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An all too familiar scene was enacted on the campus of Swarthmore College during a meeting on May 4th to discuss demands by student activists for the college to divest itself of its investments in companies that dealt in fossil fuels. As a speaker was beginning a presentation to show how many millions of dollars such a disinvestment would cost the college, student activists invaded the meeting, seized the microphone and shouted down a student who rose in the audience to object. Although there were professors and administrators in the room — including the college president — apparently nobody had...

A Mass. prisoner has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Correction and a prison superintendent claiming he has been denied access to items, including but not limited to ritual oils, herbs, teas, robes, medallions, colored pens, and cakes, which are necessary to properly exercise his Wiccan faith. Daniel LaPlante, who is currently serving a life sentence at MCI-Norfolk for the murder of a Townsend woman and her two children, claims both the DOC and MCI-Norfolk Superintendent Gary Roden have refused to allow him the ability, time, place, and manner to work his magic, perform his rituals, and cast the...

The Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General published a new report Monday that confirms former U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke leaked a document intended to smear Operation Fast and Furious scandal whistleblower John Dodson. The DOJ IG said it found “Burke’s conduct in disclosing the Dodson memorandum to be inappropriate for a Department employee and wholly unbefitting a U.S. Attorney.” “We are referring to OPR our finding that Burke violated Department policy in disclosing the Dodson memorandum to a member of the media for a determination of whether Burke’s conduct violated the Rules of Professional Conduct for the state...

BALTIMORE, May 20, 2013 (Operation Rescue) - The Maryland Board of Physicians has permanently revoked the license of abortionist Nicola I. Riley in a scathing 24-page order issued on May 6, which prohibits her from ever again applying for licensure or reinstatement of her license. “In view of the fraudulent and deceptive nature of Dr. Riley’s criminal conduct, her demonstrated lack of candor and integrity on her application to the Board and to Utah and Wyoming, and her demonstrated propensity for dishonesty and misrepresentation, Dr. Riley’s unprofessional conduct is not remediable,” stated the Board. “In light of the unprofessional manner...

The union representing 12,000 adjudications officers and staff for the United States Citizen and Immigration Services Council (USCIS) came out in opposition to the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill on Monday morning. The USCIS Council and its president, Kenneth Palinkas, joined the (letter) the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Council, the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers, and sheriffs from around the country have signed declaring the 867 page immigration bill makes problems worse for immigration law enforcement rather than better. In that letter, law enforcement officials noted that there has been a rush on the border by illegal...

Two women in a convenience store were burned in an assault in the early hours of Monday morning when another woman entered the store and doused them with a flammable liquid that ignited. The women were inside the Buy & Save convenience store in the 2700 block of Azle Avenue playing video games around 2:30 a.m. when the suspect entered and sprayed them with an unknown liquid, according to the Fort Worth Fire Department. [Snip] It is unclear why the women were attacked or how the liquid was ignited. One victim, whom Hilo described as 18 or 19 years...

The US Department of Homeland Security seized a payment processing account Tuesday belonging to Mt. Gox, the largest international Bitcoin trader, claiming the monetary exchange service falsified financial documents. The American government has previously made it clear that officials are watching Bitcoin, a decentralized economic currency that international regulators have not yet been able to control. Many of those who favor Bitcoin use Dwolla, an Iowa-based startup that allows customers to transfer their dollars into Bitcoins. Unfortunately for those consumers, the Department of Homeland Security issued a warrant Tuesday effectively shutting down Dwolla’s ability to process Bitcoin payments, as reported...

The Hill has a story today that leaves one wondering if, when it comes to gun control, there is any line too ridiculous for progressives to cross: A House Democrat inspired by the last James Bond movie has offered legislation to produce handguns with “personalization technology.” The idea is to produce guns that can only be used by the gun’s owners. Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.) cited the latest James Bond movie, “Skyfall,” as inspiration for the bill. “In the most recent James Bond film, Bond escapes death when his handgun, which is equipped with technology that recognizes him as its...

