Free Republic

Voters in Parma, Missouri voted in their first African-American female mayor. Tyus Byrd will be sworn in as mayor on Tuesday evening, April 14, at the Parma Community Building. According to Mayor Randall Ramsey, five out of six police officers resigned this week, effectively immediately. Mayor Ramsey said the clerk and the waste water treatment plant supervisor also turned in resignation letters citing “safety concerns.” …

The Secret Service said Monday that its second-ranking official was resigning his post, a departure under pressure of one of the last remaining senior managers who had presided over a string of embarrassing security lapses in recent years. The ouster of Deputy Director Alvin “A.T.” Smith, which followed pressure from lawmakers who have called for fresh leadership at the troubled agency, came three days before he was scheduled to testify before a House oversight committee. He was considered one of the few people with a deep understanding of the Secret Service’s highly specialized mission.

<p>Washington, Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) -- William Webster, picked less than two weeks ago to head the newly created accounting oversight board, may resign within days, a person familiar with the situation said.</p> <p>SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt quit yesterday amid four federal investigations into how he chose Webster to lead the oversight board even though he knew the former FBI chief had been chairman of the audit committee of an Internet company accused of fraud.</p>

".................In one email from March 2011, after being sent a news story about the Fast and Furious investigation, Holder told staff, "I hope there is another side to the story." Later, after the ATF deputy director assured Holder aides that "we did not allow guns to walk," Holder responded to staff with, "Do they really, really know?" That August, Holder was told by staff that about 25 U.S. attorneys was upset that the resignation of Dennis Burke, then the U.S. attorney in Arizona, was announced simultaneously with the reassignment of ATF Acting Director Ken Melson. Holder wondered "why wouldn't we...

Robert Malley, a top Middle East advisor that US President-elect Barack Obama promised months ago would play no role in his administration due to ties to Hamas, has reportedly been sent out on the next administration's first diplomatic mission. According to a report in Middle East Newsline, Obama dispatched Malley to Egypt and Syria late last week with a message that the he intends to mend and bolster relations with both nations, and to give greater weight to their concerns regarding regional conflicts than did President George W. Bush. During the Democratic Party primaries, Obama was lashed by critics for...

<p>President Obama says Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew has requested and received the resignation of acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller, after critical report on targeting of conservative groups.</p>

Three top officials in the State Department resigned Wednesday in the wake of a scathing report which slammed "systemic failures" and "management deficiencies" in the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, which resulted in the murder of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. Assistant Secretary Eric Boswell, head of the bureau of diplomatic security, and Charlene Lamb, deputy assistant secretary for international programs, have stepped down, CNN and CBS television said, citing unnamed department officials. Lamb, who was Boswell’s deputy in charge of international programs, denied requests from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli for an extension of temporary security...

Republic of Korea: For the record. Pak Ku'n-hye (Park Geun-hye) of the New Frontier Party won South Korea's presidential election on 19 December, media reported. She is the daughter of Park Chung-hee and the first woman elected to be president of the Republic of Korea. That should confound the North! North Korea-Iran: According to a Japanese news service, an Iranian lawmaker told the service that North Korea informed Iran in October of its plan to launch a satellite. The head of an Iranian parliamentary delegation to North Korea, Hamid Reza Taraghi, revealed talks took place mid-October with the North's delegates...

(CNSNews.com) - Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, the ranking Republican on the House intelligence committee, says the resignation of Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair “is the result of the Obama administration’s rampant politicization of national security and outright disregard for congressional intelligence oversight.” ABC News reported today that President Barack Obama would be accepting Blair’s resignation tomorrow, and the Associated Press reported that the administration has already interviewed several candidates to replace him. Hoekstra, who formerly served as chairman of the intelligence committee, issued a written statement saying that Blair’s readiness to step down, considering his record of service...

On paper, it was a promotion. But Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta turned down a White House offer to become the next director of national intelligence anyway. President Barack Obama last week fired his intelligence chief, Dennis Blair, without an immediate successor teed up. People familiar with the matter said the White House had expected Mr. Blair would stick around until a replacement was found. Mr Blair declined. The struggle to find a successor has highlighted the challenges of filling an ill-defined job fraught with political tripwires. Mr. Panetta is one of a number of people who have turned...

