Free Republic

As the Civil War seesawed and the Union scored one of its rare early successes, a man met a somber-looking Lincoln at the White House. Trying to cheer the president up, he suggested that the president should be pleased by the latest news from the battle front. Lincoln agreed but then sighed that "nothing touches the tired spot." And he should have had a tired spot. Abraham Lincoln's administration had to deal with the Civil War and its raft of incompetent Union generals; Indian uprisings; an ongoing monetary crisis of epic proportions; and a dozen major foreign issues, including the...

A New Jersey judge on Thursday issued a criminal summons for Gov. Chris Christie in connection to his role in the George Washington Bridge scandal. Judge Roy McGeady issued a probable cause summons for Christie, saying there’s evidence to show he might have known that aides were up to political shenanigans and did nothing to top it. It comes weeks after activist Bill Brennan filed a complaint against Christie citing official misconduct. Brennan said he filed the complaint over the fallout from the 2013 Bridgegate lane closures, which he said cost taxpayers millions of dollars. “Defendant Christopher J. Christie knowingly...

Prosecutors said Tuesday they will charge Sheriff Joe Arpaio with criminal contempt-of-court for defying a judge's orders to end his signature immigration patrols in Arizona, exposing the 84-year-old lawman to the possibility of jail time and clouding his political future as he seeks a seventh term. The announcement in federal court sets in motion criminal proceedings against the sheriff less than a month before Election Day and comes as he has taken on a prominent role on the national political stage in 2016, appearing alongside Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on several occasions. Arpaio has acknowledged violating the order to...

Yahoo scanned hundreds of millions of incoming emails at the behest of U.S. intelligence or law enforcement, according to a report published Tuesday. The internet company conducted the surveillance last year after receiving a classified demand from the National Security Agency or the FBI, Reuters said in its story. The report cited three former Yahoo employees and another unidentified person familiar with the matter. Those individuals told Reuters that the government pushed Yahoo to search for a string of letters, numbers or other characters. That meant the fishing expedition could have involved finding a specific phrase or code in the...

Palantir Technologies has discriminated systematically against Asian job applicants since at least January 2010, the U.S. Department of Labor said in a lawsuit filed Monday.

Palantir Technologies co-founder Peter Thiel is evidently paying the price for backing Republican nominee Donald Trump, as the Obama administration has slapped his company with a frivolous lawsuit alleging “racial discrimination” against Asians. The lawsuit, filed and announced Monday by the Department of Labor, threatens the complete cancellation of every contract Palantir has with the federal government — a penalty worth $340 million, the lawsuit claims, which would end the company. The claims in the lawsuit are laughable. The Obama administration alleges that Palantir discriminated against Asians. But it has to admit that Palantir, in fact, hired many Asians —...

The Environmental Protection Agency has violated the personal privacy of tens of thousands of farmers and ranchers, according to a unanimous ruling issued by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. The ruling in American Farm Bureau Federation and National Pork Producers Council vs. EPA concerned the federal agency's 2013 release to three environmental groups of a vast compilation of spreadsheets containing personal information about farmers and ranchers who raise livestock and poultry in 29 states. The case also related to similar personal information from farmers and ranchers in seven additional states that had yet to be...

The White House on Monday defended President Obama’s decision to enter into the Paris climate accord without Senate ratification but stopped short of confirming a Chinese report that he will do so this week during his trip to China. Still, it would surprise no one if Mr. Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping were to announce the ratification of the sweeping climate change agreement before the Sunday opening of the Group of 20 summit in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. White House senior adviser Brian Deese said the president has the legal authority to ratify the accord without the two-thirds Senate vote required...

Retired Green Beret Blasts "Make No Mistake, Everyone Warning About Clinton Is A Target And They Are Marked" by Tyler Durden Aug 8, 2016 10:25 PM 0 SHARES Submitted by Jeremiah Johnson (nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces (Airborne)) via SHTFPlan.com,The Obama Administration has been characterized by not only a lack of transparency on issues that surface, but a deliberate obfuscation to mask true actions and intentions.  There are literally no limits to what the man and his handlers will do outside of the law to attain their ends, while simultaneously...

A new Amnesty report details the horrific torture that thousands have been subjected to since the post-coup round-up. Following the attempted coup in July 15, upon the calls of mosques all across Turkey and of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and PM Binali Yildirim to the Turkish people “to take to the streets and airports,” pro-government Islamists started hunting Turkish soldiers – their own soldiers – in the streets, beating, torturing, lynching them. Torture and beatings of surrendering soldiers continued at police stations, too. In a disturbing video published on social media and some Turkish newspapers, a police officer threatens...

