Free Republic

A federal judge in New York ruled last week that the Iranian regime is liable for damages in the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001. The ruling by George Benjamin Daniels, Judge of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, ordered Iran to pay almost $11 billion in compensation to families of victims killed on 9/11 and to insurance companies who covered those suffering damages in the attack. The Iranian government failed to defend itself in the lawsuit, and the ruling is a default judgment. According to court documents publicized by Asharq al-Awsat, a London-based Arabic-language newspaper,...

President Obama landed in Cuba on Sunday afternoon, hours after dozens of dissidents from the Ladies in White movement were detained during a post-Mass, pro-democracy march, in what has become a weekly ritual of protest and arrest over almost a year. “Obama, traveling to Cuba isn’t fun,” read a banner carried by the demonstrators. “No to human rights violations.” Any hopes that this week’s demonstration, on the eve of Obama’s arrival, would be tolerated were quickly put to rest, as police handcuffed and bussed away dozens of the protesting women, and a handful of men. Ladies in White was established...

Staffer from a large Northeastern state passed the entry codes for a conference call of five Republican chairmen from significant states this past Saturday. The topic on the table? Stopping Donald Trump. I had to listen in. These hard-boiled pols know the nomination will be decided not on the first ballot, but in a series of procedural votes by the entire convention to adopt the rules of the convention as recommended by the Rules Committee and the seating of the delegates as recommended by the Credentials Committee. Those key committees are made up by two members from each state. The...

PARIS — Cuban leader Fidel Castro asked the Soviet Union in 1962 to launch a nuclear attack on the United States if it invaded Cuba, according to letters published today by a French newspaper. The respected daily Le Monde said the letters were exchanged between Castro and Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev during the Cuban missile crisis. In an acrimonious reply, Khrushchev suggested that Castro was irresponsible, since such a war would have killed millions of people in both East and West and destroyed Cuba. Le Monde said Castro gave copies of three of his letters and two of Khrushchev's...

Five bodies hang from a pole suspended between two cranes, a public display which serves as a reminder to those who might contemplate a life of crime. They belonged to a gang of five robbers, all of whom were publicly beheaded before their corpses were hoisted high in the air, where they remained for days. The gruesome sight is one scene in a shocking documentary to be aired this week which sheds light on life in Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s bloodiest and most secretive countries. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3502079/Saudi-Arabia-s-kingdom-savagery-DOES-Britain-cosy-butchers.html#ixzz43V8fu0Xn Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Google in 2012 sought to help insurgents overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad, according to State Department emails receiving fresh scrutiny this week. Messages between former secretary of state Hillary Clinton's team and one of the company's executives detailed the plan for Google to get involved in the region. "Please keep close hold, but my team is planning to launch a tool ... that will publicly track and map the defections in Syria and which parts of the government they are coming from," Jared Cohen, the head of what was then the company's "Google Ideas" division, wrote in a July 2012...

Pennsylvania Turnpike officials say the suspect shot and killed by police after a robbery attempt that turned violent was a retired state trooper. The suspect has been identified as Trooper Clarence Briggs of Newville, Pennsylvania. It happened just before 7 a.m. Sunday at the Fort Littleton Interchange in Fulton County in South Central Pennsylvania. According to police, Briggs tied up two people, one of whom has been identified as 55-year-old Danny Crouse, inside a building next to the toll booths.

Yesterday Far left open border activists SHUT DOWN THE HIGHWAY leading to the Trump rally in Fountain Hills, Arizona for two hours. The protesters parked their trucks across the highway to block traffic. Only three protesters were arrested. Where were he paddy wagons? The lead protester who chained her neck to a pickup was Jacinta Gonzales from New Orleans. Jacinta shut down traffic for two hours in Arizona. Jacinta Gonzalez is a trained community organizer and Soros Fellow. Jacinta is from Mexico. It's not clear if she is an American citizen. Jacinta was one of three organizers who shut down...

Investigators found crates’ worth of disposable cellphones, used and discarded after being meticulously scoured of email data. All around Paris, they found traces of consistent and improved bomb-making materials. And they began sketching in the details of a multilayered terrorist attack that evaded detection or prevention until much too late. In the immediate aftermath of the Paris terror attacks on November 13th, French investigators came face to face with the reality that they had missed the signs that the Islamic State was able to mount large and sophisticated international terrorist strikes. Now, the arrest on Friday of Salah Abdeslam, the...

“I want to speak to you about something that may be controversial. And it’s not something that I have said when I have been out for Ted [Cruz] and now Mike [Lee]. But it’s something that this crowd needs to hear – that Utah needs to hear. The body of the priesthood is known to stand up when the Constitution hangs by a thread,” Beck said. ... “I joined many times. What held me through was the prophesy that the Constitution will hang by a thread, and this People would remember what our Founders did. It is our responsibility to...

