Free Republic

New information released in connection with the activities of accused child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his associate Ghislane Maxwell with many high profile names in the mix..... "intelligent background checks" A phrase used by President Trump facing the media at the White House Friday with the President indicating talks are underway with the Republican and Democrat leaders in Congress on new Second Amendment legislation.... A 20-year old man in custody in Springfield, Missouri after he walked into a Walmart Thursday with guns, wearing body armor and dressed in a military style.... Friday night KYTV in Springfield, Missouri reporting that...

New probe into another failed 2008 presidential bid -- of New Mexico governor BILL RICHARDSON has a decidedly JOHN EDWARDS flavor du jour. He allegedly ponied up campaign funds to silence a woman’s affair claims.

At the center of Jeffrey Epstein’s secluded New Mexico ranch sits a sprawling residence the financier built decades ago – complete with plans for a 4,000-square-foot courtyard, a living room roughly the size of the average American home and a nearby private airplane runway. Known as the Zorro Ranch, the high-desert property is now tied to an investigation that the state attorney general’s office says it has opened into Epstein with plans to forward findings to federal authorities in New York.

... New Mexico is finally free of a back-room highway bond deal that kept then-Gov. Bill Richardson out of then-President-elect Barack Obama’s Cabinet once it was exposed. Back in 2004 and 2006, very few people understood what had been done to get $1.6 billion in state highway bonds used to start a bunch of highway projects and the Rail Runner commuter train. And even fewer knew why a company known as CDR Financial Products Inc. of Beverly Hills, was involved. The Richardson administration wanted the $1.6 billion in bonds to make a big splash on the state’s economy... But the...

Judging by the rhetoric coming out of Tehran, John Bolton’s appointment as America’s National Security Advisor is the worst thing that ever happened. The Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council labeled Bolton’s appointment “a matter of shame.”  The Chairman of the Iranian Parliament's Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy declared,  "The use of hardline elements against the Islamic Republic of Iran shows that the Americans seek to exert more pressure on Iran.”First Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri opined, “They (US officials) are wrong to assume that the Iranian nation will give in to their threats against the Islamic Republic.”  ...

Former 2008 Presidential Candidate Bill Richardson on whether the Electoral College should meet over the alleged Russian hack of the 2016 election.

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton will be announcing her running mate within the next two months. Yes, that person is more than likely to be Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who is in an important swing state and speaks fluent Spanish, but we can dream, can’t we? Here are 10 African-American and Latino prospects the former secretary of state could select from for a vice presidential nominee.

Democrats should not expect the path to the White House to be a cakewalk if Hillary Clinton faces Donald Trump in November, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said Friday. "We've got to be very careful because Trump has tapped into a negativity, a populism that is out there, and I think we have to work extra hard" to attract young voters and turn out the party's base, the 2008 Democratic presidential contender told CNBC's "Squawk Box." Clinton will be a strong candidate, he said, but she will have to overcome her party's shift far left of the American electorate....

A nonprofit group founded by ex-New York SEIU boss Dennis Rivera has received big contributions from corporations that do business with the Puerto Rican government, while employing the governor's brother as its only employee. This arrangement was reported today by Alana Goodman of the Washington Free Beacon, based on information provided by NLPC. The charity, now known as "Sociedad Económica De Amigos del Pais," was founded in New York in 1996 by Rivera and former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson as the Hispanic Education and Legal Fund (HELF). Its name change, relocation to Puerto Rico and change of mission...

SANTA FE - Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson was cited for following too closely and failing to report an accident after a hit-and-run fender bender in downtown Santa Fe on Wednesday morning. According to the police report, the accident occurred about 8:15 a.m. during wet, snowy conditions. Richardson rear-ended a vehicle driven by a Santa Fe woman while both were traveling east on Marcy Street at the intersection with Paseo de Peralta. The woman told the police a yellow Jeep hit her car from behind while she was stopped at a stop sign. The Jeep then hit her a...

SANTA FE – Lawsuit claims about young female sex slaves allegedly kept by billionaire investor Jeffrey Epstein and offered to a worldwide list of the rich and famous have reached New Mexico. In a new court filing in Florida, plaintiffs’ lawyers maintain that a woman identified as Jane Doe No. 3, said to have been coerced into Epstein’s camp when she was 15 years old, was frequently sexually abused by Epstein “not only in West Palm Beach (Fla.), but also in New York, New Mexico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, in international airspace on … Epstein’s private planes, and elsewhere.” Epstein...

