Free Republic

Think about it. Has there been a lousier 10 years in American history? OK, the Civil War, granted. And the Great Depression wasn't so hot, either, the pictures suggest. But this one has been close enough to an all-time bad to merit the kind of willful amnesia that I'm proposing. sajohnson@tribune.com

Over five months after the election, a three-judge panel has declared Democrat Al Franken the winner of the Minnesota U.S. Senate race. The judges issued their final ruling late Monday, stating "Franken received the highest number of lawfully cast ballots in the Nov. 4, 2008 general election." They also have determined that Franken is entitled to receive the certificate of election. Last week, Republican Norm Coleman suffered a blow after a few hundred previously rejected absentee ballots were opened and counted at the tail end of Coleman's lawsuit contesting his loss in a statewide recount. They broke almost 2-to-1 for...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department has decided to drop all charges against former Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens amid charges of prosecutorial misconduct, NPR reported on Wednesday, citing Justice officials.

JUDGES should interpret the Constitution according to other nations' legal "norms." Sharia law could apply to disputes in US courts. The United States constitutes an "axis of disobedience" along with North Korea and Saddam-era Iraq. Those are the views of the man on track to become one of the US government's top lawyers: Harold Koh.

In an attempt to win sanctions against a former top Bush administration official over brutal interrogations of prisoners at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, a lawyers group deployed a strategy Monday that worked against Presidents Nixon and Clinton. Former Defense Department General Counsel William J. Haynes II is the first of several former policy makers the National Lawyers Guild wants reprimanded, suspended or disbarred for their roles in detainee abuse, said Carlos Villarreal, executive director of the San Francisco Bay Area guild chapter that filed a complaint against Haynes with the California Bar Assn. Haynes, now an attorney with Chevron Corp....

Department of Justice Withdraws “Enemy Combatant” Definition for Guantanamo Detainees In a filing today with the federal District Court for the District of Columbia, the Department of Justice submitted a new standard for the government’s authority to hold detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility. The definition does not rely on the President’s authority as Commander-in-Chief independent of Congress’s specific authorization. It draws on the international laws of war to inform the statutory authority conferred by Congress. It provides that individuals who supported al Qaeda or the Taliban are detainable only if the support was substantial. And it does not...

Last September, the Bush administration defended the unusual secrecy over an anti-counterfeiting treaty being negotiated by the U.S. government, which some liberal groups worry could criminalize some peer-to-peer file sharing that infringes copyrights. Now President Obama's White House has tightened the cloak of government secrecy still further, saying in a letter this week that a discussion draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and related materials are "classified in the interest of national security pursuant to Executive Order 12958." The 1995 Executive Order 12958 allows material to be classified only if disclosure would do "damage to the national security and the...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – A former CIA agent rose to the agency's No. 3 rank despite a record of misconduct that stretched over 20 years, prosecutors said, until his career came to an end with his conviction in a bribery scheme. In court papers, prosecutors describe how Kyle "Dusty" Foggo was investigated in the late 1980s for punching a bicyclist in a traffic dispute and for numerous relationships with foreign women that could have compromised security. ... Instead, Foggo is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria after pleading guilty to a single count of fraud as...

In his first weeks in office, President Barack Obama shut down his predecessor’s system for reviewing regulations, realigned and expanded two key White House policymaking bodies and extended economic sanctions against parties to the conflict in the African nation of Cote D’Ivoire. Despite the intense scrutiny a president gets just after the inauguration, Obama managed to take all these actions with nary a mention from the White House press corps. The moves escaped notice because they were never announced by the White House Press Office and were never placed on the White House web site. They came to light only...

Rush Limbaugh Talk-radio giant Rush Limbaugh is blasting the so-called economic stimulus plan of President Obama and the Democrat-led Congress, calling it an assault on capitalism intentionally designed to harm the private sector and lead to bigger government. "This is a full-fledged attack on capitalism, and the leftists Democrats have been seeking this for the longest time," Limbaugh said on his program this afternoon. "That's why they can't stop themselves. It is Christmas morning every day for these people. There's nobody that can stop them." A question e-mailed to the host asked if the Democrats really understood that they're "destroying...

