Free Republic

DURHAM – A historian who’s written about the Duke lacrosse case must answer questions from Duke University lawyers defending the school from lawsuits filed by two groups of former lacrosse players, a federal court in Maine says. U.S. Magistrate Judge John Rich III said Brooklyn College professor K.C. Johnson has to give Duke’s legal team a deposition and turn over documents about his dealings with the players. Johnson invoked a form of journalist’s confidentiality privilege as he fought Duke’s subpoena. Rich acknowledged that such claims can be valid, depending on how the interests in each case balance out. In this...

A Florida appeals court on Wednesday granted George Zimmerman's request for a new judge. Zimmerman, the former neighborhood watch volunteer charged in the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, had said the judge presiding over his case has made disparaging remarks about him. The Fifth District Court of Appeal wrote in a decision that Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester Jr. should "enter an order of disqualification which requests the chief circuit judge to appoint a successor judge."

THE ARTICLE COMMENTS: Here is the real problem. My own investigation reveals the following: 1 - one night he was drunk and partying with young women; he drove off a bridge, ran away like a coward, did not get help for 8 hours, and let the young woman die in an air pocket in 6 feet of water 2 - at a conference, he brutally bit and raped a nursing home operator and told her to put ice on it 3 - in his office, he assaulted a woman pleading for a job whose husband had just died 4...

My name is Mike Adams. I’m honored to have been elected mayor of Salem, Massachusetts at this seminal point in history as we struggle to eradicate intolerance and prejudice towards gays, bisexuals, lesbians, and transgendered persons. Members of the GBLT community (hereafter: Giblets) are in need of our support. But they cannot go it alone. They need the support of the government as well. I have been inspired by the recent efforts of the Mayor of Boston who has the courage to say that intolerance will not be tolerated in Massachusetts. He is a prescient man. He knows that people...

Special prosecutor Angela Corey just released more than 120 recorded phone calls that murder suspect George Zimmerman made from the Seminole County Jail... Also released is the statement of "Witness 9," a woman who says Zimmerman is prejudiced against blacks and that he molested her when she was a child.

During last week’s House Homeland Security Committee hearing on “The Radicalization of Muslim-Americans,” Congressman Al Green (D-TX) took issue [1] with the hearing’s focus on Islam and Muslims, asking the witnesses testifying before the Committee: “If you agree that radicalization exists within all religions to some extent, would you kindly extend a hand into the air.” Noting triumphantly that “all the hands are raised,” Green then asked: “Why not have a hearing on the radicalization of Christians?”The immediate answer is obvious. On the one hand we have recent jihad plotters in the U.S., including Naser Abdo, the would-be second Fort...

Florida special prosecutor Angela Corey plans to announce as early as Wednesday afternoon that she is charging neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in the shooting of Trayvon Martin, according to a law enforcement official close to the investigation.

IRS Stepping Up Tea Party Witch Hunt? The IRS may be stepping up its targeting of the Tea Party and other conservative groups. More than 20 Tea Party groups have engaged the American Center for Law and Justice to defend them after the IRS targeted at least 80 groups nationwide with intrusive questionnaires that Tea Party leaders feel violate their First Amendment rights. The questionnaires were sent out nominally to gather information needed for a decision on the groups’ requests for 501(c)(4) nonprofit status. But the questions have demanded private information regarding topics such as the credentials of board members,...

"Given all the attention to the ethics matter, it's worth asking what actually happened back in 1995, 1996, and 1997. The Gingrich case was extraordinarily complex, intensely partisan, and driven in no small way by a personal vendetta on the part of one of Gingrich's former political opponents. It received saturation coverage in the press; a database search of major media outlets revealed more than 10,000 references to Gingrich's ethics problems during the six months leading to his reprimand. It ended with a special counsel hired by the House Ethics Committee holding Gingrich to an astonishingly strict standard of behavior,...

Feds Wicthhunt against Sheriff Joe. ------- DOJ released a report last month alleging that Sheriff Joe's office racially profiles Latinos, ------ Sheriff Joe has denied the allegations, calling the DOJ report a politically motivated attack by Obama's administration. --------

DES MOINES — Having just taken his place at the front of the Republican presidential pack, Newt Gingrich now faces a potential backlash from conservative activists here in Iowa over an immigration proposal that he called “humane” but that his opponents quickly decried as providing “amnesty.” The former House speaker appears to have alienated some of the conservatives who had warmed to his candidacy by saying Tuesday in a candidates debate that he would allow millions of illegal immigrants who have settled in the United States to become legal residents.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said Friday he doesn't know anything more about an FBI raid on the home of one of his top aides beyond what he's seen reported in the press. Walker said "it's hard to tell" whether he should be concerned about Wednesday's raid on the home of Cynthia Archer, who was his aide while Milwaukee County executive and followed him to work in state government when he was elected governor. The raid came amid a secret Milwaukee County investigation that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, citing unnamed people familiar with the case, has reported focuses on whether county...

