Free Republic

The Paul Manafort indictment is much ado about nothing . . . except as a vehicle to squeeze Manafort, which is special counsel Robert Mueller’s objective — as we have been arguing for three months....Do not be fooled by the “Conspiracy against the United States” heading on Count One (page 23 of the indictment). This case has nothing to do with what Democrats and the media call “the attack on our democracy” (i.e., the Kremlin’s meddling in the 2016 election, supposedly in “collusion” with the Trump campaign). Essentially, Manafort and his associate, Richard W. Gates, are charged with (a) conspiring...

By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON, ALLISON HOPE WEINER and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM The New York Post is cooperating with a federal investigation into whether a longtime contributor for the Page Six gossip column — the avidly read daily log of wrongdoing, double-dealing and sexual indiscretions by celebrities both minor and major — tried to extort money from a California billionaire, according to a spokesman for the newspaper. Several people involved in the investigation said the reporter, Jared Paul Stern, had been captured on a video recording demanding a $100,000 payment and a monthly stipend of $10,000 from Ronald W. Burkle in return...

Last month Keith (Hakim Mohammad) Ellison of Minnesota became the first Muslim elected to serve in the United States Congress and shocked many Americans by declaring that he would take his oath of office by placing his hand on the Quran rather than the Bible. Can a true believer in the Islamic doctrine found in the Quran swear allegiance to our Constitution? Those who profess a sincere belief in Allah say “no!” In 1789, George Washington, our first president under the Constitution, took his oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. So help me God.”...

TAMPA, Fla. - Gen. John Abizaid, the head of U.S. Central Command, was briefly hospitalized over the weekend for a stomach illness that appeared to be food poisoning, the military said Monday. Abizaid, who spent Friday night in the hospital, was back at work Monday at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, command spokesman Maj. Matthew McLaughin said. The Tampa-based command oversees U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan . "The best we can tell he had symptoms consistent with food poisoning," McLaughin said. He said Abizaid did not eat fresh spinach, which has been linked to an outbreak of E....

Lost in the tumult over Islamic port deals and Katrina video capers is the recently released -- and willfully ignored -- Barrett Report. David Barrett, you'll recall, is the independent counsel appointed in 1995 to investigate allegations of impropriety against President Clinton's Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros. Mr. Barrett found his path mined by the Justice Department, the Internal Revenue Service and President Clinton's attorneys, even after Mr. Clinton departed the White House. He prepared 18 felony indictments against Mr. Cisneros but had to settle for a guilty plea on a misdemeanor charge (lying to the...

Reporting confrontation between PFP and students in Oaxaca The cordon of federal agents fell back about 200 meters and they returned to the starting point, the terminus of University Avenue Jorge Octavio Ochoa, Alejandro Torres & David Aponte/Correspondents El Universal (Mexico City) Oaxaca City, Oaxaca Thursday 2 November 2006 11:20 a.m.   A confrontation between students of the Benito Juarez Autonomous University of Oaxaca (UABJO) and elements of the Federal Preventive Police (PFP) is being reported. The uniformed officers are being practically bombarded by a rain of stones, sticks, molotov cocktails, and fireworks, from the interior [of the University] to...

PHOENIX -- An engineer from Iran was convicted Tuesday of illegally accessing a protected computer in the United States to use software he obtained at a former job at the nation's largest nuclear plant. Mohammad Reza Alavi, 50, who worked at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station for 17 years, faces up to five years in prison and could be fined up to a $250,000 for his conviction on a count of illegally accessing a computer. A sentencing hearing has not been set. Alavi was also charged with one count of stealing protected software from the plant and one count...

A federal judge on Wednesday denied a former Republican congressional candidate’s request for a restraining order barring President Bush or Vice President Richard Cheney from bombing Iran or Syria. Mary Maxwell, 59, of 179 Loudon Road, Apt. 10, Concord, filed a lawsuit Monday against Bush, Cheney and other “unnamed defendants actively engaging in acts of war against Iran and Syria in the guise of the war against terrorism.” Maxwell’s suit seeks a ruling that the administration lacks legal authority to pre-emptively attack either Iran or Syria without a Congressional declaration of war, and that radioactive fallout from the use of...

When U.S. Special Operations forces raided several houses in the Iraqi city of Ramadi in March 2006, two Army Rangers were killed when gunfire erupted on the ground floor of one home. A third member of the team was knocked unconscious and shredded by ball bearings when a teenage insurgent detonated a suicide vest. Who, the relative asked, was this man — the one represented by a blue dot and nearly killed by the suicide bomber? After some hesi­ta­tion, the military briefers answered with three letters: FBI. The wounded agent in Iraq was Jay Tabb, a longtime member of the...

Conflicts Of Interest: Supporters of suspending California's climate-change law submit signatures for a November ballot initiative. Among the initiatives' opponents is an administration energy official who stands to profit from its defeat. Opponents of California's draconian global warming law, Assembly Bill 32, on Monday submitted 800,000 signatures, almost double the amount required, to put an initiative to suspend the law on the November ballot. They believe, as we do, that AB32 will, when implemented, cost California, a state with 12.6% unemployment, more jobs in an already bleak economy, while raising energy prices and driving away more business with its unfriendly...

