Free Republic

New emails and testimony from Department of Homeland Security FOIA officer Catherine Papoi reveal that a former Obama campaign staffer repeatedly asked Papoi and her team to redact portions of “politically sensitive” documents, as well as portions of documents that were already publicly available. Papoi, who came under fire at DHS for complaining that “sensitive” FOIA requests were being vetted by political employees, testified on March 3 that Willard “Clint” Carte, a DHS attorney with the title of “confidential assistant,” attempted to block a FOIA request for DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano’s calendar in which Napolitano’s secretary had referred to Secretary...

Michael Scheuer, a former counter-terrorism analyst for the CIA, scolded CNN's Christine Romans Thursday for letting her support for the current President show. Toward the end of a lengthy interview on "American Morning" about the situation in Libya, Romans took issue with her guest saying America is "nearly bankrupt" leading Scheuer to respond, "You're just carrying the water for Mr. Obama" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

(CNSNNews.com) - The former home congressional district of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama ranks dead last in the United States for “healthy behavior,” according to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index released this month. Out of 436 districts measured by the Well-Being Index—including the 435 U.S. Congressional Districts plus the District of Columbia—the 1st Congressional District of Illinois ranked 436th for the “healthy behavior” of its residents in 2010. That was down from the district’s ranking of 408th for “healthy behavior” in 2009, which was Mrs.Obama’s first year as first lady. Every one of the Gallup-Healthways top ten Congressional...

RUSH: BusinessInsider.com: "Former SEIU Official Reveals Secret Plan To Destroy JP Morgan, Crash The Stock Market, And Redistribute Wealth In America -- A former official of one of the country's most-powerful unions, SEIU, has a secret plan to 'destabilize' the country. The plan is designed to destroy JP Morgan, nuke the stock market, and weaken Wall Street's grip on power, thus creating the conditions necessary for a redistribution of wealth and a change in government. The former SEIU official, Stephen Lerner, spoke in a closed session at a Pace University forum last weekend." A website, "The Blaze procured what appears...

(CNSNews.com) –Jamie Gorelick, a former Clinton administration official who has reportedly made the Obama administration's to become considering the next director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), was paid more than $26 million in total compensation as a top executive at Fannie Mae--before taxpayers had to bail out the mortgage giant. Gorelick, who left the Clinton Justice Department in 1997 to work for Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines, was paid $26,466,834 in salary, bonuses, performance pay and stock options from 1998 to 2003, according to the Report of the Special Examination of Fannie Mae (2006), conducted by the Office...

202 225-4965 I just told her receptionist to let Speaker Pelosi she will be FIRED tomorrow and to get ready to turn in her gavel. "... But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it..." YOU"RE FIRED!

Readers who read my original Washington Examiner post about Shirley Sherrod know that she and husband Charles received $150,000 each for "pain and suffering” as part of "a thirteen million dollar settlement in the minority farmers law suit Pigford vs Vilsack." Based on history presented by Ron Wilkins yesterday at Counterpunch, it's appropriate to ask: "Whose pain and suffering?" It now seems that Mr. and Mrs. Sherrod inflicted quite a bit of pain and suffering on their own -- and on some of the very people Mr. Sherrod described as "our own"

NOWY TARG, Poland – With every step toward the gate, Jerzy Bielecki was certain he would be shot. The day was July 21, 1944. Bielecki was walking in broad daylight down a pathway at Auschwitz, wearing a stolen SS uniform with his Jewish sweetheart Cyla Cybulska by his side. His knees buckling with fear, he tried to keep a stern bearing on the long stretch of gravel to the sentry post. The German guard frowned at his forged pass and eyed the two for a period that seemed like an eternity — then uttered the miraculous words: "Ja, danke" —...

Washington - A former US State Department official has been sentenced to life in prison for spying, while his wife was ordered to spend nearly seven years behind bars for helping to pass highly classified information to Cuba, the Justice Department said Friday. Walter Kendall Myers, 73, and wife Gwendolyn, 71, pleaded guilty in November to espionage charges and acting as agents for the Cuban government. Myers had also admitted to passing top secret information in a conversation with an undercover FBI agent, the Justice Department said.

