Free Republic

The Department of Justice is now prosecuting a 79-year-old grandfather. The reason: Richard Retta walks alongside women on the sidewalk outside a Planned Parenthood abortion facility and offers women hope that they can carry their babies to term. “They go in and they’re kind of sullen in what they’re doing, and I’m sure there’s a lot of sorrow there,” Retta says in a short video by Pro-Life Unity. “But when they change their mind, most of the times they’re smiling, they’re happy. And they’re willing to talk to us,” he says. This is the first time, in over a decade...

Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein has hired Reid Weingarten, a high-profile Washington defense attorney whose past clients include a former Enron accounting officer, according to a government source familiar with the matter. Blankfein, 56, is in his sixth year at the helm of the largest U.S. investment bank, which has spent two years dodging accusations of conflicts of interest and fraud. The move to retain Weingarten comes as investigations of Goldman and its role in the 2007-2009 financial crisis continue. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission scored a $550 million settlement against the bank in a fraud lawsuit in...

For those political pundits still scratching their heads over Michele Bachmann's victory in last weekend's Iowa straw poll, here's a piece of advice. You owe it to yourself to get out a little. Because if you get beyond the Beltway portrayals of the Tea Party -- such as Newsweek's ridiculous cover story on Bachmann -- you'd find the Minnesota congresswoman on the vanguard of a growing angst in middle America all but invisible to many of the cultural elite who cover politics. It is the angst of a Nixonian silent majority who now fail to recognize the nation in which...

All five new hires to the Justice Department's immigration office have far-left resumes — which were only released following a PJM lawsuit. (This is the third in a series of articles about the Justice Department's hiring practices since President Obama took office. Read parts one and two.)   Earlier this week, PJM commenced a series of articles highlighting the army of new attorneys hired for the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division by the Obama administration. PJM based its reporting on resumes that were finally turned over following a lengthy Freedom of Information Act battle with the Department.The intent of...

America should be appalled at the overwhelmingly politicized backgrounds of Eric Holder's hires in the Department of Justice Voting Section. (This is the second in a series of articles about the Civil Rights Division’s hiring practices since President Obama took office. Read the first article here.)   Eric Holder’s Justice Department wields enormous power over the American political landscape heading into the 2012 elections. Under the Voting Rights Act, sixteen states must submit any election law change to the Justice Department for approval. The law also gives the states the right to go to federal court for approval instead.States need...

The U.S. Justice Department is preparing subpoenas as part of preliminary investigations into News Corp. relating to alleged foreign bribery and alleged hacking of voicemail of Sept. 11 victims, according to a government official. The issuance of such subpoenas, which would broadly seek relevant information from the company, requires approval by senior Justice Department leadership, which hasn't yet happened, the person said. The issuance of subpoenas would represent an escalation of scrutiny on the New York-based media company

The Department of Justice is trying to protect its political appointees from becoming embroiled in the broadening Fast and Furious gun-tracing scandal by refusing to release an internal "smoking gun" report that acknowledges the role of top officials in the program that allowed guns to flow illegally into Mexico, according to the head of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Kenneth Melson, the ATF acting director, earlier this month also told congressional investigators examining the role of top officials in the ill-fated program that affidavits in support of wiretaps used in the operation are inconsistent with what...

Americans take the integrity of our elections for granted. Every citizen has an equal right to vote, and every vote cast is counted. Rubbish. The voter rolls of this country are stuffed with illegal aliens, felons and dead people, who not only vote, they vote overwhelmingly Democrat. Citizens in uniform serving overseas, who might vote Republican, are routinely denied the right to vote when ballots are mailed "too late" to be returned in time to count. When a Republican wins a close race, uncounted ballots are "found" in the backseat of a Democrat poll worker's car. American elections are getting...

Testing is set to resume next week on the blowout preventer that failed to stop gushing oil at BP's Macondo well, but an independent federal agency that has been probing the disaster will not be permitted to participate. Under a federal judge's ruling, the only witnesses allowed during the examination at a NASA facility in New Orleans will be representatives of the Justice Department, oil spill victims in a broad class-action lawsuit and three companies linked to the disaster. That shuts the door to the Chemical Safety Board… CSB has investigated more than 50 industrial accidents in its two-decade history...

Mission un-accomplished. I thought the goal of federal law enforcement officials was to keep guns out of Mexico and away from drug traffickers, not help them get in. It's time to drive that point home to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and its acting director, Kenneth Melson. Thanks to reporting by CBS News and its investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson, the agency finds itself embroiled in an ugly controversy that might wind up soiling the Justice Department. It's hard to tell who is more eager to get to the bottom of what CBS is calling the Obama administration's...

