Free Republic

State Senate Democrats have decided to resume the annual Pro Tem Cup golf fundraiser in 2015, a year after the event was canceled in the wake of criminal charges filed against three Democratic Senators. The event at Torrey Pines golf course in San Diego is the Senate Democrats' largest political fundraiser for the state party and has been criticized for allowing special interests to mingle with lawmakers in exchange for tickets costing between $15,000 and $65,000 per person. The indictment of Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) on public corruption charges a week before this year's event was to be held...

Governor Palin posted to Facebook:See more here:http://insider.foxnews.com/2014/12/13/eric-bolling-blasts-cia-torture-report-i-have-zero-sympathy-terrorists  Connect with Governor Palin on Facebook

Kevin McCarthy of Thousand Oaks, California, was surprised last spring, when he learned his family doctor of 14 years could not accept the Blue Shield insurance he'd purchased under Obamacare. He said he was "outraged" because when he was shopping for his policy, Blue Shield confirmed his doctor was covered. "We were duped," McCarthy said. "Hoodwinked is another good term." Here's what happened. Insurance companies -- to save money -- are quietly selling what are called "narrow networks." They sharply restrict the number of doctors and hospitals people can see. In some cases, people may be limited to 30 percent...

Protesters Block Hollywood Intersection, Burn Flag; Four Arrested Hollywood Protests By VICTORIA KIM Protesters demontrating against police killings in Missouri, New York block Hollywood intersection, burn flag Protesters blocked a tourist-filled Hollywood intersection Saturday afternoon and burned an American flag as part of nationwide marches protesting recent police killings of unarmed black men. Four activists who were part of the crowd, three female and one male, were arrested for failing to disperse, said Sgt. Chuck Slater of the Los Angeles Police Department. Officers declared the crowd an unlawful assembly about 4:15 p.m. and ordered demonstrators to disperse.

Say what you will about the compromises contained in John Boehner’s spending bill, but there is at least one thing about it I love: Nancy Pelosi hates it. At issue are the reform measures the GOP inserted in the bill to get rid of excessive regulation in Dodd-Frank and so-called campaign finance reform. Pelosi expressed enormous disappointment in the White House, which supported Boehner’s bill, would support the roll back of Dodd-Frank and the 1st Amendment violations in the name of campaign finance reform. The thing conservatives should understand about this lame duck Congress is that what they do here...

Every now and then, news breaks in the Obama administration that is so stereotypical, it is actually depressing. You might want to sit down for this. Attorney General Eric Holder, made infamous by Operation Fast and Furious, is currently arguing before the Supreme Court that United Nations treaties trump the United States Constitution. That’s right. The sitting Attorney General, charged with upholding and defending the Constitution, is arguing before the highest court that international law is in fact the law of the land. The case in question, Bond v. United States, is actually pretty ridiculous. The defendant is charged with...

Russia has called on the United States to punish those responsible for the use of “inquisition-style” interrogation methods in the “global war on terror”, as revealed in the US Senate report on torture this week. Konstantin Dolgov, the human rights ombudsman of Russia’s foreign ministry, said the results of the “shocking” report were “the latest confirmation of gross, systemic human rights violations by the American authorities”. .... The Senate report showed that “prisoners in secret torture chambers were subjected to inhuman, humiliating treatment” including waterboarding, sleep deprivation and threats against suspects’ families in order to “beat confessions out of often...

Scalia Challenges Liberals On CIA Torture Debate: ‘You Think It’s An Easy Question?’ By Douglas Ernst December 12, 2014 Supreme CourtJustice Antonin Scalia has waded into the CIA torture debate after Democrats on the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee released a report on the interrogation techniques used after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Justice Scalia, speaking Wednesday with a Swiss broadcaster on the issue, accused American and European liberals of being unduly self-righteous on the matter given the kind of real-world scenarios that could unfold, The

The federal government is financing the creation of robots that can assist the elderly and make sure they are eating healthily.A nearly $800,000 project from the National Science Foundation (NSF) is pairing the University of Pennsylvania with a robot company to create the machines, which will be able to deliver glasses of water to senior citizens.The government said that the project is necessary due to a demographic crisis in America where soon there will not be enough young people to take care of their elders.“This Partnership For Innovation project develops and tests the use of service robots to monitor and...

San Diego Council Aide Suspended For Comments About Protesters By TONY PERRY A San Diego City Council member has suspended a staffer without pay for two weeks for referring to police-conduct protesters as idiots and suggesting - in jest - that she wanted to shoot them. The comments were made after a council meeting Wednesday in which two dozen protesters indicated opposition to the decisions by grand juries in Ferguson, Mo., and New York not to indict white police officers in the deaths of two unarmed black men. Children in the group wore black sweat shirts with the phrase: "Don't...

