Free Republic

Iowa is one of only six states that do not have a state constitutional provision that protects the right to keep and bear arms in some way. The other five states without such a provision are California, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, and New York. The two outliers on that list are Iowa and Minnesota. Both states have strong Second Amendment activist organizations.An Iowa legislator is attempting to remedy the lack of the constitutional protection. One of the reasons Iowa does not have such a protection in its constitution, is the process to enact constitutional amendment in Iowa is extremely...

A shadowy figure tied to the Clintons has suddenly emerged in the Trump-Russia collusion saga.His name is Cody Shearer, dubbed “Mr. Fixer” for Bill and Hillary Clinton and a workmate of fierce Clinton defender Sidney Blumenthal.Last week, his name surfaced in a letter to the Democratic National Committee from Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican. The letter listed nearly 40 names and entities. The two senators asked the DNC to disclose any communications with them from March 2016 to January 2017. The list included the well-known...

Republican senators Charles Grassley (Iowa) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.) on Monday released a letter they sent to the FBI asking that ex-British spy Christopher Steele be investigated for possible criminal violations. Steele authored the anti-Trump "dossier" that was full of false or unverified information, provided to the FBI and leaked to the press in 2016. The FBI secretly used the Steele dossier to convince a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to permit one of the most sensitive invasions of privacy against a U.S. citizen: electronic surveillance by the government. Top Obama and Trump officials signed four wiretap applications against Trump adviser...

A newly released document from the Senate Judiciary Committee says Christopher Steele, the former British spy who compiled the Trump dossier, wrote an additional memo on the subject of Donald Trump and Russia that was not among those published by BuzzFeed in January 2017. The newly released document is an unclassified and heavily redacted version of the criminal referral targeting Steele filed on Jan. 4 by Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. It appears to confirm some level of coordination between the extended Clinton circle and the Obama administration in the effort to seek...

Judge James E. Boasberg ruled Friday against making public former FBI Director James Comey’s seven memos describing his conversations with President Donald Trump. And by doing so, the jurist protected — at least for now — a key potential witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of allegations of collusions between the president’s 2016 campaign and agents of the Russian government.Boasberg is a member of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) — the judicial body created in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). A Yale and Oxford graduate, Boasberg is hardly known to...

Watch closely for Barack Obama’s fingerprints,” said Rep. Steve King (R-IA) on Saturday, suggesting the recent alleged partisan weaponization of state surveillance powers could be connected to the 44th president. “[Democrats and their allies] will defend Barack Obama at all costs, and they’ll defend Hillary Clinton almost at all costs unless they have to sacrifice her to protect Barack Obama,” he added.

Democrats, media, and the aggregate DOJ/FBI intelligence community are finally seeing accountability. With the HPSCI memo now in the rear-view mirror, and the content in the bloodstream of the U.S. electorate, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley is next. Toward the end of December, the FBI provided the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley, with FBI investigative documents (likely FD-302’s) from their contacts with Christopher Steele. According to most reasonable timing we can discover Steele met with FBI officials sometime around October 1st, 2016. From the U.K. lawsuit against Christopher Steele (pdf here), Steele admits to having shopped the Clinton-Steele dossier to...

The Day the Music Died

Batting Order: Chairman Nunes (aggregate IC focus) got a lead of single by strategically presenting the classified documents in a 4-pg summary form. Next up came Chairman Chuck Grassley (FBI focus). As Grassley questioned the FBI, Nunes stole second with release of the House Intel memo. Grassley remains at the plate comfortably ahead in the count; while Chairman Goodlatte (Justice oversight) is on on deck circle sending signals: Washington, D.C. — House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) released the statement below regarding reports indicating that Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Deputy Director Andrew McCabe will step down from his...

After decades helping refugee families become Americans, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Dubuque announced on Dec. 18 that it was getting out of the business. Its 77-year-old refugee resettlement ministry was being shut down. (snip)“We have received some indication that those agencies that are serving under 100 resettlement clients a year are at risk for being discontinued, of losing their federal contracts,” she said on Jan. 9. “So some of the agencies that are very small are threatened.”(snip) Sister Markham emphasized that the closing of the refugee programs “is not a decision that Catholic Charities is making…this is being...