Hodgkinson had a history of violence that did not rise to the level to prohibit him from legally owning a firearm. He was the foster father of at least two girls. The first, Wanda Ashley Stock, 17, committed suicide in 1996 by pouring gasoline on herself and setting herself on fire after a few months of living with the Hodgkinsons, the Belleville News-Democrat reports. The Hodgkinsons gave an interview to the paper after her suicide, calling her a “very practical, level-headed girl.”

DHAKA, Bangladesh - The simple yet revolutionary idea of loaning tiny sums to poor people looking to escape poverty by starting businesses won Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. Yunus' notion - today, known as microcredit - has spread around the globe in the past three decades and is said to have helped more than 100 million people take their first steps to rise out of poverty. Some bought diary cows, others egg-laying hens. In recent years, money for a single cell phone has been enough to start thriving enterprises...

The State Department doled out $13 million in grants for longtime friend and Clinton Foundation donor Muhammad Yunus during Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state, according to federal records. The grants were provided in 18 separate transactions from the U.S. Agency for International Development to the Bangladesh-based Grameen bank, according to a Sunday evening report from the Daily Caller News Foundation, for which Yunus served as a founding board member. Groups associated with Yunus through business relationships received an additional $11 million. Yunus oversaw the distribution of microcredit loans to impoverished borrowers for the bank for over 30 years....

Fear of Too Many Babies is Hard to Bear October 22, 2006 BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist Last Tuesday morning, in a maternity ward somewhere in the United States, the 300 millionth American arrived. He or she got a marginally warmer welcome than Mark Foley turning up to hand out the prizes at junior high. One could have predicted the appalled editorials from European newspapers aghast at yet another addition to the swollen cohort of excess Americans consuming ever more of the planet's dwindling resources. And, when Canada's National Post announced "'Frightening' Surge Brings US To 300m People," you can...

/begin my translation PLA Maneuvers with Intervention to N. Korea in Mind? 09/11/06 China's PLA is reportedly conducting training exercises designed to cope with crisis in Korean Peninsula Chinese state media, Xinhua, reported, "Total of 6,000 troops, made up of mechanized infantry brigade(3,000) from Shenyang Military District and its opponents(3,000), an armored brigade from Beijing Military District, went into training exercises against biochemical, naval, and aerial attacks. It started on Sept. 5 on a training base under Beijing Military District, located on a steppe in Inner Mongolia." 190th Mechanized Infantry Brigade of 39th Corps under Shenyang Military District finished map...

Without so much as a single public hearing, the Senate has adopted a bill that could radically weaken our national defense. Obscure language slipped into legislation on the Senate floor would effectively enable outsourcing to Russia the production of titanium, a strong but lightweight metal that is critical for America's military hardware -- aircraft, armored vehicles and other defense systems. Alarmingly, the provision would enable America's ability to produce defense-grade titanium to be handed over to a single company in Russia. What's worse, the Russian government is attempting to take over the company, named VSMPO. In other words -- and...

Larry Elder reads from a 2006 article in The American Spectator entitled, "Race to the Top" (http://tinyurl.com/gn88j7m). In the article we find out some interesting sides to the new Senate Minority Leader. And I am sure this info will become much more public now that the words of Sen. Schumer (D-NY) are in the troposphere.

As President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry close in on a nuclear deal with Iran, it's worth remembering that the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation received money from "a front for the government of Iran" called the Alavi Foundation. The front gave the Clintons $30,000 between April 2005 and March 2006, according to tax forms. This occurred years after law enforcement officials tied the group to Iranian radicals. “The center is funded by the New York-based Alavi Foundation, which law enforcement officials say is closely tied to the mullahs who dominate Iran,” the Washington Post reported...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. intelligence community on Tuesday unveiled its own secretive version of Wikipedia, saying the popular online encyclopedia format known for its openness is key to the future of American espionage. The office of U.S. intelligence czar John Negroponte announced Intellipedia, which allows intelligence analysts and other officials to collaboratively add and edit content on the government's classified Intelink Web much like its more famous namesake on the World Wide Web. A "top secret" Intellipedia system, currently available to the 16 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, has grown to more than 28,000 pages and...

How a onetime hero of the liberal blogosphere and the Democratic Party spread perhaps the most damaging anti-Obama smear of the primary. On May 13, 2006, Larry C. Johnson -- former CIA intelligence officer, counterterrorism pundit, classmate of Valerie Plame -- put up a breaking post claiming that Karl Rove was under federal indictment for perjury and lying to investigators looking into the leaking of Plame's identity. "Rove Indicted," Johnson blogged. "Frog march the bastard. As Freddie Mercury sang, 'another one bites the dust.'" The post linked to the investigative site TruthOut, and an anonymously sourced story that it turned...