Free Republic

Former Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) on Wednesday joined Husch Blackwell Strategies, a Washington, D.C., lobbying firm with close ties to the veteran GOP senator. Blunt will lead a newly launched strategic advisory practice at the firm, which is run by Gregg Hartley, Blunt’s former chief of staff in the House, and Andy Blunt, his son. Blunt will also reunite with Stacy McBride, his chief of staff in the Senate who joined the firm last month. Blunt recently retired from Congress after 26 years in office. He held several prominent roles, chairing the Senate Rules Committee and Senate Republican Policy Committee...

Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Hossein Salami said Tuesday that Iran is seeking revenge against the U.S. that “will be hard, firm, regrettable, decisive and complete.” The major general was speaking at the funeral of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, semi-official domestic news agency IRNA reports.

The founder and CEO of a Swiss space technology firm, who previously received threats against him, is in hospital with serious injuries after a vicious attack. Pascal Jaussi, 40, who heads Swiss Space Systems (S3), was beaten up and set on fire by two unknown perpetrators on August 26th in a forest in the canton of Fribourg, reported the Tribune de Genève on Monday. News of the attack was not released until his condition improved, said the paper. The CEO’s life is now out of danger but he remains in a serious condition in hospital, it said. The entrepreneur was...

Reuters reports that the NSA paid massive computer security firm RSA $10 million to promote a flawed encryption system so that the surveillance organization could wiggle its way around security. In other words, the NSA bribed the firm to leave the back door to computers all over the world open. Thanks to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, we already knew the NSA played a central role in promoting a flawed formula for generating random numbers, which if used in encryption, essentially gives the spies easy access to computing systems. A piece of RSA software, bSafe, became the most significant vector...

Canadian provincial health officials last year fired the parent company of CGI Federal, the prime contractor for the problem-plagued Obamacare health exchange websites, the Washington Examiner has learned. CGI Federal’s parent company, Montreal-based CGI Group, was officially terminated in September 2012 by an Ontario government health agency after the firm missed three years of deadlines and failed to deliver the province’s flagship online medical registry. The online registry was supposed to be up and running by June 2011. Officials at the U.S. government's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services awarded six technology contracts worth $87 million to CGI Federal for...

A Canadian tech firm that has provided service to that country's single-payer health care system is behind the glitch-ridden United States national health care exchange site healthcare.gov. CGI Federal is a subsidiary of Montreal-based CGI Group. With offices in Fairfax, Va., the subsidiary has been a darling of the Obama administration, which since 2009 has bestowed it with $1.4 billion in federal contracts, according to USAspending.gov. The "CGI" in the parent company's name stands for "Conseillers en Gestion et Informatique" in French, which roughly translates to "Information Systems and Management Consultants." However, the firm offers another translation: "Consultants to Government...

Rampant fraud on a New York City contract last year didn’t stop a major nonprofit from landing a slew of federal contracts to sign people up for ObamaCare. Seedco, a New York-based community-development organization, was sued by the federal government for faking at least 1,400 of 6,500 job placements under a $22.2 million federally funded contract with the city. Eighteen months later, the feds and Seedco are teaming up again, this time to help medical-insurance seekers maneuver through the maze that is the Affordable Health Care Act. When ObamaCare’s open-enrollment period starts Tuesday, among the frontline agencies will be Seedco,...

Manufacturer in Nuremberg sends anti-Semitic mail to owner of Tel Aviv toy store after business deal turns sour. Eti Doron wanted to buy toys from a company in Germany for her store in Tel Aviv, but when the deal fell through she started receiving anti-Semitic letters. Doron provided The Jerusalem Post with emails in which Walter Adler, who identifies as the founder of Hoff-Interieur, a manufacturer based in Nuremberg, calls Jews a disease and praises German poet Günther Grass for saying Israel is a danger to world peace. “We see that you have decided to be a real Jew, not...

The dramatic rescue of an American aid worker and her Danish colleague in Somalia by Navy commandos was a terrific encore to the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan nine months ago. However, all the White House-driven publicity for both events has helped turn the once-secret SEAL Team 6 into a household term, with likely negative consequences. Although SEAL Team 6 and its official successor, the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, have been around since the 1980s, their missions always were kept secret to shield their members’ identities and protect operational security. Every president since the team’s founding has...

Nevadans are probably wondering why their own Attorney General, Catherine Cortez Masto is prosecuting corrupt lenders for the fraudulent act of robo-signing, but U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is not. In fact, millions of Americans, particularly those who are being foreclosed upon are probably wondering the same thing since the Obama administration decided in October to forego criminal charges against Bank of America, JPMorgan, Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Ally Financial in exchange for a $25 billion civil settlement. But new information reported by Reuters today implies that Holder and other top Justice Department officials may be restraining themselves because...

