Free Republic

At an anti-deportation march in Irving on Saturday, one of the leaders told the mostly Hispanic crowd, "We want to send a message that there is no division in our community. We are one." But some Hispanics were there to undermine that statement and demonstrate a sticking point in the immigration debate: Many Hispanics are among the strongest opponents of illegal immigration. "We've been here 38 years, and we deserve to be here, not some illegal immigrants," said Eva Hinojosa, whose parents were from Mexico. "They should go back to their own country; they don't belong here." She and her...

A computer security expert says he found that a forensic image of the election server central to a legal battle over the integrity of Georgia elections showed signs that the original server was hacked. The server was left exposed to the open internet for at least six months, a problem the same expert discovered in August 2016. It was subsequently wiped clean in mid-2017 with no notice, just days after election integrity activists filed a lawsuit seeking an overhaul of what they called the state’s unreliable and negligently run election system. In late December 2019, the plaintiffs were finally able...

President Donald Trump gave the order to kill Iran's Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani a few days ago following a Hazbollah mob's attacks on the United States' embassy in Baghdad. Now that Soleimani is dead, we're learning that this isn't the first opportunity a nation has had to kill the Iranian terrorist. According to a January 2018 report from the Israel newspaper Haaretz, leaders in Israel were prepared to kill Soleimani back in 2015 but the Obama administration put an end to the plan. Just as Israel was "on the verge" of killing Soleimani, the Obama administration alerted Iranian officials...

Maxwell, the late owner of Mirror Newspapers, invested $2 million in Mr Romney's first private equity fund, which launched the controversial career in finance that the Republican presidential challenger now cites as proof of his ability to lead the US to prosperity. He was recruited by Lyons, a late colleague of Mr Romney's at Bain & Company and one of the "Guinness Four" who were convicted in 1990 over the infamous share-trading fraud at the drinks firm. Lyons and his family invested almost $3 million in Mr Romney's fund.

When President Barack Obama was reelected in 2012, a Saudi tycoon and his business associate sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to the U.S. to help pay for the inaugural celebration and get a picture with the president, according to court documents and an analysis of campaign finance records by The Associated Press. U.S. election law prohibits foreign nationals from making those sorts of political contributions. But the donations Sheikh Mohammed Al Rahbani tried to send to Obama's inaugural committee were funneled through a seasoned straw donor, the records and the AP analysis show. That intermediary, Imaad Zuberi, agreed this...

Mitt Romney’s national security advisor in his 2012 campaign sits on the board of directors of Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company that paid Hunter Biden $50k a month despite his complete lack of credentials or qualifications. And it also an odd coincidence that Mitt has as CNN puts it “been a lone Republican voice expressing concern about President Donald Trump's July phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump asked Ukraine's President to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his family.”

President Trump on Monday tweeted out a video mocking Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) over his failed 2012 presidential bid, comparing it with Trump's own success four years later. The video includes clips of election night 2012, where Romney lost to former President Obama, and 2016, where Trump defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. The video was posted just hours after Romney told reporters that he wants the Trump administration to give Congress the transcript of a highly controversial call between the president and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky.

It's not all that surprising that, in the wake of Rick Perry's much-maligned anti-gay ad the other day, the gay conservative group GOPRoud ended up at the center of the ensuing media storm, fielding requests from reporters left and right. Except it seems that the group's director and chairman (inadvertently, they claim) created a gay-bashing brouhaha of their own by letting slip the true sexual orientation of Tony Fabrizio, a top strategist on the governor's presidential campaign. In an e-mail to the rest of the board — acquired by the Daily Caller — GOProud leaders Chris Barron and Jimmy LaSavlia...

In a quip destined to be one of the most memorable of Thursday night's vice presidential debate, Joe Biden jabbed Paul Ryan for seemingly comparing his political chops to those of the late President John F. Kennedy. Ryan was in the process of arguing that it's possible to cut tax rates while keeping in place tax preferences for middle class Americans and growing the economy — something he said has been done before — when Biden cut him off. "You can cut tax rates by 20% and still preserve these important preferences for middle class taxpayers," said Ryan, who was...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, her Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, and Sen. Bob Menendez (D., N.J.) supported a visa waiver for the daughter of a fugitive Ecuadorian banker in exchange for significant campaign contributions to the Democratic Party. On Tuesday, NBC 4 New York reported that Menendez, with express written support from Clinton, intervened on behalf of Estefania Isaías, who was banned from traveling to the U.S. due to accusations of visa fraud. Isaías is the daughter of Roberto Isaias, who lives in Miami and is currently fighting extradition to Ecuador for banking crimes and under investigation for...

