Free Republic

There are good reasons not to confine the discussion to academic journals. In the latest issue of National Review, John McWhorter has a challenging and thought-provoking essay about the topic of race and IQ — specifically, about whether that topic should even be up for discussion in liberal-arts classrooms and in the media, as opposed to in scientific journals. He suggests not, as there is nothing to gain from discussing it. I read McWhorter’s essay with special interest because I have violated the norm he proposes. I have written about race and IQ on numerous occasions — and for a...

The House Intelligence Committee is the foremost oversight network with responsibility over the most sensitive and secretive government intelligence, including covert anti-terrorism activity. The Majority Chairman (Nunes) and Minority Chair (Schiff) sit on the CIA oversight team known as the “Intelligence Gang of Eight“: 2017 Congressional Intelligence Oversight “Gang of Eight” I am sure most of you are familiar with the above Intelligence Gang Of Eight. They are responsible for the security oversight for the United States as the they are the House Intelligence Committee. You will recognize them from their work investigating imaginary issues surrounding President Trump. While they...

An NSA document purporting to show Russian military hacker attempts to access a Florida company which makes voter registration software is sent anonymously to The Intercept. A low-level NSA contractor, Reality Winner, above, is arrested almost immediately. What’s wrong with this picture? A lot. Who Benefits? Start with the question of who benefits — cui bono— same as detectives do when assessing a crime. — Trump looks bad as another trickle of information comes out connecting something Russian to something 2016 election. Intelligence community (IC) looks like they are onto something, a day or so before ousted FBI Director James...

When the news broke that Reality Winner, a 25-year-old NSA contractor with an apparently heavy social media presence, had been charged with leaking a classified document to reporters, many people wondered: How does someone so young have a such a top-level security clearance? It’s actually very common. "The vast majority of people who do the National Security Agency’s intercept work, who translate and analyze — most of them are fresh out of high school," said Matthew Aid, an intelligence historian who has written about the NSA. "There are thousands and thousands of 18 to 21-year-olds doing critically important and secret...

@JackPosobiec Beeking [sic] Jeff Sessions Files Charges Against NSA Leaker "US Justice Dept. files against Reality Leigh Winner, 25, federal contractor from Augusta, GA, a secret clearance holder, who "improperly removed classified intelligence reporting, which contained classified national defense intelligence from an intelligence agency community agency . . . retained it . . . [Then] a few days later unlawfully transmitted it by mail . . . to an online news outlet."

With the Republican nomination and subsequent election of Donald Trump there has been a great deal of hand wringing regarding what it means to be conservative. Does it mean this or that and who gets to determine which? Many “conservative” publications have spent more than a few pixels on this topic; and yes, most of the editors believe they get to define it. They are wrong. In fact the framing of the entire argument is wrong. And for all you self-identified conservatives out there please don’t get your panties in a bundle since the same can be said of liberalism....

Former FBI director James Comey is formally refusing to answer questions submitted to him by a bipartisan group of senators, suggesting he no longer must do so as a private citizen. Comey sent an email from his private account last week rebuffing the seven questions that had been submitted to him by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley and the committee’s ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein after Comey’s final testimony as FBI director to the panel last month. Comey was fired by President Donald Trump shortly after his appearance. Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., joined in the request...

Julian Assange on terror attacks: intelligence agencies left to "run amok" in Syria, Iraq & Libya--producing ISIShttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfSRQ5RU9Gg

Three of the nation’s intelligence agencies received subpoenas Wednesday afternoon issued by the House Intelligence Committee, Fox News has confirmed, with each of the three demands for documents explicitly naming three top officials of the Obama administration: Susan Rice, who served as President Obama’s White House national security adviser; former CIA Director John Brennan; and former U.N. ambassador Samantha Power. The three subpoenas, among a total of seven signed by panel chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), were served on the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency, and all three explicitly referenced “unmasking” –...

Former FBI Director James Comey acted on key information created by Russian intelligence in the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails that he knew to be fake, CNN reported Friday. Unidentified officials told CNN that Comey feared that if the information became public it would undermine the investigation as well as the Justice Department itself. The false information reportedly spurred the then-FBI chief to publicly declare last summer that the investigation into Clinton’s emails was over. Meanwhile, Comey also said that Clinton had been “extremely careless” in her handling of classified information.

