Free Republic

Firing the US intelligence community’s inspector general is a big deal. I should know. I was a former longtime Central Intelligence Agency official who blew the whistle on the Clinton White House and agency bosses. Even so, I believe President Trump’s firing last week of IC Inspector General Michael Atkinson was appropriate — indeed, overdue. Liberals and their media allies are predictably framing the firing as ­retaliation for Atkinson’s decision to inform Congress about a complaint by a so-called whistleblower that set off the Democratic effort to impeach the president. That’s false. Let’s review the facts. On Sept. 9, 2019,...

On Monday, the intelligence community inspector general (ICIG) admitted that it did alter its forms and policies governing whistleblower complaints, and that it did so in response to the anti-Trump complaint filed on Aug. 12, 2019. The Federalist first reported the sudden changes last Friday. While many in the media falsely claimed the ICIG’s stunning admission debunked The Federalist’s report, the admission from the ICIG completely affirmed the reporting on the secretive change to whistleblower rules following the filing of an anti-Trump complaint in August.The ICIG also disclosed for the first time that the anti-Trump complainant filed his complaint...

You may have seen reports that a massive asteroid the size of a football field is hurtling toward Earth. Although the European Space Agency (ESA) has placed asteroid 2006QV89 on its Risk List, there's no reason to sound the alarms just yet. First of all, it's probably not as big as you think it is. The object is roughly 40 meters in diameter, according to the ESA. A football field is 48.5 meters wide and 109 meters long. The Risk List might sound scary, but that simply means that ESA calculated a non-zero impact probability. ESA says this particular asteroid...