Free Republic

Putin at Fateful Crossroads on Ukraine, Says Illarionov Editor July 5, 2014 Print FriendlyAndrei Illarionov, an economist and former advisor to the Putin administration, posted this blog at Ekho Moskvy 07:49 on 5 July, possibly before the news of the fleeing of the Slavyansk separatists and Col. Strelkov’s demobilization order had reached him (see our Ukrainian Liveblog), although this news has not been confirmed. Translation by The Interpreter. Operation “Strategic Blackmail” In the last 48 hours, the Russian authorities have implemented a special operation unprecedented in scale and resources used to blackmail Western leaders, the Ukrainian leadership, and Russian society...

Ok, this is just the germination of the plan. We have independent units from the Bolinas Border Patrol and the Central Valley Citizens militia joining forces with independent citizens militia units of Texas to defend our southern border in Texas, to protest Obama's lawless open borders policies and to rally support for Governor Perry to officially call out Guard units and Texas militia units at his disposal to defend the border!! Lawsuits will not cut it. The invasion is happening now. Action must be taken NOW!! FReepers, Patriots, Militia members: Prepare to answer the call!!

A planeload of undocumented migrants arrived at the San Ysidro Border Patrol Station Friday night at about 8:30 p.m. after being bussed from Lindbergh Field. This is the second wave of immigrants in the past couple of days carrying the mostly women and children here from Texas... All day long, protestors were waiting in Murrieta, misled to believe the migrants would arrive there today. When the busses arrived there this week, they were turned away by the portestors who did not want the migrants housed or processed in their community.....

The chaos unfolding at the border demonstrates the catastrophic, real-world consequences of the president’s lawless conduct. For the last five years, with average household incomes falling and Americans being pushed out of the workforce, the president has been engaged in a sustained campaign to strip away Americans’ immigration protections. He has accomplished his aims: Interior removals have been cut by more than 40 percent. President Obama’s own former ICE director reported to the Los Angeles Times that “if you are a run-of-the-mill immigrant here illegally, your odds of getting deported are close to zero.”

An employee of Germany's intelligence agency has been arrested on suspicion of spying for the US, reports say. The man is said to have been trying to gather details about a German parliamentary committee that is investigating claims of US espionage. German media say the man arrested this week is a 31-year-old employee of the federal intelligence agency, known as the BND. The German federal prosecutor's office confirmed the man's arrest, but gave no other details. A spokesman for Ms Merkel said she had been informed of the arrest, as had the members of the nine-strong parliamentary committee investigating the...

Richard Mellon Scaife, the billionaire publisher and banking heir who financed conservative causes that included attempts to discredit Bill Clinton while he was president, has died. He was 82. Scaife's death on Friday followed his disclosure less than two months ago that he had terminal cancer, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, one of his newspapers. He was heir to the banking, oil and aluminum fortunes of the Mellon family and used his estimated $1.4 billion wealth to underwrite conservative crusades and groups that included the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute.

Supreme Court Sides With Christian College In Birth Control Case The three female justices say their colleagues are reversing themselves from this week’s Hobby Lobby ruling. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP) BY ROBERT BARNES July 3 The three female justices of the Supreme Court sharply rebuked their colleagues Thursday for siding with a Christian college in the latest battle over providing women with contraceptive coverage under the Affordable Care Act, saying the court was retreating from assurances offered only days ago. In a short, unsigned opinion, the court said that Wheaton College in Illinois, at least temporarily, does not have to comply...

(CNN) -- The national controversy over a surge of Central American immigrants illegally crossing the U.S. border established a new battleground this week in a small Southern California town, where angry crowds stopped detained migrants from entering their community. The sentiment carried over to a raucous Wednesday night meeting at a Murrieta high school auditorium. Border Patrol and immigration officials got an earful. "This is an invasion," attendee Heidi Klute said before a full house. :snip: Local politicians appear to be in lockstep with their constituents. "It's a nationwide problem, and little ol' Murrieta has taken the lead," said Mayor...