In the midst of the 2016 presidential primary season, the FBI received a purported Russian intelligence document describing a tacit understanding between the campaign of Hillary Clinton and the Justice Department over the inquiry into whether she intentionally revealed classified information through her use of a private email server. The Russian document mentioned a supposed email describing how then-Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch had privately assured someone in the Clinton campaign that the email investigation would not push too deeply into the matter

In a significant advance in the study of mental ability, a team of European and American scientists announced on Monday that they had identified 52 genes linked to intelligence in nearly 80,000 people. These genes do not determine intelligence, however. Their combined influence is minuscule, the researchers said, suggesting that thousands more are likely to be involved and still await discovery. Just as important, intelligence is profoundly shaped by the environment. Still, the findings could make it possible to begin new experiments into the biological basis of reasoning and problem-solving, experts said. They could even help researchers determine which interventions...

An unnamed “senior aide” to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton left classified information unsecured and unattended in a hotel room during a 2010 trip to China, one of several overseas lapses by Clinton’s inner circle, Fox News has learned. Confirmation of the alarming violation comes as Clinton herself is under a renewed FBI probe for mishandling sensitive information on a private server and her longtime senior aide, Huma Abedin, also faces scrutiny as part of the investigation. It was not known which of Clinton’s aides left the information exposed.

The Chinese government systematically dismantled C.I.A. spying operations in the country starting in 2010, killing or imprisoning more than a dozen sources over two years and crippling intelligence gathering there for years afterward. Current and former American officials described the intelligence breach as one of the worst in decades. It set off a scramble in Washington’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies to contain the fallout, but investigators were bitterly divided over the cause. Some were convinced that a mole within the C.I.A. had betrayed the United States. Others believed that the Chinese had hacked the covert system the C.I.A. used...

Sen. Rand Paul, the former Republican presidential candidate and vocal champion of civil liberties, has received allegations that the Obama administration sought intercepted intelligence from the National Security Agency on him and other members of Congress and has asked President Donald Trump to conduct a formal investigation, Circa has learned. Paul quietly asked for the probe nearly a month ago in a letter to Trump that was obtained by Circa. "An anonymous source recently alleged to me that my name, as well as the names of other Members of Congress, were unmasked, queried or both, in intelligence reports of intercepts...

During his final year in office, President Barack Obama's team significantly expanded efforts to search National Security Agency intercepts for information about Americans, distributing thousands of intelligence reports across government with the unredacted names of U.S. residents during the midst of a divisive 2016 presidential election. In all, government officials conducted 30,355 searches in 2016 seeking information about Americans in NSA intercept metadata, which include telephone numbers and email addresses. The government in 2016 also scoured the actual contents of NSA intercepted calls and emails for 5,288 Americans, an increase of 13 percent over the prior year and a massive...

“See you in the Supreme Court!” President Donald Trump tweeted last week, responding to lower court holds on his national security policies. But is taking cases all the way to the highest court in the land a good idea? Artificial intelligence may soon have the answer. A new study shows that computers can do a better job than legal scholars at predicting Supreme Court decisions, even with less information. Several other studies have guessed at justices’ behavior with algorithms. A 2011 project, for example, used the votes of any eight justices from 1953 to 2004 to predict the vote of...

After leaving the presidency, Barack Obama has been spotted using his favorite iPad to take photos of his wife while on a David Geffen-owned megayacht in Tahiti. But this may be no ordinary iPad. A government watchdog speculates that he may have taken the Top Secret version out of the Oval Office, a big no-no.

Last month, Fox News regular Judge Andrew Napolitano claimed that President Obama and his cronies used British intelligence to spy on then candidate Donald Trump. That certainly caused a stir among the higher-ups at Fox News. A week later the outspoken judge was suspended from Fox. More specifically, Judge Napolitano accused the Obama administration of doing an end run around the U.S. intelligence community, using GCHQ, the British spy agency, to do its dirty work. GCHQ has unfettered access to the NSA database. Meaning that the Brits could request transcripts of conversations between the Trump campaign and any foreign players, then...

Two men have been arrested in Marseille, southern France, on suspicion off planning an "imminent" terror attack just five days before presidential elections. The two suspects, aged 23 and 29, were arrested on Tuesday morning by intelligence agents and elite anti-terror police in Marseille's 3rd arrondissement. --SNIP-- The police source said the two men appeared to have turned to radical Islam during a term in prison. A search of a rented apartment was underway.