Two Maine news anchors resigned together at the end of Tuesday’s broadcast after “a longstanding battle with upper management over journalistic practices” including being expected to do politically unbalanced news, the Bangor Daily News reported. Cindy Michaels and Tony Consiglio announced at the end of WVII-TV’s 6 p.m. newscast that it would be their final broadcast together. “And finally tonight, this will be Tony and my final show together here on ABC 7,” Michaels said. “The last six years have been an interesting and enjoyable time for both of us as we have been the longest running news team in...

Barclays Plc Chief Executive Bob Diamond quit on Tuesday under fire from politicians and regulators, the highest-profile casualty of an interest rate-rigging scandal spanning more than a dozen big banks across the world. "The external pressure placed on Barclays has reached a level that risks damaging the franchise - I cannot let that happen," said Diamond, 61. The terms of his severance were not announced.

Jacques Santer—a ghost from the most ignominious time in the European Commission's history—was on Monday (23 January) evening appointed to head fund-raising for the EU's new bailout fund. A former Luxembourg prime minister, Jacques Santer gained notoriety for presiding over a weak commission, which resigned en masse in 1999 amid allegations of corruption. An independent panel at the time noted that "it is difficult to find anyone who has even the slightest sense of responsibility" in his institution. … Santer's job will be to head up a Special Purpose Investment Vehicle (SPIV), designed to boost the firepower of the EU...

Turkey’s entire top military command resigned Friday in a row with the government over generals jailed for an alleged coup plot, AFP reported. According to the report, Turkey’s Chief of Staff, General Isik Kosaner, stepped down after several meetings with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in recent days, ahead of a meeting scheduled for early August of the army’s high command, which decides on promotions for senior officers. Local media reports blamed Kosaner’s resignation on tensions between the military and Erdogan over army demands for the promotion of dozens of officers who are being held on suspicion of involvement in...

Oregon Rep. David Wu apologized Tuesday for sending photos of himself dressed in a tiger costume to aides, calling that and other behavior last fall “unprofessional” and “inappropriate” as his mental health suffered. “You shouldn’t ever send photographs of yourself in a Halloween costume, something you intend to wear to a private party a couple of nights later,” the Democrat said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” It’s just not professional, even when you’re joshing around with your kids a couple of nights before Halloween. I did send those photographs. It was unprofessional, inappropriate.” Half a dozen Wu staffers have quit...

Will the health care reform bill pass? Nate Silver, the expert number-cruncher at fivethirtyeight.com, thinks it is a 50-50 proposition. The real test will be in the House, and not the Senate, where 51 votes are likely there for a reconciliation package (though so far, only 47 Senators have committed to supporting it). The House passed its version of health care reform by 220-215 in late 2009. Since that date, Congressman John Murtha has died, and two other Democrats -- Neil Abercrombie and Robert Wexler -- have resigned. All three voted for the bill. Democratic Congressman Bart Stupak says he...

The Washington Times suggests in an editorial that the fallout from the Department's refusal to proceed with the New Black Panther party's criminal prosecution for voter intimidation is causing an implosion in the Holder Department of Justice. DOJ has already lost three top officials ; Gregory Craig,Cassandra Butts, and now David Ogden: "[T]he Justice Department has, for now, ordered two key career attorneys not to comply with a subpoena about the case issued by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The commission, by law, has explicit power to issue subpoenas, and the law mandates that 'all federal agencies shall cooperate...

In the midst of the National Endowment for the Arts controversy, their former communications director Yosi Sergant has submitted his resignation. The NEA's Sally Gifford sent the Washington Times the following release.:

The American people stood up and demanded answers. Instead of providing them, the Administration had Jones resign under cover of darkness. I continue to be amazed by the power of everyday Americans to initiate change in our government through honest questioning, and judging by the other radicals in the administration, I expect that questioning to continue for the foreseeable future.

Christopher Buckley ’75, co-founder of the Yale Daily News magazine and son of conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. ’50, resigned Saturday from his position as a columnist at National Review, the influential magazine his father founded five years after graduating from Yale. The younger Buckley offered up his post to National Review editor Rich Lowry after Buckley’s Thursday endorsement of Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama in an online news magazine elicited a wave of outrage from National Review readers. “By Friday, I was Judas,” said Buckley in a telephone interview with the News on Tuesday night. “I thought...