Free Republic

We must stand up to terrorism,” bleated Hillary Clinton a few days ago in a tweet expressing outrage against BokoHaram, the jihadist organization that has abducted hundreds of young girls in Nigeria. Yet, when she was actually in a position to stand up to Boko Haram’s terrorism as secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton instead protected the group.At the Daily Beast, Josh Rogin reports: The State Department under Hillary Clinton fought hard against placing the al Qaeda-linked militant group Boko Haram on its official list of foreign terrorist organizations for two years. And now, lawmakers and former U.S. officials are saying that the decision may have hampered the...

The Ben Rhodes memo revealing the duplicity of this administration on the subject of Benghazi reminds us about the character of those involved. That President Barack Obama could lie so evenly and so passionately (remember the second presidential debate?) is not perhaps surprising at this stage. But let’s not forget what it took for Hillary Clinton to lie to the grieving father of an American hero....The brazenness and scope of the disinformation would make any KGB colonel sigh with admiration. At 10:32 on the night of the attack, Clinton issued a statement deploring violence in response to “inflammatory material posted...

ABU DHABI — Qatar, under pressure from the Arab League, is said to have expelled the Muslim Brotherhood. Diplomatic sources said Doha deported dozens of exiled Brotherhood leaders who escaped Egypt in 2013. The sources said the Brotherhood operatives flew to Egypt’s neighbor Libya and joined Islamist militias. “The Brotherhood people were given three days to pack their bags and get on the plane to Tripoli,” a source said. The sources did not identify those deported. But they said several of them were on a list of 15 Brotherhood and Hizbullah operatives submitted by Saudi Arabia last month. In March...

The ‘smoking gun’ email that reveals who instructed Susan Rice to blame the Benghazi attack on a video also exposes a recipient named Mehdi K. Alhassani. Alhassani was the leader of the Muslim Student Association (MSA), a Muslim Brotherhood front group and attended the sister mosque of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center (ISBCC) mosque attended by the Boston Marathon bombers. It is a mystery how Alhassani slipped through the cracks to become a Special Assistant to the Office of the Chief of Staff, National Security Council Staff, and Executive Office of the President. It is unknown why a...

In a crass and ill-timed intervention, the unelected president of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy has warned Vladimir Putin that the EU intends ultimately to control every country on the western flank of Russia. In an interview with De Standaard newspaper, Van Rompuy speaks about his “dreams” that all the Balkan states will join the EU. He calls it an “inspiring thought” that in the long term “the whole of European territory outside Russia” will be tied in some way to the EU. He admits he does not know if there is public support for such a move, “But we do...

Former CIA directory (and part of the Benghazi cover-up) went to work for Ben Rhodes’ brother at CBS. David RHodes is the brother of ‘big Ben’ and president of CBS News. Need any other reasons why CBS has ignored the latest e-mail released about the Benghazi cover-up? Surely there isn’t a conflict of interest there right? Need another reason why Sharyl Attkinson left CBS?Michael Morell, who retired as deputy director of the CIA last summer, has joined CBS News as an intelligence, national security and counterterrorism contributor, the network announced this week. Morell has held various senior leadership positions during...

Every month, Raymond Yowell, the 84-year-old former chief of the Shoshone Indian Tribe in northeastern Nevada, has almost $200 garnished from his $1,150 Social Security check, and it all dates back to a 5:00am phone call on a Friday morning in 2002. That morning, a government official from the Bureau of Land Management told him to come down to a seizure site where the 132 cattle he owned were about to be impounded.When he arrived, men brandishing handguns told him he couldn't get any closer than 250 yards from his cattle. He watched from a distance as the government loaded...

Lloyds Bank has been accused of religious discrimination after offering free overdraft accounts to Muslims. The bank sent customers a booklet this month explaining new charges. While many will have to pay up to £80 a month if they go into the red, Muslims were told they would escape the charges. The document said: “We are removing the monthly overdraft management fee of £6 from our Islamic Account, Islamic Student Account and Islamic Graduate Account. So, if you use an unplanned overdraft on these accounts, there won’t be any charges.” One customer, Anita Milton, a nurse of New Eltham, south...

The student data processing organization inBloom will shut down in the coming months, its chief executive officer said Monday following criticism that led to the recent loss of the startup's last active client — New York state....Launched in 2013 with $100 million in financing from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Carnegie Corp., the nonprofit's goal was to give educators a data-based tool to personalize instruction. InBloom, based in Atlanta, offered to store and synthesize student data, such as grades, disciplinary actions and disability records in cloud-based servers. Nine states initially signed on but backed out as parents, school...

A few weeks back, I read a Washington Post story "Inside the admissions process at George Washington University" and noted this interesting tidbit towards the end: GW also asks students to list a role model and two words to describe themselves. As for herself, Freitag said, she would list “Martha Stewart/Tina Fey” and “sassy/classy.” This year, she’s seeing a lot of Edward Snowden citations. I had thought about writing it up, but decided it was a pretty small thing, really. It's not secret that, as a group, younger people have a much more favorable impression of Snowden than older people....

