Free Republic

The House Homeland Security Committee has begun hearings on Mayorkas that might lead to impeachment. At the first hearing, former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott said that Mayorkas’ agenda was to “find new ways to let more migrants into the U.S.,” and Former Acting Homeland Director Chad Wolf added that “it was by design.” In reality, his career has long been marred by scandal and corruption. In 2015, the Homeland Security Inspector General found then Deputy Director Mayorkas had showed “favoritism and special access” involving visas and green cards when he was Director of Citizenship and Immigration from 2009 to...

Sixteen years ago, a group of military veterans turned a presidential campaign upside down. The Democratic Party had selected then-senator John Kerry as its nominee. His party positioned him as a war hero, backed with a glowing campaign biography by historian Douglas Brinkley. Inaccuracies in Brinkley’s account attracted the attention of Navy veterans who had served with Kerry in Vietnam. They formed a group called the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and began to investigate and document Kerry’s activities during and after the war. They quickly found and publicized evidence that undercut Kerry’s mythology, including his oft-repeated claim that he...

With the recent indictment of former Congressman and Abscam figure Michael "Ozzie" Myers for election fraud, the high profile FBI sting from 40 years ago was back in the news. And now eyes turn to former South Dakota Senator Larry Pressler, who is scheduled to be inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame this September. In 2014, Pressler was attempting to return to the Senate after an 18-year absence. Jonathan Ellis was a reporter covering the campaign for the Argus News Leader, the state's largest newspaper in Sioux Falls. I sent Ellis the transcript of the FBI undercover tape...

Congressman Jerrold Nadler, who represents New York's 10th congressional district which includes most of Manhattan's west side and parts of Brooklyn, has a long, controversial and sometimes disturbing history, He is a man of the far left, who became an ardent defender of Bill Clinton as a member of the House Judiciary Committee during his impeachment in spite of the evidence. Now, as chairman of that same committee, he has been desperately searching for a way to impeach Donald Trump, again, in spite of the evidence. But more troubling and gut wrenching is his history of supporting some of America's...

Obituary for Col. Ben H. Swett, U.S. Air Force, Retired Col. Ben H. Swett, Ret., passed away on July 20, 2019 in MedStar Southern Maryland Hospital. He had been a resident of Temple Hills, Maryland since 1971. He was born on September 3, 1934 at Saint Agnes Hospital, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, son of Herbert Elbridge and Marcia Harriet (Fadner) Swett. Though originally named “Herbert Benjamin,” he always used “Ben H.” as his first and middle names. Ben H. Swett attended grade schools in Wisconsin and Colorado, and graduated from Pasadena, Texas, High School in 1951. In 1955, he graduated...

Football players who call for equality are throwing rocks from a glass stadium. The NFL’s high-paying jobs are only given to men with specific physical skills, while the rest of the people are pushed aside. It’s time for the league to start leading by example. The time is right for the NFL Equality Plan. The first step in the plan is to guarantee everyone’s right to participate in the games. Every player in today’s NFL is male, which is obviously unfair. The new balance will be 51% women, 47% men, and 2% transgenders. This means the 53-player roster of every...

Recently, the Chicago City Council named a street in honor of Oscar Lopez-Rivera, the founder of the notorious terrorist group FALN. In President Obama's waning days in office, he commuted his sentence. He had been scheduled to serve until June of 2023, and after Obama's order, he still would remain incarcerated at the Federal Prison in Terre Haute, Indiana until May 17 of this year. But early in February, a fervent Lopez-Rivera supporter, the far-left Chicago Congressman Luis Gutierrez, succeeded in having him transferred to Puerto Rico, where he will be with his daughter while under house arrest until his...

The 2016 presidential campaign, we are told, was nasty and divisive to an unprecedented degree. As students of history are aware, this characterization is far from accurate. But more importantly, we seem to have forgotten the very purpose of elections, which is to provide a non-violent way to adjudicate differences between opposing factions.  The alternative is open warfare – consider the endless revolutions in South America or America's own Civil War. Appalling though the recent election cycle may seem, it was a war of words, not of bullets. As the dust settles, the losers petition for a greater share of...

In June of 2014, the Washington Free Beacon came upon an audiotape of then first lady of Arkansas Hillary Clinton from the 1980's discussing with journalist Roy Reed a legal case she had been involved with in 1975. She had been the defense attorney for Thomas Alfred Taylor, who at age 41 had been accused of raping a 12 year-old girl in May of that year. On the audio, Hillary, in an affected southern drawl, could be heard laughing at several inappropriate times. "He took a lie detector test," she said. "I had him take a polygraph, which he passed, which...

Here's a sharp new ad for Caspar Stockham, who is running to unseat 20-year Dem incumbent Congresscritter Diana DeGette in the Denver area.

