Free Republic

Round one occurred on Feb. 10, when an Iranian drone launched by a Revolutionary Guards Quds Force unit operating out of Syria’s T4 air base, east of Homs in central Syria, was shot down with a missile from an Israeli Apache helicopter that was following it after it penetrated Israeli airspace. “This is the first time we saw Iran do something against Israel — not by proxy,” a senior Israeli military source told me. “This opened a new period.” It certainly helps to explain why Israeli jets launched a predawn missile raid on the Iranian drone’s T4 home base last...

“The president brought up former President Obama, your former boss,” Tapper posed to Psaki. “He blamed him for, quote, ‘basically creating no border.'” “I didn’t even understand what he was talking higher than,” he continued. “He was talking about his poll numbers in Rasmussen, ‘higher than Cheatin’ Obama at the same time in his Administration.'” “I don’t know exactly what he’s referring to with the Cheatin,” Tapper added. “It’s an interesting thing to bring up during the Stormy Daniels saga, certainly. What’s your response?” “Well given Trump’s history, you can also guess that he might — there might be racial...

Doctors say a stem cell transplant could be a "game changer" for many patients with multiple sclerosis. Results from an international trial show that it was able to stop the disease and improve symptoms. It involves wiping out a patient's immune system using cancer drugs and then rebooting it with a stem cell transplant. Just over 100 patients took part in the trial, in hospitals in Chicago, Sheffield, Uppsala in Sweden and Sao Paulo in Brazil. They all had relapsing remitting MS - where attacks or relapses are followed by periods of remission. The patients received either haematopoietic stem cell...

President Trump said Monday that it was “un-American” and “treasonous” when some congressional Democrats did not applaud during last week's State of the Union address as he touted the low rates of black and Hispanic unemployment. -- Obama used the word “treason” only twice during his eight years in office. Not coincidentally, he was discussing the rise of Trump both times. As the Republican primaries raged on in March 2016 and the establishment tried to block Trump from securing the nomination, Obama said during a fundraiser in Austin that their party wouldn’t be in that position if elected Republicans had...

Over a career that has taken him to Afghanistan and Iraq, Col. Patrick Duggan has seen the lethal power of drones. Now, as a base commander in the nation’s capital, he is worried that frequent illegal flights buzzing over Washington could pose a threat. In the middle of a federal no-fly zone for drones, in some of the most sensitive and restricted airspace in the United States, technicians working with Duggan recorded nearly 100 drone sightings over two months last summer. And that was just around two Army posts he oversees. Many of the operators were probably oblivious to the...

A series of mysterious attacks against the main Russian military base in Syria, including one conducted by a swarm of armed miniature drones, has exposed Russia’s continued vulnerability in the country despite recent claims of victory by President Vladimir Putin. The attacks have also spurred a flurry of questions over who may be responsible for what amounts to the biggest military challenge yet to Russia’s role in Syria, just when Moscow is seeking to wind its presence down. In the most recent and unusual of the attacks, more than a dozen armed drones descended from an unknown location onto Russia’s...

Republican Joe Arpaio, a close ally of President Trump and former sheriff known for his provocative approach to combatting illegal immigration, is running for Senate in Arizona. The 85-year-old Arpaio could shake up the late August Republican primary in a critical open-seat race to replace retiring Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. Trump pardoned Arpaio last summer, sparing the former sheriff jail time after he was convicted of ignoring a federal court order in a racial-profiling case. The polarizing yet iconic former Maricopa County sheriff, beloved by many conservatives for his hawkish immigration policies, presents an alternative to the unimpressive Kelli Ward...

President Donald Trump questioned the politics of his decision to finally acknowledge former President Barack Obama was born in the US, which he did late during the campaign in 2016, according to a source close to the White House. The source said that shortly after he made the statement, Trump told aides that he would have done better in the polls had he continued to stand his ground on the birth certificate issue. Trump has continued to question the legitimacy of Obama's birth certificate during private conversations in recent months, The New York Times reported Tuesday, citing advisers who discussed...

Tonight we welcome former Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio. He’s done plenty of heroic things during his 50+ years as a lawman. But he’s best known to our audience as the only elected official in the country who had the courage to investigate Barack Obama’s proffered birth documents—and declare them beyond a shadow of a doubt to be complete fabrications. This is a show you don’t want to miss! *Date: Monday, October 30, 2017** Time: 8:00 to 10:00 pm Eastern Call in number: 347-989-8853. Press number 1 to get on the air Listen Live Here

...it could be quite politically significant that tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans, maybe more, are expected to permanently move into Florida as the result of Hurricane Maria. Their citizenship entitles them to vote, and they tend to overwhelmingly support Democratic candidates. Florida-based Republican operative Rick Wilson thinks the hurricane might be a game changer. “If you put an influx of 100,000 Puerto Ricans who vote Democratic eight times out of 10 in the Orlando area, there you go,” he said. “Nobody can afford a big change in the registration pattern or a change in the voting pattern that offsets...

