Free Republic

A Bay Area man who allegedly talked online about wanting to emulate the Poway synagogue shooter “except with a Nazi uniform on” is in county jail and facing three felony charges, after an investigation by the FBI and Concord police. Concord resident Ross Anthony Farca, 23, was charged this week with making criminal threats, as well as manufacturing and possessing an assault weapon. The charges stem from comments Farca allegedly posted to his account on Steam, a popular video game platform. Farca’s screen name was “Adolf Hitler (((6 Million))),” a reference to the number of Jewish people killed during the...

NASCAR will pause the Coca-Cola 600 in the middle of the race on Memorial Day weekend for a moment of remembrance. Charlotte Motor Speedway officials requested that the series make the gesture, which it did in 2009 when the Sunday race was moved to Memorial Day due to rain. “People kept talking about that that was so impactful,” Charlotte Motor Speedway general manager Greg Walter told NBC Sports.“So we asked can we do that again? Our sport is so prone to supporting the military and so prone to understanding what the Memorial Day is all about.” The 30-second break will take...

CONCORD, Calif. (KGO) -- It appears, at this point, a controversial plan to build an immigrant detention center at the former Naval Weapons Station in Concord is not moving forward. The news came just as the city council there was starting an emergency meeting on the issue. "There will be no relocation camps in Concord or California," announced Guy Bjerke, Concord's Director of Community Reuse Planning, to open the meeting. "Just a few moments ago, Congressman Mark DeSaulnier called the city manager and further informed us he has informal confirmation that there is no intention of establishing detention facilities in...

U.S. Military Academy Cadet Peter Zhu was declared brain dead Wednesday, four days after the California resident was involved in a skiing accident. WEST POINT, N.Y. — The parents of a 21-year-old West Point cadet fatally injured in a skiing accident raced the clock to get a judge's permission to retrieve his sperm for "the possibility of preserving some piece of our child that might live on." U.S. Military Academy Cadet Peter Zhu was declared brain dead Wednesday, four days after the California resident was involved in a skiing accident at West Point that fractured his spine and cut off...

Every so often, but especially in August before school starts, I like to see some evidence of my private-school tuition dollars at work. So I recently asked my sons what provoked the first gunshots in the American Revolutionary War. “The Tea Act of 1773,” said the 12-year-old, apparently tossing out the first Colonial grievance that came to mind. “King George's Stamp Act!” screamed his younger brother, apparently mistaking our conversation for a televised game show with prizes. “You're both wrong,” I said. For many years, the American colonists’ disaffection was manifest as a strictly political and social movement, free of...

A Russian consulting firm indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller plans to ask a U.S. court to allow it to share information that the U.S. government considers "sensitive.” In a joint scheduling motion filed on Tuesday, the firm, Concord Management and Consulting, LLC, said it plans to argue that the information should be shared with Concord officers or employees, and that the judge's decision on the matter will "significantly affect the defense position to how it can proceed." **SNIP** The handling of sensitive U.S. government information has long been a sticking point in the case. In October, ABC News reported...

One of the tells that the special counsel investigation of Robert Mueller is, if not an outright sham and fraud, an exercise in self-justification is the charges brought so far. Once you eliminate the charges that have zero to do with the 2016 Trump campaign (that would be the cases against Paul Manafort) you are left with some real hardcore chickensh**–Mike Flynn, George Papadopoulos, Richard Pinedo, Alex van der Zwaan–and some cases that Mueller was confident he’d never have to prosecute–Russians who will never be extradited to the United States. The flimsiness of the cases against all the Russians is...

**SNIP** In a hearing in a Washington, D.C. courtroom on Monday, Eric Dubelier of the American law firm Reed Smith argued that the case against the Russian consulting company known as Concord, which allegedly operated a “troll factory” in which the Russians created or stole the identities of hundreds of Americans online in order to sow discord and spread propaganda, should be dismissed. If people lying about who they are on the Internet and engaging in political speech is a crime, he argued, then every politician in America would be in prison. “This argument is beyond belief,” Dubelier said. “They...

It looks like Robert Mueller’s publicity stunt is backfiring bigly. U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, a Trump-appointee, is having very serious doubts about Mueller’s garbage case against Russian company Concord Management.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s week just keeps getting worse. First a federal judge chewed his team out Friday for lying about the scope of its investigation and seeking “unfettered power.” The same afternoon, Mueller’s team practically begged another federal judge to delay court proceedings in its case against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities who allegedly interfered in the 2016 presidential election. That judge basically said, “No!’ In an order issued Saturday, U.S. District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich specifically denied a request by Mueller’s office to delay its first hearing in the Russian indictment case, offering no reason for...

