Free Republic

New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez is scheduled to appear on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday amid the rekindled firestorm surrounding his trips to the Dominican Republic. Several people at the network, including anchor George Stephanopoulos, haven’t responded when Breitbart News has asked if Stephanopoulos or reporter Martha Raddatz will ask Menendez about his alleged sexual escapades abroad. This reporter interviewed two Dominican Republic women in November, while reporting for The Daily Caller before joining Breitbart News, who claimed Menendez paid them for sex around Easter time this year. The encounter apparently took place at Casa de Campo, a posh...

Documents published online for the first time Thursday indicate that the FBI opened an inquiry into New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez on August 1, 2012, focusing on repeated trips he took to the Dominican Republic with longtime campaign contributor and Miami eye doctor Salomon Melgen. TheDC reported in November that Menendez purchased the service of prostitutes in that Caribbean nation at a series of alcohol-fueled sex parties. The documents, which The Daily Caller had obtained hours earlier from an anonymous source, also indicate that Carrie Levine, research director at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), was alerted...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, perhaps the most famous current female political figure, has fallen ill. "In the course of a follow-up exam today, Secretary Clinton's doctors discovered a blood clot had formed, stemming from the concussion she sustained several weeks ago. She is being treated with anti-coagulants and is at New York-Presbyterian Hospital so that they can monitor the medication over the next 48 hours," a spokesman for the former first lady said yesterday in a statement. Clinton's illness, and the fact that she has not been seen in public in the last three weeks, has prompted a slew...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted to hospital with blood clot following concussion.

AP) -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted to hospital with blood clot following concussion. APTV 12-30-12 1953EST

December 29, 2012 Bill and Hillary Clinton in Punta Cana for New Year's celebration Staff report Punta Cana, DR.– Ex-president Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary Clinton are enjoying their year-end vacation in Punta Cana, in the eastern coast of the Dominican Republic. According to press reports, the Clintons will celebrate New Year’s at the Puntacana Resort & Club and could also attend a fashion show scheduled for December 29, which will be held in honor of famous Dominican designer Oscar de la Renta. Also expected to attend are American journalist Barbara Walters, Vogue editor Anna Wintour, Spanish actress Mar...

Two women from the Dominican Republic told The Daily Caller that Democratic New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez paid them for sex earlier this year.

Seven people, including three children, have been killed after an out-of-control van drove off a road and plunged more than 100ft into New York's Bronx Zoo. The van had been heading south down the Bronx River Parkway when it suddenly bounced off the central section, careered across two lanes and then hit the guardrail. Police said it flipped over the rail and then landed upside down in an area that is used by the zoo to store its monorail trains, some way from the animal enclosures. All seven people in the van were killed in the accident. They have been...

‘S-HERTOGENBOSCH, Netherlands (Reuters) - When Christianity fades, it doesn't just leave empty pews behind. With each church that shuts, the statues, crucifixes, chalices, paintings or vestments that were part of regular Sunday services suddenly have no liturgical home.In the Netherlands, where faith has faded more dramatically than in many other parts of Europe, two churches close down on average every week. The sacred art left over is piling up in cellars and storerooms around the country.Some congregations elsewhere have the opposite problem. New Catholic and Protestant churches are springing up in Latin America, Africa and Asia, and pastors in eastern...

A Southern Californian man thrown off a Caribbean gay cruise earlier this week has said that that he and his partner were taunted, humiliated and subjected to inhumane treatment when they were arrested for indecent exposure.Dennis Jay Mayer, 53, of Palm Springs said he has no doubt they were arrested in Dominica because they were gay. Police said it was because they were seen having sex in public on the balcony of their ship cabin. Mayer said they were not having sex, but were ‘partially clothed’. (edit) The pastor of Dominica's Trinity Baptist Church, Randy Rodney, praised the police for their...

SNIPPET: "In July, the British government warned that Al Qaeda’s exploitation of social networking websites is on the rise." SNIPPET: "The massive and multifarious network of websites and social media has presented a challenge to authorities in trying to combat it. Additionally, civil liberty concerns have conflicted with government efforts to spy on communications. Reducing terrorist activity on social media sites has been particularly difficult because users have adopted new forms of communication to conform with the new formats. Many Arabic speakers on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other sites use Arabizi, a form of colloquial Arabic written in the Latin...

