Free Republic

"The new IG report gives clarity to the screamingly obvious. Hillary Clinton used an unauthorized and unsecured private e-mail server to avoid compliance with legitimate Congressional oversight and Freedom of Information Act requests. Under her leadership, the State Department misled several courts and a number of Congressional inquiries about the existence of Clinton’s e-mails..."

The Middle East Quartet, made up of the US, EU, UN, and Russia, is scheduled to release a major policy report later in coming weeks, and senior diplomats involved in its drafting have indicated that the US is taking a far harder line on Israel than in the past. The report, which is likely to be released in late May or early June, will focus heavily on Israeli construction in Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem, senior diplomats told AP. The Quartet’s report will also take Israel to task for the demolition of illegal Arab buildings – many of which were built...

"A 'twisted ideology' drove an Israeli soldier to fatally shoot a Palestinian assailant in the head as he lay subdued in the road," the US news site Vice claims, based on a classified IDF report on the recent incident. "A few seconds before the attack, few seconds before the attack, as came up in the investigation with Sergeant M, (Azariya) told him that 'a terrorist that wounded their friend needs to die," the site reported, adding that "Sergeant M tried to calm the soldier down telling him, 'Relax, our wounded friend will be just fine.'" Despite this, Azariya still shot...

Hillary Clinton’s State Department kept tabs on the Drudge Report, new emails released Thursday reveal.In an April 2012 email, then-Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Michael Hammer alerted then-Chief of Staff to Hillary Clinton Cheryl Mills about a story “running on Drudge.”Image source: Screen grab The story was about a USAID program using federal dollars to train individuals for English-speaking jobs. The headline on the Drudge Report read, “Fed Gov’t Training Foreign Workers for English-Speaking Jobs.”Mills forwarded Hammer’s email, which included a press guidance and draft statement, to Clinton as an “Fyi.”In another email, this one from Dec. 2011, Hammer...

As representatives from 195 nations gather in Paris to hammer out a global agreement to slash greenhouse gas emissions, a new study finds that the failure to do so could leave the world gasping for breath. Marine plants such as phytoplankton are estimated to produce more than half the Earth’s atmospheric oxygen, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. For the study, Sergei Petrovskii, an applied mathematics professor at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, calculated how unrestrained global warming could affect phytoplankton and thus the ocean’s ability to generate breathable air. He ran computer models that...

Is it just me or do others wonder what the Drudge Report is up to? It seems like so many headlines and stories are more Hollywood BS and other unimportant things, than any relevant information that concerned people would care about. Did Drudge turn into Nero just fiddling while Rome (the rest of the world) burns? One of the first sites (also Free Republic) I go to is Drudge, but unfortunately it is not usually not very important.

Politics Report: The Obama Administration Conducts More Closed-Door Meetings Than Ever Before Photo of Chuck Ross Chuck Ross Reporter 3:28 PM 11/03/2015 94 693 A new report finds that in the past decade, federal agencies held the highest percentage of closed-door meetings in 2013 and 2014, undermining President Obama’s commitment to running the “most transparent administration in history.” The report, from the Congressional Research Service, looked at data provided by federal agencies under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). The executive branch utilizes federal advisory committees as a way to allow outside experts to provide advice and recommendations to the...

A report this week by the California Department of Justice showing that homicides and other violent crimes continued to drop statewide in 2014 also gave a look at the nature of killings last year. Overall, 1,697 people were slain — an eye-opening amount to be sure but a 3 percent decline from 2013 and the lowest number since 1971. In 1993, a staggering 4,095 people were killed in the Golden State.

Earlier this year, the Democratic National Committee said it would release its full report on what went wrong for the party in the 2014 elections and what it can do to better perform in future elections by May. It’s now July, and that hasn’t happened yet. In February, the DNC released a preliminary nine-page report, saying its Democratic Victory Task Force final recommendations would be made public by mid-2015. “In May of 2015 the Task Force — in partnership with the Democratic National Committee — will release a strategic plan to guide the Party’s efforts through the 2022 elections,” the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A phosphate export firm owned by the Moroccan government will give the Clinton Foundation a donation of at least $1 million in advance of a May meeting the charity is to host in Morocco, Politico reported Thursday. The gift adds to the Clinton family charity's reliance on contributions from foreign nations as Hillary Rodham Clinton prepares to enter the 2016 presidential race. Clinton Foundation spokesman Craig Minassian did not confirm the Politico report about the donation from OCP, but said Thursday that international participants in the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in Marrakech in early May would work...

