Free Republic

Democratic National Committee documents recently released by WikiLeaks include spreadsheets and emails that appear to show party officials planning which donors and prominent fundraisers to provide with appointments to federal boards and commissions. The documents, which were circulated among top DNC officials in April, could raise legal questions for the party, says Ken Boehm, the chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog group. “The disclosed DNC emails sure look like the potential Clinton Administration has intertwined the appointments to federal government boards and commissions with the political and fund raising operations of the Democratic Party,” Boehm...

Healing After Dallas, Without Obama When the president repeatedly assumes the worst about police, he sends a dangerous message. By Jason L. Riley July 11, 2016 7:06 p.m. ET President Obama is scheduled to speak in Dallas Tuesday at a memorial service for the five police officers gunned down last week—but haven’t we already heard enough from him? Mr. Obama’s initial response to the shootings was more of the same: equivocation mixed with an attempt to change the subject. He said there is no possible justification for violence against law enforcement, but then added a line about racial disparities in...

Hillary Clinton likely dodged criminal charges Tuesday for a simple reason: the bar for bringing criminal charges against a politician, particularly a high public official, is so much higher than they are for anyone else. Prosecutions against such high public officials only go forward when there is “definitive” evidence. Evidence that prosecutors know will lead to a certain conviction. Why do I say that? Because earlier in my career I was chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission. I worked frequently with prosecutors. The reputational loss public officials face from criminal charges can be so great that prosecutors feel...

The White House on Monday canceled a Fourth of July celebration for troops who were scheduled to attend an event on the South Lawn, citing the possibility of inclement weather. However, President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will proceed with a planned performance this evening from rapper Kendrick Lamar and singer Janelle Monae. Afterward, the couple will deliver remarks in the East Room of the White House. Before the event was canceled, troops were scheduled to participate in a barbeque and view fireworks in the evening,...

Illegal Immigrant BUYS 14yo Girl from Guatemala to Use As Sex Slave, Maid An illegal immigrant -- whom the media is comically calling a "Morganton man" -- was arrested for buying a 14-year-old girl from Guatemala and using her as a sex slave and maid. The man's family, who all seem to be illegals as well, knew of the arrangement and appear to have thought nothing of it. He reportedly bought the girl from other family members in Guatemala. This is the culture we're importing. WATCH: Via WSOCTV (Channel 9): http://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/man-arrested-in-morganton-for-human-trafficking-of-14-year-old-girl-police-say/374448137 MORGANTON, N.C. — A man in Morganton is locked...

The United States Forest Service severely damaged a forest road and trail in Northwestern Idaho earlier this month, raising serious questions about the agency’s ability to care for federally-managed lands. During the first weekend in June, several members of Northwestern Gold Prospectors Association (NWGPA) planned to attend a gathering to prospect private claims in the Bedrock Gulch and Eagle Creek areas. When the prospectors arrived, Forest Road 152 was blocked with cement barricades and hundreds of felled trees. ... Photographs from that day show large logs laid crosswise and laterally on the trail, covered with hundreds of large pine branches...

A letter sent by a Federal Communications Commission commissioner suggests that taxpayers are footing the bill for half a billion dollars in fraudulent "Obamaphone" subsidies. Ajit Pai, the senior Republican commissioner at the FCC, says there may be as many as 4.2 million duplicate recipients of Lifeline Assistance subsidies, also known as the “Obamaphone” program. In a letter to chief executive of Universal Services Administrative Company (USAC), Pai requests an audit of how carrier sub-contractors vet the applications for new subsidies. In the letter, first published by The Hill, Pai says that cell phone carriers may have bypassed a safeguard...

Daily Caller News Foundation VA Proposes To Remove Ban On Transgender Surgery For Vets Jonah Bennett National Security/Foreign Policy Reporter The Department of Veterans Affairs has proposed to a rule to remove the ban on transgender sex change surgery for veterans, which has existed since the 1990s. According to the proposed regulation, gender reassignment surgery wasn’t previously considered medically necessary for gender dysphoria, a condition transgender individuals claims makes them feel as though they were born in the wrong body and assigned the wrong gender.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is quietly transporting illegal immigrants from the Mexican border to Phoenix and releasing them without proper processing or issuing court appearance documents, Border Patrol sources tell Judicial Watch. The government classifies them as Other Than Mexican (OTM) and this week around 35 were transferred 116 miles north from Tucson to a Phoenix bus station where they went their separate way. Judicial Watch was present when one of the white vans carrying a group of OTMs arrived at the Phoenix Greyhound station on Buckeye Road

Going Inside The Chicago Police Department’s ‘Strategic Subject List’ May 31, 2016 7:58 AM Audio CHICAGO (CBS) — Chicago suffered through an especially bloody holiday weekend, with 69 people shot over the Memorial Day weekend, including six fatalities. Police said the vast majority of the victims were on a watchlist of sorts – what the department calls its “strategic subject list.” CBS 2’s Mai Martinez sat down with the Chicago Police Department’s top brass to talk about how the list works. The strategic subject list uses an algorithm to try to predict who is most likely to be involved in...

