Free Republic

Cuba’s communist-led intelligence services are aggressively recruiting leftist American academics and university professors as spies and influence agents, according to an internal FBI report published this week.Cuban intelligence services “have perfected the work of placing agents, that includes aggressively targeting U.S. universities under the assumption that a percentage of students will eventually move on to positions within the U.S. government that can provide access to information of use to the [Cuban intelligence service],” the five-page unclassified FBI report says. It notes that the Cubans “devote a significant amount of resources to targeting and exploiting U.S. academia.”“Academia has been and remains...

MINNEAPOLIS — Two former employees of the Minneapolis VA Medical Center allege they were pressured to falsify patient appointment dates and medical records to hide delays, a television station reported. In a report that aired Wednesday night, the ex-employees told KARE-TV that in some cases, they were told to falsify medical records by writing that patients had declined follow-up treatments when, in reality, they say the veterans had never been contacted. The former VA workers fear that patients' lives may be at risk because they say some cases involved suspected colon cancer. "Some of them were getting missed altogether," said...

James Vanderbilt's Truth, the high-profile movie chronicling the scandal that derailed Dan Rather's career, has gotten the greenlight to begin shooting this fall. Brett Ratner's RatPac Entertainment and Echo Lake Entertainment will finance the movie, starring Robert Redford as the iconic news anchor and Cate Blanchett as Mary Mapes, Rather's producer. At the same time, FilmNation has come aboard to represent international rights and will pre-sell the project to foreign buyers at the Toronto Film Festival, which kicks off Thursday night (based on the cast, it's sure to whet appetites). Mythology Entertainment is the driving force behind Truth, which was...

Democrat Chad Taylor must stay on the ballot for U.S. Senate in Kansas, Secretary of State Kris Kobach said Thursday afternoon. Kobach said Taylor submitted a letter Wednesday to withdraw from the race but did not declare he was incapable of serving, which is also required. The Kansas Republican Party had questioned whether Taylor, the Shawnee County district attorney, could withdraw. Kansas law means “we now have no choice” but to put Taylor’s name on the ballot, Kobach told reporters at an afternoon news conference. “The law is the law.” Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/election/article1504835.html#storylink=cpy

Three senior members of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) - including an aide to its leader - were killed in a U.S. airstrike in Iraq, a senior Iraqi security official told NBC News Thursday. The strike on the ISIS stronghold of Mosul killed Abu Hajar Al-Sufi, an aide to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as well as an explosives operative and the military leader of nearby Tel Afar, the source said on condition of anonymity. Al Arabiya cited the Iraqi Defense Ministry saying Baghdadi's aide had been killed.

Since early Thursday morning, United States military planes have begun shelling the outskirts of Mosul, a Sunni-majority city in northern Iraq and military post of Islamic State (IS) militants. According to a source from the Peshmerga forces stationed near Mosul, US warplanes began bombing the hideouts of IS militants in Mosul and the surrounding areas in the ill-lit hours of dawn. The current shelling began in the neighborhoods of Somar and Intisari, which are on the outskirt of Mosul. US planes also attacked high buildings in the city that have been used as hideouts and supply storage by the Jihadi...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Wednesday said that the Obama administration should make defeating the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) its top priority. "ISIS is growing in strength. It has money, it has organization, it has the capacity to inflict real damage. So when we think about a response we have to think about how to destroy that," Warren told Yahoo's Katie Couric. Warren agreed that "time is of the essence." "We need to be working now, full-speed ahead, with other countries, to destroy ISIS. That should be our No. 1 priority," she said in a wide-ranging interview...

The French government has announced that planned deliveries of two Mistral warships to Russia have been placed on hold. The first delivery was scheduled for October. After a meeting of the French defense committee on Wednesday, Paris announced that the deliveries would not yet take place given the current unrest in eastern Ukraine. "The President of the Republic declared that, despite the prospect of a ceasefire which still remains to be confirmed and implemented, the conditions for France to deliver the first warship are not to date in place," a statement from the office of French President Francois Hollande read.

(Reuters) - As fighting between the army and Russian-backed rebels rages in eastern Ukraine, preparations are under way near its western border for a joint military exercise this month with more than 1,000 troops from the United States and its allies. The decision to go ahead with the Rapid Trident exercise Sept. 16-26 is seen as a sign of the commitment of NATO states to support non-NATO member Ukraine while stopping well short of military intervention in the conflict. The annual exercise, to take place in the Yavoriv training center near Ukraine's border with Poland, was initially scheduled for July,...

