Free Republic

FORT HUACHUCA — They may be both Republicans and represent Arizona in the upper chamber of Congress but they don’t agree on the recent decision of the Obama Administration of the reestablishing diplomatic relations with Cuba after six decades. After about 90 minutes on Fort Huachuca Thursday, Sen. John McCain and Sen. Jeff Flake discussed the announcement with the Herald/Review during a quick walking interview to a plane waiting to take them to Yuma.

The IRS has been bled white, complained Commissioner John Koskinen. Budget cuts to the agency, he adds, have forced the IRS to eliminate almost all overtime, implement hiring freezes, and furlough nonessential operatives. It will also likely mean a reduction in taxpayer services like audits and, yes, even the processing of refund checks. And Koskinen wants the public to know that it’s all the GOP’s fault. “Everybody’s return will get processed,” the IRS commissioner told reporters on Thursday. “But people have gotten very used to being able to file their return and quickly get a refund. This year we...

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- A state lawmaker from St. Louis is asking a legislative committee to investigate whether St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch "manipulated" the grand jury in the Michael Brown case. A joint House and Senate committee is investigating why Gov. Jay Nixon did not use National Guard troops to prevent burning and looting in Ferguson on Nov. 24, the night McCulloch announced that the grand jury would not indict Ferguson officer Darren Wilson in the August shooting death of Brown....

Full title: Judicial Watch Files Two Lawsuits against Obama Administration for Information on Terrorist Swap for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl GAO found that Obama broke a “clear and unambiguous” law when he swapped Bowe Bergdahl for the high-level terrorists (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that on November 18, 2014, it filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits against the U.S. Departments of Defense and State to obtain records concerning arrangements made between the U.S. government with third parties or another state regarding agreements and monetary payments to secure the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from captivity in Afghanistan....

President Obama's deal to normalize relations with Castro reminds us of a fantastic 1998 episode of the long-running animated series The Simpsons, "The Trouble With Trillions." In that episode, we learn that Montgomery Burns had made off with the $1 trillion bill that President Truman printed in 1945 to pay for Europe's postwar reconstruction. When the FBI finally uncovers Burns' deception, he flees the country, looking for an island to buy, and, flying over Cuba, decides that it "has 'freedom' written all over it." Burns, with Homer accompanying him, goes to see Castro, who just moments before was about to...

<p>The body of the lone terrorist behind the attack on the Sydney, Man Haron Monis, is unlikely be receive a proper burial after Muslim funderal directors said his body should either be thrown in the sea or “chucked in the bloody sh*thouse”.</p>

The U.S. Army's report on Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl will show he deserted, but not that he is a traitor, two military analysts familiar with the case told Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor." The report was completed in October, but has yet to be released to the public. Bergdahl walked away from his base in Afghanistan and was captured and held by the Taliban for five years.He was released earlier this year in a controversial trade for five Taliban leaders being held at the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, who said he played...

President Obama holds a year-end news conference for reporters ahead of his annual holiday vacation with family in Hawaii. Join the conversation and share your comments on Facebook and Twitter using #cspanchat.

The FBI said Friday that North Korea is responsible for the cyberattack on Sony Pictures that led the studio to cancel the release of a movie. Confirming what government officials were saying privately for days, the FBI announced that is months-long investigation concluded that North Korea was behind the attack, based on technical similarities to previous attacks. A statement from the FBI said investigators found “significant overlap in the infrastructure” used in the Sony hacking and in previous attacks. The agency said there were also similarities in technological tools used in this attack and an a cyberattack in March 2013...

Yet another woman has come forward to accuse Bill Cosby of drugging and possibly taking advantage of her. On an episode of "Dr. Phil" airing on Friday, the talk show had seven of Cosby's accusers for guests, including a woman who was identified only as Lisa who said that she was drugged by the famous comedian more than two decades ago. Lisa had built a friendship with Cosby after being called to audition for him when she was a model in the 1980s. "I was very excited to go and see him," Lisa told Dr. Phil. "I was starstruck. I...

The Daily Beast has unearthed several emails that reveal at least two U.S. government officials screened a rough cut of the Kim Jong-Un assassination comedy The Interview in late June and gave the film—including a final scene that sees the dictator’s head explode—their blessing. The claim that the State Department played an active role in the decision to include the film’s gruesome death scene is likely to cause fury in Pyongyang. Emails between the Sony Entertainment CEO and a security consultant even appear to suggest the U.S. government may support the notion that The Interview would be useful propaganda against...