A group against pornography has put Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in its cross hairs, placing him at the top of a list of national offenders at fault for furthering the X-rated industry. Morality in Media’s “Dirty Dozen List” posting on its website calls Mr. Holder the worst of its “top 12 facilitators of porn” in the entire nation. Why Mr. Holder? He closed the Justice Department's Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, Morality in Media said. “Holder’s actions keep the porn industry thriving,” said Patrick A. Trueman, president of Morality in Media, in a Raw Story report. “He not only...

Over / under for appropriate / inappropriate: 27 Odds on “mistakes were made” 200-1 Benghazi Emails Directly Contradict White House Claims WH Live Stream

Move on to What? By Chris Stirewalt Published May 20, 2013 | FoxNews.com “Already, officials that would normally talk to us, and people we talk to in the normal course of newsgathering are already saying to us that they’re a little reluctant to talk to us. They fear that they will be monitored by the government…It’s not hypothetical, we’re actually seeing impact already.” -- Gary Pruitt, president of the Associated Press, on “Face the Nation.” How does an administration move on from scandals that are still unfolding? The answer: Not very effectively. President Obama and his team tried last week...

The White House is circling the wagons as one of the most feverish periods of President Obama’s tenure enters its second week. Obama and his aides have taken a more aggressive stance in recent days after fumbling their initial response to headline-grabbing scandals at different government agencies. The administration’s strategy is centered on a simple defense: “Our basic thrust is that nobody, here, did anything wrong,” an Obama administration official told The Hill. “That’s why none of this is going to stick.”Even though there is no evidence yet of wrongdoing in the White House, it does not mean that Obama...

Jeffrey Lord at the American Spectator has reviewed the White House logs looking for a relationship between meetings listed there and the timeline found in the Inspector General’s report on the targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups issued last Tuesday. Lord’s work represents yet another example of alternative media scooping a lazy or negligent establishment press. What Lord has found is that President Barack Obama met with the President of the National Treasury Employees Union Colleen Kelley, on March 31, 2010. The NTEU is “the 150,000 member union that represents IRS employees along with 30 other separate government agencies.”...

<p>Gangs of youth apparently angered by the police shooting death of an elderly man have hurled rocks at police and set cars and buildings on fire in a Stockholm suburb, forcing the evacuation of an apartment block.</p> <p>Police spokesman Lars Bystrom says around 50 youths were involved in the riots early Monday in the suburb of Husby, west of Stockholm.</p>

In an outdoor café, wearing jeans and his trademark black T-shirt, Finance Minister Yair Lapid gave his first interview to foreign press since taking office. “Lapid has embarked on a media blitz, deploying his telegenic good looks and sound-bite savvy,” the newspaper observed. In the interview, Lapid acknowledged that thousands of settlers would someday be uprooted, something he called “heartbreaking.” The interview itself revolved mainly around the stalemated negotiations with the Palestinians, but also on the future aspirations of the Yesh Atid chairman. Lapid told the NYT that he is still hoping to succeed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but clarified:...

Why does the U.S. Constitution make no mention of education? Because the Founding Fathers understood that the education of children must be at the local level. We now stand at the edge of a cliff as the federal Common Core State Standards continues its march across the country. How did we get here? In 2009, the U.S. Department of Education blackmailed the states with stimulus money in the form of Race to the Top (RTTT) grants. If states wanted to get out from under No Child Left Behind, and wanted more funding they had to agree to adopt the Common...

News reports from the time indicate the now-chief counsel of the IRS, William Wilkins, helped a church connected to President Barack Obama’s friend Rev. Jeremiah Wright get out of an IRS probe in 2008 while working as a private attorney. “Lawyers from Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr have won the dismissal of an IRS case against United Church of Christ, Sen. Barack Obama's denomination,” The American Lawyer’s Zach Lowe wrote on May 22, 2008.

