Free Republic

Newly unsealed court documents obtained by Fox News show a State Department contractor allegedly was paid thousands by an individual thought to be a Chinese agent in exchange for information on Americans -- but despite an FBI probe, the Justice Department declined to prosecute. A November 2014 FBI affidavit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, shows the bureau investigated the contractor for her admitted contact with individuals she believed to be Chinese intelligence officers. The affidavit from agent Timothy S. Pappa states the translator, Xiaoming Gao, was paid "thousands of dollars to provide information on...

A Republican congressman ripped congressional leadership for their inaction on President Obama’s executive amnesty plan for illegals and pointed a finger at Sen. Marco Rubio for U.S. problems with open borders. Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks was a guest on Tim Constantine’s “Capitol Hill Show” on Tuesday and the conversation was dominated by the topic of illegal immigration and the effort by the Obama administration to circumvent existing law and grant amnesty to millions. “What I am very disappointed in is the House and Senate leadership,” Mr. Brooks explained....

Chimpanzees Granted Petition To Hear 'Legal Persons' Status In Court New York judge grants writ of habeas corpus to Hercules and Leo, chimpanzees used for medical experiments, to defend rights against imprisonment The judge’s argument in this case and others is that chimpanzees are intelligent, emotionally complex and self-aware enough to merit some basic human rights. Alan Yuhas in New York 21 April 2015 For the first time in US history, a judge has granted two chimpanzees a petition – through human attorneys – to defend their rights against unlawful imprisonment, allowing a hearing on the status of “legal persons”...

In a comment about a report of what confusingly appears to be support for attacks on Hillary Clinton coming from Democrat Party mainstays like WaPo and NYT, I posted the following: Most don’t seem to have a clue about what is really going on here. The beliefs at the heart of the GOP are free market, individual liberty conservatism. Those at the heart of the Democrats are statist, collectivist Marxism. Both philosophies are currently making strong plays to permanently take over their respective parties and their political and financial apparats. Both are backed and, to some extent, controlled by massively...

resident Obama will once again avoid using the word “genocide” at a ceremony to designed to memorialize more than a million Armenians murdered by the Ottaman Turks 100 years ago. During his 2008 campaign, then-Senator Obama repeatedly promised he would label the massacre a genocide as president. The LA Times reports the decision to avoid using the word genocide was revealed Tuesday after the White House held a meeting with Armenian groups. The ceremony marking the 100th anniversary of the deaths of as many as 1.5 million people will be held this Friday. ... Rep. Adam Schiff of California has...

On Monday, eight months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi commissioned the first Project 15A guided missile destroyer, INS Kolkata, the first of its successor class vessels - INS Visakhapatnam - was launched into the water at Mazagon Dock Ltd, Mumbai (MDL). INS Visakhapatnam, the first of four stealthy destroyers coming up under Project 15B, began taking shape on January 23, 2013, when MDL started fashioning 2,800 tonnes of Indian-made warship steel into the warship's hull. With this partly-build structure now floating in water, INS Visakhapatnam will be built up by 2017 into a 7,334-tonne behemoth. After trials, it will be...

The parents of a Fairfield boy abducted while sleeping in his family's car are blasting police a day after their son was found safe. A thief drove away with Broc Guzman Monday and even though the case had a happy ending, the boy's parents are angry at police. Cell phone video shows Broc’s mother Suzanne Guzman being held on the ground by officers after refusing to allow them to search the family home for her year eight-old-son. Fairfield police released the frantic 911 call from Suzanne Guzman who called police saying that the family car had been stolen and her...

Gov. Jerry Brown has received hundreds of comments and shares of a photo showing him posing with a snake. The photo posted on Brown's Twitter and Facebook pages over the weekend shows Brown, dressed casually, holding a stick to the head of a snake. A spokesman for the governor, Evan Westrup, said the photo was taken by Brown's wife, Anne Gust Brown, just outside Williams in Colusa County. The governor owns rural property there.

A Nigerian bishop says that he has seen Christ in a vision and now knows that the Rosary is the key to ridding the country of the Islamist terrorist organization Boko Haram. Bishop Oliver Dashe Doeme says he is being driven by a God-given mandate to lead others in praying the Rosary until the extremist group disappears. “Towards the end of last year, I was in my chapel before the Blessed Sacrament … praying the Rosary, and then, suddenly, the Lord appeared,” Bishop Dashe told CNA April 18. In the vision, the prelate said, Jesus didn’t say anything at first,...

Welcome to Liberland, population 250,000…and anyone else looking for a tax haven. A self-professed Libertarian politician from the Czech Republic says he has created a new, sovereign country on the Croatian-Serbia border where citizens decide their own tax burden, property and individual rights are respected and the national motto is "Live and Let Live."

