Free Republic

Palestinian terrorists open fire on Israeli cars en route to Passover meal; IDF troops launch massive manhunt in area; Hamas, Jihad praise attack. * * * Hamas and Islamic Jihad both praised the attack, although neither organization claimed responsibility. A spokesman for Islamic Jihad called the attack "a natural response to Israeli crimes," while Hamas said the shooting was "the response to the crimes of the occupation, and the repeated assaults on the Al-Aqsa Mosque and against our prisoners in Israel jails."

A Bay Area federal judge says the Obama administration can keep secret a memo spelling out the legal rationale for a 2011 drone attack in Yemen that killed a U.S. citizen and alleged terrorist mastermind. The ruling dismissed a suit by the First Amendment Coalition, an open-government advocacy group in San Rafael. The organization sued after a September 2011 drone strike in Yemen that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born Muslim cleric whom authorities suspected of organizing an attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner in 2009. Another U.S. citizen was also killed in the drone attack, and Awlaki's U.S.-born, 16-year-old...

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) went after fellow Republican Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and President Barack Obama on This Week With George Stephanopoulos sunday morning, telling ABC’s Jonathan Karl that Obama’s “five years of weakness” had emboldened Putin and that the U.S. needed to defend its values across the globe, in contrast to Paul’s less-interventionist foreign policy. “I’m a big fan of Rand Paul,” Cruz said, “but I don’t agree with him on foreign policy. I think U.S. leadership is critical in the world. I agree with him that we should be very reluctant to deploy military force abroad. But...

... Nigeria's Islamist insurgency has claimed more than 3,000 lives since it began in 2009, according to Human Rights Watch. Boko Haram, which means "Western education is sacrilege" in West Africa's Hausa-Fulani language, is fighting for the imposition of stricter Sharia law across the country, and has launched a self-styled "war on Christians" in Nigeria. ... U.N. refugee agencies estimate that more than 8,000 Nigerians have fled into neighboring Cameroon to escape escalating violence sparked by the militants, while another 5,000 have become internally displaced. Until now, Boko Haram's focus has mainly been concentrated on areas of Nigeria's northeast, where...

What started as a hard-charging Marine comment to Congress has turned into a public relations emergency for Sgt. Maj. of the Marine Corps Micheal Barrett. Speaking to the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel on Wednesday, Barrett was making the case that personnel costs needed to be reined in to maintain readiness — as all the services have in recent testimony — but went a step further by saying that lower pay would actually improve discipline within the Corps. “I truly believe it will raise discipline,” Barrett said. “You’ll have better spending habits. You won’t be so wasteful.” (snip) Barrett...

A bird native to Arizona and other western states could be listed as a threatened species by the federal government. The Yellow-billed Cuckoo lives along the Verde, Colorado and San Pedro Rivers in Arizona. It also can be found at the Gila River and Rio Grande in New Mexico and the Sacramento and Kern Rivers in California. Federal officials said the bird’s habitat is shrinking because of dams and other construction projects on the rivers, plus cattle grazing.

Attorney Stanley Cohen, who has defended Osama bin Laden's son-in-law and the leader of Hamas .. SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Stanley Cohen, a prominent lawyer who has represented political activists and terrorism suspects, among them Osama bin Laden's son-in-law, pleaded guilty this morning in Syracuse to obstructing the IRS. ... Last month, Cohen was the lawyer representing Osama bin Laden's son-in-law in a high-profile New York City criminal trial. Sulaiman Abu Ghaith was convicted of conspiring to kill Americans and of other terrorism charges. ... Assistant U.S. Attorney John Duncan wrote that Cohen failed to file tax returns from 2005 through...

<p>‘HONOR DIARIES” might not be coming to a theater near you, at least not if CAIR gets its way. The award-winning documentary about “honor” violence against girls and women in much of the Muslim world was released last month in honor of International Women’s Day, and it didn’t take long for the Council on American Islamic Relations to slap its all-purpose “Islamophobic” label on it. The film has been shown in dozens of venues, but CAIR has raised enough of a stink to get screenings cancelled on several college campuses, including the University of Michigan and the University of Illinois.</p>

Brandeis sides with a spawn of Hamas over a champion of women’s rights. Author’s Note: This week, capitulating to Islamic-supremacist agitation led by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Brandeis University reneged on its announced plan to present an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the heroic human-rights activist. In my 2010 book, The Grand Jihad, I devoted a chapter to the origins and purposes of CAIR, its roots in the Muslim Brotherhood’s Hamas-support network, and its aim to silence critics of Islamic supremacism. In light of the continuing success of this campaign — despite a federal terrorism-financing prosecution that...