Halifax Mooseheads goaltender Zachary Fucale turns away a shot with the help of defenseman Austyn Hardie as Portland Winterhawks center Brendan Leipsic presses sduring the first period of a junior hockey Memorial Cup game Saturday, May 18, 2013, in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Liam Richards) Jazz singer Alexis Normand garnered a penalty before a Saturday hockey game in Canada after slashing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” SI.com reports. Normand delivered an unforgettable version of America’s national anthem during a Memorial Cup round-robin game between the Halifax Mooseheads and the Portland Winterhawks in Saskatoon. According to SI.com, Normand made it through...

The fateful question came from a tax lawyer, in a room filled with dozens of them. It came at the end of a Friday morning panel, on the second day of the American Bar Association tax section’s big annual meeting at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Washington D.C. The moderator had announced that it would be the panel’s last question. “Lois, a few months ago there were some concerns about the IRS’s review of 501(c)(4) organizations, of applications from tea party organizations,” Celia Roady, a veteran tax lawyer, asked Lois Lerner, head of the IRS’ tax-exempt organizations division, a few...

A group members of the U.S. House of Representatives have sent Secretary of the Department of Human and Health Services, Kathleen Sebelius, a letter questioning her reported actions of soliciting donations from non-profit organizations that are “directly implementing” Obamacare. Florida’s Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Jeff Miller, Bill Posey and Trey Radel are among the 26 members of Congress who penned their signatures on the letter to Sebelius. The letter asks Secretary Sebelius if she indeed made the calls,how many did she make? In addition, Sebelius was asked if Department resources were used, and how much money was raised?

Our democracy is endangered. Not by the Russians, North Korea, the Iran regime, or even terrorists. To quote Pogo: "We have met the enemy and he is us." Inside the beltway, the fingers point and the media tuts and struts in glee, and we, the American public, respond by becoming more rigid and divided ourselves. No more "truth springing from argument amongst friends," as David Hume said. A recent nonpartisan Pew Research Poll finds our knee-jerk partisanship has increased dramatically. This road we're on will lead us step-by-step to an extreme: either an autocratic government that functions, or a dysfunctional...

...new information has emerged from both the Treasury Inspector General’s report and congressional testimony Friday that calls into question key statements made by Lois G. Lerner... The clumsy way the IRS disclosed the issue as well as Lerner’s press briefing by phone were seen at the time as a public relations disaster. But even so, it is worth reviewing three key statements made by Lerner and comparing them to the facts that have since emerged. “But between 2010 and 2012 we started seeing a very big uptick in the number of 501(c)(4) applications we were receiving and many of these...

The IRS abused its power in targeting conservatives for harassment and probably leaking information to liberal groups during the presidential election cycle. But the IRS’s actions crossed a line from merely corrupt into sinister when it grilled an Iowa pro-life group about its religious views. During a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on Friday, Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Ill., asked outgoing IRS commissioner Steven Miller about it. “Their question,” Schock said, “specifically asked from the IRS to the Coalition for Life of Iowa: ‘Please detail the content of the members of your organization’s prayers.’ Would that be an inappropriate question...

Nurses treating Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev say their natural inclination toward compassion makes it difficult to see the 19-year-old as a possible terrorist. And they have to make concerted effort — and buddy-system pacts — to keep from referring to him with terms of endearment such as “hon.” One 29-year-old nurse said on Gawker: “When you’re in the room, it’s just a patient. You’re here to … make sure they’re feeling better. When you step away, you take it in. I am compassionate, that’s what we do. But should I be? The rest of the world hates him right...

Jason Chaffetz raises the prospect. Representative Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, says President Barack Obama may face impeachment over his administration’s response to the Benghazi attack. “They purposefully and willfully misled the American people, and that’s unacceptable,” Chaffetz tells me. “It’s part of a pattern of deception.” Behind the scenes, he says, House Republicans are frustrated by the White House’s evasiveness, and the calls for impeachment will likely increase.