A forestry company filed a civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) lawsuit against Greenpeace Tuesday for misrepresenting the company’s environmental record to raise funds and promote its agenda. Greenpeace knowingly and deliberately made false claims about the company while fundraising, and fabricated evidence of Resolute’s alleged environmental malfeasance, according to the forestry and paper company Resolute Forest Products. RICO is an anti-mafia law designed to combat organized crime. Greenpeace’ is a global fraud,” states the 124-page legal complaint. “For years, this international network of environmental groups collectively calling themselves ‘Greenpeace’ has fraudulently induced people throughout the United States and...

Truth involves Obama, 'nude pictures of passengers' and fed-up workers. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson warns air travelers to prepare for much longer than usual airport security lines, but a Transportation Security Administration watchdog says this mess is simply a matter of the government failing to manage its resources responsibly. On Monday, Johnson stood at Ronald Reagan National Airport just outside Washington and told passengers to expect longer than expected wait times as the Transportation Security Administration, or TSA, expedites hundreds of new personnel into service to speed up the security process. In Chicago, passengers were told to arrive three...

TSA's Union Power Grab: Thousands Slowing Down Airports Michelle Malkin All you travelers stuck in mile-long TSA security lines are pawns. Convenient political pawns. Big Labor bosses want more power and more money. Stranded travelers are just the latest victims in this age-old game of D.C. extortion. Union leaders want you to think the fault lies with a stingy Congress unwilling to fork over enough money to fill screener shortages. White House spokesman Josh Earnest poured more partisan fuel on the fire last week by blaming the nationwide slowdowns on "the inability of Republicans in Congress to govern the country."...

Report: Tesla Used Illegal Foreign Labor to Expand CA Plant by Chriss W. Street 17 May 2016Newport Beach, CA148 First Digital’s Bay Area News Group investigative reporters have accused Tesla Motors of employing foreign contract laborers at $5-per-hour, 10 hours a day, six days a week to expand its government-subsidized California auto plant. In 2009, the U.S. Department of Energy in loaned Tesla Motors $465 million to open a plant for its all-electric Model S vehicle. Despite the $1 billion traditional automakers were paying to build and equip new auto plants, Tesla acquired the bankrupt General Motors “New United Motor...

$16 million in fines dropped, threats canceled. A Wyoming rancher threatened by the Environmental Agency with $16 million fines for getting a state permit and building a stock pond on his ranch has reached a settlement that will have the fines go away and he’ll keep his stock pond. WND reported in 2015 on a lawsuit filed on behalf of Fort Bridger, Wyoming, rancher Andy Johnson by officialsl with the Pacific Legal Foundation seeking to vindicate his property rights. The lawsuit explained federal law clearly exempts stock ponds from the rules of the EPA, which had filed a compliance order...

...The founding fathers created a unique and beautiful system of government with checks and balances that they hoped would make it impossible for a dictator to emerge because Congress would recognize a dictator. They could not have foreseen that Congress would aid and abet him...

Bowie Resources Partners’ purchase of Peabody Energy Corp.‘s Twentymile Mine in Routt County has fallen through, and Peabody has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. Peabody, the world’s largest privately owned producer of coal, joins other major coal companies including Arch Coal, owner of the West Elk Mine in the North Fork Valley, in going bankrupt. Arch Coal also is in Chapter 11 reorganization. Bowie, owner of the Bowie No. 2 Mine near Paonia, had agreed to buy Twentymile and two mine properties in New Mexico for $358 million. But Peabody previously had said Bowie was still trying to find...

the U.S. Supreme Court .. issued an injunction blocking the EPA from implementing its Clean Power Plan, which would end America’s use of coal, its cheapest and most abundant source of electricity. ... Western Colorado’s economy is so dependent on coal. It employs more than 2,000 people and generates $58 million in federal and state royalties, $28 million in private landowner royalties, $4.5 million in reclamation funds, and pays $28 million in property, severance, and sales taxes — all of it on the Western Slope. EPA has never tried anything so unpopular in its 45-year history, and that is saying...

The U.S. Department of Housing has just determined that refusing to rent to a convicted felon may be a violation of the Fair Housing Act, and National Public Radio seems to approve. Felons are not a protected class (yet) under the Fair Housing Act, but since the American justice system disproportionately affects persons of color, it's racist to deny felons housing. Note that HUD says may violate the act. That means, all you have to do as a landlord is ignore HUD and then battle it out in court. Feeling lucky? Roll the dice: 40% of the federal judiciary has...

The Federal Communications Commission has announced plans to fine a mobile provider $51 million for defrauding its Lifeline program, which subsidizes wireless service for low-income Americans. The FCC accused California-based Total Call Mobile of fraudulently enrolling tens of thousands of duplicate and ineligible consumers in the Lifeline program. The company received an estimated $9.7 million dollars in improper payments since 2014, according to the FCC. In the fourth quarter of that year, 99.8% of the company's enrollments allegedly involved overriding a system designed to stop the registration of duplicate customers.