Free Republic

A Fox News guest terrorism analyst was arrested on Thursday after a grand jury indicted him on charges of falsely claiming to have been a CIA agent for decades, US prosecutors said. Wayne Simmons, 62, of Annapolis, Maryland, bogusly portrayed himself as an “Outside Paramilitary Special Operations Officer” for the Central Intelligence Agency from 1973 to 2000, the US Attorney’s Office for Virginia’s Eastern District said in a statement. Simmons allegedly tried to use that claim to get government security clearances and work as a defense contractor. At one point he was deployed overseas as an intelligence adviser to senior...

Police arrested a congressional staffer to Democratic Rep. Sander Levin Oct. 8 following a bizarre altercation where he attacked a lover with a shovel. According to a police report, Tim Foster assaulted a black man described as his boyfriend with a small red and black shovel, leaving the man so badly injured that he was hospitalized with scrapes and bruises across his neck and torso, Roll Call reported Tuesday. The dispute began at about 12:30 a.m., with the two getting into an argument at a house in Baltimore which soon escalated to physical violence on Foster’s part, according to Roll...

Frontrunner Clinton prepares to debate surging Sanders Hillary Clinton faces heavy pressure during the first Democratic presidential debate Tuesday to outperform primary rivals cutting into her lead and perhaps keep her biggest potential challenger on the sidelines. Vice President Biden, still mulling a bid, is not expected to be on stage in Las Vegas. But he’ll surely be watching as the former secretary of state spars in person for the first time with her 2016 Democratic opponents. And those candidates have not been shy about casting Clinton as a calculating candidate swaying with the political winds. Most recently, Clinton has...

RUSH: I'm telling you, Snerdley, do not discount this. We've been making this mistake now since the early nineties. The left will go out, the Democrats, somebody will say something just totally outrageous, like all these clowns that predicted the end of the earth in ten years if we didn't clean up the oceans, or name your prediction. Twenty years ago, or 40 years ago, if we didn't fix global warming in 20 years we weren't gonna be able to inhabit the East Coast, all of these things. Or take this food's gonna kill you, that food's gonna save you,...

Here's an exchange from Bernie Sanders's appearance on "Meet the Press" on Sunday: CHUCK TODD: Are you a capitalist? @BernieSanders: No. I'm a Democratic Socialist. And, in those five words, Sanders showed why — no matter how much energy there is for him on the liberal left — he isn't getting elected president. Why? Because Democrat or Republican (or independent), capitalism remains a pretty popular concept — especially when compared to socialism. A 2011 Pew Research Center survey showed that 50 percent of people had a favorable view of capitalism, while 40 percent had an unfavorable one. Of socialism, just...

Trump says people will turn off tomorrow's Democratic primary debate – because he's not in it! 'I think people are going to turn it on for a couple of minutes and then fall asleep,' Trump told a Fox News audience Claimed 'a person at CNN' said that 'we have to put Donald Trump in this debate. We're going to die with it' First two GOP debates drew 24 million and 23 million viewers, largely on the strength of Trump's participation Hammered Obama for '60 Minutes' appearance: 'I watched his performance last night and I thought it was terrible' Tuesday's first...

The latest New Hampshire poll shows a far more engaged electorate continuing to be a thorn in the side of the 2015/16 GOPe scheme to anoint Jeb Bush. In addition, the ruse candidates, Fiorina and Rubio have exhausted their media-fueled surge and remain static alongside Jeb Bush at 8%.John Kasich’s ground game and almost exclusive attention to New Hampshire has garnered him a position just above Jeb, Carly and Marco. However, the vulgarians are determined to Make America Great Again!Gravis Marketing, a nonpartisan research firm, conducted a random survey of 1,035 registered voters in New Hampshire regarding the presidential election...

An organization called the Global Rally for Humanity is organizing a series of events this weekend in at least 20 U.S. cities to protest Islam, targeting mosques, community centers and government offices. “Standing up against Islam does not mean you’re a racist or a bigot, it simply means you’re not an idiot and can see the reality of Islam around the world,” rally organizers wrote on their Facebook page. “The world is saying no to Islam.” Numerous mosques have upped security because of the rallies, which are being organized via social media. The Council on American-Islamic Relations is working with...

Hillary Clinton used her private email account to pass along the identity of one of the CIA’s top Libyan intelligence sources, raising new questions about her handling of classified information, according to excerpts from previously undisclosed emails released Thursday by Rep. Trey Gowdy, the Republican chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi. On March 18, 2011, Sidney Blumenthal — Clinton’s longtime friend and political adviser — sent the then secretary of state an email to her private account that contained apparently highly sensitive information he had received from Tyler Drumheller, a former top CIA official with whom Blumenthal at...

This story was more or less lost in the noise of yesterday's palace intrigue, but it's too important to simply let lie.  Do yourself a favor and click through to Gowdy's letter before proceeding any further. Read the entire thing. It's extraordinary, on several levels: First, Gowdy summons his prosecutorial vigor to absolutely demolish the ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on Benghazi.  Democrats have seized upon erstwhile Speaker-in-waiting Kevin McCarthy's ill-advised comments to try to shut down the panel's probe -- a continuation of their ongoing, partisan efforts to dismiss its focus as a "phony scandal" and to portray the investigation as a political witch hunt.  Gowdy...

