Free Republic

Ross Ulbricht was a quiet nerd -- an Eagle Scout who never cursed. Then he became a libertarian, and he decided, "I want to use economic theory as a means to abolish the use of coercion." By coercion, Ulbricht meant force. He viewed laws against drugs as coercion -- government force that stops people from living the way they want. So he created a website called Silk Road. Silk Road let people buy and sell contraband -- mostly drugs -- using bitcoin. The site became successful quickly. It soon carried a billion dollars in transactions. Because Silk Road didn't use...

Federal prosecutors say an IRS investigator in California has admitted leaking confidential details of financial transactions by former Trump attorney Michael Cohen to Michael Avenatti, lawyer for Stormy Daniels. John C. Fry has been charged in federal court with searching for and disseminating Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs), reports filed by banks when they note potentially suspicious transactions. Federal officials say they found telephone records that indicate Fry placed a phone call from his personal cell phone to that of Stormy Daniels’ attorney Michael Avenatti the day before Avenatti released details of Cohen's financial transactions, and the day after. The federal...

One of the dumbest moves made by Lois Lerner (and those above her who presumably approved her strategy to deflect blame) was blaming her subordinates in Cincinnati as "rogue agents" who launched the anti-tea party jihad the IRS has been carrying on ever since the 2010 midterm elections threatened the Obama agenda. She may have expected they would remain quiet and accept their role as scapegoats. Perhaps that is how she has operated before in the vast federal bureaucracy, using the threat of poor performance evaluations and truncated career advancement to intimidate subordinates into remaining quiet and covering her rear...