Free Republic

Over the Christmas weekend, Chicago surpassed the 750-murder mark for 2016. But as blacks lay dying on the streets of Chicago’s South and West Sides, a Black Lives Matter offshoot is more interested in traveling overseas to learn “resistance” from terrorists. The Dream Defenders bills itself as “an uprising of communities in struggle, shifting culture through transformational organizing.” But an investigation conducted by the Haym Salomon Center reveals the group’s embrace of anti-Semitism and collaboration with a State Department-designated terror group. In August, Black Lives Matter singled out Israel for condemnation, declaring it an “apartheid” state engaged in “genocide.” These...

A senior Cabinet minister in Ireland says he’s gay, becoming the first openly homosexual government figure in the history of the traditionally conservative Catholic country. Sunday’s announcement on state radio by Health Minister Leo Varadkar received widespread praise for its straightforward honesty. Analysts said his decision was likely to be viewed with hindsight as a landmark of social change in a country that, until 1993, outlawed homosexual acts. Varadkar said he decided to declare his sexuality in advance of government moves this year to advance gay rights. These include plans to legalize gay marriage, permit homosexual men to donate blood,...

Ali Saleh Kahlah al Marri, an admitted former al Qaeda operative, has been released from a American jail and permitted to return home to Qatar. No formal statement has been released yet by either government, but it is being reported that al Marri's release was the result of a bilateral agreement between the Qatari and American governments. According to the US Bureau of Prisons, a prisoner with the same name and estimated age (ID number 12194-026) was freed on Friday. Additionally, a source from al Marri's family told the Qatari press he was recently released and arrived in Doha Saturday....

Newly surfaced emails show connections among a U.S. health agency headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, EcoHealth Alliance, and Chinese scientists. The recently exposed documents also show that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were scrambling to find disinfectant and asked a National Institutes of Health official for help. Judicial Watch obtained 301 pages of emails and other records from National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases officials who had connections with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. According to the documents that were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by Judicial Watch, the NIAID gave at...

The U.S. Air Force has announced its strategy for replacing America’s Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles—which have stood alert, awaiting Armageddon, for nearly five decades. Making nukes is hard. But squeezing another multi-billion-dollar project into the Air Force’s already bulging budget is perhaps the bigger challenge. We’re talking about the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent, an effort to replace the stockpile of Minuteman nuclear missiles Boeing built for the Pentagon back in the late 1960s.

Janel Davis of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that a “noted scholar, author and veteran civil rights activist” by the name of Angela Davis will deliver the keynote address January 18 at Kennesaw State University’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day observance. This is the same Angela Davis “who supported the imprisonment of Soviet political dissidents (calling them common criminals), cheered on the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and was awarded the International Lenin Peace Prize (formerly the International Stalin Peace Prize) by communist East Germany,” as noted by another paper, the British Telegraph. The differences reflect the abysmal state of...

Sunday's Der Spiegel had a massive expose on the continuing efforts of Bashar al-Assad to build a nuclear weapons plant, which included evidence that Iran is constructing such a plant for Syria in Qusayr, less than two kilometers from Syria's border with Lebanon. The issue came up in the State Department's Monday daily briefing. Disturbingly, spokeswoman Marie Harf said that the United States did not plan to raise the issue in the Iranian nuclear talks, claiming that those talks only deal with Iran's nuclear capabilities and not with Syria's. According to findings of Western intelligence agencies, however, the situation...

"Eight former U.S. national security practitioners — the two of us, plus former U.S. representative to NATO Ivo Daalder, former undersecretary of defense Michèle Flournoy, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst, former deputy undersecretary of defense Jan Lodal, former NATO European commander James Stavridis and former U.S. European Command deputy commander Charles Wald — come together issuing following recommendations for immediate action. (releasing Monday report: “Preserving Ukraine’s Independence, Resisting Russian Aggression: What the United States and NATO Must Do.”) First, White House and Congress must commit serious money to Ukraine’s defense: $1 billion in military assistance this fiscal year,...

Former President Bill Clinton took a romantic jaunt in 2002 to convicted pedophile pal Jeffrey Epstein’s “orgy island” with “two young girls” from New York, according to a shocking new interview. Virginia Roberts, who’s accused Epstein of turning her into a “sex slave” at age 17 and forcing her to sleep with his powerful friends, claimed Clinton stayed in one of the many villas on Epstein’s US Virgin Islands estate — where group sex was a “regular occurrence.” “I remember asking Jeffrey, ‘What’s Bill Clinton doing here?’ kind of thing, and he laughed it off and said, ‘Well, he owes...

