Free Republic

This video is a follow-up to Adrian Murray’s facebook post over the weekend, in which he says that he donated to the Obama campaign as “Adolph Hitler,” occupation “Dictator” living at a German address. As you can see in the clip, citizen journalist George Scaggs of Austin tries the same thing at three different campaign sites, that of Obama, Romney and Santorum. Only the Obama site accepted the donation without the verification number. Let’s take a look at the three campaign websites mentioned in the video ... [graphics] The Obama campaign’s donation page for Americans living outside the US also...

DEVELOPING: MasterCard is reportedly investigating a possible breach of cardholder account data involving a U.S.-based payment processor, the company said Friday. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Purchase, N.Y., credit-card company said law enforcement has been notified of the matter and an "independent data security organization" is conducting an ongoing forensic review. The company is alerting card-issuing banks regarding "certain MasterCard accounts that are potentially at risk." "MasterCard's own systems have not been compromised in any manner," a company spokesman told the newspaper. The spokesman declined to say how many cards may have been compromised or how many banks...

New Delhi An Israeli official said an explosion was hit an Israeli diplomat's car in New Delhi on Monday. He said one person was hurt in the blast, but did not identify the victim. Israeli Embassy spokesman David Goldfarb said the car was near the embassy when the blast went off. Indian police said only that a car was on fire on the street outside the embassy.

Feds: Unruly air traveler, 19, was "singing about Usama bin Laden" FEBRUARY 22--The man who repeatedly yelled “Allah is great” as he was removed yesterday from a plane that was forced to make an emergency landing due to his unruly behavior is a 19-year-old Saudi Arabian who was arrested Sunday night after he led Oregon police on a drunken car chase that saw him ram two cop cars and attempt to run over pedestrians, The Smoking Gun has learned. According to investigators, Yazeed Mohammed Abunayyan was smoking an electronic cigarette on a Continental Airlines flight traveling from Portland to Houston....

MK Dr. Michael Ben Ari (National Union) has been waiting for a visa to visit the United States for some time, but the State Department refuses to issue him one. This is despite pressure from Israel's Foreign Ministry to allow Ben Ari to visit the US in order to attend conferences, including one slated to start in New York on Wednesday. It has been widely speculated that the US refusal was based on Ben Ari's affiliation with the late Rabbi Meir Kahane and his banned Kahane Hai party. However, Ben Ari told Arutz Sheva on Tuesday that the US embassy...

by John Hill Stand With Arizona As if Obama's plan to cut National Guard troops on the Mexican border by 75% at a time when there has been a sudden surge in border crossers wasn't leaving the United States vulnerable enough, now a report has revealed a new insanity - lowered standards for granting immigration visas: Higher-ups within U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services are pressuring rank-and-file officers to rubber-stamp immigrants’ visa applications, sometimes against the officers’ will, according to a Homeland Security report and internal documents....A 40-page report, drafted by the Office of Inspector General in September but not publicly...

Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, who served as Speaker of the House and is now head of the House minority, is once again spending her Christmas at the exotic Four Seasons Resort Hualalai at Historic Ka'upulehu in Kona on the island of Hawaii. Pelosi reportedly plans to spend her Christmas Eve at midnight mass in St. Michael's Catholic Church in Kailua-Kona. Pelosi spent the last two Christmas holidays in Kona at the same hotel in an elaborate suite that rents for $10,000 a night.

Ethics: As Democrats demonize Wall Street CEOs as the "greedy" fiends of the financial crisis, they've lined their own pockets — both before and after the crisis. Nancy Pelosi's just the latest example. The former House speaker allegedly gamed financial reforms to boost her personal stock portfolio. The brewing scandal is complicated, but here's the Reader's Digest version: After a Pelosi staffer left to lobby on behalf of credit-card giant Visa, Pelosi delayed bringing to the House floor a bill to end lucrative "swipe fees" for Visa and other credit providers. The bill couldn't have come at a worse time...

Following a report on CBS' "60 Minutes" regarding the way members of Congress profit off of insider information, new details are emerging about the way Visa tried to wield influence over former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. As CBS reported, current insider trading laws do not apply to nonpublic information about current or upcoming congressional activity. In other words, lawmakers can go into confidential meetings with corporate leaders, understanding new legislation is going to come out next week, and are free to trade on that information. This form of "insider trading" is one of the reasons why there are...

Senator Chuck Schumer is one of two senators introducing a bipartisan bill aimed at improving the housing market by offering an incentive to foreign buyers, the Wall Street Journal report. He and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah want to offer residence visas to any foreigner that spends at least $500,000 on residential real estate in the United States. The measure compliments existing rules that offer visas to foreign investors that create jobs in America.

