Free Republic

Joy Reid, radical leftist news commentator, went Tweet crazy when President Trump announced on Friday he was rescinding much of President Obama’s order loosening diplomatic relations with communist Cuba. And although most of them amounted to outrage that yet another imprudent Obama administration policy was going by the wayside, there is one President Trump should print out and tape to his office wall. “Trump name checks Assata Shakur (calls her by her former name, Joanne Chesimard) as a dog whistle to his people. #Trumping Cuba,” she tweeted. Reid is angry Trump not only rescinded what he called the “completely one-sided...

The federal judge presiding over the case of accused National Security Agency leaker Reality Winner has come down on prosecutors’ side in a dispute over rules of evidence, which defense attorneys have said could jeopardize her right to a fair trial. In a ruling Thursday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Brian Epps said defense attorneys cannot talk about classified information in open court, even if it has already been published in the news media. Epps granted prosecutors’ motion for a protective order designed to keep an alleged leaker from leaking further, and to force those defending her to tread lightly, lest they...

Calling his line of questioning during former FBI Director James Comey’s June 8 testimony in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee “a colossal screw-up,” Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said he got distracted by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) just minutes before it was his turn to question Comey. McCain told Esquire that a staffer had given him an iPhone with an email from Graham displayed on it, asking McCain to ask Comey some additional questions. McCain didn’t have the password for the iPhone and claimed that after the phone went black he couldn’t unlock it to keep reading. “I was looking...

WASHINGTON — An American kidnapped two years ago in Yemen while helping coordinate aid for Unicef and the Red Cross also had a second, secret role: He was shipping materials for elite military commandos under a clandestine contract his employer had with the Pentagon. The arrangement with Special Operations forces has never been made public. {snip} Mr. Darden’s work offers a rare look into the shadowy world of military contractors that operate in lawless war zones like Yemen, Somalia and Libya. But arrangements like the one Transoceanic had with Special Operations forces can cast suspicion over aid workers, potentially putting...

Summits of world leaders are usually highly choreographed affairs that leave little to chance. They are held in locations that are easily shielded from demonstrators. And policy differences are papered over by envoys behind closed doors well ahead of time. But the G20 meeting in Hamburg next week will be different. Host German Chancellor Angela Merkel has taken a high-risk gamble by choosing to hold the summit in the center of the northern port city, partly to show the world that big protests are tolerated in a healthy democracy. This has created a huge challenge for police. On the policy...

BIRMINGHAM, AL (AP) — The Trump administration on Friday slashed $400,000 in federal funding for one of the few U.S. groups that combat white extremism but denied it is now focusing only on fighting radical Islamists. A grant announcement by the Department of Homeland Security eliminated funding for the Chicago-based Life After Hate, which was initially awarded the money in January during the closing days of the Obama administration. (snip) In all, Homeland Security awarded $10 million to 26 police and community organizations, none of which has a specific mission to counter groups in the so-called “alt-right,” a hodge-podge of...

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper revised rules in 2013 in a way that made it easier to "unmask" the names of lawmakers or congressional staffers who are incidentally caught in foreign surveillance. The new procedures implemented by Clapper uprooted the previous set of rules that had been in use for just over two decades, according to a report from The Hill. The report relied in part on a newly released memo by the ODNI created in 2013 that said the lawmakers or staffers' names could be unmasked if an intelligence agency under the executive branch thought that "the...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Cinton's emails are under investigation again. Hillary Clinton and her staffers still have access to sensitive government information, but that could change. The State Department has opened a formal investigation into whether the former Democratic Presidential nominee mishandled classified information when she was Secretary of State. Depending on the outcome of the probe, Clinton and her aides could lose their security clearances. The State Department has not said when its probe began.

A nearly Earth-size storm system was spotted near Neptune's equator, surprising scientists because no bright clouds have ever been seen in that location. The storm is about 6,000 miles (9,000 kilometers) in length — about three-quarters Earth's diameter — and is even huge compared to the size of Neptune: it spans nearly 30 degrees in both longitude and latitude. When astronomers studied the storm between June 26 and July 2, it appeared to get brighter. "Seeing a storm this bright at such a low latitude is extremely surprising," Ned Molter, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, said...

The firm behind the salacious and unsubstantiated Trump dossier is refusing to to cooperate with the Senate Judiciary Committee's request to provide documentation or respond to questions sent from the committee in March about the clients who paid for the dossier that launched the investigation into the administration and its alleged Russian connections. The Republican Chairman of the committee, Senator Charles Grassley, warned Fusion GPS, the firm that compiled the dossier, in March about its obligation "to provide details on the history of the dossier" including the clients who paid for it. The committee also wanted information on Christopher Steele,...