The so-called Stormpocalypse did little to wash away the rage or concern or fear or opportunism or whatever it is that's compelling thousands of Bay Area residents to take to the streets as of late. San Francisco police officers have had their scheduled off-days canceled this weekend in anticipation. The San Francisco Police Department is anticipating a full weekend of protest events, with no fewer than three scheduled for Saturday alone. At 12:15 p.m. tomorrow, police are expecting a "March Against Racist Police Brutality" to convene at Union Square. Within the department, SF Weekly is told, the worry is that...

The countdown begins anew for tonight's launch of the Atlas 5 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Liftoff is scheduled for 7:13:30 p.m. local time (10:13:30 p.m. EST; 0313:30 GMT). "Any of the folks who get to watch this launch, which will be an evening launch, will really get to see a show both in sound and light produced," said Lt. Col. Jim Bodnar, 4th Space Launch Squadron commander at Vandenberg. Last night's initial countdown was halted due to a bleak weather forecast. Conditions are predicted to improve for tonight's try, with a 40 percent chance of acceptable...

GRAND RAPIDS, MI — The action taken by a New York City police officer against Eric Garner is "clear," writes U.S. Rep. Justin Amash on Wednesday. Clearly excessive force against #EricGarner. I pray that peace and justice will prevail. The incident was captured on video, showing Garner talking with police as they suspected him of selling tax-free cigarettes. The 43-year-old man then is overcome by officers who take him down to the sidewalk. Garner cried out, "I can't breathe," several times before becoming motionless.

One of the Islamic State’s senior commanders reveals exclusive details of the terror group’s origins inside an Iraqi prison – right under the noses of their American jailers. In the summer of 2004, a young jihadist in shackles and chains was walked by his captors slowly into the Camp Bucca prison in southern Iraq [snip] “I knew some of them straight away,” he told me last month. “I had feared Bucca all the way down on the plane. But when I got there, it was much better than I thought. In every way.”

As CIA chief John Brennan defended the spy agency's interrogation program for terror suspects Thursday, a senior senator whose committee published a damning report on the practice contested his claims. Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein's staff repeatedly used the hashtag #ReadTheReport on the senator's Twitter feed during Brennan's rare press conference broadcast live from CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Brennan said it was "unknowable" whether key information from suspects subjected to so-called enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs), which critics have equated to torture, could have been obtained through other methods. But Feinstein's staff responded: "Study shows it IS knowable: CIA...

Just thought if anyone wants a good skewering of the recent senate report heres the CIA's 135 page response released a few days ago. 1. I appreciate the opportunity for the Central Intelligence Agency to comment on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Study of the Agency's long-terminated Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation Program (hereafter referred to as the "Study"). As I noted during my confirmation hearing and in subsequent discussions with you and with Committee members, the lengthy Study deserved careful review by the Agency in light of the significance and sensitivity of the subject matter and; of particular concern;...

CIA Director John Brennan threaded a rhetorical needle in an unprecedented televised news conference at CIA headquarters Thursday, acknowledging that agency officers did “abhorrent” things to detainees but defending the overall post-9/11 interrogation program for stopping attacks and saving lives. At the heart of Brennan’s case is a finely tuned argument: that while today’s CIA takes no position on whether the brutal interrogation tactics themselves led detainees to cooperate, there is no doubt that detainees subjected to the treatment offered “useful and valuable” information afterward. …

".....Yuma,Colorado, a farming town of 3,500 people near the Kansas border, celebrated last month as homegrown Republican Cory Gardner was elected to the U.S. Senate. Gardner, a high school football player and the son of a farm equipment dealer, defeated incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Udall to help the GOP gain control of the Senate in the second-most expensive congressional race of all time.Gardner represented Colorado’s 4th Congressional District for four years, an expansive territory that covers the mostly flat and rural eastern third of the state. Farmers there mostly grow corn to feed cattle, and water comes from the quickly...

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Thursday morning slammed a provision in the pending spending bill that would repeal a piece of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law and expressed doubt that enough Democrats could support the package if that rider remains. “I just spoke to Nancy Pelosi. The Democrats believe this is an odious provision that should not be included. Many of us feel the same way,” said Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “[Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio)] can take it out in the bat of any eye, and I hope he will....

Liberal House Democrats are fighting tooth and nail against President Obama over the fate of an enormous year-end government spending bill. With just hours to go before a scheduled government shutdown, the Democrats launched a lobbying blitz to counter calls made by Obama and other White House officials urging passage of the bill. Leading the charge was Rep. Maxine Waters (Calif.), the senior Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, who is up in arms over the face that Obama has agreed to accept a GOP rider to undo parts of the 2010 Wall Street reform law as part of...