Free Republic

In the twisted world of the rich and powerful, sexual predators like former film producer Harvey Weinstein and “Financier” Jeffrey Epstein were able to commit and/or coordinate heinous sexual crimes for decades, and out in the open to a degree. Alleged sex trafficker Epstein’s accusers are insisting the billionaire’s private paradise of Little St James in the US Virgin Islands was a center of an international sex trafficking ring. The New York Times obtained more than 2,000 pages of Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) records just days before Epstein’s ex-girlfriend and alleged co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell is set to start trial...

Armed Services Committee member Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) on Monday called for the panel to hold a hearing to investigate U.S. strategy in the 18-year Afghanistan War following a damning report that senior U.S. officials knowingly lied to the public for years about the country's progress in the conflict. “We all read today, the striking reporting by The Washington Post, suggesting that administration officials, potentially including military officials, have misled the American public about the war in Afghanistan. I am writing to request hearings to address these deeply concerning revelations about the Afghan war,” Gillibrand wrote in a letter to...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s, D-N.Y., mother doesn’t regret moving from New York to Florida in part due to the lower real estate taxes. “I was paying $10,000 a year in real estate taxes up north,” Blanca Ocasio-Cortez told the Daily Mail. “I'm paying $600 a year in Florida. It's stress-free down here.” Blanca moved to Eustis, Fla., just before her daughter entered the 2018 Democratic primary race against then-Rep. Joe Crowley in a Bronx- and Queens, N.Y.-based district, a contest she won in one of the biggest upsets in recent political history. Blanca said living in the Yorktown Heights area of...

There were 23 homicides and 39 nonfatal shootings in Baltimore in May 2014. Through 29 days of May 2015, there were 42 homicides and 104 nonfatal shootings. Gulp. Why are arrests down so sharply? Some cops may fear that criminals have turned more aggressive and confrontational after a year of high-profile allegations of police brutality, from the protests in Ferguson to the assassination of two officers in New York to the riots over Freddie Gray in Baltimore. Jack Dunphy, a cop himself, noted in a piece for PJM last month that crime rates are up in multiple major cities nationwide....

The US has released five video clips of Osama bin Laden that it says was taken from the Pakistani compound where the leader of al-Qaeda was reportedly killed last week. The videos mainly show bin Laden rehearsing taped remarks, but there is also video showing him watching news coverage of himself on TV. Al Jazeera's Rosiland Jordan, reporting from the Pentagon in Washington DC, said that the video clips were shown to journalists, but the sound was removed from them. "We did see a video of Osama bin Laden watching video of himself on what appears to be Al Jazeera,"...