Free Republic

Joe Biden is being portrayed as the Democrats’ safest potential presidential nominee, despite his obvious flaws as a candidate. But one wonders how Biden’s history of swamp corruption will play if he actually faces the scrutiny of a national run. Biden’s family has gotten wealthy, like those of so many low-paid “public servants”–Tom Daschle and Harry Reid are obvious examples. How does that happen? Politico headlines: “Biden Inc. Over his decades in office, ‘Middle-Class Joe’s’ family fortunes have closely tracked his political career.” It begins:

Joe Biden’s younger brother James received a series of “unusually generous” bank loans during the 1970s, while the former vice president served on the Senate Banking Committee. Politico reported on Friday that James Biden, who has a history of murky financial dealings, was able to parlay his role as the chief fundraiser for his brother’s 1972 Senate run into the startup capital required to open a nightclub. The loans were considered “unusually generous” given that the younger Biden was a salesman without any business experience and purportedly had a net worth of less than $10,000 at the outset of the...

Three members of the National Rifle Association’s board resigned on Thursday August 1, 2019. Concerns about fiscal impropriety and mismanagement motivated the board members to resign from the organization. The three board members — Esther Schneider of Texas, Sean Maloney of Ohio and Timothy Knight of Tennessee — claimed that they were stripped of their committee assignments after they questioned NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre’s spending habits. BLP reported on concerns about LaPierre’s lavish spending a few months ago, which has drawn considerable criticism from members of the gun rights community.

President Trump's criticism of the rampant crime, corruption, and filth that pervades the City of Baltimore was characterized as "racist" by his political opponents in the Democratic Party and the media. Though Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md) had previously made similar criticisms of the City, he took offense at "the President's insensitive remarks. It is one thing for those of us who have had to suffer the decades of misgovernment to complain. It is quite another for a white outsider to dare to expose it to the world. That's racist." Trump pointed out that "Cummings has represented the worst portions of...

“The water is meant to represent gender and sexual fluidity,” Mr. Singh said, seated beneath a 1988 Herb Ritts portrait of Cindy Crawford. The women who would pose in that water — their limbs wrapped around one another in a balletlike pose — were not simply models but activists. One uses performance art and digital media to share stories about the H.I.V. epidemic. Another is an underwater dancer who promotes ocean conservation. The third, a Belgian artist, recently filmed herself walking naked through a Hasidic neighborhood of Brooklyn during a sacred holiday.

The former Sheriff of Philadelphia John Green, 72, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was sentenced today to serve five years in prison followed by one year of supervised release, and ordered to forfeit $76,581 by U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. John Green was convicted of conspiring to defraud the citizens of Philadelphia of his honest services as Sheriff of Philadelphia by receiving and accepting a stream of hidden personal benefits from co-defendant James Davis in exchange for giving Davis millions of dollars of business at the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office. From 2002 to 2011, Green accepted hidden...

HYANNIS PORT, Mass. - A 22-year-old granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy died Thursday at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, the family said in a statement. Saoirse Kennedy Hill, 22, was the daughter of Robert and Ethel Kennedy's fifth child, Courtney, and Paul Michael Hill, who was one of four falsely convicted in the 1974 Irish Republican Army bombings of two pubs. The Kennedy family released a statement on Thursday night, following reports of a death at the family's compound in Hyannis Port. The statement was issued by Brian Wright O'Connor, a spokesman for former congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II....

A watchdog group has filed a complaint with the IRS for the mishandling of a non-profit organization run by Rep. Elijah Cummings’ wife, Maya according to One America News’ Jack Posobiec. The findings are shocking. According to the report, the nonprofit group was “cutting deals” with special interest groups directly tied to Cummings’ House Oversight Committee. Maya runs her non-profit “Global Policy Solutions” along with a separate for-profit venture. The watchdog alleges her group “received $6.2 million in grants from various corporate backers including Google, JP Morgan, Prudential & Johnson and Johnson.” The complaint also highlighted that Mrs. Cummings’ separate...

While many progressives were dismayed to learn on Thursday that Democratic leaders remain reticent to call for impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, some looked with admiration at the hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans who successfully forced their governor from office with days of non-violent protests. Gov. Ricardo Rosselló's resignation Wednesday night followed nearly two weeks of historic, sustained demonstrations by Puerto Ricans angry over leaked messages showing the governor and his associates denigrating his constituents, as well as a corruption scandal. Puerto Ricans have given "their fellow Americans the blueprint to remove Trump," wrote one progressive critic on...

Longtime Chicago union boss John Coli Sr. doesn’t necessarily seem like the type to cooperate with authorities. A politically connected and nationally known fixture in the Teamsters, Coli once told a lawyer in sworn testimony to “go f--- yourself.” He dodged controversy for years — from suspicious appointments to state boards to allegations of organized crime ties — often accusing his accusers of using overzealous investigative tactics. And in 2016, Coli was caught on an undercover FBI recording urging the firing of an executive at a West Side film studio who was purportedly balking at paying him extortion money. “You...

