Free Republic

One of the most glaring myths propagated by Washington — especially the two parties’ media loyalists — is that bipartisanship is basically impossible, that the two parties agree on so little, that they are constantly at each other’s throats over everything. As is so often the case for Washington partisan propaganda, the reality is exactly the opposite: from trade deals to Wall Street bailouts to a massive National Security and Penal State, the two parties are in full agreement on the bulk of the most significant D.C. policies (which is why the leading candidates of the two parties (from America’s...

Here is a short pop quiz. When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed Congress earlier this month about the parameters of the secret negotiations between the United States and Iran over nuclear weapons and economic sanctions, how did he know what the negotiators were considering? Israel is not a party to those negotiations, yet the prime minister presented them in detail. When Hillary Clinton learned that a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives had subpoenaed her emails as secretary of state and she promptly destroyed half of them -- about 33,000 -- how did she know she could get...

In a revelation that is bound to further erode an already tense relationship between the US and Israel, Israel has reportedly been spying on nuclear talks with Iran — and then using the inside info to lobby members of Congress to kill the deal. Officials told The Wall Street Journal that the spying began last year after the US and other interested parties entered negotiations on slowing down Iran's nuclear program. This news comes after a tumultuous few weeks following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address to a joint session of Congress. In that address on March 3, Netanyahu passionately...

Not only did Israel spy on the P5+1 nuclear negotiations with Iran, but it angered Obama administration officials by using the information gleaned from its espionage efforts to drum up opposition to a nuclear deal among US lawmakers, The Wall Street Journal is reporting on Tuesday. The administration's discussions with Iran appear to be nearing an agreement, with Israeli officials resigned to the fact that the sides are about to strike what they call "a bad deal." According to the Journal, Israel spied on the talks as part of the Netanyahu administration's campaign to publicly build a case against the...

The superintendent of the Watchung Hills Regional High School District in New Jersey has confirmed that she sent an email to fellow superintendents Tuesday about her concern that education publishing giant Pearson is “monitoring” children’s social media accounts for possible leaks about the Common Core-aligned PARCC tests.

” Pearson, the multinational testing and publishing company, is spying on the social media posts of students–including those from New Jersey–while the children are taking their PARCC, statewide tests, this site has learned exclusively.

(TNS) -- Pick another issue -- maybe any other issue -- and they'd be at each other's throats. But on Monday, the Minnesota Tea Party Alliance shared a stage with Occupy Minnesota, with the American Civil Liberties Union and an anti-Affordable Care Act advocacy group, with liberal DFLers and conservative Republicans. These unnatural allies agreed on one thing: limiting the ability of government to access electronic data. "There won't be many opportunities for you to see a group this ideologically diverse and bipartisan," said state Sen. Branden Petersen, R-Andover. Petersen, a Republican with libertarian leanings, wants to amend Minnesota's constitution...

I really feel like slamming some of the chickens**t American Jews who regularly comment - both on this blog and on Twitter and Facebook - that Jonathan Pollard should rot in jail because what he did was so terrible they're afraid of being accused of having 'dual loyalties' if they actually question Pollard's life sentence. Much of the infamous Cap Weinberger memo (that Pollard's lawyers were never allowed to see) has been declassified, and it shows that much of the US government argument for keeping Pollard imprisoned is based on lies and mischaracterizes what Weinberger (an anti-Semite in his...

Geneva - Islamic State militants are selling abducted Iraqi children at markets as sex slaves, and killing other youth, including by crucifixion or burying them alive, a United Nations watchdog said on Wednesday. Iraqi boys aged under 18 are increasingly being used by the militant group as suicide bombers, bomb makers, informants or human shields to protect facilities against US-led air strikes, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child said. "We are really deeply concerned at torture and murder of those children, especially those belonging to minorities, but not only from minorities," committee expert Renate Winter told a...

That’s the revelation made by California Congressman Devin Nunes, who sits on the House Ways And Means Committee on Hugh Hewitt’s Show Wednesday night. Here’s the key part of that transcript: HH: The idea that this might be a Geithner-Axelrod plan, and by that, the sort of intimation, Henry II style, will no one rid me of this turbulent priest, will no one rid me of these turbulent Tea Parties, that might have just been a hint, a shift of an eyebrow, a change in the tone of voice. That’s going to take a long time to get to. I...

At a conference of the Annual Strategic Data Project (SDP) last year, Common Core "architect" and current president of the “non-profit” College Board, David Coleman, praised the collection of student data via the Common Core State Standards initiative.  Furthermore, he welcomed to that effort members of Barack Obama’s re-election campaign who, Coleman said, would be reaching out, as they did for the campaign, to the “low-hanging fruit,” or low-income and Latino students.In the video below, recorded last May by the Harvard Center for Education Policy Research CEPR, Coleman gave his audience several important pieces of information. First, Coleman admitted, as former...

