Free Republic

Hours after the Boston Marathon bombings but before authorities identified suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, President Barack Obama purposefully addressed the nation. "We will find out who did this. We'll find out why they did this," the president pledged. "Any responsible individuals, any responsible groups, will feel the full weight of justice." Days later, there's reason to wonder how zealously the administration will work to uncover everything that needs to be known. The day after the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi, Libya, attacks, which left four Americans -- Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty -- dead,...

To call the Tsarnaev family a “piece of work” is an insult to work. But they are a piece of something, something the editors won’t let me write here (just think of what last night’s dinner is now). Not only were Tamerlan, the Boston terrorist currently burning in Hell, and Dzhokhar, the Boston terrorist soon to be burning in Hell, on welfare, but their whole family was on the government dole. This isn’t as much a case against welfare as it is a case against immigration reform. In their time in this country this family did nothing but take and...

A top-ranking Republican congressman said yesterday he expects the feds to make more arrests in their ever-widening probe of the deadly Boston Marathon bombings, which took a new frightening turn yesterday when officials revealed the accused terrorist brothers made “spontaneous” plans to launch an attack on Times Square. “I hear a lot of definitive statements out there that it was just these two men and it’s over, but I will tell you I hear these briefings every day, and I don’t think this is over,” said U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican who chairs the House Committee on Intelligence....

According to The Weekly Standard, authorities are still investigating how much Tamerlan Tsarnaev's wife knew about the Boston bombings. The report states that law enforcement officials now believe 24-year-old Katherine Russell Tsarnaeva called Tamerlan to let him know the FBI was looking for him after she saw his photos on the news. Though officials believe Tsarnaev was already aware, he and his younger brother went on the run a short time later, culminating in his death and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's arrest. Investigators were told of the alleged phone call by Dzhokhar in his interrogation before he was read his Miranda rights.

That the older Boston bombing suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, became a terrorist strikes one as disturbing. That younger brother Dzhokhar also became a terrorist strikes one as frightening. Adjusting to new country can be trying and stressful. The brothers' parents came to America, only to return to Russia. Tamerlan came at age 16. A widely reported quote attributed to Tamerlan from 2010 says: "I don't have one American friend. I don't understand them." According to his aunt, Tamerlan became a devout Muslim. He reportedly once stood up and shouted down his imam for praising Martin Luther King. One shocked witness recalled...

The FBI briefed the Senate yesterday and today on the progress in the Boston Marathon bombing case, but more questions than answers may have arisen from it. The Boston Globe quotes multiple sources from within the briefing that the FBI didn’t just get one warning from Russia about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, they got warned repeatedly — including after the FBI’s initial investigation of the now-deceased bomber: Russian authorities contacted the US government with concerns about Tamerlan Tsarnaev not once but “multiple’’ times, including an alert it sent after he was first investigated by FBI agents in Boston, raising new questions about...

The CIA pushed to have one of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers placed on a U.S. counterterrorism watch list more than a year before the attacks, U.S. officials said Wednesday. Russian authorities contacted the CIA in the fall of 2011 and raised concerns that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed last week in a confrontation with police, was seen as an increasingly radical Islamist who could be planning to travel overseas.

Marathon bombings mastermind Tamerlan Tsarnaev was living on taxpayer-funded state welfare benefits even as he was delving deep into the world of radical anti-American Islamism, the Herald has learned. State officials confirmed last night that Tsarnaev, slain in a raging gun battle with police last Friday, was receiving benefits along with his wife, Katherine Russell Tsarnaev, and their 3-year-old daughter. The state’s Executive Office of Health and Human Services said those benefits ended in 2012 when the couple stopped meeting income eligibility limits. Russell Tsarnaev’s attorney has claimed Katherine — who had converted to Islam — was working up to...

Bombing suspect reportedly a fan of al-Qaida magazine and Alex Jones website Videos on the Internet and an online jihadist magazine may have played a part in the Boston Marathon bombings suspects’ self-radicalization, according to reports. New accounts say the brothers learned how to build a bomb from the online magazine, Inspire, which gave instructions on how to make them with a pressure cooker. Pressure cooker bombs, authorities say, were used in the attacks at the Boston Marathon. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving suspect, reportedly told investigators there was no foreign influence on him and his brother. But apparently the brothers...

The American public now knows the identity of the Boston marathon bombing suspects. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was a former boxer and Chechnyan immigrant, radicalized in the United States by an Islamist mentor. He turned against the West in liberal Cambridge, Mass. His younger brother, Dzhokhar, 19, was a pot-loving college student at the University of Massachusetts. Last Friday, Tamerlan was killed during a shootout with police after his brother reportedly ran him over with a car. Dzhokhar was captured hours later hiding in a boat. Few who knew Tamerlan seemed surprised at the news that he had masterminded the bombings...