MEDIA MOGUL CHARGED WITH FIRST-DEGREE MURDOCH July 20, 2011In December 1996, a Florida couple, John and Alice Martin, who sounded suspiciously like union goons, claimed to have inadvertently tapped into a phone conversation between then House Speaker Newt Gingrich and House Republican leadership. According to these Democratic and union activists, they were just driving around with a police scanner in their car, picked up a random phone conversation and said to themselves, "Wait a minute! I could swear that's Dick Armey's voice!" Luckily, they also had a tape recorder and cassette in their car, so they proceeded to illegally...

Gingrich Fires Back, But Tax Expert Says He's in 'World of Trouble' By MATTHEW MOSK, BRIAN ROSS (@brianross) and ANGELA M. HILL June 16, 2011 GOP Presidential contender Newt Gingrich attacked the "elite media" Wednesday for running "hit pieces" against him, even as tax and ethics experts were telling ABC News that the recent reports on a charity Gingrich founded have spawned serious questions about the former House Speaker's business and charity empire. "I think he's in a world of trouble from a tax standpoint," said Marcus S. Owens, who ran the IRS Exempt Organizations Division for ten years, and...

You spent three years trying to hide this, Sarah. You failed. The email account of Aug. 29, 2008, the day John McCain announced Palin as his running mate, tells a tale of jubilant shock and amazement from Palin devotees… “Wow governor! Just watched you on TV!” wrote budget director Karen Rehfeld. “You knocked their socks off!” “Can you believe it!” Palin replied. “He told me yesterday — it moved fast! Pray! I love you.” Vice President Dick Cheney called the governor’s office requesting a call back. “Talked to him. Thank you – you rock – i love you!!!” Palin wrote...

'Journalism': The New York Times and Washington Post have asked their readers' help in scouring 24,000 emails from Sarah Palin's governorship, released Friday. They hate her — really hate her. Imagine a newspaper in 2008 asking readers' help in perusing Barack Obama's emails as U.S. senator and Illinois state senator. Or for that matter, help in unearthing his college records. The howls from "mainstream" journalists and Democratic politicians would have been deafening. But a private citizen conducting a bus tour across the country — Palin is not a candidate, let's not forget — is fair game for a mob witch...

<p>As Washington bureau reporter Matea Gold reported, the state of Alaska is scheduled to release more than 24,000 pages of Sarah Palin's emails Friday from her time as governor.</p> <p>The emails will span the beginning of Palin's term, in December 2006, through Sept. 30, 2008, which is when media outlets requested them. It has taken since that time to fulfill the records request.</p>

More than 24,000 e-mail messages sent to and from Sarah Palin during her tenure as Alaska's governor will be released Friday. Join The Post in digging through them. We are looking for 100 organized and dilligent readers who will work alongside Post reporters to analyze, contextualize, and research the emails. Think of it as spending some time in our newsroom. Our hope is that working together, we can efficiently find interesting information and extract new stories that will lead to further investigation. We don’t know what we’ll find, but we want you to be ready and open for the challenge....

Proclaiming "Today I am a Muslim too," about 1,000 protesters gathered Sunday in Times Square to decry Rep. Pete King's upcoming hearings into homegrown radical Islam. "Today, they're targeting Muslims. Tomorrow, it will be Jews. Tomorrow, they'll close a synagogue," said Abu Abdullah, 57, a perfumer from Bay Shore, L.I., who stood in the rain at the interfaith rally. "Peter King is trying to divide us - to make it like shark eat shark," he said of the Long Island Republican, who heads the House Homeland Security Committee. "It shouldn't be that way." Christians, Jews and Muslims branded the hearings...

A bipartisan panel investigating the financial crisis has referred cases of potential wrongdoing by financial industry officials to the Justice Department, a person familiar with the matter said on Tuesday. The 2009 law creating the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission instructs the congressionally appointed panel to refer anyone who may have violated the law to the Justice Department and state attorneys general