Free Republic

RCMP grapples with questions of FBI authority in Canada ... In the wake of a dramatic RCMP reveal of two people arrested in Canada in connection with a plot to derail a passenger train, Canadians may have questioned why the United States Department of Homeland Security and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation were involved in the operation. Those who have followed the quiet evolution of Canada-US cross-border policing, however, weren't surprised. Law enforcement agencies in Canada and the US are now working together in an unprecedented way, says the RCMP—and the two countries are hammering out a plan to...

The Amnesty Twins disgrace themselves yet again.- by John HillStand With ArizonaWebsite | Facebook | Twitter I am disgusted. John McCain and Lindsey Graham are despicable, and must be run out of office. Here's why. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) led a 13-hour filibuster against the confirmation of CIA nominee John Brennan yesterday, in response to a merely to try and get an answer to a single question for Barack Obama and Eric Holder: “Does the president have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on an American soil?” This followed a stunning comment from...

Imagine a vast registry that details every legal gun owner in the country, along with information about all of their firearms. Now imagine the gun lobby not making a fuss about it. That’s what has happened in Germany, where a new gun database went into service at the beginning of the year. Until recently, some records were kept on index cards across what used to be 551 separate local registries. Now, law enforcement officials can sit down at their computers and scroll through lists of owners and their guns in seconds. Hunting is popular in Germany, and gun manufacturers are...

PORTSMOUTH, Ohio (WSAZ) -- A dead science teacher, weapons of mass destruction, first responders in hazmat suits and the Ohio Army National Guard all near the Municipal Stadium in Portsmouth, Thursday. There's no cause for alarm -- this is just a drill! The mock disaster training exercise is being done with Scioto County first responders and the Ohio Army National Guard 52nd Civil Support Unit. "It's the reality of the world we live in," says Portsmouth Police Chief Bill Raisin. "Don't forget there is such a thing as domestic terrorism. This helps us all be prepared." The make-believe scenario is...

Near-shoring refers to the practice of attracting global businesses to Detroit whose growth and expansion is otherwise hindered by restrictive U.S. immigration laws. American businesses, particularly in industries critical to the new economy, have faced significant hurdles to engaging the world’s most talented workers because of restrictive U.S. immigration laws. Since the H-1B skilled worker visa cap was rolled back to 65,000, the demand by U.S. firms for these visas has far exceeded the supply, usually surpassing the cap only days after the application period is opened. As a result, U.S. firms have been forced to locate facilities in other...

We believe that being welcoming is the right thing to do, but that’s not the whole story. Michigan is the only state that lost population between 2000 and 2010. Considering how high unemployment in Michigan has been, some might say that’s a good thing — fewer people to compete for the jobs we do have. In 2008, the New Economy Initiative for Southeast Michigan, the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce, and the Skillman Foundation commissioned former State Representative Steve Tobocman to explore the idea of immigration as a potential strategy for reinventing the economy of that region. Fewer people to...

Exclusive: Joseph Farah stresses that Jewish state's fate is not in hands of globalists TIBERIAS, Israel – Today I am staying in a kibbutz guest house on the Sea of Galilee – the first day of weeklong trip to the Holy Land. I haven’t been here since 1991. Prior to that, in the 1980s, I had made trips to Israel and other Middle East countries as an Arab-American correspondent for the Hearst Newspapers. This is different. Israel is different. It’s a lot smaller than it was in those days. Slowly but surely, due to relentless Arab pressure and the whining...

Lisa Jackson is the boss at one of the most contentious government agencies in the Obama administration and is responsible for numerous controversial actions that will have a significant financial effect on American consumers: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). So it’s no wonder Congress is miffed to discover that her decision-making process on key issues was conducted in the most secretive manner Washington has ever devised—under an alias. Jackson’s secret identity email account name is “Richard Windsor.” The name is part family dog (Richard) and part hometown (East Windsor, N.J.), and it turns out there are at least 12,000 recently...

India Slowly Confronts Epidemic Of Missing Children Simon Denyer/The Washington Post - Children rescued from a bangle-making factory in New Delhi after a police raid on Sept.5, 2012. More than 90,000 children go missing in India every year, many of them sold into forced labor on farms and in factories. By Simon Denyer, Published: September 22 NEW DELHI — Every six minutes, a child goes missing in India. They are boys like Irfan, drugged and abducted at the age of 9 by two men on a motorbike as he walked home one day after playing with friends. (Simon Denyer/The Washington...

I spoke with a well-placed journalist last night whose sources describe the situation at the State Department in one word: “Chaos.” The working assumption is that several American embassies may have been penetrated, or are vulnerable to attack, because so many of them rely on local residents for staff needs at the embassy, and as such may be in a position to breach security if they have been recruited by Al Qaida. ...The consulate in Benghazi was an interim facility, with only a standard door lock for security, and worse, Ambassador Stevens was traveling with only a light security detail,...