A Dominican with an anti-American grudge has been busted for building a bomb in his upper Manhattan apartment to blow up a police station, sources said Sunday night. -snip- The suspect was identified through one of the al-Awlaki web sites, where he posted anti-American comments, the source said.

Having tied the knot in a white wedding, a lesbian couple thought the icing on the cake would be a traditional honeymoon along with other young couples. But the trip turned out to be a nightmare after staff at their resort treated them as if it was not a "real honeymoon" and excluded them from special romantic meals and dances. Gemma Harman, 24, and Tamsin Harper, 36, said it was the "worst two weeks" of their lives and the "homophobic manner" in which they were treated was "disgusting". The couple, from Brighouse, near Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, decided to go on...

Why It's No Longer Raining Cocaine in the Dominican Republic By Ezra Fieser / Santo Domingo Drug cartels often drop their product from small planes for it to be picked up by traffickers on land. But sometimes those air deliveries miss their mark — and until recently, errant bundles of cocaine used to fall from the sky into the Dominican Republic's countryside so frequently that one rural cab driver tells TIME they were like "gifts from God," because residents who found them could sell them back to the narcos for a handsome price. "It paid better than any other job,"...

(English-language translation) A septuagenarian missionary became the first person to import the dangerous cholera bacterium to Puerto Rico in over a century. Confirmation was done by the Department of Health, following protocol which requires that confirmed cholera cases be reported within 24 hours. The man, whom the Department of Health only identified as a missionary who lives in the northern part of the island, traveled to the Dominican Republic two weeks ago to do work in an area where hygienic conditions were not the best. "He is a person who travels to the Dominican Republic frequently," State Epidemiologist Carmen Deseda...

SAN DIEGO, Texas - A reserve deputy driving home from work swerved violently off the road and overturned his car after his headlights revealed the battered bodies of three men on a dark South Texas road. The incident happened about 1 a.m. Tuesday as Duval County reserve deputy Alonzo Zamora was driving along Farm-to-Market Road 1329. Sheriff's Sgt. David Canales says Zamora suffered only bumps and bruises in the crash. Canales says the men were a 30-year-old from El Salvador, a 23-year-old from the Dominican Republic and a 23-year-old from Mexico. Each suffered head injuries, and the Salvadoran also had...

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) sold his villa in the Dominican Republic that played a role in his conviction on ethics charges last year, according to his financial disclosure forms released Wednesday. Rangel received between $250,001 and $500,000 from the sale of his beach villa in Punta Cana. The former Ways and Means Committee chairman was sanctioned for committing 11 violations of House ethics rules, including improperly using his office to solicit donations for an educational center in his name and filing incorrect financial disclosures and tax forms that failed to list income earned on his Dominican villa. The 81-year-old lawmaker...

A Dominican Republic-bound JetBlue flight made a U-turn and headed back to Kennedy Airport after the pilot discovered a scamming TSA screener had sneaked aboard... ... Insisting that he was authorized to use a jump seat in the cabin, he caught the pilot's attention 45 minutes into the flight.

Households headed by immigrants have a substantially higher rate of welfare use than native-headed households, according a report released by the Center for Immigration Studies this week. The report examined census data about the use of welfare programs – cash assistance, food assistance, housing assistance, and Medicaid – and compared usage by immigrant headed households with at least one child – those headed both by legal and illegal immigrants – with usage by native headed households with at least one child. 57 percent of immigrant headed households participate in at least one welfare program, compared to 39 percent of native...

Although it is not in the form of binding resolution, the American push for U.N. action has helped win over a handful of new countries to the cause. A resolution could be brought to a vote later this year. The issue of gay rights has polarized nations at the U.N. for years. And despite growing acceptance for homosexuality in Western nations and parts of Latin America, lawyers say there is still a gap in human rights treaties for the protection of gays against discrimination and mistreatment. "We are very concerned that individuals continue to be killed, arrested and harassed around...