For many conservatives, agreeing with Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is a rare occurrence. Warren is a pure collectivist who views strong government control as a critical mechanism for politicians to "improve" the lives of Americans as they see fit. Her liberal voting record and view that individual financial success creates a social obligation to pay heavy taxes reinforce those perspectives. Yet, in her recent opposition to federal spending legislation, Warren correctly noted that reinstituting federal insurance for riskier financial products like credit default swaps was a concession to the largest banks in America contrary to the interests of most taxpayers....

Attorney General Eric Holder announced expanded protection for transgender government employees Thursday, allowing the Justice Department to file claims against employers accused of discriminating based on gender identity. The expanded protections come from Holder's clarified interpretation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits workplace discrimination due to racial, gender or religious bias. Holder will no longer maintain the previously established position that "Title VII's prohibition against discrimination based on sex does not encompass gender identity per se." "This important shift will ensure that the protections of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 are extended to...

Ben Carson, on his first visit here, tells ‘Post’ he is not sure that a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria ‘makes sense,’ and that Israeli settlement construction is ‘blown out of proportion.’ Retired neurosurgeon and aspiring US politician Ben Carson could walk down the streets of Jerusalem, shout at the top of his lungs “I am Ben Carson,” and almost no one would know who he is. At least not yet. But that could change very quickly as the 2016 US presidential campaign picks up speed, and Carson gains traction. And if recent polls are any indication, the 63-yearold...

ST. LOUIS, MO (KTVI) – Missouri Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder wrote an open letter to Attorney General Eric Holder. He is calling him out for not releasing his findings yet in the federal investigation into the Michael Brown shooting. In Kinder’s letter, he notes the investigation has gone on, “For more than four months.” He adds: “I respectfully request that you release to the public the findings of fact from your federal investigation into whether a civil rights violation occurred. I ask this not knowing what those findings are. However, I believe that all Missourians, indeed all Americans, have a...

President Barack Obama has broken two barriers: Being the first black president -- and becoming the first Latino president, according to Tom Perez, Obama’s labor secretary. Perez made the comment a day after Obama’s shocking shift to take steps to normalize relations with Cuba and a month after the president’s executive actions on immigration that had widespread appeal among Latinos. “When I reflect on the breadth and depth of what he has done for Latinos, it really makes him in my mind, and in the minds of so many others, the first Latino president,” Perez said Thursday, according to Politico....

The State Department's Rose Gottemoeller, under secretary for arms control and international security, spoke at the Brookings Institution Thursday where she reaffirmed the United States' "unassailable" commitment to putting the nuclear weapons genie back in the bottle. Gottemoeller told the attendees at the Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative-sponsored event that "the U.S. commitment to achieving the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons is unassailable." She went on to note that the nation's stockpile of active weapons is down 85 percent from maximum cold war levels, falling to 4,804 in 2013 from a high of 31,255. But, she...

Attorney General Eric Holder has issued an edict, through a memorandum, that cross dressing and transsexualism is now protected under federal civil rights laws which were designed to protect women from sex discrimination. Existing federal law provides no statutory support for treating cross-dressers and transsexuals as the law treats female victims of discrimination. This means that the Justice Department could now, for example, consider the decision by a school or church to not hire a transvestite as a violation of federal law. Holder ordered that the Department of Justice will stop making arguments in litigation suggesting that transgender people are...

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas ripped the Obama administration’s policies on Israel and Iran at a dinner Sunday evening in New York hosted by a major Jewish group.“What would real presidential leadership look like?” the Texas Republican said, the Dallas Morning News reported. “A real president … would stand up and say on the world stage: Under no circumstances will Iran be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. Iran will either stop, or we will stop them.”, one of the most outspoken defenders of Israel’s interests, spoke at the annual dinner of the Zionist Organization of America.The potential 2016 presidential contender condemned...

The U.S. Justice Department and the Obama administration have lost their first battle in the war over the president’s plan to provide “deferred action,” or amnesty, to almost 5 million illegal aliens. When the judge for a Pennsylvania federal district court held on December 16 that President Obama’s “Executive Action is unconstitutional because it violates the separation of powers and the Take Care Clause of the Constitution,” it must have felt like it came from left field, since the case didn’t involve a general attack on the immigration amnesty plan. No, U.S. v. Elionardo Juarez-Escobar is a criminal prosecution...