Free Republic

The Obama administration, anticipating that Congress might not pass comprehensive immigration reform this year, is considering ways it could act without congressional approval to achieve many of the objectives of the initiative, including giving permanent resident status, or green cards, to large numbers of people in the country illegally. The ideas were outlined in an unusually frank draft memo prepared for Alejandro N. Mayorkas, director of the federal agency that handles immigration benefits, U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS). The memo lists ways the government could grant permanent resident status to tens of thousands of people and delay the deportation...

Investigators have found concrete evidence on computers used by Pfc. Bradley Manning that link him with the leak of classified Afghanistan war reports, a U.S. defense official said. The disclosure came as Defense Secretary Robert Gates pledged Thursday to "aggressively investigate the leak" and find ways to prevent further breaches, and told reporters that he had invited the Federal Bureau of Investigation to assist the probe. Defense officials said the FBI was investigating whether civilians aided Pfc. Manning in providing the information to WikiLeaks, a Web-based group that this week released 76,000 secret reports from Afghanistan. Pfc. Manning already was...

In the winter of 1983, archival research expert David Dodge, and former Baltimore police investigator Tom Dunn, were searching for evidence of government corruption in public records stored in the Belfast Library on the coast of Maine. By chance, they discovered the library's oldest authentic copy of the Constitution of the United States (printed in 1825). Both men were stunned to see this document included a 13th Amendment that no longer appears on current copies of the Constitution. Moreover, after studying the Amendment's language and historical context, they realized the principle intent of this "missing" 13th Amendment was to prohibit...

US v. State of Arizona and Janice K. Brewer

Under a little-noticed provision of the recently passed financial-reform legislation, the Securities and Exchange Commission no longer has to comply with virtually all requests for information releases from the public, including those filed under the Freedom of Information Act. The law, signed last week by President Obama, exempts the SEC from disclosing records or information derived from "surveillance, risk assessments, or other regulatory and oversight activities." Given that the SEC is a regulatory body, the provision covers almost every action by the agency, lawyers say. Congress and federal agencies can request information, but the public cannot. That argument comes despite...

Among the individuals who were part of the controversial "JournoList" e-mail group were activists with ties to the White House and a socialist group closely linked for years to President Obama. Other members of JournoList were activists from a far-left think tank that has been partnered with ACORN and was founded with input from Obama. The group, Demos, may have been instrumental in securing the appointment of Obama's former "green jobs" adviser, Van Jones, who resigned after it was exposed he funded a communist organization. JournoList – a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists and like-minded professors and activists...

If freedom of religion means anything in the United States, it means that Mus lim-Americans have a right to congre gate and worship wherever they please -- including places those with vivid memories of 9/11 may find distasteful. But that doesn't mean the people behind a planned mosque blocks away from Ground Zero are acting like good neighbors -- or good citizens. Exhibit A: Their secrecy about who'll actually be funding the project. Granted, the groups leading the mosque-building effort seem just fine. The Cordoba Initiative, led by Kuwaiti-born Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, says it's devoted to "interfaith tolerance," while...

US authorities have known for weeks that they have suffered a haemorrhage of secret information on a scale which makes even the leaking of the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam war look limited by comparison. The Afghan war logs, from which the Guardian reports today, consist of 92,201 internal records of actions by the US military in Afghanistan between January 2004 and December 2009 – threat reports from intelligence agencies, plans and accounts of coalition operations, descriptions of enemy attacks and roadside bombs, records of meetings with local politicians, most of them classified secret. The Guardian's source for these is...

<p>THE US government secretly advised Scottish ministers it would be "far preferable" to free the Lockerbie bomber than jail him in Libya.</p> <p>Correspondence obtained by The Sunday Times reveals the Obama administration considered compassionate release more palatable than locking up Abdel Baset al-Megrahi in a Libyan prison.</p>

For a number of years traditional print media has been on life support, but after the revelations from Tucker Carlson’s The Daily Caller, it looks like someone finally pulled the plug. The expose on Journolist, a now defunct, listserv that included hundreds of liberal journalists, detailed: the Journolisters’ attempt, during the 2008 presidential campaign to kill and bury stories about Obama’s relationship with “Reverend” Jeremiah Wright; their push to deliberately smear innocent conservative journalists and politicos as “racists” and “bigots” their twisted passion to see Rush Limbaugh killed off and dead; their intolerant desire to have the government censor and...