It’s all a grand charade — the matinee show put on by the Theater of Science was merely being used for the Grand Extravaganza called the Theater of Politics.Wikileaks, not surprisingly, turned up some not-so-diplomatic and not-so-scientific goings-on in the political race to steer power and dollars.From The Guardian The US diplomatic cables reveal how the US seeks dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming; how financial and other aid is used by countries to gain political backing; how distrust, broken promises and creative accounting dog negotiations; and how the US mounted a secret global diplomatic...

It's a battle between privacy advocates and police. Two bills regarding the controversial license plate readers, also known as LPR's, received a hearing at the State Capitol Thursday afternoon. "The scanning and storage capabilities of these systems have increased exponentially since they were first implemented," testified Teresa Nelson of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), an opponent of storing this data collected by law enforcement. "As this technology improves and costs go down we're going to see LPR systems reach a point where they're deployed on every street corner and capable of scanning every vehicle." Republican Senator Branden Petersen, R-Andover,...

Not Every Leak Is Fit to Print Why have federal prosecutors subpoenaed a New York Times reporter?by Gabriel Schoenfeld 02/18/2008, Volume 013, Issue 22 Investigations of national-security leaks in Washington are not all that rare. But until Judith Miller of the New York Times was sent to jail for 85 days by a special prosecutor digging into the Valerie Plame imbroglio, investigations of such leaks in which journalists are subpoenaed were about as common as unicorns wandering the National Mall. We now have another such unicorn. On January 24, a federal grand jury in Alexandria issued a subpoena to...

The documents kept by the Iraqi Intelligence Service were meticulous in detail and sweeping in scope. In some, Iraqi intelligence officers in the United States are directed to use informers to track the "criminal'' actions of one current and one former Chicago area resident, both Assyrian Christians from Iraq who founded an anti-Saddam Hussein political party. Another accuses the group of being influenced by "imperialists'' and "Zionists.'' Others include the exact dates of the group's meetings and conventions in Chicago and elsewhere, the names of the people who ran the events, those in attendance and what statements were made. Trips...

CHICAGO: A judge denied bail to a man accused of spying on Iraqi opposition groups for Saddam Hussein, saying he had "hitched his star to the murderer and torturer of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis”. Khaled Abdel-Latif Dumeisi, 61, held his head in his hands on Thursday as federal magistrate judge Edward A Bobrick accused him of spying for "the maniacal, perverted, homicidal mass murderer and torturer of women and children." The community newspaper publisher is accused of spying on Iraqi opposition leaders in this country on behalf of Saddam's intelligence service while failing to register as an agent of...

Disclosure of classified info complicates trial of alleged Iraqi agent Prosecutors say a page of grand jury testimony should never have been turned over to the defense. CHICAGO (AP) -- A community newspaper publisher accused of spying on Iraqi opposition groups in the United States for Saddam Hussein's intelligence service wants the charges thrown out because federal prosecutors mistakenly disclosed classified information. Khaled Abdel-Latif Dumeisi, of Oak Lawn, is scheduled to go to trial Monday on federal charges of perjury and failing to register as a foreign agent. But lawyers for Dumeisi, 61, filed court papers this month detailing efforts...

December 29, 2008 Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2008/December/08-nsd-1151.html Former Maryland Man Charged with Conspiracy to Act as an Iraqi Agent Defendant Allegedly Worked for the Government of Iraq and Assisted the Iraqi Intelligence Service WASHINGTON – A criminal complaint was filed today charging Mouyad Mahmoud Darwish, age 47, formerly of Maryland, with conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government, specifically, as an agent of Iraq, announced United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein and Patrick Rowan, Assistant Attorney General for National Security. Darwish is a Canadian citizen born in Iraq....

A veteran State Department diplomat and longtime Pakistan expert is under federal investigation as part of a counterintelligence probe and has had her security clearances withdrawn, according to U.S. officials. The FBI searched the Northwest Washington home of Robin L. Raphel last month, and her State Department office was also examined and sealed, officials said. Raphel, a fixture in Washington’s diplomatic and think-tank circles, was placed on administrative leave last month, and her contract with the State Department was allowed to expire this week. Two U.S. officials described the investigation as a counterintelligence matter, which typically involves allegations of spying...

Thursday on Fox News Radio’s “John Gibson Show,” investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson explained she is suing the Department of Justice to get discovery, which she said hopefully will start with the names of the agents or third-party contractors sometimes hired for “certain dark projects,” who hacked her computer and planted a fiber optics cable at her house.