Free Republic

The F.B.I. on Monday raided the office of President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, seizing records related to several topics including payments to a pornographic-film actress. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan obtained the search warrant after receiving a referral from the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, according to Mr. Cohen’s lawyer, who called the search “completely inappropriate and unnecessary.” The search does not appear to be directly related to Mr. Mueller’s investigation, but likely resulted from information he had uncovered and gave to prosecutors in New York. “Today the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New...

The woman revealed to have been carrying on an affair with former CIA Director David Petraeus lost her driver's license in a Washington, D.C., park recently, sources tell U.S. News. A Maryland National Capital Park Police spokesman confirmed that a jogger found a North Carolina license in Rock Creek Park belonging to Paula Broadwell. Park Police planned to hold it for 90 days, per policy, and then send it back to the North Carolina Department of Transportation. The Park Police also alerted the FBI, says Bill Kellogg, a spokesman for the Park Police. The FBI did not initially return calls...

Touting education and job creation through green technology, former President Bill Clinton on Sunday night told San Jose State students they will bear some of the responsibility if Democrats lose their control of the House and the Senate on Election Day. "There's a reason people think that the Democrats are going to lose these houses," Clinton said. "The reason is you." So Clinton urged the enthusiastic crowd of 5,000 -- most of them students -- to tweet, text and e-mail their networks of friends to vote Democratic on Nov. 2. Clinton came to San Jose to campaign for gubernatorial candidate...

We're all whores on the hamster wheel of life. And I mean that in the most respectful sense.The w-word has taken a ride through the cultural wash/dry/spin cycles after someone in Jerry Brown's camp used it to describe rival Meg Whitman's alleged deal for police union support in a recorded conversation that was made public.People reacted as if we were still living in Puritan Massachusetts. It was "hate speech," said the National Organization for Women's president. "Women know exactly what's going on here," Whitman scolded at last week's gubernatorial debate. Yes, we all do: politics. The same as when Whitman's...

Until Jerry Brown came along, Trice Harvey had offered the worst apology for calling someone a "whore" – and ole Trice wasn't trying to be sincere. Harvey was a Republican assemblyman from Bakersfield in 1994 when Republicans won control of the lower house and thought they could elect a speaker. Willie Brown didn't give up without a fight. Calling in a chit, he persuaded Republican Paul Horcher to vote for him, ensuring the San Francisco Democrat could retain his speakership for a little longer. Harvey denounced Horcher as, what else, a "political whore." Democrats demanded an apology, and Harvey obliged:...

Although many California voters might not know it, the state could make history next month by electing Meg Whitman as its first woman governor. The Republican candidate certainly hasn't made much of that fact in her speeches or paid ads, and neither has her Democratic rival Jerry Brown. In fact, gender had largely stayed out of this high-profile race, as Whitman and Brown tussled over creating jobs and tackling the state's multibillion-dollar budget deficits. That all changed last week when a member of the Brown campaign – a woman – was overheard in a voice mail recording suggesting that his...

SAN RAFAEL, Calif. -- Coming into their final debate of the California governor's race, Democrat Jerry Brown and Republican Meg Whitman had a chance to persuade a statewide audience they could turn around the economically troubled state. Instead, their third face-to-face exchange resorted to many of the personal attacks that have dominated the last few weeks of the campaign. Neither candidate presented any new ideas in a contest that is virtually tied just three weeks before Election Day and in which a fifth of voters remain undecided. A poll released two weeks ago found about half the respondents were dissatisfied...