To borrow a line from Dennis Green, they are who we thought they were. From his hospital bed, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has acknowledged his role in planting the explosives near the marathon finish line on April 15, the officials said. The first successful large-scale bombing in the post-Sept. 11, 2001, era, the Boston attack killed three people and wounded more than 250 others.The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation, said Dzhokhar and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed by police as the two attempted to avoid capture, do not appear to have been...

We cannot bring back the stolen lives. We cannot bring back the lost limbs or the lost hearing. And we cannot mitigate the infinite grief of the victims' loved ones. But there is something we can and must do: We must learn all the lessons we can. Here are some: 1. The gulf between the decent and the indecent Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older brother, once told an interviewer before a Golden Gloves boxing competition: "I don't have a single American friend. I don't understand them." The reason Tsarnaev didn't understand Americans was not primarily cultural. Tsarnaev came to America...

CBS isn't letting the thread drop on Tamerlan Tsarnaev's six-month odyssey in the Caucasus, and neither are federal investigators, apparently. Russian intelligence says that the elder brother in the Boston Marathon bombing met with a suspected militant on several occasions while staying in Dagestan, and the US is taking a closer look at those contacts even as the younger brother insists the two acted alone:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO The Wall Street Journal has more: U.S. investigators are looking into a Russian intelligence report that alleged Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev met with a suspected militant during his six-month visit...

Waltham police have stepped up their investigation of a 2011 triple homicide where a friend of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was brutally murdered, according to a relative of one of the victims who was interviewed by the Globe. The relative said Sunday that police have renewed the investigation at the request of victims’ relatives who believe Tamerlan, and perhaps his younger brother, Dzhokhar, played a role in the homicides. Authorities have said the victims all had their throats slit.

The House Committee on Homeland Security wrote DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano a letter on Saturday demanding answers on the Boston Marathon bombing. This was after Tamerlan Tsarnaev became the fifth person since 9-11 to participate in terrorist activities despite being under federal investigation. DHS Committee Chairman Rep. Mike McCaul told reporters Saturday that we are “probably looking at a terrorist cell” being involved in the Boston attack. ... Committee Chairman Rep. Mike McCaul said bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev appears to be the fifth person since 9/11 to participate in a terror attack, despite being under FBI investigation. McCaul, R-Texas, said...

Vilayat Dagestan, a jihadist group that is part of the Caucasus Emirate, an al Qaeda-linked group operating in the North Caucasus, has issued a statement on the Boston Marathon bombings. The group released the statement on its main website earlier today, citing "speculation" in the press that one of the bombers "could be affiliated with the mujahideen of the Caucasus Emirate, in particular, the mujahideen of Dagestan." The statement has been translated by the SITE Intelligence Group. The organization's statement references Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of two brothers responsible for the bombings, who reportedly traveled to Dagestan and Chechnya last year....

I’m not really in the mood to write a column. The reason why I’m in a foul disposition is I just saw the picture, taken a few minutes before the Boston blast, of the Muslim POS, better known as “Suspect #2”, dropping off his backpack filled with a pressure cooker bomb right behind eight-year-old Martin Richard, his little sister Jane, his mom Denise and scores of others. This image made me both sick and pissed off. Minutes after this picture was captured, as we now know, Martin would have nails and buckshot blast his body to smithereens, Jane would...

The FBI was last night hunting a 12-strong terrorist “sleeper cell” linked to the Boston marathon bomb brothers. Police believe Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were specially trained to carry out the devastating attack. More than 1,000 FBI agents were last night working to track down the cell and arrested a man and two women 60 miles from Boston in the hours before Dzhokhar’s dramatic capture after a bloody shootout on Friday. A source close to the investigation said: “We have no doubt the brothers were not acting alone. The devices used to detonate the two bombs were highly sophisticated and...

This NewsBuster is in no position to say that the FBI made a mistake by deciding not to monitor Tamerlan Tsarnaev after having interviewed him in 2011, acting on inquiries from Russian intelligence regarding his possible radical Islamic ties. But by the same token, MSNBC host Alex Witt is in no position to say the FBI didn't make a mistake. Yet Witt has pre-emptively proferred an excuse for the FBI's decision. Speaking with investigative reporter Michael Isikoff on her show this afternon, Witt, alluding to the FBI's decision not to monitor Tzarnaev, declared: "hindsight is 20-20." View the video here.

(CNSNews.com) – Although no group has claimed responsibility for Monday’s deadly bomb blasts at the Boston Marathon, a leading al-Qaeda ideologue last year recommended that jihadists in America include sporting events in their list of prospective terror targets.