Free Republic

Internet billionaire Reid Hoffman apologized on Wednesday for funding a group linked to a “highly disturbing” effort that spread disinformation during last year’s Alabama special election for U.S. Senate, but said he was not aware that his money was being used for this purpose. Hoffman’s statement is his first acknowledgement of his ties to a campaign that adopted tactics similar to those deployed by Russian operatives during the 2016 presidential election. In Alabama, the Hoffman-funded group allegedly used Facebook and Twitter to undermine support for Republican Roy Moore and boost Democrat Doug Jones, who narrowly won the race. Hoffman, the...

Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) is asking federal authorities to conduct an investigation into whether disinformation tactics similar to those used by Russian hackers were used in his Senate race last year. Jones’s call for a federal investigation comes after a report in The New York Times that said New Knowledge, a cybersecurity research firm, experimented with using social media posts spreading disinformation in the 2017 Alabama Senate race. Jonathon Morgan, chief executive of New Knowledge, said he used the disinformation posts — which he said were similar to those used by Russia in the 2016 election — to test whether...

Democratic operatives, backed by a liberal billionaire and facilitated by a former Obama official, created thousands of fake Russian accounts to give an impression the Russian government was supporting Alabama Republican Roy Moore in last year’s election against now-Sen. Doug Jones. The secret project, which had a budget of just $100,000 and was carried out on Facebook and Twitter, was revealed after the New York Times obtained an internal report detailing the efforts. “We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet,” the internal report...

As Russia’s online election machinations came to light last year, a group of Democratic tech experts decided to try out similarly deceptive tactics in the fiercely contested Alabama Senate race, according to people familiar with the effort and a report on its results... One participant in the Alabama project, Jonathon Morgan, is the chief executive of New Knowledge, a small cyber security firm that wrote a scathing account of Russia’s social media operations in the 2016 election that was released this week by the Senate Intelligence Committee. An internal report on the Alabama effort, obtained by The New York Times,...

A man who was reportedly trying to break into a vacant Chinese restaurant in California got stuck in the grease vent for two days. Firefighters responded to the shuttered business on Wednesday morning in San Lorenzo. Upon arrival, they heard moaning coming from inside the building, and learned there was a man stuck in the duct of the hood above the stove, according to the Alameda County Fire Department. “The response was upgraded to a rescue. An adult male was extricated from the vent system within 30 minutes of firefighters arriving at the scene,” the fire department said in a...

In 2016, revenues from the court system and the drug towing law, brought in more than $546,000, approximately double from the year before. At the same time, however, payroll for the cops and court quadrupled, according to financial documents.

A test flight in Alaska of a small launch vehicle by a stealthy startup company ended in failure in late November, the Federal Aviation Administration has revealed. In a speech Dec. 6 at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce space conference here discussing the agency's approach to commercial spaceflight safety, FAA Acting Administrator Dan Elwell mentioned a recent, but previously unreported, accident involving a launch taking place from Alaska one week ago. A launch license the FAA issued to Astra Space Inc. on Oct. 15, also available on the FAA website, authorized the company to perform a suborbital flight of its...

If the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) stuck to its stated mission statement and only did civil rights work protecting Muslim Americans from discrimination and bigotry, you likely would never see it mentioned on this site.But CAIR has a second, perhaps more paramount objective that it never directly acknowledges: To oppose Israel and promote Palestinian nationalism.CAIR’s mission statement makes no mention of Palestine. Instead, it says it aims to “enhance understanding of Islam, protect civil rights, promote justice, and empower American Muslims.” It describes its lobbying arm as focusing “on issues related to Islam and Muslims. The department monitors legislation and government activities and responds...

Former Jeb Bush campaign staffer Tim Miller was responsible for giving anti-Roy Moore information to the Washington Post, according to text messages obtained by Big League Politics. Tim Miller is the co-founder of America Rising super PAC, which was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece by the Republican National Committee and the Senate Leadership Fund during the 2016 campaign cycle. Miller now works for Definers, which is a major vendor to America Rising. He served on the Bush campaign in a communications role and has since established himself as an anti-Trump Republican lauded by the anti-Trump left for his...