The IRS scandal is becoming more insane by the minute.  After the testimony on Friday from the Inspector General and the now “retiring� acting IRS Commissioner, Steven Miller, things couldn’t be more convoluted.  First of all, Obama came out and said that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew had “demanded the resignation� of Miller, when in fact, Miller was due to leave his post by June of this year.  So there was no “resigning� going on, and he will leave with all of his benefits intact.  Wow!  No accountability, no answers, no penalties. Next we find out that during the four year...

John Boehner is wondering who connected with the IRS caper might be going to jail. The disappointing answer is … probably no one. The targeting of political groups by the IRS is apparently not a crime, according to political lawyers from both parties. “I am not aware of any statute that prohibits IRS targeting of applicants,” said Republican lawyer Jan Baran, who served as general counsel to George H.W. Bush and the RNC. Other politically inclined lawyers agree. Essentially, there are three types of laws that might conceivably have been broken, as Attorney General Eric Holder acknowledged in his testimony...

It is now well known that the Obama justice department has prosecuted more government leakers under the 1917 Espionage Act than all prior administrations combined - in fact, double the number of all such prior prosecutions. But as last week's controversy over the DOJ's pursuit of the phone records of AP reporters illustrated, this obsessive fixation in defense of secrecy also targets, and severely damages, journalists specifically and the newsgathering process in general.

Remember the White House war on Fox News in 2009? By the fall of that year, it had collapsed from overreach; after attempting to block Fox from participating in pool coverage, the rest of the White House press corps revolted, forcing Anita Dunn and others into retreat. Apparently, the Obama administration found a way to wage that war by other means. The Washington Post reports that the Department of Justice spied on James Rosen, Fox’s Washington correspondent, in 2010: When the Justice Department began investigating possible leaks of classified information about North Korea in 2009, investigators did more than obtain...

Remember all the headlines during the election, wondering what happened to the Tea Party, the liberal crowing that it had gone silent? NPR, February 2012: "Strong in 2010, Where Is the Tea Party Now?" - "what's most striking about the movement this election has been its notable absence." Mother Jones, "The Tea Party is Dead." ." ABC: "What Happened to the Tea Party?" New York Times, June 2012: "The Movement Has Fizzled Out." Remember how odd it was hear conservative pundits saying, 'our voters would crawl over broken glass to vote against Obama', while pollsters correctly predicted that Republican turnout...

National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley (in tan jacket) leads a protest earlier this month. About 250 Federal workers massed in Federal Plaza in Manhattan May 7 to protest the sequester cuts. (The Chief) This explains things… President Obama met with anti-Tea Party IRS union chief Colleen Kelly in the White House the day before the agency targeted Tea Party. The Spectator reported: “For me, it’s about collaboration.” — National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley on the relationship between the anti-Tea Party IRS union and the Obama White House Is President Obama directly implicated in the IRS scandal?...

Dan Pfeiffer was so arrogant yesterday, he and other White House Staff Members need a dose of reality from "the Little People!" Does anyone have telephone numbers and eMail addresses for key White House Staffers? If so, please provide this information for our Free Republic Friends. Many Thanks. God bless You and God bless America!

As just heard live on WLS radio in Chicago in phone inverview. Illinois Dem. Congressman Danny Davis says he has no problem with a special prosecutor being named to investigate IRS-Gate.

“For me, it’s about collaboration.” — National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley on the relationship between the anti-Tea Party IRS union and the Obama White House Is President Obama directly implicated in the IRS scandal? Is the White House Visitors Log the trail to the smoking gun? The stunning questions are raised by the following set of new facts. March 31, 2010. According to the White House Visitors Log, provided here in searchable form by U.S. News and World Report, the president of the anti-Tea Party National Treasury Employees Union, Colleen Kelley, visited the White House at 12:30pm that...

