Free Republic

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.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Tuesday the agency is “fairly certain” that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not sign a separation statement upon her departure from Foggy Bottom. “We don’t have record of it,” Psaki admitted. “Can you put to rest the questions that you have not been able to answer to this point about former Secretary Clinton, whether she signed this separation form or not?” asked The Associated Press’ Matt Lee. “Well, we have reviewed Secretary Clinton’s official personal file and administrative files and do not have any record of her signing any of the 0F-109,”...

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...

“Be gone, Brian Williams, from our TV screens,” Major Gen. Paul E. Vallely, US Army (ret), tells MRCTV in an exclusive interview regarding NBC’s Brian Williams scandal, in which the news anchor admitted to having fabricated his oft-repeated claim of having been in a U.S. military plane that was shot down. Major Gen. Vallely retired in 1991 from the US Army as Deputy Commanding General, US Army, Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii after serving a distinguishing career of 32 years. He is currently chairman of Stand Up America, an organization dedicated to “recovering and preserving our Constitution and Representative Republic.” In...

NBC News anchor Brian Williams, who apologized on the air Wednesday night for lying about an experience covering the Iraq War, is now facing scrutiny over his gripping accounts of Hurricane Katrina, the disaster that burnished his nightly news bona fides almost a decade ago. Williams’ account of seeing a body float by in the French Quarter — which remained largely dry — and even a claim of catching dysentery from drinking Katrina floodwaters have raised eyebrows among bloggers and elsewhere since he took it on the chin this week over a claim that he rode in a helicopter that...

I was the pilot in command of the flight that carried Brian Williams into Iraq in March 2003. The mission was to deliver bridges to the Objective Rams region in order to support our ground-force advancement. We were briefed that we would be operating forward of the line of troops and that the objective was unsecure. We were a flight of two, and I was the rear aircraft. Our flight to Objective Rams was uneventful, with the exception of a desert dust storm that caused deteriorating conditions not suitable for flight. We determined that we would not make it back...

PARIS — When Chérif Kouachi first came to the attention of the French authorities as a possible terrorist a decade ago, he was in his early 20s and, according to testimony during a 2008 Paris trial, had dreamed of attacking Jewish targets in France. Under the influence of a radical Paris preacher, however, he decided that fighting American troops in Iraq presented a better outlet for his commitment to jihad. On Wednesday, Mr. Kouachi, according to investigators, returned to his original plan of waging holy war in France. Along with his older brother Said and a third French Muslim of...

While the political commentators in the nation's capital are wrapped up in the debate over what to do about ISIS, and as one third of the Senate and nearly all members of the House campaign for re-election, the president's spies continue to capture massive amounts of personal information about hundreds of millions of us and lie about it. The president continues to dispatch his National Security Agency spies as if he were a law unto himself, and Congress -- which is also being spied upon -- has done nothing to protect the right to privacy that the Fourth Amendment was...

A top House Republican on Thursday accused the Justice Department of helping a former department lawyer duck an interview about the IRS’s improper scrutiny of Tea Party groups. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) pressed Attorney General Eric Holder to provide contact information for Andrew Strelka to the House Oversight Committee by Friday. Republicans say that Strelka’s tenure with the government illustrates a conflict of interest in the Obama administration’s investigation into the IRS scandal. Strelka once worked for Lois Lerner, the former IRS official at the center of the controversy. After moving to the Justice Department, Strelka defended the IRS against...

President Obama apparently isn't the only one who gets his information about the IRS targeting scandal from the newspaper. During an exchange today on Capitol Hill between Republican Rep. Ron DeSantis and Deputy Attorney General James Cole about the IRS targeting of conservatives, Cole said he found out about Lois Lerner's "lost" emails through news reports. DeSantis: “Mr. Cole, we learned in Congress on June 13th, 2014 that two years-worth of Lois Lerner’s emails were missing—the IRS would not produce those. When did the Justice Department learn of that fact?” Cole: “I think we learned about it after that from...

The buck stops with the president. Or maybe it's the secretary of Defense. As the fallout grows over the controversial Taliban prisoner swap, White House officials are emphasizing that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was the one who "signed off" on the deal -- a move one Republican lawmaker suggested is an effort to shift blame. "I hope they're not just pushing him out to be a fall guy for this," Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif., told Fox News. According to a congressional source, Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken refused to answer directly when asked point-blank during a briefing with House...

Records newly obtained by officials with Judicial Watch revealed on Thursday that lodging, security and “entertainment” for the Obamas’ entourage during their trip last year to Africa cost taxpayers nearly $2.2 million. “The Obamas clearly either do not understand the value of a dollar – or understand it all too well when someone else is picking up the tab,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Keep in mind that this outrageously lavish excursion came at the very same time that the president was shutting down White House tours and blaming it on the sequester. As one congressional critic noted at...

After months of false leads and dead ends, there have been some promising updates in the case of Connecticut teen Justina Pelletier. The Massachusetts Department of Children and Families took custody of Justina after her parents disputed the diagnosis doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital’s handed down. Boston Children’s Hospital said the then 15-year-old had a psychiatric disorder – not mitochondrial disease, which her parents had been treating her for at the direction of another doctor. Though a Boston juvenile court judge recently awarded permanent custody of Justina to the state DCF, it would appear, based on the letter by Massachusetts...

Early in Obama's first term, Attorney General Eric Holder submitted a formal, written response to Congressional inquiry into Fast & Furious. This official DOJ testimony attempted to absolve the DOJ of responsibility for F & F by fraudulently covering up information concerning who knew what and when. When information came to light which conclusively proved the Eric J Holder perjured himself, and the DOJ under his direction with malice and forethought attempted to deceive Congress, Holder simply "withdrew" this sworn, official testimony. Since this time, Holder's DOJ has stopped trying to lie its way out of compliance. Now, the DOJ...

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So when did Ann's and Obama Sr.'s "whatever happened happened fast" wedding happen? For no apparent reason, confusion abounds among Obama's biographers over the wedding date: 1. Dreams claims that Ann and Obama Sr. were in married "in 1960"; similarly, Mendell's 2007 book claims that the couple were married "sometime in late 1960" when they "slipped off alone to the island of Maui"; and both Obamaland (2008) by Ron Jacobs (with contributor David Maraniss) and a 2007 Washington Post article claim that the two were married "late in 1960." 2. A 2007 Chicago Tribune article vaguely claims that Ann and...

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CNN reporter Don Lemon had some shockingly revealing things to say when asked about the criticism the President has received. He shared with his audience that journalists actually take into account his race before criticizing his policies.

Whether Democrat or Republican, do you really want your private tax information leaked with impunity? On March 9, 2010, around 10 a.m., I announced my plans to run for senate representing Delaware. Later that same day, my office received a call from a reporter asking about my taxes. It’s since come out, after a halting and unenthusiastic investigation, that a Delaware Department of Revenue employee named David Smith accessed my records that day at approximately 2 p.m. — out of curiosity, he says. That these records ended up in the hands of the press is just a coincidence, the IRS...