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis has sought to encourage Iraq's beleaguered Christians under threat from Islamic militants, saying they are the "heart" of the church and that the church is proud of them. In comments translated into Arabic during his weekly Wednesday general audience, Francis said the Catholic Church is like a mother, and like any mother will "defend her defenseless and persecuted children." Francis has said it was legitimate to use force to stop the militants..."The church suffers with you and is proud of you."

BEFORE he was named as a key suspect in the brutal beheading of two western journalists, the man who has become known as Jihad John was an aspiring rapper with a dark message. Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, who released music videos under the name L Jinny and even had a few songs played on BBC radio, has gained notoriety for darker reasons other than his music. The British man has gained worldwide attention after he was named as the chief suspect in the gruesome beheading of American journalist James Foley. Police and intelligence officials told Britain’s Sunday Times that “MI5 and...

ANCHORAGE—A controversial ad from the campaign to re-elect Democratic Sen. Mark Begich, which attacked his Republican rival Dan Sullivan’s record as Alaska’s attorney general, has been pulled from the airwaves. But an argument over the ad’s merits continued Tuesday. The ad started running early Friday and claimed that a list of sex offenders flashing across the screen had received inappropriately light sentences when Sullivan was attorney general. It made reference to one defendant in particular — though not by name — who is charged with murdering two elderly Anchorage residents and sexually assaulting a 2-year-old girl. In the ad, a...

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said that President Barack Obama should “continue to follow the law” in order to help “create an environment where you could do immigration reform in a responsible way next year” on Tuesday’s “Hugh Hewitt Show.”

(CNN) – Militant group ISIS released another gruesome video, showing the beheading of a second American, journalist Steven Sotloff. The terrorist group has gained strongholds in eastern Syria and northeastern Iraq, and, according to a former CIA operative, ISIS cells have already infiltrated the U.S. "The people who collect tactical intelligence on the ground, day-to-day – and this isn't Washington – but people collecting this stuff say they're here, ISIS is here, they're capable of striking," said CNN national security analyst and former CIA operative Bob Baer. "They don't know what their plans and intentions are. But it's a definite...

President Vladimir Putin has said Kazakhstan's history of independent statehood is scant and its people's desire for closer ties with Russia is profound — a rhetoric reminiscent of Moscow's stance on Ukraine — and inhabitants of Kazakhstan are worried. Kazakhs have taken to social networks to call for supporters to "send a history textbook to Putin" in response to the Russian leader's remarks last week that the Central Asian nation had never held any independence worth speaking of until very recently. Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev has "created a state on a territory that never had a state," Putin told a...

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) release video apparently showing beheading of US hostage, Steven Sotloff ---- David Cameron has said: "I've just seen the news. It's an absolutely disgusting and despicable act and I will be making a statement later."

Sen. Mike Lee has called on Americans to join him in the effort to abolish the federal Common Core education standards "As a U.S. Senator, I’ve seen the federal government make a mess of everything it touches," the Utah Republican wrote in the email sent out Monday morning. "And if they're allowed to stay, Common Core standards will be the ObamaCare of education," he wrote. "Common Core is the DC takeover of our school system. It will dumb down standards and cheapen the education our children receive." All kids in America "deserve the best education in the world. The only...

Are American Troops Already Fighting on the Front Lines in Iraq? The Pentagon is denying that U.S. troops are fighting ISIS on the ground in Iraq—but eyewitness accounts and Kurdish officials tell a different story. ZUMAR, Iraq — The role of American Special Operations Forces in Iraq has remained hidden even while the U.S. air war expands. As momentum against ISIS picks up, they may be emerging from the shadows. In a pitched battle on Monday, Kurdish Peshmerga, backed by American airpower and what appeared to be U.S. troops, struck at ISIS positions in the strategic crossroads of Zumar.Scenes from...

The Alaska Democratic Party broke with long tradition Monday when its central committee voted 89-2 to not field a gubernatorial ticket and instead put its weight behind the independent campaign of Bill Walker and Byron Mallott. The vote to support the fusion ticket was contingent on Walker dropping his Republican Party affiliation. Mallott will quit as the Democratic Party’s nominee for governor, as will his running mate, state Sen. Hollis French. But Mallott will remain a Democrat, executive director Kay Brown said after the vote at party headquarters in a Spenard bungalow.

President Obama was given detailed and specific intelligence about the rise of the Islamic State as part of his daily briefing for at least a year before the group seized large swaths of territory over the summer, a former Pentagon official told Fox News. The official -- who asked not to be identified because the President's Daily Brief is considered the most authoritative, classified intelligence community product analyzing sensitive international events for the president -- said the data was strong and "granular" in detail. The source said a policymaker "could not come away with any other impression: This is getting...