A Senate committee approved a bill today that would give the District its first full seat in the House of Representatives, setting up a crucial vote by the full chamber sometime in coming months. The Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee passed the legislation 11 to 1 at its first business meeting in the new Congress. The lone "no" vote was cast by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the 2008 Republican presidential nominee. It's not clear when the legislation will reach the Senate floor for what is likely to be the key vote on the measure. In 2007, a similar bill...

Bill Gertz, defense and national security reporter for The Washington Times, argues that high-level bureaucrats in the State Department, White House, Pentagon, and CIA have repeatedly undermined the Bush administration's national security policies. Mr. Gertz says that these unelected officials - liberals from both political parties - have pursued their own agendas towards countries like Iran, China, North Korea, and Iraq and have weakened U.S. security as a result. Mr. Gertz discusses his book with Frank Gaffney, president and CEO of the Center for Security Policy.

Published: January 15, 2009 WASHINGTON — A federal intelligence court, in a rare public opinion, issued a major ruling validating the power of the president and Congress to wiretap international phone calls and intercept e-mail messages without a specific court order, even when Americans’ private communications may be involved. The court decision, made in August 2008 by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, came in an unclassified, redacted form. The decision marks the first time since the disclosure of the National Security Agency’s warrantless eavesdropping program three years ago that an appellate court has addressed the constitutionality of the...

A federal grand jury in Seattle has charged two people in an alleged immigration fraud conspiracy, saying they advised straight immigrants to claim homosexuality in applying for political asylum. Steven Mahoney and his wife, Helena, were arrested today and scheduled to make initial appearances at U.S. District Court in Seattle in the afternoon. Prosecutors say Steve Mahoney ran Mahoney and Associates in Kent, and held himself out as an expert in immigration affairs. They say the point was to make money by advising immigrants on how to stay in the U.S. According to an indictment unsealed Tuesday, the Mahoneys in...

In a remarkable screw-up, a Department of Justice official today accidentally distributed to the media a document containing the names of nearly 20 confidential witnesses interviewed during a federal probe targeting the operators of a fraudulent investment scheme. In announcing felony charges against two men for their roles in an alleged $15 million Ponziesque swindle, the spokesman for Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald (he of Rod Blagojevich- and Scooter Libby-prosecuting fame) e-mailed reporters a 62-page U.S. District Court complaint filed against John Walsh and Charles Martin, principals of the now-defunct One World Capital Group. Included in the document was a...

Panetta's a patriot, an experienced Washington hand, and close to the president-elect. As with many of the other early appointments on the incoming national security team, conservatives should be asking themselves if they ought not to be thanking their stars that the new team appears very realistic about the world they are being called on to lead and the enemies they will be facing.

President-elect Barack Obama has selected Leon E. Panetta, the former congressman and White House chief of staff, to take over the Central Intelligence Agency, an organization that Mr. Obama criticized during the campaign for using interrogation methods he decried as torture, Democratic officials said Monday. Mr. Panetta has a reputation in Washington as a competent manager with strong background in budget issues, but has little hands-on intelligence experience. If confirmed by the Senate, he will take control of the agency most directly responsible for hunting senior Al Qaeda leaders around the globe, but one that has been buffeted since the...

The Minnesota Supreme Court has rejected Republican Norm Coleman's request to count an additional 650 rejected absentee ballots in the state's U.S. Senate recount. The court's ruling Monday likely paves the way for the state Canvassing Board to certify results showing Democrat Al Franken won the race. But Coleman's attorneys have said they are likely to sue if he loses the recount, meaning it could be weeks more before the outcome is final.

The Canvassing Board overseeing the vote recount for Minnesota’s tightly contested U.S. Senate race isn’t quite done examining disputed ballots, but the board issued a projection Saturday night that Al Franken will pick up 270 votes when it finishes. Currently the board is determining voter intent in disputed ballots. If the projection proves correct, Franken will beat incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman by 78 votes.Vote totals have changed a lot since Nov. 4, when Coleman led Franken by 725 votes. Correcting typos cut Coleman’s margin to 215, and a recount by all the counties reduced it further to 192. Yet, the...