JERSEY CITY -- A traffic stop near the Holland Tunnel yesterday evening lead to the recovery of a shotgun and nearly 200 rounds of ammunition, a police spokesman said. At about 6:30 p.m., a police officer saw a blue plastic drum in the back up a pickup truck that had just passed through the Holland Tunnel toll plaza. The officer stopped the vehicle driven by a Pennsylvanian man to make sure there were no hazardous materials in the drum, Port Authority spokesman Joe Pentangelo said. Police asked the driver Marlon Murphy, 45, of Easton, if there were any weapons in...

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — President Barack Obama sided with law enforcement Friday in the debate pitting encryption and personal privacy against national security, arguing that authorities must be able to access data held on electronic devices because the "dangers are real." Appearing at an annual tech festival in the Texas capital, Obama delivered his most extensive comments to date on an issue currently being played out in federal court. Apple, one of the world's largest technology companies, is challenging the government's request that it help the FBI access data on a cellphone that was used in the San Bernardino, California,...

"I'm not going to stand up here and unilaterally take any options off the table when it comes to the president's use of his executive authority," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest, venting that lawmakers are also ignoring Mr. Obama's budget proposal and his intention to fill a Supreme Court vacancy. "There is this emerging trend in Congress that has worsened in just the last few weeks. Congress is actually refusing to engage. They're refusing to consider the specific Gitmo plan." Mr. Obama announced his long-anticipated proposal to close the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba with considerable...

Abraham Lincoln told an 1864 audience that "the world has never had a good definition of the word 'liberty.'" Different people can define liberty in different, even contradictory ways, so that both sides in a conflict can claim to the mantle of liberty. That was exactly the situation in the Civil War: Slaveholders defined liberty in such a way as to make themselves the guardians of liberty... The South's liberty was the liberty to hold other people as chattel slaves. What the slaveholders called liberty, the North quite rightly called tyranny; namely, the systematic deprivation of the natural rights of...

Donald Trump has been blowing up the old traditional GOP certainties left and right, and this week he overturned another one. In what seemed like an embarrassing rebuke, on February 1, Adele told the Republican front-runner that he didn’t have her permission to use her songs at his massive campaign events. Adele might just be the world’s most popular singer at the moment, and any normal candidate would have folded his tent, chastened. Not Trump. At his rally in Little Rock, Arkansas two days later the crowd of thousands listened to Adele’s “Skyfall” before Trump’s helicopter landed. A day after...

The U.S. Secret Service escorted the Mounds police chief out of Tulsa's Mabee Center on Wednesday because he was carrying his gun, he says.Chief Tim McDaniel was there with his family to see Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump speak. He was in uniform when he was told he either needed to check his gun or leave."I think it's interesting, because in Mr. Trump's debate the other night, he actually said that officers are some of the most mistreated people in the country, and I come up to see the man and I'm mistreated,” McDaniel said.McDaniel said he didn't want to...

The National Rifle Association, the country's most influential gun-rights supporter, is challenging President Obama's new plan to use his presidential power to tighten firearms laws, calling it a "political stunt" that fails to increase public safety. President Obama said this weekend that he'll meet Monday with Attorney General Loretta Lynch to discuss his "options” toward curbing gun violence, after ordering his White House team several months ago to identify "new actions" that he can take. The president also said that he's taking action because Congress has failed to act. He is expected to use so-called executive orders to tighten federal...

In the final hours of 2015 the Obama administration has quietly proposed a host of rule changes that critics say will end up being a bonanza for foreign students and illegal immigrants seeking work in the U.S. while putting a dagger in the hearts of thousands of American workers. The rules, as proposed by Obama's Department of Homeland Security, make it easier for employers to hire and retain foreign workers who have not yet received their green cards or "lawful protected resident" status. The U.S. already hands out approximately 1 million green cards per year, but under the proposed changes...

President Barack Obama is expected to announce in the coming days a new executive action with the goal of expanding background checks on gun sales, people familiar with White House planning said. Described as "imminent," the set of executive actions would fulfill a promise by the President to take further unilateral steps the White House says could help curb gun deaths. Plans for the action are not yet complete, and those familiar with the process warn that unforeseen circumstances could delay an announcement. But gun control advocates are expecting the new actions to be revealed next week, ahead of Obama's...

Uwe and Hannelore Romeike came to the United States in 2008 seeking political asylum. They fled their German homeland in the face of religious persecution for homeschooling their children. They wanted to live in a country where they could raise their children in accordance with their Christian beliefs. The Romeikes were initially given asylum, but the Obama administration objected – claiming that German laws that outlaw homeschooling do not constitute persecution.