Free Republic

It’s official: The situation in Sunland Park has gotten crazier than the last two seasons of “Lost.” On Friday, Daniel Salinas was arrested again, this time charged with 18 new felony charges, including receiving and soliciting illegal kickbacks, fraud and ethics violations. Salinas is the man who: *as the border town’s mayor pro tem got drunk with then-mayor Martin Resendiz during a meeting at a restaurant with officials from a California firm during which Resendiz said he got so inebriated he signed city contracts [4]while not realizing their import *has been accused of trying to blackmail rival mayoral candidate Gerardo...

Corruption: A new study documents that access to the White House is based on how much money is put into the president's campaign coffers. At least the Lincoln Bedroom isn't for rent — yet. During the Clinton administration, when the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House became a favorite place for campaign contributors to rest their weary wallets, the infamous Johnny Chung made the observation that the White House was like a subway turnstile: You put your token in and you got inside. An analysis of White House access by the New York Times suggests that hope and change has...

GREENBELT, MD—United States District Judge Peter J. Messitte sentenced former Director of Prince George’s County Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) James Edward Johnson, age 67, of Temple Hills, Maryland, today to 37 months in prison, followed by two years of supervised release, for conspiracy to commit extortion. Judge Messitte also entered an order requiring James Johnson to pay a fine of $25,000 and to forfeit $46,300 that was seized from his safe deposit box. The sentence was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein; Special Agent in Charge Richard A. McFeely of...

Here is me speaking last week at "Liberty First" down in Colorado Springs. It is a relatively poor-quality video taken in the back of the room, but it is watchable. It has also been edited for time. There are a few jumps. Language warning. Seriously. You have been disclaimed.

This week, our esteemed attorney general canoodled with Reverend Al at the annual convention of the “National Action Network,” home base for the infamous huckster (that would be Sharpton, not Holder — sorry for any confusion). It is difficult to imagine another attorney general in American history sucking up to such a race-mongering charlatan. The Sharpton record was succinctly catalogued on the Corner by Victor Davis Hanson: inciting murderous riots; slandering Jews, Mormons, and homosexuals; libeling a state prosecutor in the course of championing Tawana Brawley’s fabrication of a racial “hate crime.” Yet there was Holder, ladling cringe-making praise on...

This week, our esteemed attorney general canoodled with Reverend Al at the annual convention of the “National Action Network,” home base for the infamous huckster (that would be Sharpton, not Holder — sorry for any confusion). It is difficult to imagine another attorney general in American history sucking up to such a race-mongering charlatan. The Sharpton record was succinctly catalogued on the Corner by Victor Davis Hanson: inciting murderous riots; slandering Jews, Mormons, and homosexuals; libeling a state prosecutor in the course of championing Tawana Brawley’s fabrication of a racial “hate crime.” Yet there was Holder, ladling cringe-making praise on...

For those who need proof that the Senate was a do-nothing chamber in 2011 beyond the constant partisan bickering and failure to pass a federal budget, there is now hard evidence that it was among the laziest in 20 years. In her latest report, Secretary of the Senate Nancy Erickson revealed a slew of data that put the first session of the 112th Senate at the bottom of Senates since 1992 in legislative productivity, an especially damning finding considering that it wasn’t an election year when congressional action is usually lower. For example, while the Democratically-controlled Senate was in session...

In Katie Pavlich’s devastating new expose of the Eric Holder Justice Department-approved Fast and Furious operation, Pavlich doesn’t just expose the Obama administration. She exposes the mainstream media for what they are: tools of the Democratic Party, and of the White House. As Pavlich recounts, the first mainstream media outlet to report on Fast and Furious was CBS Evening News, which aired a report by Sharyl Attkinson. She stated that the scandal itself was so awful that “some insiders say it surpasses the shoot-out at Ruby Ridge and the deadly siege at Waco.” She pointed out that the Bureau of...

The government official on the frontlines of the scandal involving a wasteful government conference, U.S. General Services Administration regional commissioner Jeffrey Neely, will invoke his 5th amendment right against self-incrimination, his lawyer Preston Burton tells ABC News. He won’t comment on the $822,751 conference, many of the expenditures for which the GSA Inspector General called “excessive” and “wasteful.” He won’t comment on the bizarre awards ceremony, or the commemorative coins, the mind-reader/motivational speaker. Mr. Neely bares a bit more in a photo collection on his wife’s Google+ page. There visitors can see photos of Neely staying in a luxurious suite...

Kenyan businesses lately are increasingly becoming recipients of U.S. government largesse, as the Obama Administration, among pursuing other endeavors, aims to expand "livestock-related economic opportunities" in that nation. Although this and other recently released presolicitation notices for unrelated programs serve as advance alerts to potential vendors—and therefore do not offer cost estimates and other details— a review of U.S. government contracting actions nonetheless indicates a spike of activity in Kenya in a variety of sectors. The White House is committing to a five-year effort to "improve the inclusiveness and competitiveness" of the livestock industry specifically in Marsabit and Garissa counties,...

