Free Republic

Chuck Schumer is a verbal escape artist, but when it comes to Sayfullo Saipov’s entry into the United States, the New York senator is trapped. The Diversity Visa Lottery program that brought Saipov to America was created by Chuck Schumer, no matter what his pals in the media want you to believe. After President Trump made sure Americans knew who was responsible for the program, Arizona Senator Jeff Flake jumped in to help Schumer escape from his legislative record. But Flake’s defense of Schumer deserves particular scrutiny. Flake argued that the Gang of 8 amnesty bill that Schumer and...

President Trump has nominated a slate of solid picks for the federal bench, including a new list of nominees this week. Among them is Kurt D. Engelhardt. Trump nominated Engelhardt to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, a district that covers the area from Alabama to the Rio Grande. Engelhardt already serves as a United States District Court judge in New Orleans. Engelhardt will be familiar to PJ Media readers. He is the judge who wrote a scathing 129-page order blistering the misconduct of lawyers at the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and the local New Orleans U.S. Attorney's...

Yesterday, I reported on an outlandish effort to shake down a Christian pastor about his views on Islam by the Justice Department in an Obama-era holdover case. Today, a federal court entirely dismissed the Justice Department's case. United States District Court Judge Norman Moon ruled that the case was moot because the mosque settled with Culpeper County. The mosque obtained a settlement allowing it to pump and haul sewage from the land. The United States had sought to keep the case alive, and to conduct wide ranging and intrusive discovery against third parties such as Pastor Steve Harrelson of...

The United State Department of Justice has issued subpoenas to force a Christian pastor in Virginia to disclose under oath his views on Islam. Pastor Steve Harrelson of the Mt. Lebanon Baptist Church in Boston, Virginia, has been served with a wide-ranging subpoena by lawyers for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. The subpoena demands his presence to testify under oath in response to questions from Justice Department lawyers about his views on Islam as well as several other issues: DOJ Subpoena listing documents targets must provide to the government Harrelson is not a party to any lawsuit or other...

Some inside the Beltway are in a froth about foreign influence in our elections. Yet I’ll wager they won’t say a word about real foreign influence in elections -- even when actual evidence exists. A new report released today documents that in Virginia alone, 5,556 voter registrations were cancelled because of citizenship defects. Many of those cancelled had gotten on the voter rolls despite saying on their voter registration form that they were an alien and not eligible to vote . Voter history records also show that many thousands of ballots were cast by registrants removed for citizenship defects...

Here we go again. Another federal judge has scalded the unprofessional conduct of Justice Department lawyers inside the Civil Rights Division. The first time it was perjury . After that, it was unethical conduct in a trial against New Orleans police officers . Now its unprofessional behavior and bigotry toward the South in a federal court trial challenging Texas legislative districts. United States Fifth Circuit Court Judge Jerry Smith has scalded a DOJ lawyer for misbehavior in the courtroom. While it wasn't perjury this time, it was behavior Justice Department lawyers aren't supposed to do. It's behavior Attorney General...

Leaked funding documents reveal an effort by George Soros and his foundations to manipulate election laws and process rules ahead of the federal election far more expansively than has been previously reported. The billionaire and convicted felon moved hundreds of millions of dollars into often-secret efforts to change election laws, fuel litigation to attack election integrity measures, push public narratives about voter fraud, and to integrate the political ground game of the left with efforts to scare racial minority groups about voting rights threats. These Soros-funded efforts moved through dozens of 501(c)(3) and (c)(4) charities and involved the active compliance...

A good guideline in politics is that we should never explain as conspiracy an action that can be satisfactorily explained as mere stupidity. But the highly questionable meeting between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton at a Phoenix airport last week tests the limits of that maxim, because it is hard to believe that two seasoned politicians could be that stupid. Lynch now admits that the meeting with Bill Clinton while his wife is the target of a major FBI investigation has “cast a shadow” over public perception of the independence of that investigation. But both Loretta Lynch and...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: And welcome, my friends, to the Independence Day weekend version of the Rush Limbaugh program. It's great to be with you. It's also shocking to see all these man-on-the-street interviews, if we can believe them -- and I think we can. So many Americans that have no idea why we celebrate Independence Day, Fourth of July, any of that. It's also Friday, so that means... JOHNNY DONOVAN: And now, from sunny south Florida, it's Open Line Friday! RUSH: Which is a golden opportunity extended -- remember, folks, I'm a benevolent dictator on this program. There is no...

American Muslims must use the time they have left to unleash a transformation within their community. The despicable conduct of Omar Mateen’s wife, Noor Zahi Salman, is the latest example. The Orlando shooter's wife allegedly knew of his plan and accompanied him to buy ammunition, yet did nothing to stop him. Then there was Tashfeen Malik, the obedient jihadist Bonnie Parker, who helped her husband Syed Farook gun down fourteen in San Bernardino. Days before the killing in Orlando, the Husseini Islamic Center in Sanford, Florida, hosted Sheikh Farrokh Sekaleshfar. The Islamic scholar had previously preached to a crowd...

