Free Republic

The 7-month prison sentence of Douglass Mackey has been stayed per a federal judge. He was convicted in March for circulating a satirical meme that encouraged Hillary Clinton voters to cast their votes via text in the lead up to the 2016 election. The Motion Order reads: "granting motion for release pending appeal, at docket entry 16 Mackey's surrender date is stated. The District Court is ordered to determine the appropriate terms of release, without prejudice to the government's making a future request for detention, on behalf of Appellant Douglass Mackey, It is further ordered that this appeal is expedited....

A man in black bloc behaving suspiciously near a right-wing rally outside the Pinellas County Courthouse in Florida on Jan. 6 was apprehended by deputies after he tried fleeing on foot. Garrett James Smith, 22, was arrested and found carrying an active pipe bomb, Antifa propaganda and a written document on what to bring for his direct action. He had recently returned from Portland, Ore. "He was running fast, he was running away from something," Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said at a press conference on Friday. Smith was purportedly targeting dozens of the attendees of a rally protesting the...

The chairman and former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Reuters news agency – James C. Smith – is a top investor and board member for pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer. He was elected to the board in 2014, as well as joining Pfizer’s Corporate Governance and Science and Technology Committees. The news raises serious conflict of interest concerns as corporate media outlets such as Reuters continue to promote Pfizer products, defend pharmaceuticals companies from criticism, and move to silence skeptics. Smith is currently the Chairman of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the London-based charity known for providing news and information to billions...

Posted: September 23, 2005 12:32 p.m. Eastern The Pentagon has barred a pair of intelligence operatives from testifying before a Senate committee about a military operation that allegedly identified a major figure in the 9-11 attacks before they occurred. Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer and civilian contractor James Smith were not allowed to answer questions posed by members of the Senate Intelligence Committee regarding "Able Danger," a secret data-mining operation that allegedly named Mohammad Atta as an al-Qaida operative a year before Sept. 11, 2001.

Sticking to, but not penetrating, the wall The New York Times reports that "an active-duty Navy captain has become the second military officer to come forward publicly to say that a secret defense intelligence program tagged the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks as a possible terrorist more than a year before the attacks." According to the officer, Captain Scott Phillpot, "Atta was identified by Able Danger by January-February of 2000." Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer went public with this story last week, stating that analysts in the Able Danger project had been overruled by military lawyers, pursuant to the "wall"...

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - A former FBI agent who had an affair with an accused Chinese double agent he was handling was sentenced to three months in home confinement in the climax of a bizarre spy saga. Ex-Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent James Smith, 61, was also ordered to perform 100 hours of community service and sentenced to three years' probation for his role in the scandal that shook the US police agency. Smith was sentenced under a plea bargain with prosecutors after admitting in court Wednesday that he had lied to his bosses about his two-decade "sexual relationship"...