Because efforts to promote safe, responsible, and efficient development of unconventional domestic natural gas resources are underway at a number of executive departments and agencies (agencies), close interagency coordination is important for effective implementation of these programs and activities. To formalize and promote ongoing interagency coordination, this order establishes a high-level, interagency working group that will facilitate coordinated Administration policy efforts to support safe and responsible unconventional domestic natural gas development.

Any hope that the media might fairly and responsibly cover the shooting death of black teenager Trayvon Martin was effectively doomed the moment Al Sharpton descended on Sanford, Florida, and started holding rallies with the victim’s family. Recall that Sharpton once said of Clarence Thomas’s tenure on the Supreme Court, “I remember growing up reading Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Now I get to see it.” Unless they agree with his race-driven political agenda, Sharpton is not above accusing even African Americans of wanting to return to a day when the Fugitive Slave Act was still on the books.

From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind. by Greg Swann Chapter 5. The greatest love of all. When the subject of love and sex come up, our friends in the lab coats have a field day. For one thing, gibbons and other critters pair-bond for life, so they’re “just like us.” And for another, when you’re in the thrall of your best-beloved, your brain is all but drowning in pheromones and oxytocin and a mad obsession to rut yourself raw, so you’re no different from a house-cat in heat. Everything they have to say about you omits...

Hilary Rosen is a frequent visitor to the White House. According to White House visitor logs, she has visited the president's home 35 times since he took office, but on Thursday, Press Secretary Jay Carney did his best to distance President Obama from Rosen because of her remarks about Mitt Romney's wife, Ann. Carney's claim that he knows three Hilary Rosens was a feeble attempt to defuse a ticking time bomb. Rosslyn Smith had an interesting blog in Thursday's American Thinker in which she said: Let us count the Hilary Rosens in Jay Carney's world. There is Hilary Rosen spokesperson...

Americans must ask themselves whether Eric Holder and black leaders indeed fear the New Black Panther Party, as they all refuse to condemn their rhetoric and tactics in the last few weeks. The Trayvon Martin Case is the latest in a long list of incidents into which the New Black Panther Party has injected itself, but nothing has measured up to its latest tactics, which include placing a bounty on George Zimmerman’s head with the qualifier "dead or alive." It would seems to the most independent of observers that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, in his refusal to condemn this...

From Remington Arms to The Daily Caller NBC continues to attack Remington and the firearms industry through sensational and factually inaccurate reporting. On April 11, 2012, Brian Williams again demonstrated NBC’s anti-gun agenda with the claim that the Model 870, Model 1100 and other Remington firearms have a design flaw. That claim is demonstrably false and Remington stands fully behind the safety and reliability of the most popular shotguns in the world. It wasn’t enough for NBC to attack over 20 million Remington firearms; they also called the Second Amendment into question by suggesting that there is a need for...

Imagine Soldier Field beyond capacity, brimming with 63,879 young African-American men, ages 18 to 24 — more than U.S. losses in the entire Vietnam conflict. Imagine the University of Michigan’s football stadium — the largest in the U.S. — filled to its limit of 109,901 with black men, age 25 and older. Now add 28,223 more — together totaling more than U.S. deaths in World War I. Picture two UIC Pavilions packed with 12,658 Trayvon Martins — black boys, ages 14 to 17 — nearly twice the number of U.S. lives lost in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now picture all of...

A guy who walks around with a bunch of bodyguards criticizes self-defense lawsAmerican Thinker Rick MoranApril 12, 2012 If we all had half a dozen bodyguards to protect us like New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, we might all think that Florida's "stand your ground" law and other self defense measures were a "license to murder." But most of us aren't that lucky - which is why most of us thank the Lord that we live in a country with a second amendment. Politico: The so-called Stand Your Ground self-defense laws in Florida and some other states amount to "a license...

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said Wednesday that five employees associated with the recently scandal-plagued Government Services Administration went to Hawaii for up to a week in 2011 to attend an hour-long groundbreaking on space leased by the federal government for the FBI. ... In October 2010, a GSA division spent more than $823,000 at an employee-training conference in Las Vegas. During the investigation and the release of the Inspector General's report this month, videos surfaced of employees do skits about the lavish spending.

NEWARK, NJ—Former Secaucus, New Jersey Mayor Dennis Elwell was sentenced today to 30 months in prison for accepting a $10,000 cash bribe in exchange for agreeing to provide assistance in securing town approvals for purported real estate projects in Secaucus, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced. A jury found Elwell, 66, of Secaucus, guilty following a two-week trial in July 2011. Elwell was convicted of one count of bribery and acquitted on one count of conspiracy and one count of attempted extortion under color of official right. U.S. District Judge Jose L. Linares presided over the trial and imposed the...