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A laptop tied to the Boston bombing suspects has been recovered and could provide important clues as authorities look into how the suspects were radicalized. Pete Williams, NBC justice correspondent, says the FBI has the laptop, although investigators have not spoken publicly about the computer. Both Williams and Bryan Bender, national security correspondent for the Boston Globe, spoke with WTOP on Thursday about the latest developments in the investigation. "The laptop could be critical in learning how they became radicalized and how they learned to make the bombs," Bender says. "(Investigators believe the suspects) became more religious, they became more...

The instant Jim Asaiante heard the first explosion, he flashed back to Iraq. "That was an IED," he said to no one in particular. The former Army nurse fought the urge to rush toward the wounded. He knew there would be a second blast. Tending to soldiers blown up by roadside bombs had taught him that. Asaiante paused and waited a few seconds. The ground shook again, a percussive explosion that sent more people scrambling, more smoke roiling down Boylston Street. While most ran for their lives, first responders like Asaiante swooped into action. In the days to come, first...

Three new suspects have been charged in connection with the Boston Marathon bombing, two for conspiring to get rid of their friend's incriminating backpack filled with gutted fireworks after learning he was a suspect in the April 15 terror attack, and another for lying to investigators, according to an FBI affidavit released Wednesday. Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakova both 19-year-old natives of Kazakhstan and friends of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev at UMass-Dartmouth, allegedly went to Tsarnaev's dorm and took a laptop, the backpack and some Vaseline that may have been used in making the deadly pressure cooker bombs that killed three and...

A drop in the bucket. Given Judy Clarke’s fee in the Susan Smith case, $100K probably isn’t much more than what you’ll wind up paying Dzhokhar’s lawyers to help him avoid the death penalty. And if they succeed, you’ll be paying for his upkeep for years and years and years after that. So poisonous are the politics of this that even local Democrats are vowing a full investigation. I thought the preferred “solution” here would be a variation of their response to Gosnell, i.e. what we need is more welfare/clinics so that impoverished people aren’t led down the wrong path....

Judge Jeanine Pirro didn’t hold back during her opening statement Saturday night when she lashed into Zubeidat Tsarnaev — the mother of Boston Marathon bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. “We should not be required to breathe the same air as you, we should not be required to share the indignity of your presence,” Judge Pirro said in a direct statement to the woman now being dubbed as “Jihad Mom.” “We opened our arms to them,” Judge Pirro said about the Tsarnaev family. “Showered them with food, and money, and housing, and education and all the freedoms of American citizens....

Former Rep. Ron Paul said the law enforcement that swarmed around Boston in the days following the marathon bombings was scarier than the actual terrorist attack. “The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city,” he said on the Lew Rockwell website, Politico reported. “This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself.” The terror attacks on April 15 in Boston killed three and injured 264. Mr. Paul, a former libertarian political candidate who served in Congress as...

BOSTON — The defense team representing the Boston Marathon bombing suspect got a major boost Monday with the addition of Judy Clarke, a San Diego lawyer who has managed to get life sentences instead of the death penalty for several high-profile clients, including the Unabomber and the gunman in the rampage that injured former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Clarke’s appointment was approved Monday by U.S. Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler....

In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings, investigators are looking into extremist ties between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, including a suggestion by his mother that he travel to “Palestine” to conduct possible terrorist activities there. New wiretap evidence provided by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) to the Federal Bureau of Investigation suggests possible extremist influence by the mother of the two bombers, Tamerlan and Dzhokar. In early 2011, the FSB had intercepted a called between Tamerlan and his mother, Zubeidat, where the two vaguely discussed jihad....

It looked like the backlash was starting even before the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing were identified as Muslim. Hours after the explosions, a Bangladeshi man told police he was dubbed an "Arab" and beaten in New York. A veiled Muslim woman in a city near Boston said she was struck in the shoulder and called a terrorist. When the public learned days later that the FBI was pursuing two Muslim men of Chechen descent, American Muslims feared the worst. But the worst didn't happen....

Updating our earlier report: Details are emerging that when U.S. Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler read Dhokhar Tsarnaev his Miranda rights, she went to his hospital room accompanied by a federal public defender (meaning taxpayer-funded) and an assistant U.S. attorney from the Massachusetts prosecutor’s office. Reports say the FBI was only partway through questioning Tsarnaev to get intelligence to determine who else was involved in the plot and how broad it was. The FBI told federal lawmakers in classified briefings this week they were “stunned” when this judicial officer and lawyers from both sides showed up to read him his rights....