Yesterday Hassan Nemazee was sentenced to 12 years in prison for running a Ponzi scheme some proceeds of which were funneled into Democratic campaigns. The New York financier was no stranger to liberal Democratic politics, having served as national finance chairman for Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign and New York state finance chairman for John Kerry's 2004 presidential run. He also donated a generous $50,000 to President Obama's inaugural festivities. Yet in reporting the development, both the Washington Post and the New York Times downplayed the story.

A former Justice official who claims the administration backed off a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party for racial reasons is set to testify Tuesday before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The testimony from J. Christian Adams, who resigned from the Justice Department last month in protest of the administration's handling of the case, comes after he made a series of explosive allegations during an interview with Fox News last week. He said the administration abandoned an open-and-shut case of voter intimidation and that Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez gave false testimony before the commission in...

Rick Sanchez Tuesday invited on a former adviser to deceased Palestinian terrorist Yasser Arafat in order to tell viewers how Israel has become a threat to American troops. The CNNer devoted a good amount of his two-hour "Rick's List" to teeing up a number of guests and fellow so-called journalists to voice their anti-Israel sentiments.

Alleged terror ties are at the heart of a lawsuit the US Consulate in Jerusalem is fighting; it is being sued for NIS 250,000 by a former employee who the consulate discovered had ties with Hamas. The plaintiff is Azam Qiq, who worked at the diplomatic mission until 2006 as a mechanic. His father was Hassan Qiq, the former head of Hamas in Jerusalem, who died in 2006.

SANAA, YEMEN -- When he served in the Afghan mountains as Osama bin Laden's personal bodyguard, Nasser al-Bahri said, he was known as "The Killer." Today, Bahri is a business consultant in Yemen who favors Western-style pinstriped shirts, crisp slacks and black loafers. But his ideas are still radical: Ask him whether jihadists should kill Americans on U.S. soil and he replies without hesitation, "America is a legitimate target."

The Justice Department investigation centers on a 2006 decision to award oil shale leases in Colorado to a Royal Dutch Shell subsidiary. Months later, the oil giant hired Norton as a legal counsel. Reporting from Washington - The Justice Department is investigating whether former Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton illegally used her position to benefit Royal Dutch Shell PLC, the company that later hired her, according to officials in federal law enforcement and the Interior Departmen The criminal investigation centers on the Interior Department's 2006 decision to award three lucrative oil shale leases on federal land in Colorado to a...

Former president George W. Bush had a flair for insulting the people fighting to be his successor, former speechwriter Matt Latimer reveals in the October issue of GQ. The piece, an excerpt from Latimer's forthcoming book, "Speech Less: Tales of a White House Survivor," gives a candid look at the final days of the Bush presidency. In several passages, Bush comments on the candidates then vying for the White House: The president, like me, didn't seem to be in love with any of the available options. He always believed Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee. "Wait till her fat...

(CNSNews.com) - A terror suspect charged with the attempted murder of two U.S. soldiers -- before a judge ruled that his confession was coerced and inadmissible -- returned home to Afghanistan on Monday, the same day news broke of a policy change in interrogations. After many Democrats and some Republican lawmakers called the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation techniques such as playing loud music and waterboarding “torture,” President Barack Obama reassigned interrogation responsibilities from the CIA to the National Security Council – which is run out of the White House, the Washington Post first reported.

I think we should support these guys; Welcome them to the "tea party" coalition: they're the kind of friends we need (even though some, just like the PUMAs do not believe everything we do--we can work on that through friendships;)- debating the issues:).

(IsraelNN.com) Former Jordanian prime minister Abd Al-Raouf Al-Rawabdeh delivered a speech recently in which he called Israel “a cancer that must be eradicated.”

(IsraelNN.com) Elliot Abrams, who served under United States Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, took issue Thursday with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's claims that there were no understandings between the Bush administration and Israel about construction for natural growth in Judea and Samaria. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Abrams said, "Despite fervent denials by Obama administration officials, there were indeed agreements between Israel and the United States regarding the growth of Israeli settlements on the West Bank."