(CNSNews.com) - The $2.7 billion border “fence” authorized by Congress to be built along stretches of the U.S.-Mexico border is just over two-thirds finished--and should be mostly complete by the end of the year. But not everyone is happy with it. Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) said the fence that is being built is “not the one Congress had in mind” when it passed legislation in 2005 authorizing a double fence combined with a patrol road. The law Congress enacted specifically directed that “the Secretary of Homeland Security shall provide for at least 2 layers of reinforced fencing, the installation of...

CHICAGO (Reuters) – President-elect Barack Obama was in no way implicated in the federal corruption charges against the governor of his home state of Illinois, a fellow Democrat, ... "I should make clear the complaint makes no allegations about the president-elect whatsoever," said U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested on corruption charges on Tuesday, including trying to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Obama. ... Fiztgerald told a news conference .. he had wanted to stop a "crime spree."

The state worker who unwittingly ran an improper child-support check on the man known as Joe the Plumber told lawmakers yesterday that a deputy director later "dictated" how she was supposed to cover it up. Vanessa Niekamp, an administrator for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services' Office of Child Support and a 15-year state employee, said that when Deputy Director Doug Thompson came into her office, "He appeared very upset, his neck was bright red, and he was shaking. He closed my door." Thompson told her she must write an e-mail to the agency's information-security officer, and then...

A former CIA deep-cover spy says President-elect Barack Obama needs to radically reshape what he terms the "dysfunctional" CIA -- or face more strategic intelligence failures. Ishmael Jones, the pseudonym for a former Marine and recently retired CIA case officer, said in an interview that despite intelligence reform efforts in the post-Sept. 11 era, "the CIA bureaucracy has mutated into a living creature that serves its own aims."

RAYMONDVILLE, Texas – A judge dismissed indictments against Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Monday and told the southern Texas prosecutor who brought the case to exercise caution as his term in office ends. Willacy County District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra had accused Cheney and the other defendants of responsibility for prisoner abuse. The judge's order ended two weeks of sometimes-bizarre court proceedings. Guerra is leaving office at the end of the month after soundly losing in his March primary election.

Joe the Plumber case still dripping Half-dozen agencies access records of Ohio man By Dennis J. Willard Beacon Journal staff writer Published on Friday, Nov 14, 2008 The election is over, but the Joe the Plumber case is not. Ohio Inspector General Tom Charles said his office is now looking at a half-dozen agencies that accessed state records on Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher. The Beacon Journal has learned that, in addition to the Department of Job and Family Services, two other state offices — the Ohio Department of Taxation and Ohio Attorney General Nancy Rogers — conducted database searches of Joe...

Drudge Breaking:Democrats prepare to move forward with investigations of the Bush administration... Ahhh yes....here we go...Obama and the Rats getting exactly what they wanted all along.

Government computers used to find information on Joe the Plumber Investigators trying to determine whether access was illegal Friday, October 24, 2008 8:41 PM By Randy Ludlow The Columbus Dispatch "State and local officials are investigating if state and law-enforcement computer systems were illegally accessed when they were tapped for personal information about "Joe the Plumber." Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher became part of the national political lexicon Oct. 15 when Republican presidential candidate John McCain mentioned him frequently during his final debate with Democrat Barack Obama. The 34-year-old from the Toledo suburb of Holland is held out by McCain as an...

Per Van Sussteren on Fox just now. Developing... WHAT are we going to do? ACORN is stealing this election in broad daylight.

To: ALL MEDIAFor immediate releaseOctober 8, 2008 For more information contact:Ted Novin 203-426-1320 Obama Campaign Unlawfully Misuses Proprietary Firearms Industry Media List NEWTOWN, Conn. – The Obama campaign in Indiana, on September 27, unlawfully obtained and made unauthorized use of a proprietary media list belonging to the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) – the trade association for the firearms industry.  Sen. Obama used this list to e-mail a press release concerning National Hunting and Fishing Day.Earlier today, NSSF sent a “cease and desist� letter to the Obama campaign demanding that they immediately stop any further unauthorized misuse of its...