Megyn Kelly reported Friday that the bombs used in the Boston Marathon attacks had to be detonated via a ‘line of sight’ trigger mechanism. According to federal officials this could mean there was a 3rd bomber or accomplice who may have been involved in the attacks. The range of remote control parts is within at least 250 yards or less. The remote control parts are also NOT a part of Al Qaeda’s Inspire magazine instructions. Federal investigators now believe a third terrorist could have been involved in the attacks. Via America Live: (VIDEO-AT-LINK) It’s just too bad Barack Obama already...

The mother of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects was added to a federal terrorism database about 18 months before the attack, government officials said Thursday. Two government officials said the CIA had Zubeidat Tsarnaeva’s name listed along with that of her son Tamerlan Tsarnaev after Russia contacted the agency in 2011 with concerns that the two were religious militants about to travel to Russia. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the case. Being in the classified TIDE database does not automatically mean a person is suspected by the U.S. of...

Isaac Chotiner explains that the expressed desire/hope/prediction of many liberals that the Boston bombers turn out to be white non-Muslims was based on a “reasoned reactions to a society that is still full of racism and bigotry” and that “in times of national emergency or stress, double standards—one form of that dreaded disease called political correctness—serve very useful purposes.” He writes that if the bomber had turned out to be white, then the bombing would have been treated as an isolated incident and that if the bombers were “militia-men type extremists”, then you wouldn’t have seen racial profiling and such....

Poster distributed by a California chapter of Hamas-linked CAIR"We have been informed that the FBI may be starting to question some of the community members about the two suspects. Insha'Allah we want to help as much as we can, but of course not put ourselves at risk either." This unsigned email from the ISB could have told members to cooperate fully. Instead, it fosters the victim mindset by telling them to contact the ACLU and lawyer up. Why? What do they have to hide? Innocent people should be able to talk to investigators without any problem. "EMAIL: Islamic Society of...

Many commentators have criticized the Obama administration for prosecuting Dzhokhar Tsarnaev criminally, which entailed giving him Miranda rights and providing him with a lawyer. But apart from the wisdom, in principle, of promptly commencing a criminal prosecution in this case, the sequence of events raises obvious questions about what the administration is up to. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured last Friday evening. At that time, his condition was described as critical. He had been shot multiple times, had lost a great deal of blood, and doubt was expressed as to whether he would live. Nevertheless, by Monday morning, the administration had...

Posted By EdBigCon: The Bomber’s (Terrorists) stop for gas may have foiled the trip to New York City. NYPD Commissioner: Tsarnaev brothers had 6 IED’s for use in New York City, 1 Pressure Cooker Bomb and 5 Pipe Bombs. Fox News Report: The Boston Marathon bombing suspects had Times Square in their sights before law enforcement authorities put an end to their bloody terror spree, according to a top U.S. lawmaker who cited police sources. Brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev spoke of going to New York while driving the streets of Cambridge last Thursday, according to a man who was...

The surviving suspect in the Boston bombings has told investigators that he and his brother planned to bomb Times Square, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Thursday. "Last night we were informed by the FBI that the surviving attacker revealed that New York City was next on their list of targets," Bloomberg said. The two came up with the plan spontaneously after the Boston bombing, as the talked in an SUV they hijacked, New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev initially told investigators that he and his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, had talked about going to New...

We actually have two major welfare stories today. The first is about the Boston bombers, who, it turns out were among those immigrants we’re always chided not to notice: They were on welfare. As good Americans we’re supposed to pretend that immigrants (I’m married to a legal immigrant, by the way, so no, Grover Norquist, I’m not “anti-immigrant”) don’t come here to get on welfare. Even though millions of immigrants do come here, legally or otherwise, and then get on welfare. Like the Tsarnaevs. Marathon bombings mastermind Tamerlan Tsarnaev was living on taxpayer-funded state welfare benefits even as he was...

Whoa! Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the mother of Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and Tzhokhar Tsarnaevso, made these shocking statements on CNN tonight: “If they are going to kill him. I don’t care. My oldest son is killed, so I don’t care. I don’t care if my youngest son is going to be killed today. I want the world to hear this. And, I don’t care if I am going to get killed too. And I will say Allahu Akbar!“ Are we all clear on that motive now?(VIDEO-AT-LINK)(Continued)

Well, get a load of this. On Sunday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein appeared on Fox News to discuss last week’s attack in Boston and terrorism in general, and Chris Wallace wondered whether the people in locked-down Boston last week, with concerns that “this fellow might be on the loose, might break into their house, might take hostages — would people like to have had guns?” “Oh, some may have, yes,” replied Feinstein. (VIDEO-AT-LINK) But it isn’t just “some” Americans who would be partial to having the means to defend themselves from violent criminals on the loose in their neighborhood; as it...