Free Republic

The District of Columbia (D.C.) City Council has passed a measure that would pay people $9,000 a year to NOT commit crimes. The mafia has a word for this: extortion. Except in this case, the mafia are the potential criminals, and the neighborhood business owners are the D.C. government. Under the measure, which still has to be approved by the mayor, city officials would choose 200 people a year that they consider to be at high risk for committing or becoming a victim of a crime. ...

Remember the good ol' days when immigrants would assimilate into the culture of their new nation in an effort to fit in and be 'good citizens'? Yeah, that mindset doesn't seem to exist anymore, especially with the new wave of Muslim migrants currently swarming throughout Europe. While outrage continues to spread throughout Europe (and particularly in Germany) at the disgusting spate of sexual assaults that are piling up, one Muslim group says they the solution to Europe's problem. All Europe has to do to stop the Muslim Sexual Assaults is BAN alcohol! A group called The Muslim Stern is calling...

On Monday, the Associated Press reported that "Sweet Cakes by Melissa" owners Melissa and Aaron Klein paid their state-ordered damages to a lesbian couple with check totaling $136,927.07 - but that isn't the whole story. According to Fox News writer Todd Starnes, who spoke with Melissa Klein a few weeks before Christmas, Oregon's Bureau of Labor and Industries confiscated all of the money in her checking and savings accounts, including one that had money set aside for her church tithe. They totaled nearly $7,000.

A former state Senate leader and his son were convicted Friday of federal extortion charges, marking the second time in a month that one of Albany's most powerful politicians was run out office following a case that put the state capital's political culture on trial. The prosecution of Republican Dean Skelos, 67, and his 33-year-old son, Adam, cast a harsh light on politics-as-usual, much like the one against former Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who was convicted of bribery on Nov. 30. ...

The United States is “partially” responsible for a jihadi massacre on Wednesday in San Bernardino, California, carried out by Islamic State loyalists who killed 14 and wounding dozens more, Hussam Ayloush, the Los Angeles Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said Friday. “Let’s not forget that some of our own foreign policy, as Americans, as the West, have fueled that extremism,” Ayloush said on CNN’s New Day.

Black Lives Matter, not Black Friday!No Justice, No Shopping!If you took time out from holiday festivities with family and friends to watch the news at all yesterday (likely a bad idea to begin with) you are probably aware of the large scale Black Lives Matter protests which essentially shut down holiday shopping on Chicago’s Miracle Mile. It wasn’t as if they weren’t telegraphing their punches because organizers, including Jesse Jackson, had announced the disruptions days in advance. Here are a few of the sights and sounds.CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO The crowds, understandably angry over the more than...

Questions focus on whether State officials improperly sent classified material. Even as Hillary Clinton tries to put questions about her private email server behind her, the FBI has stepped up inquiries into the security of the former Secretary of State's home-made email system, and how aides communicated over email, POLITICO has learned. The FBI’s recent moves suggest that its inquiry could have evolved from the preliminary fact-finding stage that the agency launches when it receives a credible referral, according to former FBI and DOJ officials inteviewed by POLITICO. Story Continued Below “This sounds to me like it’s more than a...

Full title: How to steal $75,000 from the poor in one Day's work - traffic court is a tax collection scheme masked as justice The new liberality concerning marijuana possession in the United States is long overdue, but let’s not exaggerate how much progress we’ve made. Users might not be ending up in jail as frequently as they did 10 years ago. But cops, judges, and courts still exercise arbitrary power to ruin people’s lives, and they continue to do so at astonishing rates, all over the country. I recently saw this firsthand. I sat in a municipal traffic court...

The Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation's flagship health project changed its mind again on Wednesday on the matter of its erroneous tax returns, saying it would refile them with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service after all. The Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) said the decision to refile its 2012 and 2013 returns was in response to "recent media interest."

http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2015/10/23/doctors-agree-obamas-electronic-medical-records-mandate-sucks-n2069809?bt_alias=eyJ1c2VySWQiOiJkNmM1NGMxZS1kY2NkLTRmYjktODdmZi02ZmIzMmFmZDEzYjgifQ%3D%3D Hey, who's up for a stiff dose of "See, I told you so?" For the past several years, medical professionals have warned that the federal electronic medical records mandate -- buried in the trillion-dollar Obama stimulus of 2009 -- would do more harm than good. Their diagnosis, unfortunately, is on the nose. The Quack-in-Chief peddled his tech-centric elixir as a cost-saving miracle. "This will cut waste, eliminate red tape, and reduce the need to repeat expensive medical tests," he crowed at the time. In theory, of course, modernizing record-collection is a good idea, which many private health care providers...