The IRS scandal keeps getting closer and closer to the top of the White House food chain as Obama officials desperately try to spin their way out of mounting evidence and foul play. The Wall Street Journal is reporting President Obama's top attorney knew about the IRS targeting weeks ago before news broke, but of course, Obama still didn't know about it until he learned about it "from the news." The White House's chief lawyer learned weeks ago that an audit of the Internal Revenue Service likely would show that agency employees inappropriately targeted conservative groups, a senior White House...

Government Overreach: The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of tax-exempt organizations when the unit targeted Tea Party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for enforcing ObamaCare. As bad as the IRS scandal was, with the taxing body of government using its unequaled authority to intimidate and harass the president's political opposition to aid his re-election, it got worse with the news that the IRS official, Sarah Hall Ingram, who served as commissioner of the Tax-Exempt and Government Entities Division from 2009 to 2012, is now serving as director of the IRS' Affordable Care Act division. Ingram was so...

Don’t stand down. Stand up and let the IRS know we won’t roll over. Tuesday. At your local IRS office. Be there. Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft has details:PROTEST THE CORRUPTION – PROTEST THE CRIMINAL OBAMA IRS Thanks to Barack Obama the Tea Party is once again outraged and motivated. The Tea Party Patriots on behalf of Tea Party, Patriot groups, 9/12, liberty activists, and the American people, we are calling for anyone and everyone to protest the IRS’ complete abuse of power on Tuesday, May 21, 2013 at noon local time.

The Internal Revenue Service is facing a class action lawsuit alleging that more than 60 million personal medical records were improperly seized by agents from the embattled agency. According to a story by Courthousenews.com, an unnamed healthcare provider in California is suing the IRS and 15 unnamed agents, alleging that they improperly seized some 60 million medical records of 10 million Americans, including medical records of all California state judges on March 11, 2011.

UNREAL!… IRS Shake Down of ‘True the Vote’ Involved Visits From FBI, OSHA and ATF – Who Checked Gun Safe (Video) Catherine Engelbrecht of True The Vote joined Governor Mike Huckabee to discuss the harassment and abuse she received from the Obama IRS since she applied for tax exempt status. Her group does not advocate for particular parties or candidates but just for fair elections at all levels. The group obviously is a huge threat to Barack Obama and Democrats. Engelbrecht reminded Governor Huckabee that in the last 18 months voter fraud cases have been prosecuted in 36 states. Engelbrecht...

Republicans Are Ripping The White House's Dan Pfeiffer For Saying The Legality Of IRS Targeting Is 'Irrelevant' Brett LoGiurato | May 19, 2013 Republicans are ripping White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer this morning for referring to the legality of the IRS' inappropriate targeting of conservative groups as "irrelevant." But Pfeiffer said that to reinforce the White House's assertion that the IRS' behavior is inexcusable. "I can’t speak to the law here. The law is irrelevant," Pfeiffer said on ABC's "This Week,"

When the Justice Department began investigating possible leaks of classified information about North Korea in 2009, investigators did more than obtain telephone records of a working journalist suspected of receiving the secret material. They used security badge access records to track the reporter’s comings and goings from the State Department, according to a newly obtained court affidavit. They traced the timing of his calls with a State Department security adviser suspected of sharing the classified report. They obtained a search warrant for the reporter’s personal e-mails. The case of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, the government adviser, and James Rosen, the chief...

The late columnist William Safire once said that a good clue that someone in Washington was engaged in “an artful dodge,” i.e., a cover-up, was that they used the phrase “mistakes were made.” Safire defined it as a “passive-evasive way of acknowledging error while distancing the speaker from responsibility for it.” The phrase became infamous when both Richard Nixon and Ron Ziegler, his press secretary, deployed it to explain away Watergate without explaining who did what and when or whether any ill motive was involved. AdvertisementAstonishingly, the Internal Revenue Service resurrected the Nixonian expression within hours of its clumsy revelation...