The saga of which I sing today is a tale most remarkable: My song comes from Valhalla, the Hall of the Slain, where war-heroes go to their rest. All those who have fallen in the fight, and borne wounds yet toiled unto death, from the beginning of the world, are come to the company of the great god Odin. Indeed, at a time of troublesome tumult on the earth, there is even greater news from Valhalla: Men should know that Odin has decided that it is now time to win the War of the Fourteen Centuries. That is, the War...

The Obama administration is considering whether to declassify still-secret sections of a congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks which examined Saudi Arabian support for Islamist militants, the White House said on Thursday. Interest in the 28-page section of the report was raised after an imprisoned former al Qaeda operative, Zacarias Moussaoui, said in deposition transcripts filed this week that more than a dozen prominent Saudi figures donated to his group in the late 1990s. Current and former U.S. officials familiar with the report's classified section, which documented the involvement of Saudi families and entities in financing terrorism, were...

Obamacare program costs $50,000 in taxpayer money for every American who gets health insurance, says bombshell budget report It will cost the federal government – taxpayers, that is – $50,000 for every person who gets health insurance under the Obamacare law, the Congressional Budget Office revealed on Monday. The number comes from figures buried in a 15-page section of the nonpartisan organization's new ten-year budget outlook. The best-case scenario described by the CBO would result in 'between 24 million and 27 million' fewer Americans being uninsured in 2025, compared to the year before the Affordable Care Act took effect. Pulling...

HERSHEY, Pa. — A group of female GOP lawmakers is trying to pressure the Republican leadership team to make changes to a 20-week abortion ban the House is set to vote on next week. Led by Rep. Renee Ellmers of North Carolina, the lawmakers are protesting language that requires a rape victim to formally report her assault to police to qualify for an exemption from the legislation’s abortion restrictions. Ellmers raised the concerns during a closed-door meeting at the GOP retreat here, according to sources in the room. Her office did not have a comment on Friday on the discussions...

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is lamenting the end of “The Colbert Report,” saying it’s a “loss for ‘truthiness’ advocates across America.” The Comedy Central series ends its run Thursday night. Host Stephen Colbert is poised to take the reins at CBS’s “The Late Show,” when David Letterman retires next year. The House minority leader appeared in a sketch earlier this month with Colbert, who plays a faux cable news host on the show. Pelosi stretched her acting muscles as a wheelie-popping bike cop who preached safety to Colbert and Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.).

Somebody has to be the good guy. So says Peggy Noonan this week in the wake of the torture report, a 14 million page accounting of mostly standard, typical, usual, unremarkable methods of forcibly extracting information from an enemy. And isn’t that a word we seem to have forgotten: enemy. The concept of an enemy is one of the most basic, primitive understandings possible. It is obvious, and should require no explanation. And yet here we are. Because we don’t have them, anymore. There is no evil empire. The modern sensibility, informed heavily by pseudo-leftist pop culture and leftover hippie...

As CIA chief John Brennan defended the spy agency's interrogation program for terror suspects Thursday, a senior senator whose committee published a damning report on the practice contested his claims. Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein's staff repeatedly used the hashtag #ReadTheReport on the senator's Twitter feed during Brennan's rare press conference broadcast live from CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Brennan said it was "unknowable" whether key information from suspects subjected to so-called enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs), which critics have equated to torture, could have been obtained through other methods. But Feinstein's staff responded: "Study shows it IS knowable: CIA...

Just thought if anyone wants a good skewering of the recent senate report heres the CIA's 135 page response released a few days ago. 1. I appreciate the opportunity for the Central Intelligence Agency to comment on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Study of the Agency's long-terminated Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation Program (hereafter referred to as the "Study"). As I noted during my confirmation hearing and in subsequent discussions with you and with Committee members, the lengthy Study deserved careful review by the Agency in light of the significance and sensitivity of the subject matter and; of particular concern;...

Why did the Democrats release their "report" on enhanced interrogation? They feel the world needs to know about torture. I don't know. They delight in hurting the United States military and intelligence agencies

Of course. And those responsible for releasing it must have foreseen this, and allowing their desire for political gain to overwhelm any residual sense of responsibility they might still have felt to protect American citizens. “Senate Torture Report Is Propaganda Bonanza for Islamic Militants, Feds Say,” by Mike Levine, ABC News, December 9, 2014: The Senate’s newly-released report on alleged torture of terror detainees after the 9/11 attacks is “unlikely” to inspire near-term attacks inside the U.S. homeland, but it is “very likely” to be used by terrorist groups for their future propaganda, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security...