Free Republic

NEW CASTLE, Ind. – Should teachers be allowed to use students as props for their personal political causes? It happens all the time in school districts around the nation, particularly at the secondary level. Local teacher unions will protest the lack of a new collective bargaining agreement with a school board, and the next thing you know, high school and middle school kids are walking out of class in support of the teachers. Who do you suppose gets the students all riled up? But now some teachers are apparently willing to involve elementary-aged children in their labor wars. Or at...

Last month, Senator Dianne Feinstein and other Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released the executive summary of their final report investigating the CIA's controversial detention and interrogation program. As part of their study, the Democrats compiled twenty case studies, which were intended to address claims made by the CIA regarding the efficacy of its interrogations. One of those case studies focused on the identification and arrest of Ali Saleh Kahlah al Marri, who was freed from a US prison just days ago. Al Marri served as a "sleeper" operative for al Qaeda inside the US in 2001....

The times they are a-changin'. This week, a Republican congressman from Orange County, California, joined Oakland medical marijuana dispenser Steve DeAngelo to urge President Barack Obama, a Democrat who started out as a critic of the war on drugs, to curb his Department of Justice. They want Obama to make his prosecutors stop trying to shut down honest marijuana establishments in states that have legalized medical marijuana. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and the left-leaning DeAngelo have found common cause in calling out one area in which the federal government can and should do less. They've got the law on their side....

Attorney General Eric Holder called out Fox News yesterday for fixating on the Obama’s administraton’s terminology for ISIS. “If Fox didn’t talk about this, they would have nothing else to talk about, it seems to me,” said at the National Press Club. (snip) “They want to kill us and yet the Attorney General, chief law enforcement officer for the United States of America, is bugged by the fact that Fox brings up the accurate point they are Islamic extremists, let’s call it Islamic extremism,” Steve Doocy said. “Obviously this administration talks tougher about Fox News than they do about ISIS,...

In weighing whether to bring discrimination charges against the Ferguson Police Department, the Justice Department has been “seriously examining” allegations that the city’s enforcement of minor offenses discriminated against minorities and often led to jail times and fines that lined the city’s coffers, a law enforcement official confirmed to POLITICO. Department lawyers handling the investigation have repeatedly met with lawyers for a St. Louis non-profit that filed a federal lawsuit last week alleging that the city of Ferguson and its neighbor, Jennings, were running what amounted to modern-day debtors’ prisons, people familiar with the meetings said. The organization, Arch City...

ACTION: Contact your Senators and urge them to cosponsor S. 477, the Firearms Manufacturers and Dealers Protection Act of 2015. Operation Choke Point a Threat to the Second Amendment About a year ago, the Second Amendment community was rocked by news that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) had teamed up with Attorney General Eric Holder to utterly destroy firearms manufacturers and dealers by cutting off all credit and banking relationships with them.For its part, the FDIC categorized gun and ammunition sales as a "high-risk business," lumping it in with drug dealers, pornographers, and Ponzi scheme operators -- all of...

About a year ago, the Second Amendment community was rocked by news that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) had teamed up with Attorney General Eric Holder to utterly destroy firearms manufacturers and dealers by cutting off all credit and banking relationships with them. For its part, the FDIC categorized gun and ammunition sales as a "high-risk business," lumping it in with drug dealers, pornographers, and Ponzi scheme operators -- all of which it was working to completely destroy. Holder, in turn, would provide the "muscle" -- using a program called Operation Choke Point to make sure banks "got the...

My nomination for Libtard Newser softball question of the year

She said, “Children were slaughtered in their classrooms [at Sandy Hook Elementary] and we have not made any meaningful progress on changing the access to guns in this country. Are we a nation of cowards when it comes to guns?” Holder responded: Well, I’ll say this, [walking through the school] was the worst day I had as Attorney General. It is, I think the single failure that I point to in my time as Attorney General, that I was not able to… convince Congress to really follow the will of the American people — which was to enact meaningful, reasonable,...

Thursday morning's "Building community trust" roundtable discussion in Oakland, California, with Attorney General Eric Holder, local law enforcement, elected officials and community leaders was designed to "build trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve." After brief remarks, Holder and company dismissed the press corps. It is a courtesy, a Department of Justice spokesman explained, to allow participants to speak more candidly. And I knew that was the plan. Still, it was painful to watch as Holder spoke in favor of "body-worn cameras" for law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line and then effectively turned off...

The self-proclaimed “activist” Attorney General, Eric Holder, told reporters that he “fixed” George Bush’s politicized Department of Justice. In fact, he went on to explain that the Obama DOJ is completely unbiased, irrefutably fair, and painstakingly judicious. And, humbly, the guy who once sued Ally Bank for discrimination without any actual evidence took full credit for “fixing” the politicization that took place during the years of Obama’s incompetent predecessor.And, he did it all without any intended sarcasm, satire, or irony… Given his history of suing banks, and handing the revenue over to Democrat oriented non-profits, I’d have to say this took a little bit...