The number of Americans 16 and older who did not participate in the labor force climbed to a record high of 92,120,000 in June, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This means that there were 92,120,000 Americans 16 and older who not only did not have a job, but did not actively seek one in the last four weeks. That is up 111,000 from the 92,009,000 Americans who were not participating in the labor force in April. …

A federal judge said this week that the Obama administration is likely violating the law by telling immigration agents and officers not to arrest illegal immigrants they deem low priority, in a case that could upend President Obama’s enforcement policy. For the last several years the administration has said it will no longer arrest most illegal immigrants, arguing it wants to focus only on those with serious criminal records or gang ties. The Homeland Security department said it was using “prosecutorial discretion.” Immigration agents and officers sued, saying federal law requires them to make the arrests, but the Obama administration...

The mass migration of illegal immigrants into the United States is like a “hurricane that won’t stop,” according to sources inside an organization contracted to run refugee camps for the Department of Health and Human Services. “It’s a tsunami of people and I don’t know what we can do to make it stop,” the source inside BCFS, previously known as Baptist Child & Family Services told me. BCFS is responsible for refugee camps at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, and Fort Sill in Oklahoma. My BCFS source said they’ve been told by the federal government to keep...

Republican Texas Governor Rick Perry warned members of Congress Thursday that transnational gangsters and terrorists are looking to exploit the border crisis, which he said endangers the nation's security. At a House Homeland Security Field Hearing at South Texas College in McAllen, Texas, Perry said gangsters and terrorists can easily take advantage of the crisis at the border that has "strained the Border Patrol," which Perry said already has "insufficient" resources. He said because the Border Patrol now has to focus on the overflow of illegal immigrant children instead of on their "primary task," the border is "less secure than...

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel have been directed to no longer refer to illegal immigrant children crossing the border alone as “UACs” (unaccompanied alien children). Instead these individuals are to be referred to as “unaccompanied children” in official correspondence, according to an internal ICE email obtained by the Center for Immigration Studies and shared with Breitbart News.

HOUSTON, Texas--On Thursday Texas Governor Rick Perry spoke at a House Homeland Security Committee field hearing near the Texas-Mexico border, where lawmakers discussed the thousands of illegal immigrants entering the country each day. Perry wasted no time stressing that the migrants--many of whom are minors--must be sent back to their home countries as soon as possible. "Nobody is doing any of these children the slightest favor by delaying a rapid return to their countries of origin, which in many cases is not Mexico," the governor said. "Allowing them to remain here will only encourage the next group of individuals to...

On Wednesday’s “The O’Reilly Factor,” conservative talker Laura Ingraham made a bold call on how to confront problem of immigration in the United States, in particular regarding the flow of illegal aliens through the U.S. southern border.

The Republican who lost a primary runoff election to Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran is taking the first step to challenge the outcome. Chris McDaniel's campaign said it believes it has found about 4,900 of examples of improper voting in the June 24 runoff. Most of them were people marked as voting in the June 3 Democratic primary and the June 24, the campaign said. McDaniel spokesman Noel Fritsch said the campaign served papers Thursday to Cochran's son, Clayton, giving notice of the intent to challenge based on allegations of improper crossover voting.

This year’s most hotly contested Republican primary elections entered a new round of controversy Thursday morning, when the Tea Party challenger attempting to unseat incumbent Senator Thad Cochran officially initiated a challenge to the results of a runoff last week.

Hiring over the past five months has been the strongest since the late 1990s tech boom as the economy added 288,000 jobs in June and the unemployment rate fell to 6.1 percent from 6.3 percent. The Labor Department says those gains follow additions of 217,000 jobs in May and 304,000 in April, figures that were both revised upward.

JACKSON, Miss. — The question seemed to tug at Senator Thad Cochran throughout his bumpy re-election campaign in Mississippi: Why, after a long, distinguished career — 42 years in Congress, including six terms in the Senate — was he seeking a seventh term? By all accounts, Mr. Cochran had needed to be talked into running. He told one national publication that he had planned to retire, and another that the first thing he wanted to do after Election Day was take a nap. And while the snowy-haired, 76-year-old Republican tried to hush whispers that he was not quite as sharp...

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has asked a pro-Thad Cochran Super PAC, called Mississippi Conservatives, to provide additional information about what the newspaper Roll Call said “appears to be campaign finance violations.” At issue are last-minute expenditures made by the PAC in the days before the initial June 3 primary. The FEC “Request for Additional Information” says the PAC does not appear to have disclosed some of its spending in a timely manner. The FEC notes in the letter sent to treasurer Brian Perry that failure to “adequately respond” by Aug. 1 “could result in an audit or enforcement action.”...