The GOP operative who admitted reaching out to Russian hackers for Hillary Clinton’s emails killed himself days after opening up to a reporter. Peter Smith told the Wall Street Journal in May that he reached out to people he believed were affiliated with the Kremlin to find messages from the Democrat’s private server. The Journal report from late last month, which showed that he had claimed to be working with future National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, said Smith died about 10 days after the conversation.

The company, which wasn't named, quietly pushed back in the government's secret court against the National Security Agency's surveillance program, but ultimately failed. {snip}....All of the documents relate to the government's use of the so-called Section 702 statute, named after its place in the law books, a provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The statute authorizes the collection of data on foreign persons overseas who use US tech and telecoms services. The law is widely known in national security circles as forming the legal basis authorizing the so-called PRISM surveillance program, which reportedly taps data from nine tech titans...

Congress shouldn’t reauthorize the government’s most potent snooping powers until it imposes stronger safeguards for Americans, a key conservative lawmaker said in response to a judge’s ruling that U.S. intelligence agencies tried to hide potential breaches of privacy rights. Rep. Raul R. Labrador, Idaho Republican, said Judge Rosemary M. Collyer’s April ruling is the latest in a string of warning signs that federal agencies need more oversight before Congress renews their broad powers under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. In particular, Mr. Labrador and several colleagues want to know how often Americans’ information is scooped up and...

US Ambassador Nikki Haley has called for international action to address the crisis in Venezuela, after a US-backed proposal for regional mediation failed to win support at the Organization of American States. (The US-backed proposal failed to overcome opposition from the 14 similar national jurisdictions that benefit from turmoil and discounted Venezuelan oil.) "The tragic situation in Venezuela calls out for action. The Venezuelan people are starving while their government tramples their democracy". //Snipp// The Judiciary has sold out and military command is wavering as the country, pummeled by the plunge in oil prices and the Hugo Chávez, legacy of...

We were trying to count the people standing in a breadline when William Contreras arrived. The line was forming outside of a bakery in the Caracas run-down neighborhood of Catia, about 20 people long with a half dozen more sprinting past me and our photographer, Cristian Hernández. It was a perfect illustration of the desperate situation of a country that was, a few years ago, boasting of its oil-funded socialist prosperity. Contreras was our government minder, a bulky 50-year-old alderman with salt-and-pepper hair. When he pulled up to us, he seemed oblivious to the snaking line.

A helicopter has apparently tried to bomb Venezuela's Supreme Court in what President Nicolas Maduro called a "terrorist attack". The government says a police office flew the helicopter over the capital, Caracas, and dropped grenades. Footage on social media shows a helicopter circling over the city before a loud bang is heard. The officer believed to have seized the aircraft has issued a video statement condemning the government...... President Maduro said grenades had been dropped in the attack and he promised that security forces would capture those behind it. "I have activated the entire armed forces to defend the peace,"...

CNN is reportedly implementing strict new rules for the network's stories regarding Russia. CNNMoney executive editor Rich Barbieri sent out an email Saturday regarding the network's new rules after the network a day earlier issued a retraction on one of its stories. "No one should publish any content involving Russia without coming to me and Jason [Farkas]," said the email, obtained by BuzzFeed News. "This applies to social, video, editorial, and MoneyStream. No exceptions," the email added. "I will lay out a workflow Monday." The new restrictions come after CNN on Friday retracted a story that connected Anthony Scaramucci, a prominent...

Former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Wednesday the Democratic National Committee decided it didn't need the department's help when it was hacked by the Russians and instead opted to rely on a private cybersecurity firm. "This was a question I asked repeatedly when I learned of [the hacking]—what are we doing? Are we in there? Are we helping them discover the vulnerabilities, because this was fresh off the OPM experience and there was a point at which DHS cybersecurity experts did get in to OPM and help them discover the bad actors and patch some of the...

The House Oversight Committee released a scathing report Wednesday that accuses former Attorney General Eric Holder and his Department of Justice of covering up Operation Fast and Furious and misleading Congress’ investigation into the botched gun-running operation. The nearly 300-page report states that the Justice Department under Holder actively tried to hide the facts from the loved ones of slain Border Patrol Brian Terry – seeing his family as more of a “nuisance” than one deserving straight answers — and at times being openly hostile to them. {..snip..}

<p>Joseph Lynn Pickett of Edwardsville was charged June 15 with threatening the president of the United States, the Belleville News-Democrat ( http://bit.ly/2ssw5WM ) reported.</p> <p>U.S. Secret Service Special Agent Vincent Pescitelli said in a criminal complaint that Pickett "did knowingly and willfully make a threat to take the life of, to kidnap, and to inflict bodily harm" against Trump on Facebook.</p>