Free Republic

The former PM’s resignation honours and peerages lists were released after weeks of speculation about who would make the cut Carrie Symonds’ dog walker and Parliament's hairdresser have been awarded for their political and public services as Boris Johnson released his honours and peerages lists. The ex-Prime Minister listed 38 people on his honours list and seven figures have been made life peers in the House of Lords. Sarah Vaughan-Brown, formerly personal adviser to Johnson’s third-wife Carrie, was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire for her political and public service. The 48-year-old's role included walking the...

Prime minister follows Donald Trump playbook by tacitly endorsing wild conspiracy theory to score points What started out as a conspiracy theory meme on the outer reaches of the internet has, with the help of Boris Johnson, swiftly established itself amid the cocktail of ideas and conspiracies that define the new extreme right. The protesters who surrounded Keir Starmer on Monday night mostly shouted the word "traitor"-once a term of abuse against pro-EU MP's during the Brexit crisis-as well as "paedophile protector", a reference to false claims about the Labor leaders links to the Jimmy Savile case. The amalgam of...

A federal judge in Washington has blocked federal executions scheduled for this week, citing concerns that the lethal injection protocol involved is "very likely to cause extreme pain and needless suffering." Judge Tanya Chutkan said the last-minute ruling only hours before executions were set to resume for the first time in 17 years was "unfortunate," but she blamed the Justice Department for racing ahead before legal challenges had been fully aired. The judge said the prison's plan to use a single drug, pentobarbital, could cause pulmonary edema, producing a sense that the condemned men were drowning. That would violate the...

TITLE: Trump Son-In-Law Kushner To Regain Top Clearance Following Mueller Interview White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, is regaining a top security clearance following a marathon interview last month with special counsel investigators, a person familiar with the matter said. Kushner met with Justice Department investigators for seven or eight hours in his second interview in the Russia investigation, the person said. The session covered “all the appropriate topics,” including the campaign, the presidential transition and post-inauguration events such as the firing of FBI Director James Comey. Kushner’s business and financial dealings did not come up either...

Robyn Gritz spent 16 years at the FBI, where she investigated a series of major national security threats. But she says she got crosswise with her supervisors, who pushed her out and yanked her security clearance. For the first time, she's speaking out about her situation, warning about how the bureau treats women and the effects of a decade of fighting terrorism. --SNIP-- Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who led the Defense Intelligence Agency, worked closely with Gritz to find terrorists overseas. He says it's a shame the FBI let go of someone with years of top national security experience.