A secret plea deal for Britain’s Prince Andrew’s pal Jeffrey Epstein protected the prince and any other high-powered friends who may have used his alleged sex slaves, RadarOnline.com has exclusively learned. Federal prosecutors promised they “will not institute any criminal charges against any potential co-conspirators of Epstein” if the Wall Street money manager pled guilty to two relatively minor state underage sex charges that put him in a local jail for 13 months, the confidential plea agreement obtained by Radar says. A lawsuit filed by four women, who say federal prosecutors illegally ignored them and kept them in the dark...

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is a “victim” of bad publicity, according to Bill Richardson, the former New Mexico governor and U.N. ambassador. “He has been the victim, Kim Jong Un, of a lot of bad press, a lot of bad international attention, with the Sony hacking, with [being] taken to the International Criminal Court by some U.N. countries, a number of other very destabilizing moves that he has made, shooting the missiles, nuclear testing,” Richardson said on Friday on MSNBC’s “News Nation with Tamron Hall.”

Sheesh! Talk about a cheap shot. If former New Mexico governor and Clinton cabinet member Bill Richardson dislikes Jeb Bush, at least criticize him for something plausible. Instead, Richardson took a cheap shot at Jeb Bush on Meet The Press today for supposedly having a poor ability to speak Spanish. Really, Bill? Because the video below of Bush speaking Spanish during an interview with Univision's Jorge Ramos clearly demonstrates a high degree of fluency in that language.

Managers at one of the nation’s premier federal laboratories improperly used taxpayer funds to influence members of Congress and other officials as part of an effort to extend the lab’s $2.4 billion management contract, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General said in a report Wednesday. A review of documents determined that Sandia National Laboratories formed a team and worked with consultants beginning in 2009 to develop a plan for securing a contract extension without having to go through a competitive process. That plan called for lobbying Congress, trying to influence key advisers to then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu...

Once upon a time, the liberal position was to reject the old discriminatory branding of people by the color of their skins rather than by the content of their characters. Not now. Political and career advantage is found in trumpeting -- or occasionally making up -- genealogies. Take the inexact category of Latino or Hispanic -- an often constructed identity that increasingly no one quite knows how to define. Almost anyone can be a Latino or Hispanic, from a fourth-generation American with one-quarter Mexican ancestry, to a first-generation Cuban, to a youth who recently arrived illegally from Central America, to...

Bill Richardson, the former New Mexico governor who held in two senior positions in President Bill Clinton's administration, was labeled a turncoat in 2008 for endorsing Barack Obama over Hillary Rodham Clinton. Now, as Clinton weighs a second presidential run in 2016, Richardson wants the political world to know he's not on board -- yet. When I called Richardson last week soliciting his thoughts on Clinton's book tour, the first thing Richardson said was, "You know I'm not in the 'Ready for Hillary' camp, right?" "It's because of our differences when I endorsed Obama," Richardson said. "The differences haven't healed,...

The tawdriness of American identity politics reached a new low this week as former New Mexico governor, frustrated 2008 democrat presidential candidate, and serial corruption suspect Bill Richardson offered his take on the junior senator from Texas. On Sunday, Richardson was a guest on ABC’S This Week when he said that because Ted Cruz doesn’t support amnesty for illegal aliens, he shouldn’t be considered an Hispanic! “Almost every Hispanic in the country wants to see immigration reform. No, I don’t think he should be defined as a Hispanic,” Richardson said. Such a politically perverse statement reminds me of how a...

Via the Free Beacon. He says he didn’t mean Cruz can’t be defined as Hispanic, just that Cruz shouldn’t be defined exclusively by race. His problem is that he’s saying this against a backdrop of 25 years of liberals accusing Clarence Thomas of being inauthentically black because his politics are right-wing rather than left. And political operatives on both sides understand that if Cruz lands on the ticket in three years, attacks of this sort in ways subtle and not will be thrown at him. Peter Beinart wrote a piece for Newsweek this morning titled “Yes, Democrats Can Be Racist”...

Bill Richardson recently insinuated that Senator Ted Cruz doesn't really count as a Hispanic. See the story at Breitbart.There's only one response to this idiot.