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/01/rep-steve-king-frustrated-president-trumps-limited-amnesty-illegal-immigrants/

A federal court judge who will decide whether the University of Iowa discriminated in deregistering a faith-based student organization asked UI attorneys Thursday if the institution has taken steps to ensure it is applying standards equally to all groups. U.S. District Court Judge Stephanie Rose pressed UI attorney George Carroll, specifically, on whether UI has addressed allegations it unequally enforced its human rights policy by deregistering Business Leaders in Christ for barring an openly-gay student. The student organization — which goes by BLinC — has argued other UI groups limit membership and leadership to those who agree with their ideals...

U.S. environmental activists who are working to halt the production and use of fossil fuels could be required to register as foreign agents if Congress gets serious about enforcing an existing law.There was some potential movement in that direction last October when Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, introduced legislation that would put some teeth into the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The law, which was first passed in 1938, calls for individuals and organizations to provide full disclosure when they are working to advance the public policy interests of a foreign government.<\/p>\nAs the Washington Examiner<\/em> has reported<\/a>, Grassley\u2019s proposed...

As negotiations are underway between the White House and establishment Republicans to potentially give amnesty to illegal aliens, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) is warning the president against such any plan that includes amnesty. In a post on Sunday, King—a staunch pro-American immigration reformer who has long opposed mass immigration—urged Trump to steer clear of a plan that would begin with giving amnesty to nearly 800,000 illegal aliens shielded from deportation by the President Obama-created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. According to King, such an amnesty deal, even if it is coupled with a plan to reduce legal immigration...

Everyone suspected the sketchy Steele Dossier was what corrupt FBI and DOJ officials used to get the October 2016 FISA warrant against Trump. FBI and DOJ officials refuse to answer that question publicly. Despite a hundred different ways congressional investigators have asked the question, and despite numerous on-camera questions to FBI and DOJ officials about the 2016 FISA process, no-one had definitively confirmed the Christopher Steele ‘Russian Dossier’ was the underlying evidence for the 2016 FISA application to gain wiretaps and electronic surveillance upon presidential candidate Donald Trump. UNTIL NOW. Senator Lindsey Graham just confirmed the sketchy Steele Dossier was...

On Friday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) called for a special counsel to investigate how the Department of Justice used the Steele dossier. Graham said [relevant remarks begin around 4:00] that he believes Special Counsel Robert Mueller is doing a fair investigation, but isn’t looking at the Steele dossier because that isn’t part of his purview.

There's been a lot of confusion about the decision by Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley and crime subcommittee chairman Lindsey Graham to refer Christopher Steele, author of the Trump dossier, to the Justice Department for a possible criminal investigation. The two senators sent a brief letter Thursday to deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein and FBI director Christopher Wray. The letter, which was unclassified and released to the public Friday, was a cover letter for what Grassley and Graham called a "classified memorandum related to certain communications between Christopher Steele and multiple U.S. news outlets regarding the so-called 'Trump dossier'...

On Friday, two GOP Senators asked the DOJ to open a criminal investigation into the author of the Russian dossier, former British spy, Christopher Steele. Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) sent a letter to Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray Friday demanding they investigate if Christopher Steele lied to federal authorities. Developing: Senate Judiciary Committee Discovers “Credible Evidence of a CRIME” Committed by Dossier Author Christopher Steele January 6, 2018 by Cristina Laila 344Share 24Tweet Email On Friday, two GOP Senators asked the DOJ to open a criminal investigation into the...

Republican Congressman Steve King says census-takers in 2020 should ask if people living in the United States are citizens. “We need to be counting citizens instead of people for the purposes of redistricting,” King says. “That’s going to take at a minimum a statute and it may take a constitutional amendment and so in this upcoming Census, I want to count separately the citizens separate from the non-citizens, the lawfully present Americans separate from the illegal aliens that are here so that America can see how bad this is.” King says if the Census is conducted as he proposes, Iowa...

Oil lobbyists aren’t accustomed to hearing the word "no." And from an all-of-the-above perspective, that’s not always a bad thing. America needs more energy, not less. We still import about a quarter of all the oil we consume. But some petroleum companies seem to be taking their influence for granted, and that could prove their undoing with a White House that is known for drawing a clear line between friends and foes. Most recently, a few refiners have begun smearing the president and his allies in Congress for refusing to abandon the Renewable Fuel Standard, which protects U.S. production of...