Free Republic

Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a left-wing Democrat who has represented the 9th congressional district of Illinois since 1999, will reportedly announce her retirement next month at the age of 80. Politico reported: Rep. Jan Schakowsky is planning to announce next month she won’t seek reelection after 14 terms in the House and has started informing allies of her retirement decision, according to two people granted anonymity to describe the private conversations. The veteran Illinois Democrat, 80, confirmed in a statement that an announcement is forthcoming, though she did not say what it would entail: “I’m going to announce my plans on...

Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) on Wednesday criticized Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for defending President Trump’s recent pardons for rioters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. “I’m speaking as a Christian here, I saw Speaker Johnson say, ‘We believe in redemption,’” Kinzinger said on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360.” “How dare you use the Bible in this?” “I mean, don’t talk about repentance, Speaker Johnson, defend this,” Kinzinger added later. “Go out and defend that there’s these criminals on the street now, do that. I’ll respect if you do it.” Kinzinger’s remarks were first highlighted by Mediaite.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) slammed President Trump’s decision to grant sweeping pardons to those convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, suggesting they are “political foot soldiers” for Trump. “Are they being released as a reserve army of political foot soldiers to act on behalf of MAGA and Donald Trump?” Raskin told CNN’s Erin Burnett during an appearance on the network Tuesday night. “I think that’s what’s so profoundly troubling to a majority of the American people who rejected the idea of freeing at least the violent criminals and the ones who were convicted of seditious conspiracy, which means...

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a former member of the Jan. 6 committee, sought to distinguish between the pardon he received from former President Biden compared to those President Trump gave to those who stormed the Capitol. Just hours apart, both Biden and Trump issued a number of pardons. An order from Biden gave a preemptive pardon to all nine members of the panel that investigated the attack on the Capitol, while Trump, through a series of pardons and commutations, cleared the slate for the more than 1,500 people being prosecuted for the attack. “Look, the people who were pardoned the...

... Ex-FBI confidential human source Derek Myers risks years of jail time for saying too much about his former employer. Yet despite the potential legal ramifications, Myers insists the FBI ran an operation involving hundreds of undercover informants on Jan. 6 to entrap and incriminate Trump supporters. He would know. He was recruited for the assignment. ... Human assets are permitted to engage in lawbreaking activity "usually within 24 to 36 hours" of the crime scene with a "specific set of parameters that will allow you to go break the law without any repercussions or consequences," Myers told WND. ...

Elon Musk has dropped a bombshell on Twitter as evidence mounts up against the FBI regarding the events of Jan. 6, 2021. Musk called attention to a new report from investigative reporter Michael Shellenberger on Twitter. Shellenberger’s report states: “FBI says it won’t release Jan 6 surveillance video because it would show too many undercover government agents and informants.” “The FBI & Democrats say the whistleblowers who testified today are ‘a threat to our national security,’ but they’re not,” Shellenberger wrote. “Rather they are honorable public servants who are being attacked for exposing abuses of power related to January 6....

Our friend Julie Kelly gave us a heads-up there was massive drama in the Proud Boys January 6 trial yesterday after an FBI agent was caught lying on the stand and concealing evidence from defense attorneys. It turns out that Special Agent Nicole Miller (or someone) deleted thousands of messages in FBIs "Lync" messaging system--messages relevant to investigation and required to be produced to defense counsel. This brazen lawlessness at FBI in its biggest January 6 case, observed Ms. Kelly, because it appears Special Agent Miller’s “Boss” instructed the FBI agent to "destroy" hundreds of items of evidence. If this...

This week the January 6th Committee voted to make criminal referrals to the Justice Department, including the proposed indictment of former President Donald Trump. However, the Committee’s splashy finale lacked any substantial new evidence to make a compelling criminal case against former President Donald Trump. The Committee repackaged largely the same evidence that it has previously put forward over the past year. That is not enough. Indeed, the reliance on a new videotape of former Trump aide Hope Hicks seems a case of putting “hope over experience” in the criminal Justice system. While still based largely on the failure to...

On January 6, the media was chock full of stories about the events at Capitol Hill on the day of the riot. One potentially big event that could have overshadowed what happened at the Capitol building was a couple of pipe bombs planted near the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee buildings. Fortunately neither bomb went off, but the mystery remains of who was the pipe bomber that still remains at large. Because of the January 6 anniversary, several media outlets were speculating about the mystery of who the pipe bomber was and why the FBI has not...

