Free Republic

For almost three months the U.S. has been able to legally export crude oil, but Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio is still campaigning on lifting the ban. Rubio told supporters he would lift the ban as president at a private fundraiser in Texas Friday, and his campaign website has an entire page devoted to the need to lift the ban. “I would also allow American oil producers to be able to export,” Rubio said, when asked what he would do about poor oil prices as president. “Right now we’re not allowed to export.” Congress lifted the ban in December...

More than two dozen firearms that were supposed to be in the custody of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) somehow made their way back to the streets and were used in other crimes, documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation appear to show. An internal memo from the D.C. Department of Forensic Sciences (DFS) reveals 24 guns police confiscated between 2005 and 2012 vanished from the MPD evidence locker and were later confiscated yet again in other crimes. One of the weapons reappeared in a murder, while several others were used to commit violent crimes

"The willful failure to show up for court appearances by persons that were arrested and released by the Border Patrol has become an extreme embarrassment for the Department of Homeland Security. It has been so embarrassing that DHS and the U.S. Attorney's office has come up with a new policy," he testified before the immigration subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. The biggest change: Undocumented immigrants are no longer given a "notice to appear" order, because they simply ignore them. Judd said that Border agents jokingly refer to the NTAs as "notices to disappear." He said the the new policy...

CHICAGO — How do you make sure police officers are held accountable if most of their full disciplinary records are no longer available? That question is at the center of what might be the next big battle brewing over police accountability across the country, and specifically in Chicago. The recent release of videos showing deadly shootings of black citizens by white police officers in Chicago has many demanding police accountability and has led to a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into the patterns and practices of the Chicago Police Department. And now, there is a legal fight over the destruction...

EXCLUSIVE: 150 on flight from Mexico allowed to skip customs, leave JFK airport What airheads! Airline and security officials at Kennedy Airport let 150 passengers arriving from an international flight leave the airport without going through customs, the Daily News has learned. American Airlines Flight 1671 arrived at JFK from Cancun, Mexico, at 8:50 p.m. Friday. When the plane landed, passengers walked out of the airport without having their passports or bags checked by Customs and Border Protection, sources told The News. A source familiar with the matter said passengers disembarking the plane “just followed” a gate agent. The...

How many jihadis are in Europe courtesy of Mohamed Abdeslam? "Brother of Paris Attacker Worked in Belgian Immigration Department," by Trey Sanchez, Truth Revolt, November 17, 2015 (thanks to Pamela Geller): Mohamed Abdeslam is the brother of two of the terrorists that attacked Paris Friday night. They hail from Molenbeek, an impoverished immigrant district in Brussels known to be a jihadi hotbed. One of Mohamed's brothers, Ibrahim, blew himself up outside of the cafe Comptoir Voltaire near the Bataclan concert hall. The other, Salah, is now on the run after making it back across the Belgian border and is currently...

Sen. Jeff Sessions and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) are slamming the Obama administration for failing to provide detailed immigration histories for 72 terrorists identified last year. “More than three months [after we sent our letter] the Administration has not provided immigration details on a single one of the 72 [terrorists identified in our letter],” the pair said in a joint statement. On August 12, Sessions, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, and Cruz Chairman of the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts, dispatched a letter to Attorney...

More than 50 intelligence analysts working out of the U.S. military’s Central Command have formally complained that their reports on ISIS and al Qaeda’s branch in Syria were being inappropriately altered by senior officials, The Daily Beast has learned. The complaints spurred the Pentagon’s inspector general to open an investigation into the alleged manipulation of intelligence. The fact that so many people complained suggests there are deep-rooted, systemic problems in how the U.S. military command charged with the war against the self-proclaimed Islamic State assesses intelligence. “The cancer was within the senior level of the intelligence command,” one defense official...

The FBI says weapons are missing after a break-in at the Army Reserve Center in Worcester. The FBI says it is working with State Police and Worcester Police to recover the weapons.

Environmental Protection Agency officials require contractors to sign secrecy pledges that in the case of the Gold King Mine spill kept the public in the dark earlier this year about a Colorado mining disaster that turned waters yellow as they flowed through two states and the Navajo Nation. ... these secrecy clauses are typical with the EPA - the same government agency whose former administrator, Lisa Jackson, used an alias email address to avoid public scrutiny. ... the EPA controls the flow of information by circumventing federal regulations that dictate when an agency can use non-disclosure clauses by including secrecy...

