Free Republic

LONDON – Activists and relatives of those killed in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing raised new questions Sunday about the medical advice that led to the release on compassionate grounds of the only man ever convicted for the deaths. Doctors claimed Abdel Baset al-Megrahi had only three months to live when he was freed from a Scottish jail last August and allowed to return home to Libya. But one year later, Al-Megrahi, who is being treated for prostate cancer, is still alive.

President Barack Obama on Saturday sought to defuse the controversy over his remarks on plans to build a mosque near Ground Zero, insisting that he wasn’t endorsing the specific project but making a general plea for religious tolerance toward all. "In this country we treat everybody equally and in accordance with the law, regardless of race, regardless of religion,” Obama told reporters Saturday when asked about his remarks at a White House dinner marking the start of Ramadan. “I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there,” Obama...

Senate Republicans pressed Attorney General Eric Holder on Friday afternoon over political appointees who'd previously defended suspects in terrorism cases. All seven members of the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote Holder, asking for more details about political appointees within the Department of Justice, who, Republicans say, may have conflicts of interest in the government's prosecution in terrorism cases. The GOP senators wrote Holder to complain that a response to an original request for information on those Justice Department personnel was "at best nonresponsive and, at worst, intentionally evasive." "It appears the Department has chosen to go another direction and refuse to...

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa is rightly unhappy that the Justice Department won't divulge the names of the nine Justice Department lawyers who directly represented suspected-terrorist detainees, or their cases. Grassley identified two himself, Neal Katyal (an aside: Katyal is a very impressive guy and very charming and level-headed) and Jennifer Daskal. Well, we've identified two more of them: Deputy AG counsel Eric Columbus and Office of Legal Counsel lawyer Jonathan Cedarbaum. (With reference to: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/25/identifying-the-gitmo-nine/)

A radical Muslim group that was an unindicted co-conspirator in a scheme to raise money for Hamas has an extensive relationship with the Obama administration, WND has learned. Last week, President Obama's top adviser on counter-terrorism, John Brennan, came under fire for controversial remarks he made in a speech to Muslim law students at New York University. The event was sponsored by the Islamic Society of North America, or ISNA. ISNA is known for its enforcement of Saudi-style Islam in mosques throughout the U.S. It was named by the Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator in its case against the...