Speaker Pelosi’s dream of relitigating the January 6th Capitol riots until the mid-term elections is over. The U.S. Senate just delivered a back-breaking rejection of the “independent” commission that was hand-selected by Nancy Pelosi. “A crucial Senate vote on a bill to create an independent inquiry to investigate the deadly January 6 Capitol Hill riot failed Friday, falling short of the 10 Republican votes needed to advance and illustrating GOP efforts to move on from the insurrection that left five people dead and injured 140 police officers,” CNN reported. “The vote was 54 to 35, showing the bill had a...

FULL TITLE: The Brady Bunch cast REUNITE as the sitcom celebrates its 50th Anniversary... after joining forces to restore the show's iconic $1.8m house The Brady Bunch cast have reunited ahead of the iconic sitcom's 50th Anniversary, as they promoted the TV special A Very Brady Renovation on Thursday. The six actors who played the children of the blended family took to the stage at the Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour for a panel to promote the series which sees them renovate the Studio City home that appeared heavily in the show. Barry Williams (who played Greg Brady), Maureen...

15 Jihadi groups with 65,000 militants are ready to replace ISIS if they are defeated and share their aim to create an Islamic state and destroy the west A total of 15 jihadi groups are waiting in the wings to replace ISIS in Syria a think tank backed by former prime minister Tony Blair will report tomorrow. The jihadi groups have a total of 65,000 fighters in Syria that are poised to fill the vacuum should ISIS be defeated, according to The Sunday Times. In the report, which has been seen by MailOnline, the author's find that some of the...

Former “Saturday Night Live” cast member Jan Hooks died Thursday, a rep confirmed to TheWrap. She was 57. Hooks died in New York City during the morning. She was suffering from an undisclosed serious illness, according to reports.

Nusra, long one of the most effective forces fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, was weakened this year by battles with Islamic State, an al Qaeda splinter group that routinely employs ruthless methods such as beheadings and mass executions. The two share the same ideology and rigid Islamic beliefs, but fell out during a power struggle that pitted Islamic State head Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi against al Qaeda chief Ayman Zawahri and Nusra Front leader Abu Mohammad al-Golani. But U.S.-led air and missile strikes, which have hit Nusra as well as Islamic State bases in Syria, have angered many Nusra members who...

UN evacuates equipment from main HQ into Israel as insurgents capture two more towns; Qatar reportedly paid high ransom for release of Fijian troops A-Sharq al-Awsat, quoting Syrian opposition sources, reported Saturday that the Qatari government paid a heavy ransom to rebels for the release of 45 captive UN peacekeepers freed Thursday. According to the report Doha paid somewhere between $20-$45 million to the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front which had held the troops since August 28. Qatar took credit for negotiating the release on Friday, though it made no mention of a ransom.

Want to sell a book? Get into a heated discussion with the President. It worked for Arizona governor Jan Brewer. Sales of her book Scorpions for Breakfast have gone up a whopping 150,398 percent on Amazon.com over the past 24 hours. You’ll recall that President Obama is upset over a passage from the book which characterized his attitude towards Brewer as being patronizing during a 2010 meeting at the White House. When he told Brewer as such last night on an Arizona tarmac, the two became embroiled in a discussion. Reporters snapped a photo of Brewer

In a interview with Chicago’s Don Wade & Roma radio show this morning, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky claimed that Americans aren’t entitled to all of their own money. Toward the end of a wide-ranging interview, the hosts played a clip from this week’s Republican Presidential Debate where California teenager Tyler Hinsley asked, “Of every dollar that I earn, how much do you think I deserve to keep?” Co-host Don Wade asked Schakowsky to answer the same question. After some initial back-and-forth, she replied, “I’ll put it this way, you don’t deserve to keep all of it. It’s not a question of...

I'm just too sick to watch the circus show. you guys wanna follow suit? Thank you.

The US Navy's Fifth Fleet in Bahrain said on Thursday there was "no way to know" if a threat radioed to US warships in the Strait of Hormuz came from Iranian speedboats, casting doubt on the earlier US version of Sunday's confrontation. "There is no way to know where this (radioed threat) exactly came from. It could have come from the shore... or another vessel in the area," Lieutenant John Gay told AFP by telephone. But he stressed that "the Iranian fastboats were acting in a very provocative and aggressive manner" towards the US warships in the strategic waterway at...

Rob Reiner better watch his back. It now appears that an outside audit – at the least – will be done of the California Children and Families Commission because it used $23 million in taxpayer funds for TV ads touting “preschool for all” at the same time Reiner, a commission board member, was circulating petitions for his “preschool for all” initiative. And when investigators come to chat, the executive director of the commission just might not go along with the cover story that it was all one big “coincidence” that the TV ads ran at the same time as the...