NEW YORK – Robert Redford will play Dan Rather in a film about the former CBS anchor’s disputed report about President George W. Bush’s National Guard service. The film, titled Truth, will be adapted from the memoir Truth And Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power by former CBS producer Mary Mapes, said the production company, Mythology Entertainment. Cate Blanchett is signed on to play Mapes. If you followed the 2004 presidential campaign, you probably recall the “disputed” 60 Minutes report claiming that George W. Bush shirked his duties and failed to follow orders as a young...

Andrew Breitbart, who died last March at just 43 years of age, was the hardest-hitting conservative activist of the Obama era. If you share his conviction that the leftist-dominated media is a threat to open political debate, you will want to see Hating Breitbart, which was screened recently in Washington. The film offers an affectionate look at the activist's political battles and outsized personality, but it also captures the rage he inspired in his adversaries -- partly due to his flamboyant, combative style, but mostly because he wouldn't play by their rules.

The Washington Post is behaving in a rather Nixonian fashion, refusing to openly admit that its hit piece on Mitt Romney in high school yesterday contained serious errors that seem to reveal malevolent intentions. The coverup -- quietly altering the text in the online version, but not admitting error there, or publishing a formal correction -- may be worse than the crime, in classic "-gate" fashion. Matt Lewis explains one problem: How can Romney's old pal Stu White tell the Washington Post that he has "long been bothered by the Lauber incident" - and then later admit to ABC News...

When Eric Holder testified last December before the House Judiciary Committee about the Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal, he proclaimed in his opening statement that the Justice Department had been "fully cooperative and responsive in its dealing with Congress." But later during the hearing, Florida Congresswoman Sandy Adams asked Holder about his communications with his top aides concerning Fast and Furious. "Did you at any time -- at any time -- e-mail on your personal account with Larry Breuer -- Lanny Breuer and Gary Grindler in regards to Fast and Furious ever?" asked Adams. Holder: Ever? Adams: Yes... Holder: I...

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus is back again using a U.S. Navy warship as a vessel of political pandering. At a hurriedly convened Pentagon ceremony Friday, Mr. Mabus announced that the next littoral combat ship, LCS-11, would be named for former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Arizona Democrat. Mrs. Giffords recently resigned her congressional seat to focus on recovering from wounds she received in a tragic January 2011 shooting. There are many appropriate ways to honor Mrs. Giffords, but this is not one of them.

Our national commentariat is twisted in an impossible yoga pose trying to compare anti-Bain Capital coverage to the famous 2004 “Swift Boat” ad campaign. The two situations are not close to analogous. I have a more-than-passing acquaintance with the Swift Boat ads - I helped produce them. Our liberal news media continue to fabricate and fantasize about the Swift Boat saga, which proved to be a decisive moment in the 2004 election. In the parlance of the media, the ads run by a group of veterans opposed to John Kerry were a “smear” and were “discredited.” They were neither, and...

In a short piece in the “Culture Monster” section of the Los Angeles Times, Christopher Knight decries a satirical depiction of the First Lady based on a 1775 portrait of famed French lover of luxury, Marie Antoinette. The image replaces Marie’s face with Mrs. Obama’s, and the young queen’s puffy-sleeved left arm with a bare muscular black arm – clearly a poke at Mrs. Obama’s penchant for going sleeveless to show off her buffed guns. Her right hand points to a spot on a world globe, and the image caption reads “Choosing the next vacation.” Obviously a pointed commentary on...

If you’ve ever found yourself engaged in a futile, one-sided argument with a politician on your TV screen, you’re hardly alone in your frustration. However, if you’re inclined to jot down such intemperate outbursts, and have the chutzpah to charge people for your services​—​you might have what it takes to join the ranks of one of journalism’s most popular and elite new breeds. They call themselves “fact checkers,” and with the name comes a veneer of objectivity doubling as a license to go after any remark by a public figure they find disagreeable for any reason. Just look at the...

A felon once imprisoned for fraud is raising money in the name of Herman Cain and profiting off of it through a company he owns. It is the second group raising large amounts of Cain cash that has a history of collecting millions of dollars through politically charged mailings and spending hardly any of it on politics. Draft Herman Cain is the latest from two California men who have raised tens of millions of dollars cashing in on causes such as breast cancer and illegal immigration, with little to show for it except payments to fundraisers and themselves, an analysis...

...after calls from Congress for a special counsel, a Justice spokesman attempted to fend off that plan by saying that once Holder had learned of the operation's "questionable tactics" earlier this year, he then "promptly asked the inspector general to investigate the matter." Cynthia A. Schnedar is the acting inspector general, and just this past month, in yet another stunning revelation, it was discovered that she had released secret audio tapes of candid conversations from last March between Hope McAllister, an ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) agent in the Phoenix office, and Andre Howard, owner of a Phoenix-area gun shop,...