During last week's memorial service for victims of April 2 Fort Hood shooting, President Barack Obama spoke about the lingering hurt from the previous attack on the base in 2009. "Part of what makes this so painful is that we've been here before," Obama said. "This tragedy tears at wounds still raw from five years ago. Once more soldiers who survived foreign war zones were struck down here at home, where they're supposed to be safe." Yet, when victims of the first Fort Hood shooting invited the president to see those wounds up close, he refused, without explaining why. The...

A bomb at a crowded bus station on the outskirts of Abuja killed at least 35 people during rush hour on Monday morning, witnesses said, the first such attack near the Nigerian capital for two years. Body parts and blood were strewn across the station and an unruly crowd of several hundred onlookers were roaming around with security forces unable to keep them away. "I was waiting to get on a bus when I heard a deafening explosion then saw smoke. People were running around in panic," said Mimi Daniels, who works in Abuja. A Reuters cameraman saw 20 bodies...

U.S. officials angry over Israel's lack of condemnation of Russia. Israeli policy is driven by its own security interests and does not need to be identical to that of the U.S., a senior defense official said Sunday in response to Haaretz's report that White House and State Department officials in Washington have built up a great deal of anger over Jerusalem's "neutrality" regarding Russia's invasion of the Crimean Peninsula. Senior figures in the Obama administration have expressed great disappointment with the lack of support from Israel for the American position on the Ukraine crisis and with the fact that the...

Police have “lost control of the Temple Mount,” Temple activists charged Monday morning, on the eve of Pesach. Dozens of Hamas men have taken over the Mount, waving Hamas flags, and are “not allowing Jews and tourists into the Mount,” said the activists. […] The Temple organizations called for the police commissioner to resign, following his failures on the Temple Mount. …

Hillary’s profiles in courage continues as she avoided a protest by the mother of one of her victims, canceling a personal appearance and instead appearing remotely by satellite. A crowd of sign-wielding protesters gathered Friday morning outside the San Diego Convention Center to voice their discontent with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s handling of the Benghazi crisis.Among them was Pat Smith, mother of San Diego native Sean Smith, one of the four Americans who died in the highly-publicized 2012 attacks on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya. She has been a prominent voice in the ensuing fallout, with Clinton and...

One of Britain’s top public schools is the subject of scandal Sunday, after it was revealed that a teacher threatened to send a Jewish student to “one of your gas chambers” for skipping the lunch line. The student, a seventeen year-old girl at the highly prestigious North London Collegiate School, later received an apology from the teacher in private over the remark, according to the Daily Mail. The school has refused to identify the offending teacher, however, or what—if any—disciplinary action had been taken over the remark. The girl’s parents urged the headmistress on Saturday night to make a public...

Thirteen-year-old Fadel Hasan has memorized the entire roster of his favorite football team, the Minnesota Vikings. He usually has an opinion about draft picks and trades that he doesn’t hesitate to share, his dad says. Now, the youngster is using his memorization skills to learn and recite every word of the Qur’an, the Muslim holy book. He is one of a dozen Muslim boys who have left conventional junior and senior high schools for a period of time to attend the intensive Qur’an school Darul Arqam Center For Excellence in Blaine. The parents who founded the Qur’an school say it...

The rural Nevada showdown between federal government officials and militia members protecting rancher Cliven Bundy has evolved into a battle of government “tyranny,” with many newly arriving militiamen rolling in to draw a line in the dirt about 70 miles northeast of Las Vegas. ... “This is a better education than being in school! I’m glad I brought you. I’m a good mom,” Ilona Ence, a 49-year-old mother from St. George and Bundy relative who brought her four teenage children to the ranch, told the Las Vegas Sun. “They’re learning about the Constitution.” Ence’s teenage sons posted up a sign...

A 6-year-old got the birthday surprise of a lifetime when he found out he would be a Navy SEAL for a day. Mason Rudder has already endured 10 surgeries for a rare genetic disorder that affects his range of motion, but that hasn’t stopped him from dreaming of becoming an elite Navy SEAL one day. Navy SEAL Jared Ogden spent a day training Mason. They went through demolition and sniper training, and during their lunch break, Mason led the SEALs on a mission.

Moscow (AFP) - Russia Saturday dismissed as a "low blow" claims that Moscow had failed to provide intelligence over one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, blaming anti-Russian sentiment in Washington over Ukraine. The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Russia declined requests from the FBI for information on Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who died in a gun battle with police after a four-day manhunt following the bombing. Citing a review of how American intelligence and law enforcement agencies could have thwarted the bombing, the Times said Russia shared additional information on Tsarnaev only after the attack. "They found that...

The daughter of former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi is claiming that she is “certain” that the televised footage showing the ousted leader in prison is not of her father, Al Arabiya reports. According to the report, the daughter Alshymaa shared two pictures of Morsi on her Facebook page, one while he was president and the other of him during his trial. She claimed in a comment that the one in prison does not resemble her father. …