Free Republic

Lawmakers in Washington are well known for using the calendar to sneak past the American voters political decisions certain to be unpopular. Take the holiday season, for example, when we’re all preoccupied with events completely unrelated to politics. According to attorney Gary Kreep, President of the United States Justice Foundation (USJF), this season is no different, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (R-NV) is preparing to fast track through the Senate a bill that has Constitutionalists like Kreep very concerned. Now, after learning from his Washington insiders that Reid has planned a snap final vote on the Senate version of...

Online politics, it seems, is a dangerous game in Iran–even when you occasionally play on the side of the party in power. Hossein Derakhshan, an Iranian blogger and journalist, has been sentenced to 19 and a half years in prison on charges ranging from propaganda against the Islamic Republic to collaborating with enemy states, according to Reporters Without Borders. (RSF) He’s also been fined the equivalent of more than $40,000. Though Derakhshan had been threatened with the death penalty, his prison sentence represents the harshest punishment ever received by an Iranian blogger. Though Derakhshan is widely credited with popularizing blogging...

A central figure in what is supposed to be a vast international conspiracy to overthrow the Iranian regime has been officially invisible until now. The information he provided has been key to the confabulations presented in the Stalinesque show-trials in Tehran. An American scholar, a British embassy employee, a prominent economist, and leading members of former Iranian governments have been given long jail sentences. A young French researcher now languishes under house arrest in her country's Tehran embassy, and Newsweek correspondent Maziar Bahari passed four grueling months, mostly in solitary confinement, before finally he was released. All because of their...

From Sarah Palin's Facebook: Horrible decision, absolutely horrible. It is devastating for so many of us to hear that the Obama Administration decided that the 9/11 terrorist mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, will be given a criminal trial in New York. This is an atrocious decision. Mohammed and his terrorist co-conspirators are responsible for the deaths of more than 3,000 Americans. Thousands of American families have suffered through the loss of loved ones because of the disgusting attacks launched against the United States, and now this trial venue adds insult to injury, in addition to compromising our efforts in the War...

Bloggers worldwide are abuzz over a report that Hossein Derakhshan, a popular Iranian-Canadian writer once dubbed the Blogfather, has been arrested in Iran. Iran's Jahan News Agency, which is said to be tied to Tehran's theocratic government, reported the arrest Monday, saying Mr. Derakhshan, 34, was suspected of spying for Israel. Mr. Derakhshan, also known as Hoder, keeps a blog in both Persian and English. The daily blog ominously stopped publishing late last month, and between each blog and his Facebook account, there's been no online trace of Hoder since Oct. 30. But one rival blogger, who didn't want to...