Half the federal agents who were investigated for allegedly attending sex parties with prostitutes in Colombia received financial bonuses during the investigation or afterward, according to a new internal review of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s handling of the scandal. Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz issued a report on Thursday analyzing the aftermath of the internal probes of DEA agents in Colombia for allegedly patronizing prostitutes. The allegations were originally investigated in 2010, but the issue created a firestorm earlier this year when the details became public…. DEA policy prohibits employees from receiving promotions, awards or other favorable personnel actions...

A Veterans Affairs hospital in West Virginia switched out patients’ prescribed medications with older drugs to cut costs, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) announced in a letter to Congress and the White House Wednesday. . . . The investigation also found that hospital’s pharmacy and therapeutics committee was chaired by a non-physician, another departure from VA policy.

Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Michele Leonhart said she is "offended by the behavior" of DEA agents who engaged in prostitution and sex parties while working on the taxpayers' dime. But Leonhart told the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday there's nothing she can do about it except to write memos stating that "these kinds of behaviors require significant discipline." If you can't fire the agents or even recommend that they be fired, "What the hell do you get to do?!" an exasperated Rep. Trey Gowdy asked her.

MIAMI (CNN) - Inside a plane at Miami International Airport, baggage handlers are going on a shopping spree with passengers' bags. What they don't know is that they are being recorded on a hidden camera. The Miami-Dade Police Department set up the camera as part of an ongoing police investigation into luggage thefts by the very airport workers who are supposed to get bags safely onto planes. "It's a problem we all face," said police Lt. Pete Estis. "We will continue to be proactive until we can see that the claims of pilfering through luggage will actually decrease."And these insider...

I have said it before -- the Obama administration’s Internal Revenue Service is institutionally incapable of self-correction. And, now it is even clearer that the Obama administration’s Department of Justice is incapable of holding accountable those responsible for a massive illegal targeting scheme. Even worse, its own involvement in the scandal not only means that it can’t properly investigate the IRS, it should instead be investigated for cooperating with the IRS in its campaign of censorship and oppression. The latest troubling development comes as the Justice Department announced it will not pursue criminal contempt charges against former top IRS official...

The latest from investigative filmmaker James O’Keefe is just unreal. A Project Veritas undercover reporter visited Cornell University under the guise of “Ali,” a student from Morocco who was thinking about attending the school and he wanted a little information on how Cornell would react if he wanted to start on new club on campus. A club to support terrorist organizations like Hamas and ISIS:

Sen Chuck Grassley has written two letter to the State Dept. concerning a special arrangement for Huma Abedin, Hillary’s closest adviser. At the same time Abedin worked for the State Dept, she also worked for a company called Teneo. For those of you who don’t know it, Teneo bills itself as an expert in helping your company get government contracts. Can you see the obvious conflict of interest here? The Senate is trying to find out if Teneo’s clients received government grants and if they did, was Abedin and or Hillary involved? Abedin also had a private email account that...

The Army’s Fort Hood Disgrace No one who supervised the shooter has been held to account, but the victims are denied pay and benefits. By Kathy Platoni March 19, 2015 7:08 p.m. ET 257 COMMENTS It was more than five years ago that the gunshots rang out, but those of us who survived can still hear their echoes. On Nov. 5, 2009, an Army psychiatrist named Nidal Hasan—an American radicalized by extremist Islamic beliefs—opened fire on his fellow soldiers in Fort Hood, Texas, killing 14 people, including an unborn child, and wounding 32. I was there. A beloved friend, Capt....

The American nonprofit OneVoice Movement – under scrutiny by a U.S. Senate panel over possible links to a campaign to oust Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – quietly filed paperwork that would allow it to engage in political activism after two leading Republican lawmakers questioned its use of government funds, FoxNews.com has learned.

It’s a curious time for people who believe in transparency and openness in government. They say they are for transparency. In 2013, President Obama boasted, “This is the most transparent administration in history.” But watch what his administration does. Today, it will issue new rules exempting a key administrative office that handles issues such as request for access to government email records from the Freedom of Information Act. That law is specifically designed to allow private parties to look at government documents that aren't privileged or involve national security. Ironically, the nation celebrated FOIA just yesterday with National Freedom of...