April 22, 2015Wednesday of the Third Week of Easter    Reading 1 Acts 8:1b-8 There broke out a severe persecution of the Church in Jerusalem,and all were scatteredthroughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria,except the Apostles.Devout men buried Stephen and made a loud lament over him.Saul, meanwhile, was trying to destroy the Church;entering house after house and dragging out men and women,he handed them over for imprisonment. Now those who had been scattered went about preaching the word.Thus Philip went down to the city of Samariaand proclaimed the Christ to them.With one accord, the crowds paid attention to what...

The deputy head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps categorically rejected any international inspectors on any Iranian military bases as part of the nuclear deal. Brigadier-General Hossein Salami told Iran’s state-run Press TV “They will not even be permitted to inspect the most normal military site in their dreams.” “Visiting a military base by a foreign inspector would mean the occupation of our land because all our defense secrets are there” Salami said. “Even talking about the subject means national humiliation.” …

Dramatic police dash cam footage, provided by New York’s Fox affiliate WPIX, caught the recent rescue of a New Jersey woman getting pulled to safety out of her overturned convertible – just in time. Kinnelon Police Officers Mark Ehrenberg and Ricky Ferriola arrived at the crash scene where they saw the 2006 Toyota Solara convertible toppled over with smoke fuming out, while forty-five-year-old Dawn Milosky, remained unconscious and pinned inside. The officers rushed to Milosky’s aid, and can be heard on the tape yelling: “Can you hear me?” Despite their attempts, there was no response. After cutting through the seat...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The Irish Catholic boy who came of age in Sacramento after World War II is an unlikely candidate to be the author of the Supreme Court's major gay rights rulings. But those who have known Justice Anthony Kennedy for decades and scholars who have studied his work say he has long stressed the importance of valuing people as individuals. And he seems likely also to have been influenced in this regard by a pillar of the Sacramento legal community, a closeted gay man who hired Kennedy as a law school instructor and testified on his behalf...

Full title: U.S. Marshal Shown Rushing Woman and Smashing Her Cellphone To Stop Her Videotaping A Public Arrest...We have another video of a police officer destroying the cellphone of a citizen who is filming an arrest in clear violation of her constitutional rights. New reports indicate that the officer holding an automatic weapon in the videotape below who is seen charging the woman and smashing her phone on the ground is a United States Marshal in California. The video shows the woman standing out of the way while filming an arrest. She is actually backing up when an officer rushes...

Microsoft released Build 10052 of Windows 10 for phones on Tuesday, along with a revised rollback tool that should help solve the bricking problems that Lumia 520 users and other unlucky souls experienced. The major problem that the new build solves is an issue where some users—including owners of the most popular Windows phone, the Lumia 520—suffered catastrophic failures that “bricked” the phones when they tried to roll them back to Windows 8.1. Microsoft said it has solved the bug on Lumia 520 phones, with an update to the Windows Phone Reset Tool.

Too soon, too soon, of course. After observing close-up the kind of headwinds her husband has met in Washington, D.C., and beyond, there is absolutely no indication that first lady Michelle Obama is looking to place her own name on any ballot. She has, in fact, said the opposite, although in his just-released book, Michelle Obama: A Life, veteran journalist Peter Slevin reports that she has always been a full partner in her husband’s political career. But it is significant that former first lady, U.S. Sen. and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has hired Michelle Obama’s former communications chief as...

The 31-year-old Solomon originally pleaded not guilty to aggravated assault and disorderly conduct charges. Authorities say Solomon was upset about President Barack Obama's re-election and began arguing with her husband when she found out that he didn't vote. Her husband suffered a fractured pelvis. He told investigators Solomon believed their family was going to face hardship.

Peshawar, April 22, 2015, terrorist has tried to blow the army contractor house in an afghan colony on Wednesday morning. In the result of the blast the front of house partially damaged while 9 other shops were also damaged. According to the police the blast occurred at 5.55 am, early the morning in the surrounding area of Peshawar, Afghan colony. After the blast the electric wire also cut and electricity shut down in the area. Local reached to the spot, but no human loss registered. Local police of the police station Faqir Abad also reached to the spot and started...

Photo credit: ©M. MIGLIORATO/CPP. Vatican City, Apr 21, 2015 / 09:54 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Amid a torrent of recent news reports on persecuted Christians, Pope Francis reflected on those killed for their faith and said that these modern “Stephens” suffer as the Church's first martyr did. “The Church today is a Church of martyrs: they suffer, they give their lives and we receive the blessing of God for their witness,” Francis told attendees of his April 21 Mass, held in the Vatican’s Saint Martha guesthouse. “In these days how many Stephens there are in the world!” he said, referring to the first...