With a margin of error +/- 3%, Rasmussen found “Americans’ belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ remains strong.” 86% of American adults believe that Jesus Christ walked the Earth 2,000 years ago, while just seven percent (7%) don’t share this belief. Furthermore, 77% of those polled believe Jesus rose from the dead.  This is only a percentage point lower (within the margin of error) than in 2011 and 2010, when 78% espoused the same belief. Rasmussen claims a 95% level of confidence in their report.

TOPEKA, Kan. — If expanding the guest list to include Michelle Obama at graduation for high school students in the Kansas capital city means fewer seats for friends and family, some students and their parents would prefer the first lady not attend. A furor over what the Topeka school district considers an honor has erupted after plans were announced for Obama to address a combined graduation ceremony for five area high schools next month an 8,000-seat arena. For some, it was the prospect of a tight limit on the number of seats allotted to each graduate. For others, it was...

Republican Senator Rand Paul called on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to “calm the rhetoric” on Cliven Bundy, arguing the Nevada senator’s “domestic terrorist” comment was “liable to stir up” the situation and lead to violence.The Kentucky senator spoke Thursday night with Fox News’ Eric Bolling, who was filling in for Sean Hannity. “Is there any need to call Americans domestic terrorists?” Bolling asked.“No, I think what we should all be calling for is for calmer heads to prevail,” Paul said. “I don’t want to see violence on either side.”“There is a legitimate constitutional question here about whether the state...

In a speech delivered at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government on Tuesday evening, White House Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Adviser Lisa Monaco said it could help prevent terrorism if parents watched for “sudden personality changes in their children at home.”“President Obama has been laser-focused on making sure we use all the elements of our national power to protect Americans, including developing the first government-wide strategy to prevent violent extremism in the United States,” said Monaco, in a transcription posted by the White House.

President Obama has warned that Iran is not open for business, even as the United States has loosened some of its punishing economic sanctions as part of an interim nuclear pact.Yet on Tuesday morning, Iran had an unlikely visitor: a plane, owned by the Bank of Utah, a community bank in Ogden that has 13 branches throughout the state. Bearing a small American flag on its tail, the aircraft was parked in a highly visible section of Mehrabad Airport in Tehran But from there, the story surrounding the plane, and why it was in Iran — where all but a...

In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Eric Holder was pressed about why the case against ex-CIA Director David Petraeus is still under investigation. Indications are that members of Congress are concerned that the case is still hanging in limbo to prevent Petraeus from revealing what he knows about the Benghazi attacks. If, as has been relayed by Shoebat.com, the details of an extensive report published in the London Review are correct, Petraeus was the man in charge of the logistics of an operation in Benghazi that involved shipping weapons from Libya to Syria through Turkey and that...

President Barack Obama's policies “have become progressively more hostile toward Christian civilization,” Cardinal Raymond Burke,head of the highest court at the Vatican, said in a recent interview. Cardinal Burke added that Obama wants to restrict religious freedom and force the individuals, outside of his or her place of worship,“to act against his rightly-formed conscience,even in the most serious of moral questions.”… “It is true that the policies of the president of the United States of America have become progressively more hostile toward Christian civilization. He appears to be a totally secularized man who aggressively promotes anti-life and anti-family policies.” “Now...

Tony Blair is celebrating another multi-million pound contract after his charity secured a key deal with the US government. This time, the former prime minister’s Africa Governance Initiative (AGI) has won a £3.3 million contract to play a key role in Barack Obama’s flagship African aid programme.… It is thought to be the third grant obtained by Mr Blair’s charity from USAID. The body was, until last February, overseen by Hillary Clinton, who, along with her husband Bill, the former US president, is a close friend of Mr Blair and his wife, Cherie.

Former Rep. Ron Paul says that America’s reaction to Crimea’s vote to secede from Ukraine should be,“so what?” “Why does the U.S. care which flag will be hoisted on a small piece of land thousands of miles away?” the Texas Republican and libertarian icon wrote in a USA Today op-ed Monday. ...Over the weekend, Crimeans voted to secede from Ukraine and join Russia,which the Russian government has moved to approve. American politicians have called the vote a sham and the administration has said it does not recognize the results of the vote,placing sanctions on some Russian officials in response. Ron...

CHICAGO (AP) - Best-selling author Kevin Trudeau, whose name became synonymous with late-night TV pitches, was sentenced to 10 years in prison Monday for bilking consumers through ubiquitous infomercials for his book, "The Weight Loss Cure 'They' Don't Want You to Know About." As he imposed the sentence prosecutors had requested, U.S. District Judge Ronald Guzman portrayed the 50-year-old Trudeau as a habitual fraudster going back to his early adulthood. So brazen was Trudeau, the judge said, he once even used his own mother's Social Security number in a scheme. ... defense attorney Tom Kirsch said the harm Trudeau caused...