GOP wins one: Ohio ordered to accept McCain absentee ballot applications Posted by Reginald Fields October 02, 2008 15:13PM Categories: Real Time News The Ohio Supreme Court today ordered Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner to accept absentee ballot applications that do not contain a checked box indicating the person is a qualified elector. The applications were mailed to registered Ohio voters by the presidential campaign of Republican Sen. John McCain. But thousands have been returned without a checkmark in a box stating the requester is qualified to vote in Ohio. Brunner, a Democrat, issued a directive last month telling county...

A Conservative government would ban sharia courts and impose a tough crackdown on Islamic extremism, the shadow security minister has said.

<p>A founding member of the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois met in New York City tonight with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.</p> <p>Jodie Evans, who co-hosted Obama's first major fundraiser in Hollywood in February 2007 just after Obama announced his candidacy and is a top fundraiser and donor to Obama's campaign, led a delegation of leftist anti-American groups that held a private meeting near the United Nations. The stated purpose of the meeting was to "serve as an opening for diplomatic resolution" to prevent war between Iran and the United States.</p>

Former State Dept. employee Lawrence C. Yontz, 48, pled guilty before a U.S. magistrate to illegally accessing hundreds of passport files, including those of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain. He didn’t access Sarah Palin’s passport file, presumably because she obtained a passport for the first time last year. According to the Justice Dept.: In pleading guilty, Yontz admitted that between February 2005 and March 2008, he logged onto the PIERS database and viewed the passport applications of approximately 200 celebrities, athletes, actors, politicians and their immediate families, musicians, game show contestants, members of the media corps, prominent business...

"Mike Kernell, a longtime Tennessee state assemblyman from Memphis and a technology enthusiast, is concerned about future elections because the new machines are harder to get a look at. ''We used to be able to check the machines and see if they'd been tampered with,'' he said. ''It is now almost impossible.'' Mr. Kernell wonders whether he will have to hire a computer programmer in his next race to make sure the machines are working smoothly and haven't been tampered with. ''We've hit a brick wall,'' he said." - NY Times A "technology enthusiast" indeed. Did he help with his...

On Oct. 10th, the Alaskan Democrat ran investigation of Palin will released its report. Obviously, they will do anything to damage Palin. Here are some points about the Kangaroo Court that is running the investigation of Palin: 1. The Democrat State Senator running the investigation has said that the investigation will be an October surprise and will be damaging to Palin. How does he know that unless the outcome is already planned by him? 2. The lead investigator and the Democrat State Senator in-charge of the investigation have conflicts of interest because both are friends with the commissioner that resigned....

Write your congress critters!!!!!

WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence. According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July. "He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview. Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in...

They have disrupted McCain's speech several times. I've never seen anything like this during a convention. I wonder how they managed to get in. To me this is scary. What if these people were there to do something other than shout? I'm sure these people will be the headline on MSNBC and the New York Times....

If Mr. Obama were to apply for a job with the FBI, CIA, or a company manufacturing a top secret product for the U.S. Government, because of his past associations, activities and friends, he would not be able to get a TOP SECRET security clearance.

Wednesday morning, August 27, between 11 am and 1:30 pm EST or 9 am and 11:30 am mountain time, I'll be chairing a New America Foundation/Middle East Task Force event in Denver at the Colorado History Museum. The keynotes are Senator JOHN KERRY (D-MA), Obama National Security Adviser GREG CRAIG, Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School Dean ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER, former Congressman and Obama Adviser MEL LEVINE, former German Foreign Minister JOSCHKA FISCHER, and Aspen Institute President (and former CNN Chairman and CEO and TIME Managing Editor) Walter Isaacson. Our panel will be former Israeli negotiator and New America Foundation Senior Fellow...