Millions have gone into the effort to attack voter identification laws in numerous states Hillary Clinton’s top campaign lawyer lost a challenge against Virginia’s voter identification laws that was fueled by money from liberal billionaire George Soros. The lawsuit, filed early last year on behalf of the Democratic Party of Virginia, sought to end Virginia’s voter identification law, known as SB 1256. The lawsuit was dismissed by a federal court Thursday after a lengthy trial that saw numerous witnesses testify, dealing a blow to an organized effort by the left to take on voter ID laws in numerous states leading...

In 2011, PJ Media published the Every Single One series. The series documented the Obama administration’s hiring of ideologically leftist and partisan lawyers to fill the career ranks of the lawyers in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division from the day it came into office. The different sections of the Division exercise enormous power over the everyday lives of Americans, ranging from employment, education, housing, religious liberty, abortion, prisons, policing, and much, much more. If a president wanted to launch a radical transformation of the country, he would start it in the Civil Rights Division . And a...

Two words that make foes of the First Amendment go crazy: Citizens" and "United." Citizens United was the Supreme Court case that ruled the First Amendment applies to everyone: unions, individuals, and corporations supporting their interests through free speech. But the Federal Election Commission has started the process to undo the Citizens United case - and only one day remains for Americans to provide comments asking the FEC to respect the First Amendment.

J. Christian Adams tweeted out tonight that not a single constitution conservative should support Ben Carson anymore because of his support for the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act:

The New York Times has revealed what some of us already knew: billionaire convicted felon George Soros is bankrolling attacks on election integrity laws in advance of the 2016 election. He is funding efforts to attack laws designed to aid election integrity in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio and perhaps elsewhere, according to the New York Times. Mr. Soros is prepared to spend $5 million or more on the effort, Mr. Vachon said. Two suits that he is supporting were filed in Ohio and in Wisconsin last month, and he is also funding a case Mr. Elias is involved with in...

If you think you haven’t heard of “reformicons” or “reform conservatives,” don’t sell yourself short. You are already familiar with this latest movement within the Republican Party, albeit under different branding. This piece, entitled “The Good Right” (as compared with … ?), sums up the Reformicon agenda this way: Yuval Levin, one of reform conservatism’s brightest thinkers, told Sam Tanenhaus that “a shrinking or scaling-back of government” was not his aim. He sought “an entire reimagining of it.” He argues that “a true Burkean conservatism would recast the federal government as the facilitator and supporter of local institutions who are...

An IRS employee tasked with trying to restore and obtain emails on Lois Lerner’s IRS computer’s hard drive was legally blind. Stephen Manning, the deputy chief information officer for strategy and modernization at the IRS, submitted an affidavit in the True the Vote vs. IRS litigation regarding the persons and procedures used to attempt to recover Lois Lerner’s hard drive containing emails pertaining to Tea Party targeting. The affidavit can be read here. Paragraph 14 describes the educational background of the person searching for data on Lois Lerner’s hard drive: “According to the Specialist, prior to joining the Internal Revenue...

A grand jury has recommended criminal charges against Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane. The grand jury found that she leaked secret grand jury information to a newspaper in an effort to smear political enemies. PJ Media has been covering Kane’s refusal to prosecute Pennsylvania Democrats who took bribes in order to oppose photo voter identification legislation in Pennsylvania. Philly News : For about six months, Special Prosecutor Thomas E. Carluccio has been directing the grand jury as it has heard testimony from numerous witnesses, including Kane and many of her top aides, to determine how details of a long-ago investigation...

Wickedness has darkened this season of lights in Brooklyn. It is no surprise or accident that a ghoul like Ismaaiyl Brinsley bathed himself in messages of hate, racial division and anger and then chose to destroy lives. But Brinsley wasn’t alone in his racially soaked hatred of the police. For starters, a mob has Brinsley’s back. This seemingly disconnected mob has been on the prowl in the months since America learned of Ferguson, Missouri. They’ve smashed up windows of banks in Berkeley, burned up bakeries in Ferguson, and looted, burned, shot, robbed and killed across the nation. But such mobs...

When history remembers the Obama administration, the flames of Ferguson will light up our memories. It wasn’t just an AutoZone and Jade Nails burning up in the fires of Ferguson, it was also the “Hope” of 2008 going up in smoke. Instead of hope, the age of Obama has been characterized by racial division and discord. Obama and Holder commanded the police to behave themselves. The police behaved, and look what happened. Last week, members of the New Black Panther Party were arrested by state officials for plotting to use pipe bombs against the St. Louis Gateway Arch and for...