The State Department hosted a delegation of Muslim Brotherhood-aligned leaders this week for a meeting about their ongoing efforts to oppose the current government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt, who rose to power following the overthrow of Mohamed Morsi, an ally of the Brotherhood, in 2013. One member of the delegation, a Brotherhood-aligned judge in Egypt, posed for a picture while at Foggy Bottom in which he held up the Islamic group’s notorious four-finger Rabia symbol, according to his Facebook page.

'Muslim Brotherhood call for ‘long, uncompromising jihad’ The Muslim Brotherhood called for “a long, uncompromising jihad” in Egypt just days after a delegation of the Islamist group’s key leaders and allies met with the State Department, according to an official statement released this week. Just days after a delegation that included two top Brotherhood leaders was hosted at the State Department, the organization released an official statement calling on its supporters to “prepare” for jihad, according to an independent translation of the statement first posted on Tuesday. The statement also was issued just two days before a major terror attack...

Intercepted conversations between representatives of the Iranian and Argentine governments point to a long pattern of secret negotiations to reach a deal in which Argentina would receive oil in exchange for shielding Iranian officials from charges that they orchestrated the bombing of a Jewish community center in 1994. The transcripts were made public by an Argentine judge on Tuesday night, as part of a 289-page criminal complaint written by Alberto Nisman, the special prosecutor investigating the attack. Mr. Nisman was found dead in his luxury apartment on Sunday, the night before he was to present his findings to Congress. In...

LONDON — The United States pressed Argentina to end its investigation of Iranian complicity in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in which nearly 100 people were killed. Western diplomatic sources said the administration of President Barack Obama urged Argentina on several occasions to either stop or limit the investigation into the bombing of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association in Buenos Aires. The sources said the U.S. appeals marked one of the demands by Iran for a reconciliation with Washington. “Argentina had hard evidence against at least one Iranian leader, which prevented him from traveling abroad,” a source said.

The White House plans a conference next month on efforts to counter violent extremism — in light of this past week’s shootings in France, and earlier attacks in Canada and Australia. The meeting will highlight domestic and international efforts to prevent extremists and their supporters from radicalizing, recruiting and inspiring others in the United States and elsewhere to carry out violent acts.

Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko says to meet Vladimir Putin, Angela Merkel and François Hollande in Astana on January 15 [Headline only]

Inside the power struggle at Clinton, Inc. In December, the board of the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation approved a salary of more than $395,000, plus bonus, for its Yale-educated CEO, Eric Braverman, while voting to extend his board term through 2017, according to sources familiar with the arrangement. Braverman, who had worked with Chelsea Clinton at the prestigious McKinsey & Company consultancy, had been brought in with the former first daughter’s support to help impose McKinsey-like management rigor to a foundation that had grown into a $2 billion charitable powerhouse. But in January, only weeks after the board's...

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson has requested the Department of Justice turn over communications from 16 FBI and DOJ officials, including former Director James Comey and former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. In a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein sent Wednesday, the Wisconsin Republican requested “all documents and communications” — which includes emails, memos, notes, texts, iPhone instant messages, and voicemails — from 16 employees between January 1, 2015, to the present.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has requested documents from a 2016 Green Party presidential candidate as part of the committee’s Russia probe, according to a new report. Last week, candidate Jill Stein contacted Dennis Trainor Jr., who worked as her communications director and acting campaign manager from January to August 2015, because the committee had requested documents from the campaign, BuzzFeed reported Monday. Trainor said that he was contacted because his personal cellphone had been given as the “primary point of contact” to those trying to reach Stein, such as producers from the Russian state-funded media company, RT News. Stein had...

Mohamed Elibiary, the former Department of Homeland Security Advisor who was relieved of duty last year after his ties with the Muslim Brotherhood became publicly known is now praising Allah and the Obama Administration in response to South Carolina’s decision to remove the Confederate Flag. Taking to twitter, Elibiary applauded Obama’s efforts to shame the South into giving up history for political correctness while praising federalism. No joke…

Immunity agreements offered to two of Hillary Clinton's top aides prevented the FBI from looking into the circumstances surrounding the use of BleachBit, a digital deletion tool, to destroy the former secretary of state's emails. In a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch Wednesday, four Republican committee chairmen demanded to know why Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, two witnesses who also served as Clinton's personal attorneys, were granted such expansive protections despite the FBI's awareness that they had participated in potentially illegal activities. For example, the FBI agreed to limit its search to emails written after June 1, 2014, but...