Jeb Bush on Monday joined growing Republicans calls for Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore to step down after Moore allegedly had a sexual encounter with a minor. “This is not a question of innocence or guilt like in a criminal proceeding, this is a question of what’s right and what’s wrong. Acknowledging that you’re dating teenagers when you’re 32 years old as assistant state attorney is wrong. It’s just plain wrong,” the former Republican presidential candidate and Florida governor said during an interview on CNBC. “We need to stand for basic principles, and decency has to be one of...

Shep Smith just said Trump isn't endorsing Roy Moore because he is an alleged child molester.

<p>Police in Alabama promised transparency Monday after a weekend of protests in response to an officer fatally shooting a black man who pulled out his legally permitted weapon following gunfire at a shopping mall.</p> <p>Hoover Police initially described the officer as "heroic" for bringing down Emantic "EJ" Bradford Jr. after two people were wounded at the Riverchase Galleria mall outside Birmingham Thanksgiving night. Then they retracted the statement, saying it's "unlikely" Bradford was involved.</p>

John Allen Chau was killed last week by North Sentinel islanders who apparently shot him with arrows and then buried his body on the beach, police say. But even officials don't travel to North Sentinel, where people live as their ancestors did thousands of years ago, and where outsiders are seen with suspicion and attacked. "It's a difficult proposition," said Dependera Pathak, director-general of police on India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands, where North Sentinel is located. "We have to see what is possible, taking utmost care of the sensitivity of the group and the legal requirements." ..." Police are consulting...

An American man was killed on an island inhabited by a tribe known to resist outside contact in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. And, his body still lies there. The American was identified as 27-year-old John Allen Chau, who sources said was a Christian missionary who wanted to convert the Sentinelese tribe that inhabits the island where he was killed. Chau was killed by members of this tribe, which is protected under Indian law, a senior police officer told India Today TV. The officer stressed that the Sentinelese must be left alone and that any forced contact with the outside...

John Allen Chau, the American missionary who was killed by an isolated tribe on a remote Indian island, reportedly wrote in his journal hours before his death, “God, I don’t want to die.” Chau, 26, of Vancouver, Wash., chronicled his last days while traveling to the Andaman Islands. He was intent on making contact with the Sentinelese tribe on North Sentinel Island, according to his journals shared by his mother with The Washington Post. “You guys might think I’m crazy in all this but I think it’s worthwhile to declare Jesus to these people,” he wrote in a last note...

Senator Doug Jones (D-Mountain Brook) confirmed on Tuesday that he will run for re-election to the United States Senate in 2020, according to a tweet by Zach Cohen of the National Journal. Jones’ comments came in a small press “scrum” on Capitol Hill, with Alabama’s junior senator reportedly saying his campaign is “[a]lready off and running.” He was named by CNBC on the same day as the senator most likely to lose his or her seat in the upcoming 2020 cycle.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has become the go-to “expert” on “hate groups” for establishment media and companies such as Amazon, but when a Washington Post Magazine reporter was commissioned to produce an in-depth feature on the organization, he came away with a least some doubt about SPLC’s credibility as an arbiter of “hate.” The reporter, David Montgomery, clearly is an admirer of SPLC, but his article was titled “The State of Hate: Researchers at the Southern Poverty Law Center have set themselves up as the ultimate judges of hate in America. But are they judging fairly?” The Post writer...

In the Nov. 6 elections, residents of Alabma voted overwhelmingly to amend their state constitution to authorize the display of the Ten Commandments on public property, including public schools. The measure, Alabama Amendment 1, also defined certain religious liberty rights to be included in the state's constitution.

Jeff Sessions, ousted as President Trump’s attorney general this week, is contemplating a run for his old Alabama Senate seat in 2020 against Democratic Sen. Doug Jones -- though those who know Sessions aren't convinced he will ultimately pull the trigger on another campaign. A source close to the former attorney general told Fox News that Sessions is “considering it but his mind isn't made up.” That person added that Sessions, known for his stances on illegal immigration and trade, “was advocating for the Trump agenda back when it was called the Sessions agenda.” Others, though, don’t see Sen. Sessions...

Dumped Attorney General Jeff Sessions is weighing a bid to win back his old Senate seat in Alabama, a report said. Sessions, fired by President Trump a day after Republicans lost control of the House in the midterm elections, left the seat in 2017 when he was nominated to head up the Justice Department. But Sessions could run against Democrat Doug Jones, who won a special election in December 2017 to fill the seat and is up for re-election in 2020, Politico reported late Wednesday.