The timing is perfect, isn’t it? Here come the most searing, sweaty, sun-blasted days of the year, when the temperature and utility bills rise in unison. And right on cue, everyone’s favorite public agency in Los Angeles has stormed back into the news. The L.A. Department of Water and Power, infamous for a 2013 billing scandal and other shenanigans, got raided Monday by FBI agents who marched in and carted away records in a corruption probe that also brought raids at other city offices. At the DWP building, nine agents went to one floor alone, and at the end of...

Title shortened, don't know how to fix She went to pick her kids up from school one day, only to find that DCFS removed them,” Spell’s lawyer Stephen Lamont told The Epoch Times. “DCFS convinced the school they had a warrant. They did not have a warrant. They tried to get a warrant but it was denied. They said there was a restraining order against Dr. Spell, but that never existed.”

Well-to-do Illinois parents, including lawyers, doctors and realtors, are reportedly giving up custody of their high school-aged children in order to help them secure scholarships and financial aid reserved for low-income students. Separate investigations conducted by ProPublica Illinois and The Wall Street Journal have uncovered dozens of cases in the wealthy suburbs of Chicago involving parents transferring legal guardianship of their teenagers to grandparents, aunts, friends, or even co-workers over the past year-and-a-half. The idea behind the tactic, which is legal in Illinois, is that once the parents give up custody, the children are able to declare themselves financially independent...

San Juan (AFP) - Tens of thousands of water bottles destined for desperate Puerto Ricans after devastating back-to-back hurricanes slammed into the US island territory remain unopened on farmland almost two years later, emergency aid officials confirmed Monday. Aerial images captured by AFP show a sea of water bottles, packaged into massive bundles, heaped on what appears to be a private estate in the Higuillar neighborhood in Dorado, 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of San Juan. In some pictures, the ground isn't visible through the piles. In others, broken pallets can be seen among the stacks.

Baltimore’s rat problem is so bad that it is causing roads in the city to collapse, proving President Trump right when he said the city was a “rodent infested mess.” After being labeled “racist” for calling Elijah Cummings’ Baltimore district a “rat and rodent infested mess,” Trump doubled down earlier today by drawing attention to the city’s crime problem. “Baltimore, under the leadership of Elijah Cummings, has the worst Crime Statistics in the Nation. 25 years of all talk, no action! So tired of listening to the same old Bull…Next, Reverend Al will show up to complain & protest. Nothing...

Why do democrats waste billions of dollars on providing sanctuary and freebies for illegal aliens while neglecting the rundown cities they [mis]manage making their poorest people live in squalor and allowing poverty, drugs, gangs, crime, rats, pestilence and disease to fester? This is not rocket science. It's a matter of priorities. American citizens should come first.

[Truncated headline above. ACLJ Obtains DOJs Immunity Agreements with Hillary Lawyers to Dispose of Evidence and Refuse to Comply with Federal Law]The American Center for Law and Justice obtained the Justice Department’s immunity agreements with Hillary Clinton’s lawyers and it showed they were allowed to ‘dispose of evidence and refuse to comply with federal law. The immunity agreements were drawn up for Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson. While the existence of these immunity agreements was already public knowledge, the ACLJ obtained the actual documents for the first time. There were two separate agreements. First, Mills and Samuelson were granted immunity...

After the Baltimore riots in 2015, President Barack Obama spoke about communities in the major Maryland city that are struggling with “abject poverty,” “no investment,” and drugs. Obama partially blamed the riots on the lack of opportunity in Baltimore communities, pointing out the high rates of crime, substandard education, and drug abuse. (RELATED: Obama Refers To Baltimore Rioters As ‘Criminals And Thugs’) Riots are more likely to occur “if you have impoverished communities that have been stripped away of opportunities, where children are born into abject poverty, they’ve got parents — often because of substance abuse problems, or incarceration, or...

More than a year in the making, the new website embodies the very essence of what Judicial Watch is all about: Simply (yet, we hope at times somewhat sublimely) it provides compelling information about what JW has done… what it is now doing… and what – with the help of its supporters – it intends to do in the future to fight government corruption and help assure full transparency.

When it came time to protect United States, America’s Arab allies and the State of Israel against the threat posed by Iran, Rep. Jerold Nadler chose party loyalty over the national interest. He was one of the sad examples of a member of Congress who took his supporters for granted because he is confident his seat is safe. As the warnings of the critics of the Iran nuclear deal are shown to be correct with each Iranian violation of the world’s trust, Nadler’s vote becomes more troublesome as it becomes more evident he has joined the president as an enabler...