Free Republic

On Wednesday, Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced at the United Nations that her office would be working in several American cities to form what she called the Strong Cities Network (SCN), a law enforcement initiative that would encompass the globe. This amounts to nothing less than the overriding of American laws, up to and including the United States Constitution, in favor of United Nations laws that would henceforth be implemented in the United States itself – without any consultation of Congress at all. The United Nations is a sharia-compliant world body, and Obama, speaking there just days ago, insisted that...

HONOLULU, Oct. 2 (UPI) -- An undisclosed number of F-22 Raptors of the Hawaii Air National Guard and the U.S. Air Force have been deployed to the Middle East for as long as six months. The Hawaii Air National Guard, or HIANG, said the deployment of most of the fighters and more than 200 personnel from Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Honolulu took place Sept. 26 but was kept secret for security considerations. The aircraft and personnel are now in an unidentified location in the region, which is in the area of responsibility of the U.S. Central Command. "Because of...

Conservative Republican Donald Trump is leading in all the polls by historic margins. Trump, who is a Presbyterian, recently held a meeting with 40 religious leaders at his Trump Towers office. Christian Pastor David Jeremiah along with television evangelist Jan Crouch, Pastor Darrell Scott, and Jews for Jesus Rabbi Kirt Schneider. While candidates have been open about sharing their faith in recent decades, true Christians act as Christians at all times… even when no one is watching. The two and a half hour meeting about faith was constructive, and all reports are that Trump asked the Lord for wisdom and...

Presidential candidate Jeb Bush made an eyebrow-raising comment in the wake of the Oregon school massacre -- saying "stuff happens" in response to a discussion about gun violence. Bush called the shooting in Oregon "heartbreaking," and said he also had challenges that he faced during his tenure as governor of Florida. "Look stuff happens, there's always a crisis and the impulse is always to do something and it's not always the right thing to do," Bush said at the Conservative Leadership Project in Greenville, South Carolina, referring to taking away rights.

Trump's dominance continues

At long last here is a photo of Chris Harper Mercer, the 26-year-old shooter in Oregon. He is most certainly a Muslim.

House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz is planning to run for House speaker, taking on Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy in what appears to be a long-shot bid to lead House Republicans, according to multiple sources. The Utah Republican, first elected to Congress in 2008, is launching a campaign less than a week before the Oct. 8 leadership elections for the House GOP Conference. The date for a floor vote to pick the next speaker has not been set yet. McCarthy (R-Calif.) is the overwhelming favorite to win, and it’s unclear how many votes Chaffetz can garner. Chaffetz's office would not comment....

Pope Francis' meeting last week with an American woman at the center of a row over gay marriage was not something he had sought and should not be seen as an endorsement of her views, the Vatican said on Friday. One Vatican official said there was "a sense of regret" that the pope had ever seen Kim Davis, a Kentucky county clerk who went to jail in September for refusing to honor a U.S. Supreme Court ruling and issue same-sex marriage licenses. The encounter in Washington was originally kept secret and has sparked widespread debate since it became public this...

The latest Pew poll shows that Jeb Bush has fallen to 4 percent in the Republican field. Donald Trump leads the field with 25 percent; Ben Carson is at 16 percent. Carly Fiorina and Marco Rubio are tied for third at 8 percent of the Republican field "At this stage of the 2016 presidential campaign, key issues divide both Republican and Democratic voters, and early candidate preferences reflect some of these cleavages," writes Pew. "When Republican and Republican-leaning voters are asked in an open-ended format (no names provided) for their first choice for the nomination, none of the 15 GOP...

Moscow said on Friday its latest strikes had hit 12 Islamic State targets, but most of the areas it described were in parts of the country where the militant group has little or no sway. The Russian Defence Ministry said its Sukhoi-34, Sukhoi-24M and Sukhoi-25 warplanes had flown 18 sorties, describing targets in western and northern Syria, including a command post and a communications center in the province of Aleppo, a militant field camp in Idlib and a command post in Hama. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict with a network of sources on the...

McCain reacted to Russia's announcement that it had begun launching air strikes targeting ISIS militants in Syria by calling on the White House to arm Syrian rebels with weapons to shoot down Russian planes. McCain initially responded to Fox News host Neil Cavuto's question about whether he would shoot down Russian planes by saying no, but then went on to assert that he would arm Syrian rebels to carry out that very same task. "I might do what we did in Afghanistan many years ago, to give those guys the ability to shoot down those planes, that equipment is available,"...