New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez interceded on behalf of an Ecuadorian woman who was banned from traveling to the U.S. because of allegations she had engaged in visa fraud. The woman, Estafania Isaias, is the daughter of a fugitive from Ecuador convicted in absentia for bank fraud and whose relatives in Florida made significant campaign donations to the New Jersey Democrat's 2012 campaign and the Democratic Party. Current and former U.S. government officials tell NBC 4 New York that Estefania Isaias was barred from traveling to the U.S. in 2007 because she allegedly lied on visa applications to bring immigrant...

“It makes no difference if they are criminals, flesh peddlers, and smut dealers that are exploiting American and Ecuadorian people for profit. For Clinton, if you have enough money, anything goes. This is just another reason why her brand of corruption must not be allowed into the White House.”

Two wealthy Ecuadorian brothers, Roberto and William Isaías, who were owners of companies fined and ordered to shut down for illegally trafficking world-wide in aborted baby parts purchased from Planned Parenthood, were arrested by ICE on February 13, 2019. [snip] Roberto and William Isaias, who fled Ecuador to avoid 8-year prison sentences, were principals in California companies DaVinci Biosciences and DV Biologics, and the two career criminals were allowed to stay in the United States by Hillary Clinton’s State Department under “suspicious circumstances” after they donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign fund.

I review a startlingly non-hagiographic biography of the 44th President, and examine why so few in public life have been willing to scrutinize the hypocrisies of Barack Obama.

Reid’s original claim, of course, wasn’t that Romney was “hiding something” but that a Bain investor had told him Romney hadn’t paid income tax at all for 10 years. We found out a few hours ago that that’s not true if your 10-year window includes 2011, and if you believe PricewaterhouseCoopers, it’s not true for the period from 1990-2009, when he paid an average annual effective rate of 20.2 percent. Time for an apology, or time to move the goalposts? Longtime Reid-watchers know the answer. From a Las Vegas Sun reporter:

Donald Trump is leaving the door open to not releasing his tax returns, just hours after Mitt Romney warned Wednesday that the billionaire's tax documents could contain a "bombshell." The GOP front-runner said in an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper that he will "make a determination over the next couple of months" as to whether he will release his tax returns... It was also an attack steeped in irony, since Romney was on the receiving end of similar claims by then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, when Democrats eviscerated him over his fortune and business record during the 2012 campaign. Reid...

It's time now to play a new political game: Who's the Liar? In one corner we have the Huffington Post Washington bureau chief, Ryan Grim, who must be feeling very grim today because his "scoop" about the Bain Capital source of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's claim about Mitt Romney not paying taxes for 10 years has blown up on him. Grim Grim quoted Reid's spokesman, Jose Parra, as stating that Reid's Bain Capital source is a Republican. Unfortunately for grim Grim this assertion was countered by Parra's parry that he said no such thing. Since grim Grim placed Parra's...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: This Harry Reid and income tax avoidance of Mitt Romney is a classic example. Let's go back. Here's Harry Reid yesterday morning on the Senate floor. REID: If a person coming before this body wanted to be a cabinet officer, he couldn't be if he did the same refusal Mitt Romney does about tax returns. So the word's out that he hasn't paid any taxes for ten years. Let him prove that he has paid taxes, because he hasn't. RUSH: The word isn't out that he hasn't paid any taxes. Harry Reid is the only guy saying...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Dingy Harry continues to smear Mitt Romney. Ann Coulter has a good column today. She points out, if I could summarize real quick, she says the reason that they are making a beeline for Romney's tax records is because he's too straitlaced. He doesn't have a divorce that they can go look at. And she recounts the history of every Obama campaign, every opponent had either divorce or custody records unsealed shortly before the election, which resulted in high embarrassment or even resignation of the opposition candidate. Her point is that Obama has never won an election...

Dying people tend to show remorse and seek and offer forgiveness. Not Harry Reid. He is going out as the amoral liar he proved himself to be. He tore into Trump recently: Harry Reid, the former Senate Majority Leader who is suffering from pancreatic cancer, has given a rare interview in which he compares a “weird” President Trump unfavorably to mafia bosses who “are really good with what they do.” He told The New York Times: “Trump is an interesting person. He is not immoral but is amoral. Amoral is when you shoot someone in the head, it doesn’t make a...