Last week intentionally gullible (frightful if they actually buy what they are writing) apologists for the Obama Justice Department proclaimed that the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) scandal was really nothing at all. You see, the Justice Department’s own Office of Personal Responsibility (OPR) had given the department a clean bill of health! Aside from the obvious hypocrisy — would a Bush self-investigation be given credence by such Obama cheerleaders? — there are multiple grounds for dismissing this as another effort at stonewalling in a scandal that has had many such examples. None of these concern the left (whether those...

It’s time for the DOJ to cough up information to the House Judiciary Committee and to Congressman Frank Wolf. The Department of Justice has avoided giving Congress and the Commission on Civil Rights answers about the New Black Panther voter intimidation dismissal by pointing to the ongoing review by the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR). The OPR review is now done and that diversion no longer applies. As reported by Pajamas here and here, the results were exactly as expected: DOJ concludes that DOJ did nothing wrong. DOJ used the OPR investigation to avoid providing information to outside investigators on...

Complete title: JW Sues DOJ for Records Detailing Contacts with NAACP about Dismissal of New Black Panther Party Voter Intimidation Lawsuit “Who is running the Justice Department?” Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it filed a lawsuit on March 9, 2011, against the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) to obtain records detailing contacts between DOJ and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) over a voter intimidation lawsuit filed against the New Black Panther Party for Self Defense. Kristen Clark, a representative of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund,...

AT&T announced on Sunday that it has agreed to purchase T-Mobile U.S.A. from Deutsche Telekom for $39 billion in cash and stock. If regulators approve the deal — a big if — it would combine the No. 2 and No. 4 U.S. wireless phone companies. Consumer groups will surely oppose the deal. They’ll argue that Verizon Wireless, co-owned by Verizon Communications (VZ) and U.K.-based Vodafone (VOD), will be waiting in the wings to swoop in and buy Sprint Nextel (S). That hypothetical deal would marry the No. 1 and No. 3 wireless firms in the U.S.

In Dayton Ohio, you can get the same as a D or F on the police exam and still become a cop. The Department of Justice Civil Rights Division run by Tom Perez (the same unit that dismissed the New Black Panther voter intimidation case) is requiring Dayton to lower police exam scores to 58 and 63 percent so enough black applicants can join the force.  The Obama administration mandate is too much for even the NAACP: “‘The NAACP does not support individuals failing a test and then having the opportunity to be gainfully employed,’ agreed Dayton NAACP President Derrick Foward.”...

U.S. Justice Department lawyers have moved again to halt the court fight over Don't Ask, Don't Tell... At the same time, government lawyers asked the appeal court to reverse a federal judge who ruled that the military's ban on open homosexuals was unconstitutional. The Log Cabin Republicans... said the administration's positions regarding the two laws were at war with each other.

ABC News’ Devin Dwyer reports:  Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King says he wants to penalize the Obama administration for its decision to drop a legal defense of the Defense of Marriage Act with fresh budget cuts for the Department of Justice. “We have the authority to do a few things, and one of them is to control the budget,” King said in an interview with ABC News from Frankfurt, Germany, where he has been attending trade meetings this week.  [Snip] “The resources that they would be using to defend the DOMA law in court are not necessary to appropriate to them,"...

Jay Carney, the president’s new mouthpiece, gives the impression of the “man behind the curtain.” Little to say, as Dana Milbank of The Washington Post reports, few tools in the toolbox, tepid and inauthentic, like one of Don Draper’s paste-up artists, stylish and self-effacing. Who’s afraid of Jay Carney? Who’s afraid of Barack Obama? It is all smoke and mirrors. But the perfect spokesman as the president moves to use the Justice Department in a pure and unconscionable strategy of political revenge. It reveals the inner man. Sarko was right: Obama is a weakling. The president’s declaration last night that...

The fate of the Somali pirates who allegedly killed four Americans off the coast of Somalia has yet to be determined, but the U.S. Justice Department says it is "investigating and reviewing" evidence in the case and is "committed to working with our international partners to ensure that the perpetrators of this heinous crime are brought to justice." The four Americans were on a yacht in the waters off the Horn of Africa when their vessel was hijacked Friday. U.S. forces were following the hijacked yacht when on Tuesday at least some of the hijackers opened fire. The hostages --...

Last week, a federal district court heard arguments in a case brought by Shelby County, Ala., challenging the constitutionality of significant parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The case may reshape American politics. At issue is the law requiring the attorney general to approve every single change touching on elections in some but not all states. Little-noticed behavior of the Justice Department makes it more likely the U.S. Supreme Court could invalidate the 45-year-old law, assuming the high court is aware of the offending behavior. Section 5 forces nine states and parts of seven others to submit every...