After President Trump’s pardon of ex-sheriff Joe Arpaio, who had been convicted of criminal contempt for violating a court order designed to stop the violation of the constitutional rights of suspected illegal immigrants, conventional wisdom — and certainly the Trump administration — would have us believe that Trump’s pardon powers are unlimited. However, never before has someone stretched the pardon power so beyond its original intent. Trump has now drawn scrutiny not simply from critics of his racist rhetoric but from the court itself. The Arizona Republic Reports: U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton canceled former Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s upcoming...

As Joseph Arpaio’s federal case headed toward trial this past spring, President Trump wanted to act to help the former Arizona county sheriff who had become a campaign-trail companion and a partner in their crusade against illegal immigration. The president asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions whether it would be possible for the government to drop the criminal case against Arpaio, but was advised that would be inappropriate, according to three people with knowledge of the conversation. After talking with Sessions, Trump decided to let the case go to trial, and if Arpaio was convicted, he could grant clemency. Trump and...

Last month, as President Trump made broad claims about his power to pardon, I noted that he “may find out that something can be both legal and, simultaneously, an impeachable offense.” Last night, as the president issued a pardon to former Maricopa County, Ariz., sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of criminal contempt of court, some commentators argued that this was exactly the case. Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman, for example, wrote after Trump’s belligerent Phoenix rally speech that such a pardon would represent an “assault on the federal judiciary, the Constitution and the rule of law itself” for which...

While Mr. Trump was beginning his revanchist run for the White House on the backs of Mexican “rapists,” Mr. Arpaio was terrorizing brown-skinned people across southern Arizona, sweeping them up in “saturation patrols” and holding them in what he referred to as a “concentration camp” for months at a time. It was this behavior that a federal judge in 2011 found to be unconstitutional and ordered Mr. Arpaio to stop. He refused, placing himself above the law and the Constitution that he had sworn to uphold. That alone would be reason enough to deny him a pardon. But a grant...

The world's best-selling drone-maker is adding a privacy mode to its aircraft to prevent flight data being shared to the internet. The announcement comes a fortnight after it emerged that the US Army had prohibited its troops from using the Chinese firm's equipment because of unspecified cyber-security concerns. DJI told the BBC that it had already been working on the new facility, but had speeded up development after the ban. The mode should be launched next month. DJI previously faced security fears in 2016 after a member of its staff told reporters that the firm had repeatedly shared customer data...

The Pentagon has given US military bases permission to shoot down or otherwise destroy consumer drones flying overhead and nearby. A spokesman revealed that guidance was issued on 4 August. He said the exact terms of the policy were classified. The move comes days after the US Army ordered its own troops to stop using drones made by Chinese manufacturer DJI because of alleged "cyber-vulnerabilities". It became illegal to fly personal drones within 400ft (122m) of the US's 133 military facilities in April. The Federal Aviation Administration announced at the time that those who disobeyed the order would face financial...

But Sunday, as he promoted his book on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Flake took his assault on Trumpism back years further — all the way to the pre-dawn of Trump’s political rise, to “when the birtherism thing was going on,” as Flake put it to host Chuck Todd. “Some people did stand up, but not enough,” the senator said. “That was particularly ugly.” “Did you do enough?” Todd asked. Flake smiled. “On that, I think I did.” Flake was a congressman in 2011, when Trump flirted with a presidential run against President Barack Obama. The current president did so “spouting...

Veselnitskaya’s visa for U.S. entry was denied, but she received special permission — in what is known as a “parole letter” — to come to New York specifically to defend Prevezon and Katsyv. She said in a court statement, however, that when she tried to reenter the United States, she was detained at London’s Heathrow Airport and “unjustifiably subjected to a strip search, for no apparent reason.” She eventually received permission to come to the United States to continue her work for Prevezon. That set the stage for Veselnitskaya to be in New York City in June 2016, where a...

An eastern Kentucky disability lawyer scheduled to be sentenced next month for defrauding the government of nearly $600 million has disappeared, the FBI said. Eric Conn pleaded guilty in March to stealing from the federal government and bribing a judge. He was scheduled to be sentenced next month and had been ordered to pay the government tens of millions of dollars. But Saturday, the FBI said Conn removed his electronic monitoring device, violating the conditions of his bond and prompting the U.S. District Court to issue a warrant for his arrest. David Habich, general counsel for the FBI’s Louisville office,...

Then there’s Cat People of Melbourne, an Australian rescue group that recently decided to turn the adorable approach on its head. Instead of emphasizing the cuddly or intelligent nature of one slender black feline in its custody, director Gina Brett wrote an adoption profile that made him sound downright nasty. “Mr. Biggles (also known as Lord Bigglesworth) is an utter utter utter bastard,” Brett wrote. “Mr. Biggles is a despot and dictator, he will let you know he is not happy, which is often because things are often just not up to his high standards.” She went on: “Mr. Biggles...