The Benghazi terrorist attack has stormed back onto the front pages, and as the attention grows, so do calls from House Republicans who want their party leaders to name a special investigative committee to take control of the inquiry. More than 150 House Republicans have signed on to a resolution that would create a “select committee” to focus on inquiries by the public and Congress about the Sept. 11 attack in Libya that left four Americans dead. SPECIAL COVERAGE: Benghazi Attack Under Microscope Forty members of Congress in the past three weeks have joined the push for a single committee....

Daniele Perazzi, president of the Italian Perazzi Shotguns firm, was taken into custody yesterday by Adams County Deputies [see update, below] along with several prototype shotguns. The executive was picked up in the parking lot of the Denver Merchandise Mart, hosting the high-end Colorado Gun Collectors show this weekend, after a taxi driver, likely reacting to a suspicious activity reporting outreach program conducted by law enforcement, told authorities he thought he could be transporting an armed “foreign speaking” terror suspect. “He loaded prototype shotguns into the cab on the way to the Merchandise Mart,” gun rights activist and newly-elected National...

A union representing 12,000 U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officers will publicly oppose the Senate Gang of Eight immigration plan Monday, giving critics of the overhaul effort additional political ammunition as they work to defeat legislation working its way through the Senate Judiciary Committee. In a release announcing the group's opposition to the bill, National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council president Kenneth Palinkas writes that the bill would fail to address an "insurmountable bureaucracy" at the federal agency overseeing immigration documents and argues that USCIS personnel are currently "pressured to rubber stamp applications instead of conducting diligent case review and...

Catherine Engelbrecht’s tale has all the markings of a classic conspiracy theory: She says she thinks that because of her peaceful political activity, she and her family was targeted for scrutiny by hostile federal agencies. Yet as news emerges that the Internal Revenue Service wielded its power to obstruct conservative groups, Catherine’s story becomes credible — and chilling. It also raises questions about whether other federal agencies have used their executive powers to target those deemed political enemies. Before the Engelbrecht family’s three-year ordeal began, Catherine says, “I had no real expectation or preparation for the blood sport that American...

If there's one foundational lesson for conservatives of various stripes to glean from the recent revelations about the atrocities routinely committed by the IRS, it's that there are reasons the Founders considered property rights among the most sacred of all rights -- and rights that a limited government must protect. Several groups focused on "values voters" and "moral issues" have learned recently just how difficult it is to accomplish anything for their values when the IRS is using the awesome weight of a massive federal government to confiscate resources, perform harassment audits, and withhold non-profit status... --snip-- Of course, it...

The White House's chief lawyer learned weeks ago that an audit of the Internal Revenue Service likely would show that agency employees inappropriately targeted conservative groups, a senior White House official said Sunday. That disclosure has prompted a debate over whether the president should have been notified at that time. In the week of April 22, the Office of the White House Counsel and its head, Kathryn Ruemmler, were told by Treasury Department attorneys that an inspector general's report was nearing completion, the White House official said. In that conversation, Ms. Ruemmler learned that "a small number of line IRS...

Confusion about the IRS scandal is distracting from its importance, so that thinking conservatives should be prepared to debate the issue. Some basics matter. Conservatives may need to share a summary such as this article to help convince moderate friends. Callers to C-SPAN badly misunderstood these details when Jenny Beth Martin, Coordinator of Tea Party Patriots, appeared on C-SPAN television last week. I interviewed Keli Carender of Tea Party Patriots on the radio on May15, who helped clarify some of the pushback and distractions from liberals. First, don't let people forget: the IRS scandal is not about conservative accusations. The...

Yale University has been fined $165,000 for failing to report serious sex crimes on its prestigious campus. After a seven-year investigation into the Ivy League university’s violations, it was discovered that Yale had failed to report four sex attacks and compiled “incomplete and unreliable” crime reports, lulling students into a false sense of security. Yale reported only five sex offenses between 2000 and 2002, while Harvard reported 80 from that same period and Princeton reported 29. … The world-class university was also found to have ill-defined the boundaries of its campus, leaving crimes committed at the Yale-New Haven Hospital out,...