Free Republic

Chicago Big profit for Pritzkers on costly Chicago FBI deal Sun, 09/14/2014 - 3:30pm Better Government Association @bettergov | Email A deal involving the federal government’s most expensive lease in Chicago produced millions of dollars in profits for a development group that included Penny Pritzker, a top campaign fund-raiser for President Barack Obama who is now his commerce secretary, a Chicago Sun-Times / Better Government Association investigation has found. The developers also included Jack Higgins, a friend and political backer of former Mayor Richard M. Daley. Over the 14-year term of the lease, the government will pay $280 million in...

The Department of Labor coordinated with the White House on whether or not to release hidden portions of former Labor Secretary Hilda Solis’ schedule as Solis battled an FBI investigation into her illegal fundraising for President Obama. New emails provided to The Daily Caller from the nonprofit legal research firm Cause of Action show the White House thanking the Department of Labor for “flagging” a public information request for “withheld” portions of Solis’ schedule. (SEE THE EMAIL CHAIN). The White House then asked for the name of the conservative group making the request — information that Labor officials were eager...

One of the biggest threats to a civilized, free society occurs when prosecutors abuse their power and allow politics to drive their administration of the criminal-justice system. Two recent examples show how liberal, partisan prosecutors misused their authority and politicized justice.

IRS: An aide to the attorney general accidentally calls the office of the House Oversight Committee chairman, asking for help in spinning the defense of the agency whose head just said they obey the law when they can. We have commented many times of the all-too-cozy relationship between the IRS and Democratic members of the House and Senate, with members writing to the agency demanding that specific conservative groups and political action committees they find particularly irritating be subject to the "special scrutiny" that the Tea Party and other conservative and religious groups were subjected to in the ongoing scandal....

The Nuclear Option: A Foreign Policy Conducted in a Drug-Addled Haze See, kids, this is why you don’t do drugs. And this is why you will always eventually regret voting for somebody who boasted of all the coke and dope he did while smoldering about his absentee father. President Choom Gang has demilitarized our military. He sends the Department of Health and Human Services to the Mexican border to welcome and take care of tens of thousands of illegal children streaming across. And now he wants to deploy American troops into West Africa to combat the Ebola virus. Boy, is...

The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday took a largely symbolic vote on a bill intended to block the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from implementing a rule it proposed earlier this year that's meant to clarify which water bodies are federally protected under the Clean Water Act. Foes call the EPA proposal a "power grab" by the federal government that would subject waters such as streams, ponds, even puddles to the EPA's red tape, bureaucracy and permitting requirements.

A senior communications aide to Attorney General Eric Holder seemingly called House oversight committee chairman Darrell Issa's staff by accident and asked for their help spinning new revelations about the IRS scandal, Issa said in a September 8 letter to Holder. The aide, Brian Fallon, is a former senior aide to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and a well-known personality on Capitol Hill. The letter describes Fallon as “audibly shaken” when he realizes his request to leak documents to help get ahead of news stories about them was mistakenly made to the very office he was seeking to undermine. Issa believes...

Head of Marshals Service in Chicago reassigned AP , Associated Press Sep. 9, 2014 4:02 AM ET CHICAGO (AP) — The U.S. Marshals Service has announced it has replaced the head of its Chicago office for the past four years in a re-organization, appointing an interim chief for its high-profile northern Illinois district. Darryl McPherson, who was named to the top Chicago post by President Barack Obama in 2010, was recently reassigned to the same office's judicial security division, said Drew Wade, an agency spokesman in Washington. Wade, however, declined to discuss why the 17-year Marshals Service veteran was moved...

Resident Barack Obama has moved from being disingenuous on immigration to downright undecipherable. Earlier this year, the administration promised a groundbreaking executive action on immigration before summer's end. Over the weekend, aides announced that the big new change essentially won't happen until after the midterm elections. What's up? Obama told "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd on Sunday: "What I'm saying is that I'm going to act because it's the right thing for the country, but it's going to be more sustainable and more effective if the public understands what the facts are on immigration, what we've done on unaccompanied...

U.S. airlines may soon be required to at least start thinking about cutting their carbon footprint. The EPA last week started a rule-making process aimed at determining whether fast-growing carbon emissions from American aircraft endanger public health and welfare. The EPA action came a month after the Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the Earth, which is represented by Earthjustice, threatened to sue the agency for failing to reduce greenhouse gas pollution from aircraft. Conservation advocates say airlines could easily make big cuts in emissions, for example by upgrading fleets with fuel-efficient planes.

