Free Republic

House Democrats on Wednesday introduced a measure in the 2022 defense budget to eliminate the Space Force. Rep. Jared Huffman (D., Calif.) led a resolution, cosigned by fellow Democratic representatives Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), Maxine Waters (Calif.), Mark Pocan (Wis.), and Jésus García (Calif.), to "abolish" America's newest military branch. The measure received support from the Koch-funded National Taxpayers Union and radical anti-war groups such as Peace Action and Demand Progress. The push to defund the Space Force comes as China increasingly threatens the United States. Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall said Monday that China is developing means to...

Most police departments—including Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police—are required to release an officer’s name within days of a fatal shooting. Not the U.S. Capitol Police, which is controlled by Congress and answers only to Congress. It can keep the public in the dark about the identity and investigation of an officer involved in a shooting indefinitely. Which is what happened with the Jan. 6 shooting of Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed protester in the U.S. Capitol riot who was fatally wounded by a plainclothes police lieutenant as she attempted to breach a set of doors inside the building. For the past six...

WASHINGTON -- President-elect Joe Biden is facing escalating pressure from competing factions within his own party as he finalizes his choice for secretary of defense. Black leaders have encouraged the incoming president to select an African American to diversify what has so far been a largely white prospective Cabinet, while others are pushing him to appoint a woman to lead the Department of Defense...At the same time, a growing collection of progressive groups is opposing the leading female contender, Michèle Flournoy... A coalition of at least seven progressive groups warned Biden to avoid Flournoy in an open letter to Biden......

WASHINGTON — It was one of the few issues on which President Barack Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. disagreed — how far to go in limiting the influence of lobbyists in government. The vice president privately complained that his boss’s effort to slam shut the revolving door between K Street and the administration would deprive it of experienced talent, and he bristled when Mr. Obama’s aides tried to block him from hiring a well-connected Washington operator who had lobbied for pharmaceutical and insurance companies, credit agencies and others. Eight years later, that same confidant, Steve Ricchetti, is...

When hearings for attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions start next month, prepare for a trip back in time to 1986. Three decades ago, his nomination for a seat on the federal bench was wrecked because Jeff Sessions fought voter fraud as a United States attorney. The same group of far-left activists are again opposing Jeff Sessions because Jeff Sessions will fight voter fraud as attorney general. The activists opposing Sessions also oppose any effort to minimize criminal behavior in American elections. Never mind that there are over four million invalid voter registrations . Never mind that we have a...

Net neutrality advocates are taking to the skies over Austin, Texas, this weekend to hit Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) for his opposition to net neutrality.A plane dragging a 1,500-square-foot banner reading “Don’t be an enemy of the Internet, Sen. Ted Cruz,” will fly above the Texas capital on Friday and Saturday afternoons, while the South by Southwest festival goes on down below.Cruz has been one of Congress’s most vocal critics of federal net neutrality regulations, which attempt to ensure that Internet service providers such as Comcast and Time Warner Cable treat all online traffic equally.Last year, he called it “ObamaCare...

Computer activist Aaron H. Swartz committed suicide in New York City yesterday. The news was first reported by the MIT newspaper The Tech, citing both his uncle and his attorney. Swartz was 26.

BOSTON (AP) — A Harvard University fellow who was studying ethics was charged with hacking into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's computer network to steal nearly 5 million academic articles. Aaron Swartz, 24, of Cambridge, was accused of stealing the documents from JSTOR, a popular research subscription service that offers digitized copies of more than 1,000 academic journals and documents, some dating back to the 17th century. In an indictment released Tuesday, prosecutors say Swartz stole 4.8 million articles between September 2010 and January after breaking into a computer wiring closet on MIT's campus. Swartz, then a student at the...