RUSH: Now, on a related item, I hope Anthony Weiner never resigns. I hope Weiner is never forced to resign. I hope Pelosi does not make a full pitched effort here at the Ethics Committee. I'm hoping that that's just for public consumption. I don't want this guy to go away. This guy, Anthony Weiner, Tony Weiner -- look at what they're asking us to believe. Here you have the classic dictionary definition of a nerd, the classic dictionary definition of a pencil-necked geek, and they are telling us that this guy would walk into a bar and women would...

The State Department in 2009 sought the Chinese government's help in blocking a sale to Iran of 25 tons of specialty steel for Tehran's defense industry to be used in building nuclear-related centrifuges, according to a classified department cable. "Post is instructed to inform appropriate-level Chinese officials of this transaction, and request that they investigate the entity and individuals involved," according to the cable, which is labeled "secret." It noted that the Chinese were to be told that the company faces sanctions for the proposed sale under U.S. law. (Snip) An earlier State Department cable revealed that China helped North

A firm handshake is usually seen as a good thing in business and even in politics. Not so much in South Florida. A candidate for the Broward County School Board wants the cops to lock up her opponent after what she claims was akin to battery after a recent debate. Jaemi Levine filed a complaint with the Broward Sheriff's Office claiming David Thomas squeezed her hand so hard during a post-debate handshake Tuesday that it now hurts. Instead of getting a grip on education issues, Thomas decided to get a grip on his opponent for the Disctrict 4 seat. Levine...

Buffy Wicks, remember, was the Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement who was implicated (along with Yosi Sergant) in orchestrating a propaganda campaign for health care reform with the National Endowment for the Arts. Sergant ended up resigning over this incident, but I believe “Buffy the Integrity Slayer” was more to blame. Anyway, I’m not sure how this news slipped through the cracks but according to this press release posted by Politico on April 4, Buffy has joined David Axelrod’s old firm, AKPD Message and Media: AKPD Message and Media today announced that political strategist Buffy...

We must confront our enemies, using whatever force is necessary. We cannot try to “shoot in the shoulder” people who are trying to blow us up, knock down our buildings and cut our throats. We cannot temporize with fanatics who are building nuclear weapons. We cannot be both “firm and flexible.” We cannot set a date to end a “war of necessity.” We cannot ignore what George Orwell taught us: “The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.”

(IsraelNN.com) Muslim terrorists' newest nightmare? Steadicopter, an Israeli company, has developed an unmanned helicopter using patented technology that enables the chopper to stay stable while airborne. The new technology was on display at ISDEF 3 – the third annual Israel defense show, currently being held at Tel Aviv's fairgrounds. The developers said that the unmanned helicopter can be used wherever manned helicopters are currently used, for a smaller price and with no danger to human life, and also in place of unmanned fixed wing aircraft.

The Obama adminstration has imposed financial sanctions on a company accused of involvement in North Korea's missile proliferation network.

As he prepared to take a job in the White House at the end of last year, David Axelrod sold the political consulting firm that helped elect President Obama for $2 million to a group of consultants who helped steer Obama’s campaign. According to a disclosure form released Friday evening by the White House, the firm, AKP&D Message & Media, paid him $897,000 last year, when it had basically turned itself into an arm of the Obama campaign, which paid the company $2.5 million.

Campaign Against Obama Health Plan Run By Notorious Conservative PR FirmBy Elana Schor - March 3, 2009, 5:55PM A new group called Conservatives for Patients Rights (CPR) is about to launch the opening salvo in the fight to sink President Obama's health care plan. CPR is running TV, radio, and web ads that attempt to stoke irrational fears of "a central national board" in charge of medical decision-making, asking Americans to envision a world where "bureaucrats decide the treatments you receive, the drugs you take, even the doctors you see." Of course, that vision has nothing to do with the...

500-year-old shipwreck found by diamond firm Last Updated: 1:47AM BST 01/05/2008 A shipwreck, believed to be 500 years old, containing a treasure trove of coins and ivory has been discovered off the southern African coast. The site yielded a wealth of objects including thousands of Spanish and Portuguese gold coins A Namibian diamond company, Namdeb, said on Wednesday that it found the wreck during mining operations in the Atlantic. "The site yielded a wealth of objects including six bronze cannon, several tons of copper, more than 50 elephant tusks, pewter tableware, navigational instruments, weapons and thousands of Spanish and Portuguese...