If you still own shares in solar energy it’s probably a sign that you’ve been in the sun too long: the sector is tanking – and deservedly so – as reality dawns that this is a Potemkin industry, an Enron of a con-trick, whose survival depends not on the energy it generates but on the subsidies it squeezes from the taxpayer. Consider Exhibit A: the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in the California desert. This $2.2 billion project, heavily backed with federal grants by the Obama administration, is absolutely brilliant at killing birds. According to some estimates it accounts for...

The farcical American welfare-state has a new posterchild. Meet Florida-resident Nicholas Jackson, who tried to purchase a brand new $60,000 BMW X-6 SUV with his Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) card ... That's not what Food Stamps are for!! But, as New York Daily News' Sasha Goldstein explains, after failing to use his us-taxpayer-funded credit card to buy the high-end German luxury car, he decided to steal it...but was caught when he ran out of gas (according to police). Nicholas Jackson, 36, showed up to a Pompano Beach dealership with little in the way of currency and was sent away, the...

On September 17, 2011, the Occupy Wall Street movement exploded onto the scene. Peaceful protestors set up tents and sleeping bags in New York City's Zuccotti Park. The movement's slogan was "We are the 99 percent." Protestors railed against big banks, the growing foreclosure scandal, and political corruption. Five years later, the Occupy movement finally has the leader it never really had: Bernie Sanders. In the years since the movement was squelched by a chillingly multi-pronged alliance between various U.S. government agencies and private enterprise, resentment toward those who retain a chokehold on power and money has simmered just below...

Brandon Tatum, an officer in the Tucson Police Department, shared a video Saturday night giving his perspective on Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Tucson, Arizona — and the disruptive protesters who hurled obscenities at the Republican candidate. Tatum says that as a black man, he did not feel unsafe around Trump’s supporters but was ready to fight protesters in self-defense. He calls them the most hateful, evil people he has ever seen. The demonstrators, who he recalls chanting the phrase “Black lives matter,” used profane language and gestures, leading a mother to cover her child’s ears. One protester, he recounts,...

The gunman accused of shooting a bystander Friday told deputies he offered the victim a cup of water and $400, but did not call 911 or try and stop the bleeding. Jakell Ward, 21, was later arrested and now faces two counts of attempted murder. The man Ward allegedly shot, Brian Mortensen, was installing a fence in Ward's complex, Magnolia Court Condominiums, Orange County deputies wrote in a report. Mortensen's lung collapsed, and a bullet ended up lodged near his heart, records show. He was taken to Florida Hospital in what deputies called "grave condition" on Friday. The incident unfolded...

Smartmatic Group, an electronic voting firm whose worldwide headquarters is located in the United Kingdom, will be running the online balloting process in the Utah Republican Open Caucuses on Tuesday. The chairman of Smartmatic’s board, Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, currently serves on the board of George Soros’s Open Society Foundation and has close ties to the billionaire. The Wall Street Journal dubbed the Republican party’s online adventure on Tuesday as “one of the biggest online votes conducted so far in the U.S.” and the “largest experiment with online presidential voting since 2004, when Michigan allowed Democrats to vote in a party caucus via...

A “power grab” by the Environmental Protection Agency threatens to crash America’s amateur car-racing industry without putting so much as a dent in climate change, warns the chairman of the House Space, Science and Technology Committee. The EPA’s move to regulate emissions on non-road racing vehicles contradicted agency administrator Gina McCarthy’s earlier testimony that the EPA did not have authority over non-road race cars and motorcycles. EPA officials said they are “clarifying” emissions law, yet the Clean Air Act has long exempted non-road vehicles used in competition. The agency has not made a similar move against NASCAR or other professional...

Cruz also basked in the praise of two big-name Mormons: former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and conservative talk show host Glenn Beck. […] Beck, a Mormon and conservative radio talk show host, said he always vows to be the worst enemy of politicians who do not keep promises. “I don’t have any friends in Washington except these two,” he said about Cruz and Lee. He added they are the first politicians he has even endorsed. Beck said that he, like many Mormons, believe in a prophecy that the Constitution will hang by a thread in the last days....

SHOCK FLASHBACK: In 2006, Obama wrote that Illegal Immigration HURTS ‘Blue-Collar Americans,’ and STRAINS Welfare... Listen/read for yourself...https://www.facebook.com/numbersusa/videos/1079683218755039/      

The four Mexicans apparently wanted to be pioneers of sorts. But they were breaking the law in a big way, Nigerian officials say, to achieve that distinction. Nigerian drug agents say they have arrested four Mexicans who were helping to build a methamphetamine "super lab." It is believed to have had the potential to rake in billions of dollars, the nation's National Drug Law Enforcement Agency said Monday. Spokesman Mitchell Ofoyeju said it was the first industrial-scale production of crystal meth found in West Africa, and possibly on the continent. "The Nigerians invited the Mexicans in to leverage their expertise...