Free Republic

The first federal prosecutor to probe the financial dealings of Bill and Hillary Clinton says he was poised to bring high-profile indictments against top Arkansas political and business figures — based in part on testimony from a chief witness against the then president — when he was abruptly replaced by a panel of federal judges, throwing his investigation into turmoil. "I was angry, frustrated and above all disappointed that I was not going to be able to carry through and finish bringing the indictments," writes Robert Fiske, a former U.S. attorney who served as the original independent counsel in charge...

While strong cases can be made for both Benghazi and Fast and Furious, most voters consider Barack Obama’s misuse of the IRS to be his administration’s worst scandal so far. But, as we wrote last year, targeting of conservative non-profits for harassment is not the only dimension of the IRS scandal. In addition, there is strong reason to believe that one or more White House political appointees have illegally accessed private taxpayer information and used it for political gain.Austan Goolsbee directed Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board and later chaired his Council of Economic Advisers. In August 2010, Goolsbee conducted...

The U.S. Justice Department asked the Ferguson, Missouri, Police Department on Friday to order its officers not to wear bracelets in support of the white policeman who shot to death an unarmed black teenager last month, sparking protests. Ferguson unrest persists despite chief's gesture Associated Press Justice Department investigates Ferguson police In a letter to Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson, the Justice Department said residents had told its investigators that officers policing protest sites on Tuesday in Ferguson were seen wearing "I am Darren Wilson" bracelets.

One of the biggest threats to a civilized, free society occurs when prosecutors abuse their power and allow politics to drive their administration of the criminal-justice system. Two recent examples show how liberal, partisan prosecutors misused their authority and politicized justice.

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...

There is no such thing as the man being accused of not thinking of himself enough. In the Concentration Camps the guards forced inmates to sing Happy Birthday on Hitler's Birthday. Maybe that's what he had in mind. And perhaps a Fudgepack Cake to celebrate. Thoughts of midnight strolls on Fudgepack Beach on the day of(HFB)His Foreign Birth would have made him almost as happy if any reporters would have remembered his birthday.

Washington, DC – Despite early refusals to make available IT professionals who worked on Lois Lerner’s computer, Ways and Means Committee investigators have now learned from interviews that the hard drive of former IRS Exempt Organizations Director Lois Lerner was “scratched,” but data was recoverable. In fact, in-house professionals at the IRS recommended the Agency seek outside assistance in recovering the data. That information conflicts with a July 18, 2014 court filing by the Agency, which stated the data on the hard drive was unrecoverable – including multiple years’ worth of missing emails. “It is unbelievable that we cannot get...

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...

...On Friday's Laura Ingraham Show, Elaine, a black woman from Baltimore, expressed her outrage that President Barack Obama is putting the interests of illegal immigrant children above those of American citizens. Though the number of illegal immigrant children unlawfully entering the country has spiked since Obama unilaterally enacted his temporary amnesty program in 2012, the White House has said the primary cause of the border crisis is the rampant gang violence in Central America. "I'm living a nightmare. My whole neighborhood is so violent. There's so much crime," she said. "I have gangs everywhere here in Baltimore! I can't let...

Rep. Darrell Issa on Thursday called Lois Lerner’s recently surfaced emails a “smoking gun” in the IRS scandal. “[This is] a smoking gun, this is Lois Lerner clearly cautioning people not to say things on email and be delighted to find out that the local instant chat they have, this Microsoft product, wasn’t tracking what they said,” Issa, a California Republican said on Fox News.

You wish you could call the police. But the neighbor who is robbing your house at gunpoint is the police. You are stupefied, so inconceivable does it seem to you that the man sworn to uphold the law could be an outlaw. Yet, the architects who designed your house not only conceived of that danger, they took precautions. As a result, you not only have your own arsenal of emergency firepower; you’re also in charge of all the ammunition. See, the architects hoped we’d always have good, honorable police, but they didn’t make your life depend on it. They knew...

if the President of the United States and his government conspired with the Mexican government to deliberately let children from Central America transit through that country on their way to the United States. The evidence does suggest this: (1) the solicitation at FedBizOpps calling for “chaperones” for these children indicate that the government knew the in flux was coming and (2) it is highly unlikely that the Mexican government would have their southern border be invaded by Central Americans. What happened here? Did the kids explain that they were on their way to America? How and why did Mexican officials...

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) cancelled its longtime relationship with an email-storage contractor just weeks after ex-IRS official Lois Lerner’s computer crashed and shortly before other IRS officials’ computers allegedly crashed. The IRS signed a contract with Sonasoft, an email-archiving company based in San Jose, California, each year from 2005 to 2010. The company, which partners with Microsoft and counts The New York Times among its clients, claims in its company slogans that it provides “Email Archiving Done Right” and “Point-Click Recovery.” Sonasoft in 2009 tweeted, “If the IRS uses Sonasoft products to backup their servers why wouldn’t you choose...

Obama administration officials refused to fully explain to key senators the justification for freeing five senior Taliban leaders that the White House had once considered to be among the most dangerous prisoners being held in the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, according to senior Senate insiders familiar with a closed-door briefing held Tuesday for members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Top Obama administration officials continued to defend the decision to skirt U.S. law and not inform Congress about the deal, telling lawmakers that “it was worth it; period,” according to one Senate insider familiar with Tuesday’s classified briefing. Officials maintained...

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...

The White House on Tuesday defended its controversial swap of Taliban detainees for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.... Regardless of the circumstances, we still get an American soldier back if he's held in captivity," Obama said. "Period. Full stop."

Veteran Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki cannot get a handle on the recent scandalous treatment of veterans in VA hospitals, where more than 40 sick men were allowed to die without proper follow-up treatment. A cover-up allegedly followed. When the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal broke under the George W. Bush administration, heads rolled. So far, Shinseki seems immune from similar accountability. Almost nothing that former Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius promised before, during or after the implementation of the ill-starred Affordable Care Act came true. She was also cited by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel...

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...

NBC Bay Area's Stephanie Chuang shows why some are alarmed after a picture of the San Francisco International Airport was included in a publication run by Al Qaeda. A stock photo of San Francisco International Airport featured in an international publication – reportedly run by al Qaeda - is sounding off alarms on Capitol Hill, especially as the year anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings nears. At a Homeland Security hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Dublin, said he was first alerted by a top law enforcement official in the Bay area to the picture of what appears to be...