BEIRUT/MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia bombed Syria for a third day on Friday, mainly hitting areas held by rival insurgent groups rather than the Islamic State fighters it said it was targeting and drawing an increasingly angry response from the West. The U.S.-led coalition that is waging its own air war against Islamic State called on the Russians to halt strikes on targets other than Islamic State. "We call on the Russian Federation to immediately cease its attacks on the Syrian opposition and civilians and to focus its efforts on fighting ISIL," said the coalition, which includes the United States, major...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Russia's launch of airstrikes in Syria is prompting discussions within the Pentagon about whether the U.S. should use military force to protect U.S.-trained and equipped Syrian rebels if they come under fire by the Russians." U.S. officials said Thursday that senior military leaders and defense officials are working through the thorny legal and foreign policy issues and are weighing the risks of using force in response to a Russian attack. Defense Secretary Ash Carter declined to discuss the problem when asked about it this week. But U.S. officials acknowledged that this is one of the questions being...

A new report confirms more White House woes with our ally Israel. A Politico exclusive reveals that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid confronted White House chief of staff Denis McDonough on two occasions to ask President Obama to reject a UN resolution that would grant Palestine statehood. Both times, Obama gave him the silent treatment. While Reid has previously shown his support for Israel, his latest request may not exactly have been for the Middle Eastern country’s best interests. The timing suggested he was trying to secure passage for the Iran Deal: The requests from Reid came as he was...

Russia's launch of airstrikes in Syria is prompting discussions within the Pentagon about whether the U.S. should use military force to protect U.S.-trained and equipped Syrian rebels if they come under fire by the Russians. U.S. officials said Thursday that senior military leaders and defense officials are working through the thorny legal and foreign policy issues and are weighing the risks of using force in response to a Russian attack.

<p>The U.S. economy added only 142,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said Friday. The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 5.1 percent.</p> <p>Analysts had forecast growth of a much more robust 206,000 jobs and an unchanged unemployment rate.</p> <p>Wages were flat in In September, with average hourly earnings at $25.09, following a 9-cent gain in August. Hourly earnings have risen by 2.2 percent over the year. Average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees were unchanged at $21.08 in September, the department said.</p>

A LONE gunman has shot dead a police IT expert outside police HQ in Charles Street, Parramatta, before being gunned down by police. The shooter, believed to be of Middle Easter appearance, launched an attack from the street, peppering the front of the building. He shot a police IT worker before being gunned by special constables who guard the entrance. The Daily Telegraph understands a number of shots were fired in the attack in the street close to a childcare centre used by police force families. There is no confirmation it was a terrorist attack. Police had warning of the...

The Taliban Friday claimed to have shot down a C-130 military transport plane in eastern Afghanistan, with NATO confirming that 11 people including six US soldiers were killed in the crash. NATO did not confirm the cause of the crash but it comes as Afghan forces -- backed by NATO special forces and US air support -- pushed into the centre of the northern city of Kunduz which was captured by the Taliban on Monday. "Our mujahideen have shot down a four-engine US aircraft in Jalalabad," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Twitter. "Based on credible information 15 invading forces...

Six U.S. servicemembers and five contractors were killed in a C-130 crash at Jalalabad Airport in Afghanistan, the Pentagon said late Thursday. The crash, which occurred just after midnight Friday Afghanistan time, involved a C-130J assigned to the 774th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron, which is part of the 455th Air Expeditionary Wing. A U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the incident publicly, said told the Associated Press that there was no indication of hostile fire. All aboard were assigned to Operation Resolute Support, which is the NATO-led mission to provide training...

Edited by Joel Leyden Israel News AgencyNew York — October 1, 2015 … Following is Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the United Nations General Assembly: “Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you greetings from Jerusalem. The city in which the Jewish People’s hopes and prayers for peace for all of humanity have echoed throughout the ages. Thirty-one years ago, as Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, I stood at this podium for the first time. I spoke that day against a resolution sponsored by Iran to expel Israel from the United Nations. Then as now, the UN was obsessively...