DENVER — Nobody in the Colorado marijuana industry is panicking, but those involved are sweating a little over the hard line taken by Loretta Lynch, President Obama’s pick to be the next attorney general, on legalization during this week’s Senate confirmation hearing. “Quite a few of my members were expressing concern and nervousness,” said Michael Elliott, executive director of the Colorado Marijuana Industry Group. “But I’m not sure we could have expected much more than we just heard. Even the president, who came out saying that marijuana is no more dangerous as alcohol, is also on the record as being...

Bill Maher is throwing some shade on President Obama's credentials as a supposed champion of freedom of the press. The host of HBO's "Real Time" sat down Friday to discuss media coverage of secret government work with documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, one of the journalists centrally involved in bringing revelations from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden to light. "I don't understand why he is perhaps the worst president we've had on clamping down on the press," Maher said. "He's used the Espionage Act more than any other president, right?" Maher added. Other members of the media have blasted...

On matters of policy, Ms. Lynch called capital punishment “an effective penalty” and said she disagreed with Mr. Obama’s statements that marijuana was no more harmful than alcohol. She called the National Security Agency’s collection of American phone records “certainly constitutional, and effective.” – From the New York Times article: Criticism of Holder Dominates Hearing on Loretta Lynch, Attorney General’s Possible Successor Eric Holder made a career out of protecting and coddling financial oligarchs (his 1999 memo essentially invented “Too Big to Jail”). This was such a lucrative decision for Mr. Holder, that it allowed him to climb all the way to...

Many of the allegations made by former CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson regarding alleged computer intrusions by the U.S. government are disputed in a report by the Justice Department’s inspector general. “The OIG’s investigation was not able to substantiate the allegations that Attkisson’s computers were subject to remote intrusion by the FBI, other government personnel, or otherwise,” reads the inspector general’s report. In her book “Stonewalled,” Attkisson had issued a wide-ranging set of claims — that her CBS News work computers and her personal computer had been hacked, that a strange wire was found hanging from the cable TV/broadband box

Jonathan Turley, a legal scholar, constitutionalist and liberal in the old fashioned sense, considers Obama the most anti-Constitution President in recent memory. Excerpts from his prepared testimony on Obama's nominee for Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, are provided below.Note that at the conclusion of his prepared testimony, Mr. Turley argues that in considering a nominee, the Senate should solicit the nominee's views on the department's past behavior and seek firm commitments to reform what needs to be reformed. Based on what I have read of the confirmation hearings, the present nominee's answers have been less than forthcoming and her commitments have been, at best,...

resident Obama's recent executive action on illegal immigration, deferring deportations and giving millions of individuals access to work permits, Social Security, Medicaid and other benefits, was front and center during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill Wednesday where attorney general nominee and U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch testified. Under questioning from Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, Lynch argued that regardless of an individual's lawful status in the United States, they should have the right to work. ... Attorney General Eric Holder, who Lynch will replace if confirmed, has openly stated he believes amnesty for those who entered the country illegally...

U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Loretta Lynch, who has been nominated by President Obama to replace outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder, will testify in front of the Republican controlled Senate Judiciary Committee as part of her confirmation process today on Capitol Hill. Lynch will be forced to address a number of controversial topics and will field tough questions from lawmakers. Some of the topics on the tape for discussion: -President Obama's executive amnesty. -The Department of Justice role in the IRS targeting scandal. -Closing of GITMO and release of GITMO detainees . -The broken relationship between...

The Wall Street Journal has reported that the Justice Department has been building a database which tracks vehicles across the United States. The license-plate tracking program reportedly reads plates and tracks cars on major highways across the U.S. The program’s high-tech cameras also reportedly take photos of drivers and passengers that are clear enough to identify people. The database was started in 2008 by the DEA to monitor drug traffickers along the Mexican border. It has since expanded, with more and more law enforcement agencies using it for non-drug-related reasons. Justice Department officials tells Fox News that the feds limit...

Late last week reporter Tim Steller of the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson published a piece about alleged serious misconduct and intimidation from DOJ attorneys during the trial and lawsuit of former ATF agent and whistleblower Jay Dobyns against the government. One of the recently unsealed documents, a Dec. 1 opinion by Judge Allegra, finally explains why in October the judge voided his original decision, made in August, to award Dobyns $173,000. (He later reversed his decision to void the judgment, which still stands.) The reason: The judge believed that Justice Department attorneys had “committed fraud on the court.” One...