Free Republic

Preet Bharara knew about FBI leaks two years before his office denied them. No one has been punished Preet Bharara is often mentioned as a possible U.S. attorney general in a Joe Biden administration after building a reputation as a hard-charging federal prosecutor and self-proclaimed ethicist teaching law school and dispensing morality on Twitter. But one of the last cases he handled as the chief federal prosecutor in New York City cuts against the grain of his carefully manicured image, exposing widespread leaking by the FBI — and knowledge of it by the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office — during the...

Two years have now passed since the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history – yet the biggest question about it remains unanswered. The American public is still in the dark as to why Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock opened fire on concertgoers outside the Mandalay Bay resort on Oct. 1, 2017, killing 58 and wounding hundreds more. The FBI’s agents and behavior specialists spent more than a year investigating the attack. Officials released clips of nearly 1,200 officer body camera videos, many hours of 911 audio recordings and dozens of handwritten and transcribed witness accounts. But 730 days later,...

It was a metaphor for all to see on this fall's World Series pre- and postgame shows. An outcast for more than a quarter-century, Pete Rose appeared as a Fox Sports TV analyst -- on a set outside the stadium. Now Rose, 74, will remain officially on the outs for the foreseeable future, following Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred's denial on Monday of Rose's bid for reinstatement, 26 years after his lifetime ban based on evidence that he had gambled on the sport -- and on his own team -- as manager of the Cincinnati Reds. Manfred's ruling is...

A new witness in the Herman Cain sexual harassment scandal has hired powerhouse attorney, Gloria Allred, and will be holding a press conference on Monday afternoon in Shreveport, Louisiana, RadarOnline.com is exclusively reporting. As Radaronline.com first reported, Sharon Bialek claimed in a news conference last Monday in New York that when she came to Cain for professional help in 1997, he "suddenly reached over and he put his hand on my leg under my skirt and reached for my genitals." Bialek is also repped by Allred, and she was the first woman to go public in the scandal that could...

During a year-long gambling binge at the Caesars Palace and Rio casinos in 2007, Terrance Watanabe managed to lose nearly $127 million, The Wall Street Journal reported. The run is believed to be one of the biggest losing streaks by an individual in Las Vegas history. It devoured much of Watanabe's personal fortune, he says, which he built up over more than two decades running his family's party-favor import business in Omaha, Neb. It also benefitted the two casinos' parent company, Harrah's Entertainment Inc., which derived about 5.6 percent of its Las Vegas gambling revenue from Watanabe that year.

LONDON - A lucky gambler has made 1 million pounds, or about $1.97 million, from a 50 pence ($1) bet, British bookmaker William Hill said Saturday. The man, who William Hill has not identified, correctly guessed the outcome of eight horse races Friday, beating odds of two-million-to-one. He walked into a William Hill branch in the north England town of Thirsk and placed wagers on eight horses in eight different contests in a so-called “accumulator bet,” the company said. His first win came when a horse called “Isn’t That Lucky” won the 2:55 p.m. race at the Sandown track, southwest...

On This Day In History July 19, 1879: Doc Holliday kills for the first time Doc Holliday commits his first murder, killing a man for shooting up his New Mexico saloon. Despite his formidable reputation as a deadly gunslinger, Doc Holliday only engaged in eight shootouts during his life, and it has only been verified that he killed two men. Still, the smartly dressed ex-dentist from Atlanta had a remarkably fearless attitude toward death and danger, perhaps because he was slowly dying from tuberculosis. In 1879, Holliday settled in Las Vegas, New Mexico, where he opened a saloon with a...

CARSON CITY, Nev. - Here's a good bet. If Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton decides to do some gambling in Nevada, check out the blackjack table. "I'm not much of a gambler, but I have gambled," the New York senator said in a brief interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, adding that her favorite game probably is blackjack. Clinton was in Nevada, one of the early voting states, to participate in a candidate forum. Democrats recently circulated a 44-page document repackaging Las Vegas and Nevada, considered the wild child of American culture, as utterly ordinary. Heartland over a...

Estelle Busch may have been a loser at the slot machines, but she won when she took on the Minnesota state tax system. The Minneapolis woman did it by claiming to work more than full time — 60 hours a week, in fact — at gambling. She said she won $1.5 million and lost $1.7 million over three years. The state said she couldn't deduct her gambling losses — $200,000 — under applicable Minnesota tax law. Instead, the Department of Revenue audited her returns and demanded $102,000 in back taxes. But Busch argued hers weren't gambling losses; she was running...

Iran: Female Gambler Skeleton Comes out of Grave Tehran, 4 October 2005 (CHN) – Archaeologists excavating the ancient cemetery of Gohar Tepe of Mazandaran, north of Iran, discovered some 600 pieces of bone used in a gambling game inside the tomb of a woman. Gohar Tepe is one of the key archaeological sites of Mazandaran province, providing experts with surprising ancient evidence in the last four seasons of work there. People resided in the region since 5000 years ago to the first millennium BC, enjoying a civilization and urban life characteristics. The game pieces found in the tomb belong to...

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Compulsive Australian gamblers seeking help from Gamblers Anonymous are being hit with online casino pop-up advertisements when they visit the Web site of the self-help group, the Daily Telegraph newspaper says. Australians gambled away a record $11 billion in the year to June 2002 -- nearly two percent of gross domestic product and slightly more than the nation's defense budget, according to national statistics released late last year. "This is when they least need that temptation. They are reaching out for support. Suddenly cues that allow them to gamble are there," Louise Sharpe, director of the University...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A Los Angeles lawyer who claims he was thrown out of Las Vegas last year because he was too lucky has sued MGM Mirage in a bid to force the casino to warn prospective gamblers that they can be barred for winning too much. Ernest Franseschi Jr., a frequent gambler, accused MGM officials of surreptitiously photographing him while he played blackjack at a high-stakes table at the chain's New York New York casino last March. Franseschi claims casino officials circulated the photo to other Las Vegas casinos after he left the blackjack table with thousands of...

The Bookie of Virtue "We should know that too much of anything, even a good thing, may prove to be our undoing...[We] need ... to set definite boundaries on our appetites." --The Book of Virtues, by William J. Bennett No person can be more rightly credited with making morality and personal responsibility an integral part of the political debate than William J. Bennett. For more than 20 years, as a writer, speaker, government official, and political operative, Bennett has been a commanding general in the culture wars. As Ronald Reagan's chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, he was...