New e-mail messages published by the Daily Caller Thursday show a coordinated effort by the JournoList's members to destroy Sarah Palin the moment she was named John McCain's running mate on August 29, 2008. Some even discussed how the former Alaska governor's decision to have a Down Syndrome baby rather than abort it could be used against her. As the attacks ensued, the Nation's Chris Hayes wrote, "Keep the ideas coming! Have to go on TV to talk about this in a few min and need all the help I can get." Witness America's so-called journalists conspiring to destroy a...

Having worked with Elena Kagan at the Clinton White House, Dick was inclined to see her as a political moderate, worthy of support as the best one could expect from the Obama White House. But no more. Thanks to the work of the Center for Security Policy Director Frank Gaffney and the writing of Andrew McCarthy of the National Review Institute, there has emerged a compelling reason to vote against Kagan’s confirmation as a Supreme Court justice: her support for Shariah law while she was dean of Harvard Law School. Islamists are seeking to spread Shariah law by inducing American...

(BALTIMORE, MD) NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous issued the following statement today after learning of the resignation of Shirley Sherrod of the United States Department of Agriculture: “Since our founding in 1909, the NAACP has been a multi-racial, multi-faith organization that-- while generally rooted in African American communities-- fights to end racial discrimination against all Americans. We concur with US Agriculture Secretary Vilsack in accepting the resignation of Shirley Sherrod for her remarks at a local NAACP Freedom Fund banquet. Racism is about the abuse of power. Sherrod had it in her position at USDA. According to her...

Since the initially strong language on religious freedom used in President Obama's Cairo speech, presidential references to religious freedom have become rare, often replaced, at most, with references to freedom of worship. A purposeful change in language could mean a much narrower view of the right to religious freedom. As Catholics, this is an area where we must remain vigilant. These small changes can be used to change our perception of rights and freedoms. The change in language was barely noticeable to the average citizen but political observers are raising red flags at the use of a new term "freedom...

From TorrentFreak: http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-authorities-shut-down-wordpress-host-with-73000-blogs-100716/ Quote: After the U.S. Government took action against several sites connected to movie streaming recently, nerves are jangling over the possibility that this is just the beginning of a wider crackdown. Now it appears that a free blogging platform has been taken down by its hosting provider on orders from the U.S. authorities on grounds of “a history of abuse”. More than 73,000 blogs are out of action as a result. End Quote Yesterday, an event took place here in the United States that got little comment – cue the crickets… WordPress host Blogetery and 73,000 WordPress...

Sworn affidavits from Hans A. von Spakovsky and Karl Bowers, who worked with J. Christian Adams in the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, offer broad confirmation of the whistleblower's accusations of bias in enforcing voting rights.

New federal regulations issued this week stipulate that the electronic health records--that all Americans are supposed to have by 2014 under the terms of the stimulus law that President Barack Obama signed last year--must record not only the traditional measures of height and weight, but also the Body Mass Index: a measure of obesity. The obesity-rating regulation states that every American's electronic health record must: “Calculate body mass index. Automatically calculate and display body mass index (BMI) based on a patient’s height and weight.” The law also requires that these electronic health records be available--with appropriate security measures--on a national...

A group of Christian students was ordered to stop praying outside the U.S. Supreme Court building on May 5 because a court police officer told them it was against the law. The students were part of a junior high school American History class at Wickenburg Christian Academy in Arizona. After taking pictures on the steps of the Supreme Court building, their teacher gathered them to a side location where they formed a circle and began to pray. According to Nate Kellum, senior counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, a police officer “abruptly” interrupted the prayer and ordered the group to...

Take a look at what the coming tax increases do to families of children with special needs…

Fourth of July by the numbersOver $600 million will be spent on fireworks, $111.1 million on charcoal by Natalie Doss Forbes updated 7/2/2010 9:37:56 AM Economic woes don't stop America's patriotic spirit. This year citizens will celebrate the Fourth of July in numbers as big as ever. In fact, they could spend upward of $3 billion on holiday weekend parties, food, entertainment and travel. According to the National Retail Federation's 2010 Independence Day Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey (conducted by BIGresearch, a consumer research firm based in Worthington, Ohio), 87.8 percent of all Americans will take part in some sort...