Romney "agrees" with Rubio. Wants "long term" solution. Full statement in Comments.

What's green and blue and grabby all over? President Obama's new pressure campaign for Congress to ratify the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). The fight over LOST goes back three decades, when it was first rejected by President Ronald Reagan. He warned that "no national interest of the United States could justify handing sovereign control of two-thirds of the Earth's surface over to the Third World." According to top Reagan officials William Clark and Ed Meese, their boss believed the "central, and abiding, defect" was "its effort to promote global government at the expense of sovereign nation states --...

The stunning repudiation of Sen. Richard Lugar's, R-Ind., bid for a seventh term has sent shock waves through Washington's internationalist lobby. A former Rhodes Scholar, Lugar has spent his career promoting a globalist agenda, since he succeeded the late Jesse Helms as the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. One day after Indiana Republicans handed Lugar his walking papers, an outfit called the Atlantic Council held a forum to promote the discredited Law of the Sea Treaty. As former Republican U.S. Sens. Chuck Hagel and John Warner beamed their approval, Obama's Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta declared that...

There is something very wrong when the sitting president refuses to divulge huge pieces of information about his background. What is he hiding? Maybe the “birthers” were a little extreme, but is there something wrong with this “manufactured candidate,” whose history remains sealed from public view? What is he hiding? Could the “Hawaii birth certificate” be a forgery? Is there something much worse—like “sponsorship” by an unnamed special interest? I don’t know. I do know that the man in the White House now is an imposter. The only question is which kind of an imposter: an incompetent “pretender” or a...

Look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It’s … a drone, and it’s watching you. That’s what privacy advocates fear from a bill Congress passed this week to make it easier for the government to fly unmanned spy planes in U.S. airspace. The FAA Reauthorization Act, which President Obama is expected to sign, also orders the Federal Aviation Administration to develop regulations for the testing and licensing of commercial drones by 2015.

Funny how some projects attract the EPA like flies to, well, you know and others? Meh. The LA Times reports: Construction cranes rise like storks 40 stories above the Mojave Desert. In their midst, the "power tower" emerges, wrapped in scaffolding and looking like a multistage rocket. Clustered nearby are hangar-sized assembly buildings, looming berms of sand and a chain mail of fencing that will enclose more than 3,500 acres of public land. Moorings for 173,500 mirrors — each the size of a garage door — are spiked into the desert floor. Before the end of the year, they will...

President Obama, I oppose your appointment of Michael Taylor, a former VP and Lobbyist for Monsanto, the widely criticized Genetically Modified (GM) food multinational, as Senior Advisor to the Commissioner at the FDA. Taylor is the same person who was Food Safety Czar at the FDA when Genetically Modified Organisms were allowed into the US food supply without undergoing a single test to determine their safety or risks. This is a travesty. Taylor was in charge of policy for Monsanto's now-discredited GM Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) which is directly linked to cancer and opposed by many medical and hospital organizations.

anuary 29, 2012 Alex Jones and Kremlin Propaganda By Ricardo Galván Estrada Following the largest anti-Kremlin protests since the alleged collapse of communism, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused the United States of orchestrating the activities of the Russian dissident movement. In televised remarks on December 8, the former KGB colonel accused Hillary Clinton and the United States government of funding the protests and suggested that the Western powers sent a "signal" to their undercover agents to begin active measures against the country. Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/01/alex_jones_and_kremlin_propaganda.html#ixzz1kwV4DTU0

A top director at a venture capital firm that finances a controversial new online voting system donated to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and also contributed the maximum allowable to Obama’s inauguration, KleinOnline has learned. The internationally-headquartered company, SCYTL, has previously faced questions about the security of its electronic voting technologies, which are now set to be deployed in 900 U.S. jurisdictions. The firm already provides balloting for overseas U.S. military and civilian voting in nine states plus elections technologies in several districts. Concerns have also been raised about SCYTL’s ties to the Spanish government and to international venture capital firms....

SAN BERNARDINO - Army Spec. Christopher Sullivan survived a suicide bombing while serving a tour in Afghanistan for the U.S. Army last December. Now his family is on pins and needles again, after a gunman shot Sullivan during his welcome-home party Friday in San Bernardino. "My son didn't deserve this. He served his country," said his mother, Suzanne Sullivan, a San Bernardino resident. Sullivan, 22, a 2008 San Bernardino High School graduate who was stationed at Fort Campbell, Ky., was taken to a hospital for treatment of gunshot wounds. His condition was not known, but family members described him as...