Free Republic

What do you get when you mix Democratic fat-cat donations, Big Labor favors, pharmaceutical lobbying and Beltway business as usual? Answer: another toxic half-billion-dollar Barack Obama-approved crony deal. Move over, Solyndra. Here comes Siga-Gate. This latest Chicago-style payoff on your dime involves a dubious smallpox drug backed by a liberal billionaire investor, along with a former union boss who was one of the White House's most frequent visitors. They're the "1 percent" with 100 percent immunity from the selectively outraged Occupier mobs that purport to oppose partisan government bailouts and handouts to privileged corporations. Ronald Perelman is the New York...

There are many who argue that President Obama has (repeatedly) broken his promise to bring transparency and openness to the White House. In literal terms, however, Obama may not have actually broken that specific promise ,.. it’s just that people may not have understood what Obama meant by transparency and openness. ..Here’s a case in point: First Dot: Several months ago, the union world was shocked when Andy Stern, the ignominious president of the Service Employees International Union abruptly “quit” as leader of the Purple Hand. Surprise and speculation swelled. Was it the Blago Trial? Is he sick?Second Dot: Then,...

The FBI rounded up a network of deep-cover Russian spies last year after the group came close to placing an agent near a Cabinet official in the Obama administration, a senior FBI counterspy said Monday as the bureau released once-secret documents on the case. ...U.S. officials said it was Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Mr. Figliuzzi said in an interview that the FBI decided to end its more than 10-year-long counterspy investigation of the network because of concerns that the spies were “getting very close to their objective.” “These 10 Russian officers were sent to the U.S. on a...

<p>London, England (CNN) -- Metropolitan police in London, England, appealed Monday for further information about last month's death of a man who worked for a British intelligence agency and whose naked body was found in a padlocked duffel bag in his bathroom.</p>

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says he hopes a series of arrests over an alleged spy ring in the US will not harm US-Russian relations. Mr Putin told former US President Bill Clinton in Moscow that US police had "let themselves go" and were putting people in prison. The FBI claims the spy ring had been operating for more than a decade Ten people have been arrested in the US and one in Cyprus after an FBI inquiry. The Russian foreign ministry has said the US allegations are baseless and a throwback to the Cold War. The 10 people arrested...

I request help locating information for a neighbor about a crash that killed her son, and put another man in intensive care. This crash happened around June 21, 2010, give or take a day.It happened on the other side of the world, Malaysia or Asia, I think. The aircraft was probably an H-47, or a "Flying Crane," or a K-MAX, or similar type helicopter, doing "lift and haul work," usually heavy construction or logs. Her son's name is "William Charles (Chuck) Scott," that was killed, he was probably the pilot, and was about 52 years old. I don't have...

""European participants are of the opinion that this is urgently necessary to prevent such crises from happening again in the future," Merkel said in her weekly podcast. Leaders of the 20 biggest developed and developing economies meet on June 26-27 in Toronto, Canada. Merkel's stance contrasted with that of U.S. President Barack Obama, who this week said public finance problems should be addressed "in the medium term" -- a warning that clamping down budgets should not be done at the expense of recovery. European governments have been launching austerity measures to head off a spread of the debt crisis begun...

An American man has been detained in the mountains of Pakistan after local authorities found him carrying a sword, pistol and night-vision goggles on a Rambo-style solo mission to hunt down and kill Osama bin Laden. Friends and family say construction worker Gary Brooks Faulkner is a devout, good-humored Christian who often talked about building a porch or framing a house — not taking down the world's most-wanted terrorist. They had few clues to explain his 7,300-mile journey. "I'm like, 'What? They got him where?'" said Daren Paredes, a friend who met Faulkner in the northern Colorado town of Greeley....

IPT News June 9, 2010 SNIPPET: "The Turkish-based charity that helped drive last week's deadly confrontation with Israeli commandos has deep ties to Hamas and other terrorist groups. The Hamas ties are not in question. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and IHH officials simply do not acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist group." SNIPPET: "U.S. officials have expressed concern over the fact that "IHH representatives have met with senior Hamas officials in Turkey, Syria, and Gaza over the past three years," but IHH is not a designated terrorist organization in the United States. It's fair to ask, why not?"...

Today in United States v. Rod Blagojevich: following up on his 2008 claims that then-Senator Barack Obama was one of a few people who could testify to his innocence, his defense team issued a motion today to subpoena the President to testify in court. Most of the juiciest bits involving Obama’s role in choosing a new Senator are blacked out, or so we thought. It turns a lucky PDF glitch gave us VIP access. Who wouldn’t want to see the blacked out part? Let’s investigate! Most of the non-blacked out portions of the motion are predictably tame general knowledge: the...

....The series, which is set to launch in June from Chicago-based Devil's Due Publishing, kicks off with Barack the Barbarian: Quest for the Treasure of Stimuli. Hugely muscled, wearing a fur loincloth and grasping a bloody battle axe in his manly hands, Barack the Barbarian is a "mighty hero"...A particular foe will be Red Sarah, a comic book version of Sarah Palin who is pictured in a wolf fur cape, a fur bikini, and little else apart from her trademark spectacles...