What 'culture war'? At the conventions, they'll try to stir up red-blue divisions. But most Americans hold un-partisan views. By Dick Meyer August 27, 2008 As the nation's attention reluctantly turns to the political parties' conventions, with their scripted suspense and stage-managed sentiment, it is important to keep in mind that these are phony representations of American political life. But the slick video profiles, the teary appearance of a beloved party elder -- these are not what is most phony about the conventions. This gathering of America's civic tribes -- and the reporters who love them -- in separate cities...

Appeals court upholds CIA leak lawsuit dismissal Tue Aug 12, 2008 12:01pm EDT By Andy Sullivan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday dismissed former CIA analyst Valerie Plame's lawsuit against Vice President Dick Cheney and several former Bush administration officials for disclosing her identity to the public. The Court of Appeals in Washington dealt another setback to the former spy, who has said her career was destroyed when officials blew her cover in 2003 to retaliate against her husband, Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson.

Fourteen years and numerous judicial reviews have passed since José Medellin was sentenced to die after confessing to the brutal gang rape and murder of two teenage girls in Houston. That's long enough, state officials say. It's time to carry out the sentence. But defense attorneys, and an unusual coalition of federal officials, including no less than the attorney general and secretary of state, say if his Aug. 5 execution is not stayed, so Mr. Medellin's case can be reviewed one more time at the behest of the International Court of Justice, Texas will be rushing to judgment and endangering...

Remember Joe Wilson? He's the diplomat who went to Niger to investigate Bush administration claims that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy yellowcake uranium, a raw material used in building nuclear bombs, from Africa. He wrote in a July 6, 2003, New York Times op-ed that he had spent the previous February in Niger, "drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people ... associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place." A story that has to be the most underplayed...

RALEIGH, N.C. — L.F. Eason III gave up the only job he'd ever had rather than lower a flag to honor former U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms. Eason, a 29-year veteran of the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, instructed his staff at a small Raleigh lab not to fly the U.S. or North Carolina flags at half mast Monday as called for in a directive to all state agencies by Gov. Mike Easley. When a superior ordered the lab to follow the order, Eason decided to retire rather than pay tribute to Helms. After several hours' delay, one of Eason's employees...

Amber Tracy spent the past academic year studying Arabic. But with a full-time job and other classes, she wasn't progressing as quickly as she had wanted. On June 23, she began an intensive Arabic program at Cal State San Bernardino, learning Arabic all day and practicing it in residence halls well into the night. "I think I've learned more in the last week than I did all last semester," Tracy said after finishing a lunch of Arab-style chicken, rice and salad with her tutors and other students. "Being able to focus on Arabic and not think about anything else is...

Steven Hatfill finally has his life back. Thanks to FBI incompetence, he also has $5.8 million. ... It's worse because it is a virtual confession that the anthrax case is cold. Throughout one of the largest investigations in law-enforcement history, agents were fixated on a "lone wolf" theory that Director Robert Mueller's FBI, for all intents and purposes, now admits was wrong. Helped along by a sympathetic press corps, the obsession with a domestic perpetrator has ended up in a dead end. *** So the FBI needed to cast a wider net all along – which still remains urgent. In...

SOUTH PADRE ISLAND - Border congressmen and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus are looking into ways of de-funding the Department of Homeland Security so it cannot continue constructing a border wall. Opponents of the border wall in Congress are not sure if they can succeed with this strategy but they have not given up hope of putting sufficient congressional hurdles in place so that the project is delayed until after the November presidential election. Border congressmen say that because Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff waived more than 30 laws and regulations in order to speed up construction of the border wall,...

he two-star general who led an Army investigation into the horrific detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib has accused the Bush administration of war crimes and is calling for accountability. In his 2004 report on Abu Ghraib, then-Major General Anthony Taguba concluded that "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees." He called the abuse "systemic and illegal." And, as Seymour M. Hersh reported in the New Yorker, he was rewarded for his honesty by being forced into retirement. Now, in a preface to a Physicians for Human Rights report based on medical examinations of...