A federal judge has approved a request to tightly control how evidence is shared with a Russian company accused of funding an Internet trolling operation to mislead American voters in the 2016 election. The dispute over how to protect sensitive materials from disclosure had threatened to stall prosecution of the sole defendant to appear in court to face charges in the indictment of Russian entities under special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich of the District of Columbia said Friday that federal prosecutors gave “ample good cause” that identifying sources in the probe could tip...

On February 16, 2018, Special Counsel Robert Mueller obtained a federal indictment of 13 Russian nationals and 3 Russian companies for conspiring to wage “information warfare” by “impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the United States by dishonest means in order to enable Defendants to interfere with U.S. political processes, including the 2016 presidential election.” The media heralded the indictment as a major achievement by Team Mueller. But a few observers questioned whether Mueller truly expected any of the defendants to appear in a U.S. court to answer the charges. Others asked if the indictment was merely an...

Special counsel Robert Mueller and his deputy Rush Atkinson filed a 14-page motion Tuesday arguing that the government shouldn’t have to release certain evidence to indicted Russian company Concord Management and Consulting LLC due to ongoing “interference operations” against the United States. In the motion, Mueller’s team requested a protective order to: (1) keep other co-defendants named in the February 16 indictment from accessing the government’s evidence against them; and (2) to keep additional evidence under the control of government attorneys and away from Concord Management itself.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Special counsel Robert Mueller's team is worried that Russian intelligence services will use a criminal case in Washington to gather information about its investigation and U.S. intelligence-gathering methods. In court papers filed Tuesday, prosecutors are asking a federal judge to impose limits on the information that can be shared by attorneys in the first criminal case directly related to Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. So far, only one defendant, Concord Management and Consulting LLC, has appeared in the case, and prosecutors say they're worried information they provide to the company's attorneys could...

WASHINGTON — A Russian company indicted in the special counsel investigation attacked the case in an acerbic court filing Monday that accused the government of inventing a “make-believe crime.” The sharp rhetoric from Concord Management and Consulting LLC suggests the makings of a pitched court fight and a fresh challenge to the authority of special counsel Robert Mueller, who was appointed by the Justice Department last May to investigate potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign.

Concord Management and Consulting LLC is one of three entities and 13 Russian individuals indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office in February in an alleged criminal and espionage conspiracy to tamper in the U.S. race, boost Trump and disparage his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. “We plead not guilty. We exercise the right to a speedy trial,” the company’s U.S.-based defense lawyer Eric Dubelier said during the arraignment before Magistrate Judge G. Michael Harvey, who scheduled a May 16 status hearing.

1775: An expedition of 700 British regulars under the command of Lt. Col. Frances Smith departs Boston to seize and destroy military stores of the Massachusetts Militia in Concord. At dawn, 70 militia members led by Capt. John Parker meet the British at Lexington, and the two sides briefly skirmish. The Americans withdraw and regroup, attacking the redcoats again at North Bridge with a much larger force, forcing the British to turn back towards Boston. The American Revolution has begun. 1861: 86 years to the day after the “shot heard round the world,” Massachusetts volunteers headed for Washington, D.C. are...

It’s that time again.High Holy Day.Today is the 253rd anniversary of the “shot heard ‘round the world” at Lexington and Concord. The British regulars who started the fracas were following an age old government tradition of seizing powder, munitions and property for a pretentious King who had assumed such wide distribution of the tools of resistance should be available only to the government approved groups such as soldiers despite the danger on the frontier. We celebrate that time of defiance against tyranny when for sixteen years (1775-1791), all thirteen colonial provinces and the thousands of rural polities that exited outside...

The sun never set on the British Empire. It was the largest empire in world history. Out of nearly 200 countries in the world, only 22 were never controlled or invaded by Britain. In April of 1775, the British Royal Military Governor of Massachusetts, General Thomas Gage, sent 800 British Army Regulars, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, on a preemptive raid to seize guns from American patriots at Lexington and Concord. George Mason of Virginia stated: “To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.” James Madison wrote (“Letters & Writings of...

One of the nation’s most exclusive prep schools – whose graduates include both former Secretary of State John F. Kerry and the new Russia probe special counsel Robert Mueller – has just issued a scandalous, astonishingly-detailed 73-page report outlining four decades of X-rated sexual abuse of students by faculty and administrators.