Free Republic

A federal district judge sentenced former state Sen. Leland Yee, a San Francisco Democrat, to five years in prison Wednesday for trading political favors for campaign contributions. He was also fined $20,000. Yee admitted in a plea deal that he was part of a racketeering conspiracy that involved exchanging official acts for money, conspiring to traffic in weapons and money laundering. Specifically, Lee promised an undercover FBI agent favors in return for campaign contributions. During the hourlong proceedings, Yee asked the court for leniency in light of his public humiliation, his wife's severe illness, his admissions of wrongdoing and his...

Governor Wolf’s official Islamic conversation has not yet been made public, other than these photographs circulating on social media. It has become evident through the photographs that Wolf has in fact already converted. According to Islam it is not permissible for a non-Muslim to pray either in the ranks or on his own. It is required that one converts to Islam before he prays, then to purify himself [by doing ghusl], and then fulfil the conditions of prayer. He is included in the obligation of prayer, and he is to be punished if he does not become Muslim and pray,...

Via the Daily Wire, that’s quite a claim. The president of the United States using a foreign intelligence agency to spy on the other party’s presidential candidate, for the obviously illicit purpose of erasing any domestic paper trail of his actions? “Scandal of the decade” material. And yet it falls not to the Fox News investigative team to break the story but to legal commentator Andrew Napolitano — and not on one of Fox’s marquee shows like O’Reilly or Tucker but on Fox & Friends and Martha MacCallum’s program. You’d think a scoop like this would be in 50-point font...

The gun business is booming. The question is, why? Smith & Wesson stock Friday was zooming, thanks to a stellar earnings report. The firearms maker also boosted its outlook for the rest of the year. Because of the strong business, its backlog of orders more than doubled from the same quarter last year, the company is concentrating on boosting production and building inventory. “We are underserving the market at this moment, we all know that, and that's a great opportunity going forward for us,” CEO James Debney said in a conference call with analysts. And another gun maker, Sturm, Ruger...

The Video Alaska Democrat politicians and bloggers tried to have removed from Youtube.com

eek, Pelosi refuses to consider GOP energy proposals that don't include massive government subsidies for so-called eco-alternatives that have never panned out. Which brings us to Madame Speaker's 2007 financial disclosure form. Schedule III lists "Assets and 'Unearned Income'" of between $100,001-$250,000 from Clean Energy Fuels Corp. -- Public Common Stock. Clean Energy Fuels Corp. (CLNE) is a natural gas provider founded by T. Boone Pickens. Yep, that T. Boone Pickens -- former oilman turned wind-power evangelist whose ads touting a national wind campaign are now as ubiquitous as Viagra promos. Pickens and Pelosi share the same talking points downplaying...

Barak Obama has now explained why small-town, penny-ante peckerwoods like moi utter vicious anti-trade and anti-immigrant rhetoric. He also explains why we like playing around with guns, bibles and other things Barack thinks are too dangerous to allow in public without arrogant, liberal supervision. He took a fund-raising junket to San Francisco and figured it would be safe to let the hemline of his Trotskyite slip show. While amongst the condescending, self-selected elite by the bay, he had the following to say about small town America. “It’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion...

Pardon me, but I smell something very peculiar in the way we have learned of the disgrace of Rep. Mark Foley. The email scandal which led to the resignation of the Republican Congressman is reverberating throughout the capital and the nation, as Democrats attempt to capitalize on bad news for Republicans. The seamiest of the released emails, which Foley has not denied, are right up there with Rhodes Scholar and Illinois Democratic Congressman Mel Reynolds’ taped phone conversations lusting for 15 year old Catholic school girls in their uniforms

Imagine going to the dentist with an aching tooth, and going through the pain of having it diagnosed and pulled -- only to discover the dentist pulled the wrong tooth. Not only have you suffered for nothing, you've still got to operate on the real problem. Democrats seem about to put themselves through this agony. Pundits and politicians tell Democrats that they have a "values" problem -- that people of faith vote against them in large numbers because the Democratic party is seen as secular, or as anti-Christian, or as straying from mainstream values. Poppycock. Democrats didn't lose Florida in...