As part of its 2012 Diversity Visa program, the U.S. State Department is considering 5,662 applicants from countries deemed ‘State Sponsors of Terrorism’ – Iran, Syria, Sudan and Cuba. In 2011, the State Department awarded 2,427 Diversity Visas to people from Iran, Syria and Sudan -- 1,842 for Iran; 553 for Sudan; and 32 for Syria.

The rapidly growing Occupy Wall Street movement taking place in Manhattan's Financial District and spreading with satellite versions popping up in cities nationwide recently lost a whopping $100,000, The New Haven Independent reported. The $100,000 loss happened when attempted online credit card donations were rejected because the account was frozen for over three days. After a series of finger pointing and blaming other companies, the reason for the freeze turned out to be the fault of Occupy Wall Street's designated fiscal agent, the Alliance for Global Justice, a D.C.-based not-for-profit. About a week ago, AFGL said that an account already...

Dick Durbin's Amendment stipulates new rules that will lead to lower fees for merchants when you swipe a debit card in their stores. Merchants currently pay around 1% of every debit card transaction to the credit card cartel. The lower fees to merchants, in theory, could lower prices in stores. We don't think consumers will benefit. The Australian government capped credit and debit interchange in 2003, which has resulted in some pretty pathetic credit card offers compared to what we have stateside. The average annual fee in Australia is $132, compared with $19 in the US. Rewards programs are also...

HARRISBURG, Pa.—Foreign students who walked off their jobs in protest this week at a plant that serves The Hershey Co. may soon be getting a free trip to see some of the United States' cultural and historical landmarks. Rick Anaya, chief executive of the nonprofit that helped bring the students to the U.S., said Friday that the plan emerged after a two-hour conference call with representatives of the other companies involved in their employment. The students began a strike Wednesday, saying their work was so strenuous and low-paying they've been unable to see much of the country.

WASHINGTON — US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday the United States is easing visa terms for Iranian students here as part of efforts to support their aspirations for political change back home. In what she called a "big step forward" in the Obama administration support's for Iran's people, Clinton said Iranian students and exchange visitors are now eligible for two-year, multiple entry visas. "This gives young Iranians the opportunity to return home for family events, to participate in internships, to travel outside the United States -- and they won't need to get a new visa every time," she...

Almost a decade after Middle Eastern terrorists with expired visas attacked the U.S., the government has failed to implement a security measure to adequately track foreigners like them who enter the country legally but never leave. As a result nearly half of the nation’s estimated 12 million illegal immigrants actually entered the U.S. legally but overstayed their visa, according to a new federal report. That’s because the agency responsible for keeping the nation safe—the Department of Homeland Security—can’t keep track of immigrants who remain in the U.S. after their visas expire. This clearly creates a huge national security issue...

Republican legislators think they have a way to keep Minnesotans on welfare from spending their benefits on booze, smokes and lottery tickets: They'd keep them from taking more than $20 in benefits in cash. Right now, welfare recipients can use their electronic benefits cards to withdraw much of their monthly allotment in cash. The proposed legislation would require more people on welfare to get a second card to use for cash withdrawal, and would limit that to no more than $20 a month.

More than 18,000 illegal immigrants, plus 14,000 of their relatives, have gained U.S. visas under a new law since 2009 because they were victims of crime. While many immigrants may still be unaware of the U visa, word is spreading fast in some communities. The controversial rules state that if you are a victim of crime and you cooperate, or are 'helpful' with authorities, then you stand a good chance of getting a U visa. Since 2009, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) has issued 18,654 and rejected 5,639 U visas — a 77 per cent approval rate....

A Silver Spring man convicted of falsifying immigration documents had threatened to blow up the White House, the U.S. Treasury building, a federal courthouse and a Metro stop, vowing to "slaughter the enemies of Islam," federal prosecutors said Monday in court. Lajqi, an ethnic Albanian who came to the United States through Mexico in the mid-1980s, is a self-described "extremist militant," who said he was trained by Bosnian Muslim rebels, according to court papers. He was angry about American military involvement in Kosovo in the 1990s, and "blamed all Albanian deaths in Kosovo on the United States," the court papers...

Immigration: The Saudi charged in a plot to bomb U.S. targets entered the country under the same student visa deal we knocked President Bush for brokering with Saudi King Abdullah. We warned in a series of editorials starting in November 2005 that the generous Saudi immigration program would import potentially more terrorists into the country. How right we were — Bush himself was one of the targets of Khalid Aldawsari. The FBI last week arrested the 20-year-old Saudi college student in Lubbock, Texas, for allegedly plotting to bomb the ex-president's Dallas home, as well as nuclear plants and several other...