Officials in Oregon have started a legal process to seize $135,000 from Christian bakers Aaron and Melissa Klein after they refused to pay the state-ordered damages for declining to bake a cake for a lesbian marriage ceremony. "Our agency has docketed the judgment and is exploring collection options," Charlie Burr, communications director at Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, told The Daily Signal. "They are entitled to a full and fair review of the case, but do not have the right to disregard a legally binding order." It's a preliminary step to seize the Kleins' house, property, or other assets...

Two days ago, I praised Gov. Scott Walker’s quiet conservatism. Today, I’ll criticize his inconsistency. The Milwaukee Bucks decided they needed a new basketball arena and they told the government to pay for it. If politicos didn’t cough up $250 million, the NBA warned that the Bucks might leave Wisconsin. Nice team you have here, Milwaukee. It’d be a shame if something happened to it… Taxpayers would rightly be furious if a private business demanded they fund a supermarket, an office building, or a strip mall — why on earth should they send their hard-earned money to millionaire athletes and...

Hackers from Syria and Iran are on the prowl to hold a neighborhood or city's gasoline supply up for ransom, or, worse, cause it to spill and explode, with Washington being high on the target list, according to a new report. The report, issued over the weekend by a group of digital security sleuths, found that a number of groups, including the notorious Syrian Electronic Army — known for hacking news groups — are looking for soft targets they can take control of easily through the Internet, and use to cause a variety of mayhem. The report shows that retail...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s closest aide is starting to look like a liability on the campaign trail for the Democratic presidential front-runner. Huma Abedin, who has been at Mrs. Clinton’s side as her personal assistant — or “body woman” — since the 2008 presidential race, has come under scrutiny for pocketing a $33,000 payout from the State Department for unused leave and using her simultaneous employment inside and outside of government to “deliver favors” to Clinton cronies.

Financial companies are facing extortion threats from hackers who threaten to knock their websites offline unless firms pay tens of thousands of dollars, an FBI agent told MarketWatch Thursday. More than 100 companies, including targets from big banks to brokerages in the financial sector, have received distributed denial of service threats since about April, says Richard Jacobs, assistant special agency in charge of the cyber branch at the FBI’s New York office. With these types of attacks, known as DDoS, criminals jam websites by flooding them with useless traffic. The ransom requests typically run in the tens of thousands of...

According to the New York Times, Bill Clinton was willing to show up at the Petra Nemcova gala commemorating the 10th anniversary of the tsunami to accept an award only after the skids were greased with an invoiced $500,000 donation. Pictures at link:

The city council in Jacksonville, Florida, is considering a bill that would make it a violation of city code for residents to back their vehicles into their driveways if their license plates cannot be seen from the street. According to the text of the bill, the new proposed ordinance would prohibit the “improper storage of vehicles” to reduce the “visual blight” of neighborhoods. It is also aimed to regulate “potentially hazardous conditions” on private property. Supporters say the ordinance is needed in order for officers to issue citations for abandoned vehicles, the Florida Times-Union reported. Currently, if a vehicle doesn’t...

A legal team investigating the Obama administration’s order that certain American military veterans deemed “incompetent” give up their weapons says the problem is worse than expected. People who live with veterans now are being ordered not to possess a gun, and some veterans are told they can “buy back” their Second Amendment rights by giving up their veterans’ benefits. “This is simply unbelievable, On the one hand the [Veterans Administration] and the FBI have found veterans to be mentally ill and too dangerous to be allowed to own firearms, while on the other hand allowing these allegedly dangerous people to...

Hillary Clinton is set to launch her presidential campaign for the second time Saturday in New York amid a barrage of criticism that has marred her first weeks on the trail. The Clintons have been no stranger to scandals, some dating back to when Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas. But there are many scandals that originated in Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state. The following 15 scandals are just a few to keep in mind as she launches her presidential campaign. Boeing bucks Boeing gave generously to the Clinton Foundation after Hillary Clinton personally intervened on its behalf...

This Memorial Day weekend marked a historic uptick in violence in many US cities. Three cities seem to symbolize our national woes the most - Baltimore, Chicago, and Ferguson. In Baltimore 9 people were killed and 29 shot. Chicago marked 12 killed and 44 wounded. The police in Baltimore and the other cities seem to be moving with unprecedented caution. Further, self initiated policing has slowed down significantly. The morale of law enforcement officers is at a decadal low. Therefore, both violent and petty crimes may flourish in several “hot spot” cities this summer. In Ferguson, sky rocketing crime rates...