Free Republic

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Friday demanded that the Obama administration answer whether it has protected a known gang member from being deported — a man who this week was charged with murder. Grassley wrote a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson noting that press reports say Emmanuel Jesus Rangel-Hernandez has been charged with murdering four people in North Carolina. One of those murdered was a former contestant on America’s Next Top Model. “Mr. Rangel-Hernandez allegedly applied for and received deferred action under the president’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program,” Grassley wrote....

Feds look to adopt 322 pages of fresh taxes, regulations; FCC Chair Refuses to Testify before Congress Another wild power-grab. Power without accountability. The net is the very last frontier for free speech. — Despite google algorithms that consistently render — day in day out, year in year out — always render left-wing sites on first page search results; — Despite filters that block my site and sites like mine (Jihad Watch, The Religion of Peace, Creeping Sharia, Sharia Unveiled, et al) at work, school, and even US army bases and government agencies; — Despite search engines refusing to include...

Two prominent House committee chairs are “deeply disappointed” in Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler for refusing to testify before Congress as “the future of the Internet is at stake.” Wheeler’s refusal to go before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday comes on the eve of the FCC’s vote on new Internet regulations pertaining to net neutrality. The committee’s chairman, Representative Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah), and Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Fred Upton (R., Mich.) criticized Wheeler and the administration for lacking transparency on the issue.

Gallup CEO Jim Clifton told CNBC he might “suddenly disappear” for telling the truth about the Obama unemployment rate. The real Obama unemployment rate has never recovered and is still above 10%. Years of unending news stories on U.S. government programs of surveillance,rendition and torture have apparently chilled the speech of even top business executives in the United States. Yesterday, Jim Clifton, the Chairman and CEO of Gallup, an iconic U.S. company dating back to 1935, told CNBC that he was worried he might “suddenly disappear” and not make it home that evening if he disputed the accuracy of what...

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...

The Obama administration, after days of mounting tension, signaled on Wednesday how angry it is with Israel that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted Republican leaders’ invitation to address Congress on Iran without consulting the White House. The outrage the episode has incited within President Obama’s inner circle became clear in unusually sharp criticism by a senior administration official who said that the Israeli ambassador, Ron Dermer, who helped orchestrate the invitation, had repeatedly placed Mr. Netanyahu’s political fortunes above the relationship between Israel and the United States.

President Barack Obama has a moral responsibility to push back on the nation’s journalism community when it is planning to publish anti-jihadi articles that might cause a jihadi attack against the nation’s defenses forces, the White House’s press secretary said Jan. 12. “The president … will not now be shy about expressing a view or taking the steps that are necessary to try to advocate for the safety and security of our men and women in uniform” whenever journalists’ work may provoke jihadist attacks, spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters at the White House’s daily briefing.

Demonstrators temporarily shut down two large malls in suburban St. Louis on one of the busiest shopping days of the year Friday, as rallies were held nationwide to protest a grand jury’s recent decision not to indict the police officer who fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson.

The Army has no plans to release the results of an investigation into Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl's disappearance and capture by the Taliban in 2009, a spokesman said Friday. "We recognize the importance of the media and the public understanding of our investigative process, and look forward to future discussions on this issue. However, the Army's priority is ensuring that our process is thorough, factually accurate, impartial, and legally correct," Army spokesman Wayne Hall said in a statement.

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...

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...

As a freshman at Columbia University in 1970, future Attorney General Eric Holder participated in a five-day occupation of an abandoned Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) headquarters with a group of black students later described by the university’s Black Students’ Organization as “armed,” The Daily Caller has learned. Department of Justice spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler has not responded to questions from The Daily Caller about whether Holder himself was armed — and if so, with what sort of weapon. Holder was then among the leaders of the Student Afro-American Society (SAAS), which demanded that the former ROTC office be renamed...

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.

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...

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.

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...

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...

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...

"I have been proud to stand along side of you in supporting efforts to advance the cause of justice that has always been at the center of this , this administrations work I am pleased to note that the last five years have been defined by significant strides and lasting reforms, even in the face, even in the face, of unprecedented, unwarranted ugly adversity. And if you don't believe that, you look at the way ...forget about me... forget about me , you look at the way the Attorney General of the Untied States was treated yesterday by a House...