Free Republic

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Tuesday asserted the southern border is secure despite the massive surge of illegal minors from Central America that has overwhelmed federal agencies. "The border is secure,” he told reporters after the Senate Democrats’ weekly policy lunch. “[Sen.] Martin Heinrich [(D-N.M.)] talked to the caucus today. He’s a border state senator. He said he can say without any equivocation the border is secure.” Reid said lawmakers need to worry less about border security and focus instead on President Obama’s $3.7 billion request to help process the tens of thousands of children from Honduras, Guatemala...

Activists who were working with immigration reform advocate Jose Antonio Vargas near the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas released a statement Tuesday claiming he was arrested while attempting to pass through security at McAllen-Miller International Airport. "Jose Antonio Vargas of Define American, has been detained by Border Patrol in McAllen after attempting to board a plane to Los Angeles," the immigrant youth-led organization United We Dream said in a statement on its website. Vargas traveled to the area last week to promote the efforts of UWD and other immigration reform groups before realizing it was within a secure perimeter manned by...

Two communist rebels were killed and two policemen wounded in a firefight on Thursday afternoon in the southern Philippines, officials said.

21:14: The IAF is targeting terrorists in Gaza at this time. The aerial assaults are reported to be heavy. Sirens are sounding in Ashkelon and the Eshkol Regional Council. 20:33: At least 100 rockets fired in the last wave towards the W. Negev and many other areas including Beit Shemesh, Be’er Tuvia, Gadera, Netivot, the Lachish district, and Ashkelon. A number of fires have broken out as a result of the rockets hitting open areas.

Former Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze has died aged 86, media reports say. Mr Shevardnadze became foreign minister of the Soviet Union in 1985. In 1992, he was appointed head of state of the newly independent republic of Georgia. He led the country out of instability and civil war but in November 2003 was toppled in the "Rose Revolution" sparked by opposition allegations of irregularities in parliamentary polls.

Celebrating Independence Day on July Fourth is as American as burgers and dogs on the grill, lemonade in plastic cups, apple pie on paper plates, baseball, fireworks and Sousa marches. Except for those Americans who don't celebrate it at all. Like William H. Lamar IV. Last year the African-American preacher from Hyattsville, Md., wrote an essay that was carried by In it he asked: "How can I celebrate liberty with bondage — economic bondage, educational bondage, political bondage, health care bondage, and religious bondage — all around me?" On the Fourth of July, he continued, "I will reflect on America...

The woman who police say viciously attacked a New Jersey mother in front of her two-year-old son has turned herself into authorities. Latia Harris, 25, surrendered to police on Monday night in relation to last week's brutal that was captured on video.

Sudanese authorities have re-arrested a young mother a day after she was freed from death row where she'd been sent for refusing to renounce her Christian faith, FoxNews.com confirmed.

The Sudanese woman sentenced to death for her Christian faith and released from prison yesterday was arrested with her family at Khartoum airport, according to sources. Meriam Ibrahim was arrested in February and gave birth to a baby girl while in custody. She was sentenced to death for apostasy, or renouncing Islam. Ibrahim was arrested today together with her two children and husband, Daniel Wani, an American citizen.

Hundreds of fans celebrating Mexico’s 3-1 World Cup win over Croatia faced off with police in the streets of Huntington Park, south of downtown Los Angeles, on Monday.

Sunni militants on Tuesday seized control of military bases and the provincial governor’s building in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, as police officers and army soldiers abandoned the town and left weapons, vehicles and even their uniforms to the gunmen. By midday, the militants, believed to belong to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, an extremist group, were in control of much of central and southern Mosul, according to witnesses and local officials. Soldiers who fled the city said the militants had seized a jail, freeing the inmates. “They took control of everything, and they are everywhere,” said one soldier...

The Taliban released a video Wednesday purporting to show the moment former prisoner Bowe Bergdahl was handed over to American custody. The 17-minute video, sent to NBC News by a known Taliban spokesman, shows both sides quickly shaking hands before a clean-shaven Bergdahl is handed over.

The White House mistakenly leaked the name of one of their top spies to nearly 6,000 journalists on Sunday. The CIA officer's name was included on a press tip sheet that was given to the White House's pool reporter, who then forwarded the list to the entire press pool—about 6,000 email addresses. The list contained the names of 15 people President Obama was scheduled to meet with during a visit to Bagram Airfield, a U.S. military base in Afghanistan. Mistakenly included was the name of the top U.S. spy in Kabul, identified on the list as the "Chief of Station."...

Republican Rep. Darrell Issa claimed that an email he’s reviewed shows the White House decided to reach out to YouTube within hours of the Benghazi terror attack, to warn the website about the consequences of posting an anti-Islam video. The email would suggest the White House was connecting the attack to the video almost from the outset -- though their initial claim that the attack sprung out of protests over the film would later be proven false. According to Issa, who discussed excerpts from the otherwise classified emails on Wednesday, the email was sent at 9:11 p.m. ET on Sept....

Pentagon is weighing allowing some immigrants brought illegally to the country as youths to serve in the military, a unilateral step by the Obama administration as immigration legislation remains stalled in the Republican-led House. The announcement came Tuesday as House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, defended his election-year decision to rebuff a narrow immigration measure pushed by a GOP congressman to achieve a similar goal. The Pentagon consideration would apply to immigrants who arrived illegally as kids but already have received work permits and relief from deportation under a program President Barack Obama announced two years ago, called Deferred Action for...

Matt Bevin seemed like the ideal candidate to challenge Mitch McConnell. The handsome and personable businessman, a father of nine, impressed national conservative groups looking for a chance to knock off the Senate Republican leader. These groups, from the Senate Conservatives Fund to FreedomWorks, the Tea Party Patriots and the Madison Project, invested more than $1 million in the Kentucky GOP primary. Bevin himself spent more than $3 million, including $1 million of his own fortune. And, yet, polls indicate he’s going to get creamed Tuesday.

WLS AM 890 just reporting that the Bloomingdale, IL K-Mart is being evacuated with a large police presence.

BRENTWOOD, N.H. (AP) — Authorities say a New Hampshire police officer was shot to death after he responded to a domestic disturbance at a home that later exploded and burned. The gunman is presumed dead in the ensuing blaze.

U.S. health officials confirmed the country’s second case of MERS, a deadly virus first discovered in the Middle East, and said the patient was in good condition in an Orlando, Florida hospital. The patient, 44, is a healthcare worker who lives and works in Saudi Arabia and traveled to the United States to visit relatives. He was admitted to the Dr. P. Phillips Hospital in Orlando on May 9. The case is the second “imported” instance of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, reaching U.S. soil. The first case was confirmed late last month in Indiana, raising fears about the...

Keith Crisco died suddenly on MondayBy Craig Jarvis Keith Crisco, former state Commerce secretary and a Democratic candidate for the 2nd Congressional District, died on Monday. Details were not immediately available, but the Courier-Tribune in Asheboro reported that he died suddenly at his home from a fall. . . . Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/05/12/3856392/keith-crisco-dead-at-71.html#storylink=cpy Aiken has won by default.