A 9-year-old girl is in stable condition after she was shot in Waverly Sunday afternoon, according to Baltimore Police. Officials believe a single shooter on 36th Street opened fire on four young men and missed, striking a little girl who was playing on her steps behind them in the 3500 block of Old York Road after 1 p.m., Interim Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said. The intended targets ran from the scene and are considered persons of interest in the investigation, according to Davis. “Not only are we looking for the gunman, we’re looking for those four would-be victims,” Davis said,...

Baltimore prosecutors argued in a motion this week that a series of actions by police officers contributed to Freddie Gray suffering a spinal cord injury in the back of a transport van. In response to a motion to dismiss charges of reckless endangerment against three officers, prosecutors said defense attorneys wrongly focused on the state's allegation that the officers failed to secure Gray with a seat belt. Attorneys for Lt. Brian W. Rice and Officers Edward M. Nero and Garrett E. Miller had argued that failing to place a seat belt on Gray does not constitute criminal negligence. But prosecutors...

Bernie Sanders blazed across the Bay State yesterday, drawing record crowds, name-dropping Elizabeth Warren and greeting rapturous crowds on his first campaign tour of Massachusetts. “As your senator, Elizabeth Warren, reminds us: This is a rigged economy. Heads, they win. Tails, you lose,” the self-avowed socialist told more than 20,000 Boston supporters. “We’re going to create an economy that works for the middle class and not just the 1 percent.” The Democratic hopeful first stopped in Springfield, and then made his way to the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, where he drew deafening cheers with his signature impassioned pledges to...

At least some Democrats are resisting Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s purge of the liberal intelligentsia. This week Ms. Warren succeeded in forcing the resignation of respected scholar Robert Litan from the Brookings Institution after he revealed that a new Labor Department regulation could cost investors billions. Now five Democratic economists have authored a letter to protest Warren’s bullying. Robert Lawrence of Harvard’s Kennedy School and Bowman Cutter of the Roosevelt Institute are among those writing “to express our concern over our colleague Bob Litan’s treatment at the hands of the Brookings Institution and Senator Elizabeth Warren.” Also signing the letter are...

Many women are afraid to take estrogen during menopause because of the well-documented cancer risk. But one woman is being applauded on social media for giving her son estrogen so he can live his childhood fantasy of being a girl. The poor boy in the video is going to go through life with artificially induced breasts...and a penis. No woman is going to want him. His only chance for companionship will be through anal sex with men. He will go through life scaring girls in locker rooms and alienating himself, and being alienated, from society. And that's the best-case scenario,...

PPP's newest North Carolina poll finds that Donald Trump is holding his ground- at least compared to where he was in the state six weeks ago. Trump leads with 26% to 21% for Ben Carson, 12% for Carly Fiorina, 10% for Marco Rubio, 9% for Ted Cruz, 6% for Mike Huckabee, 5% for Jeb Bush, 4% for John Kasich, and 2% for Chris Christie. Rounding out the field are Rick Santorum and Bobby Jindal at 1%, and Jim Gilmore, Lindsey Graham, George Pataki, and Rand Paul all at less than 1%. Trump's 26% is almost identical to his 24% standing...

For Black Democrats, especially young female Black Democrats, failing upward should be easy. The Democrats don’t elect their candidates on issues or competency; they win on open demographic appeals. Who fits the classic Democrat demographic better than Stephanie Rawlings-Blake? My goodness she is young, Black, female, a mom and even has a hyphenated name! The fact that she is an incompetent fraud means nothing in her world. Nevertheless, she will not take the senate seat being vacated by Barbara Mikulski. Since Maryland is a Democrat vote plantation it’s easy to assume the failed Mayor of Baltimore will simply deign to...

A Republican state delegate is working toward a bid for Maryland’s open U.S. Senate seat, the first candidate with establishment support. Del. Kathy Szeliga, who represents Baltimore County and serves as minority whip in the House of Delegates, is taking steps toward a campaign. “I’m seriously looking at getting into this race and gauging support, and it’s really been actually overwhelming,” Szeliga said. She said that among those Republicans reaching out to encourage her effort, first reported Sunday by the Baltimore Sun, are Rep. Andy Harris, former governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and his wife, Kendel; former lieutenant governor Michael...

Mayors from eighteen U.S. cities signed a letter to President Obama saying they are willing to take even more refugees than what has been proposed by the administration. “We will welcome the Syrian families to make homes and new lives in our cities,” wrote the mayors, all of whom are part of the Cities United for Immigration Action coalition. “Indeed, we are writing to say that we stand ready to work with your Administration to do much more and to urge you to increase still further the number of Syrian refugees the United States will accept for resettlement.” “This is...

On the day after Pope Francis spoke to Congress about the dangers of violent extremism in the name of religious fundamentalism, presidential candidate Ted Cruz, appearing at a Values Voter summit, threatened to murder Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Texas senator vowed that, if elected, he would “rip to shreds” the Iranian agreement deal recently passed through Congress, and kill the country’s leader if it didn’t give up its nuclear ambitions. “If the Ayatollah doesn’t understand that, we may have to help introduce him to the 72 virgins,” Cruz said to wild cheers from the audience of conservative Christians. The...