Concerned that “unelected persons might defame elected officials,” the New York Board of Elections has declared that no one may criticize a sitting officeholder without first forming a “political action committee.” Executive Director Todd Valentine asserted that “the notion that everyone is free to say whatever they want about members of the government is a misunderstanding of the concept of freedom of speech. If you’re talking about or to another private citizen you can say whatever you want. But if you want to criticize the governor, mayor, or a member of the legislature or city council you need to file...

Hispanic lawmakers and immigration advocates harshly criticized President Barack Obama's decision to delay executive action on immigration and vowed to keep pressuring him to make bold changes. Democratic Representatives Luis Gutierrez and Tony Cardenas on Sunday accused Obama of playing politics the day after the president said he would wait until after November's congressional elections to change policy on immigration. The announcement marked a reversal for Obama, who publicly promised to act by the end of summer. "Playing it safe might win an election," Gutierrez said on ABC's "This Week" program. "But it almost never leads to fairness, to justice...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The IRS says it has lost emails from five more workers who are part of congressional investigations into the treatment of conservative groups that applied for tax exempt status.

Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday that the federal civil rights investigation into the 2012 killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin remains active, noting “recent developments” in the case. The Justice Department is weighing charges against George Zimmerman, a volunteer neighborhood watchman who shot and killed Martin in an incident that captured national interest. Zimmerman was acquitted of murder charges more than a year ago, but the Justice Department is still running down leads as part of its civil rights probe, Holder said. “That matter is ongoing,” said Holder, who was asked about the case during a news conference announcing the...

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released a new batch of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) email documents revealing that under former IRS official Lois Lerner, the agency seems to acknowledge having needlessly solicited donor lists from non-profit political groups. According to a May 21, 2012, memo from the IRS Deputy Associate Chief Counsel: “such information was not needed across-the-board and not used in making the agency’s determination on exempt status.” Later, in her May 10, 2013, remarks in which Lerner first revealed in response to question she planted about the IRS targeting of conservative groups, she conceded that the requests...

Secret EPA water maps obtained by the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology graphically show the increase reach of the EPA’s regulatory authority over Colorado’s waters under proposed rules supported by Rep. Jared Polis (D-Boulder). The maps were drawn up in October 2013, but were only turned over to the Committee today. There is some dispute as to whether the maps relate to the Agency’s proposed Waters of the US Rules, which would bring intermittent and ephemeral waters under the agency’s control. The maps clearly delineate those waters, and were produced at the insistence of the Committee

Obama and the other White House Commies have now exposed themselves for what they are...a bunch of Marxists who hate Americans and their ideals. These are idealogs of the worst sort who value nothing but their own careers paid for by the people. Bloodsuckers living off the fat of the land through taxes, campaign contributions extorted by over regulation threats, etc. The founding fathers would be puking their guts out watching Obama and his scum destroy the country that our founding fathers gave of their lives and fortunes to foster.............

Congress's loudest immigrant rights advocate delivered a terse message Wednesday to the Senate Democrats who are urging President Obama to delay executive action on deportations until after the election: Get out of the way. "I say to the Democrats: Stand aside," Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) said during a press call. "Let the president make a decision; let him announce it; and stop this stopping the progress of our community towards justice." In June, Obama warned GOP leaders that, in the absence of congressional action on immigration reform, he would consider unilateral policy changes recommended by top administration officials "before the...

A 23-year-old teacher at a Cambridge, Maryland, middle school has been placed on leave and—in the words of a local news report—"taken in for an emergency medical evaluation" for publishing, under a pseudonym, a novel about a school shooting. The novelist, Patrick McLaw, an eighth-grade language-arts teacher at the Mace's Lane Middle School, was placed on leave by the Dorchester County Board of Education, and is being investigated by the Dorchester County Sheriff's Office, according to news reports from Maryland's Eastern Shore. The novel, by the way, is set 900 years in the future. Sheriff Phillips told the newspaper that,...

With the public hearing in Soldotna last night, the public comment period on the proposal to close the Fall 2014 and Spring 2015 Brown Bear hunting season on the Kenai Peninsula comes to an end. In a release yesterday, the Governor’s office said, “Federal land managers have again proposed limiting Alaskans’ access to a state resource, the proposed closure is not justified by either resource protection concerns or federal policy. I strongly urge the Service to reconsider this action and allow state-authorized hunting to continue on the refuge.” ... The decision to temporarily close the Brown Bear season on the...