Free Republic

Former President Trump unleashed a torrent of angry social media posts Tuesday about the investigations into his conduct, the day after his lawyers met with Justice Department (DOJ) officials. Trump posted several times on Truth Social, levying claims that he is being politically targeted and offering up misleading comparisons between his own case and President Biden’s when it comes to handling classified material. “The Marxists and Fascists in the DOJ & FBI are going after me at a level and speed never seen before in our Country, and I did nothing wrong,” he wrote in one post. “Joe Biden kept...

Republican allies of former President Donald Trump have hammered the Justice Department for leaks after it was reported another country's top secret nuclear information was found in the raid of Mar-a-Lago. The alleged discovery of highly sensitive information was reported by the Washington Post on Tuesday. The report claimed “a document describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities, was found by FBI agents who searched” Mar-a-Lago last month, citing “people familiar with the matter.” The former president's defenders immediately took aim at the department in the wake of the information making its way into the media. Trump...

- Trump took swipes on social media at potential 2024 rivals Govs. DeSantis and Youngkin. - It's been speculated that the Florida and Virginia governors could seek the GOP nomination in 2024. - Though he has not said he's running for re-election, Trump once again teased he may make another White House run.

Roseanne Barr, the sitcom superstar fired by ABC Tuesday over a racist tweet, did not react well to statements released by her Roseanne co-stars Sara Gilbert and Michael Fishman. Gilbert, who played Roseanne Connor’s daughter Darlene — and who reportedly was responsible for the sitcom’s reboot — condemned Barr in a widely-circulated tweet Tuesday. “Roseanne’s recent comments about Valerie Jarrett, and so much more, are abhorrent and do not reflect the beliefs of our cast and crew or anyone associated with our show. I am disappointed in her actions to say the least,” Gilbert said.

Real-estate mogul Donald Trump is now going after conservative talk-show host Glenn Beck. In recent weeks, Beck has repeatedly been critical of Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner. Most recently, Beck was quoted in a New York Times article on Wednesday dismissing Trump as a "schoolyard bully" who is not in touch with tea-party conservatives. The Times article was titled: "Donald Trump’s Act Seems to Be Wearing Out Its Welcome." Trump, no stranger to Twitter insults, lashed out at Beck on Thursday:

Conservative Princeton University professor and vice chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom Robert P. George, along with six other advocates, have offered to take 100 lashes each for Saudi Arabian blogger Raif Badawi who was sentenced to 1,000 lashes for insulting his country's clerics. Badawi, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes got his first 50 lashes by cane in a public square just over a week ago. A news release from Amnesty International explained that a second round of flogging for the blogger was postponed last Friday because his wounds from the...

Saudi blogger and activist Raif Badawi, sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for insulting Islam, is set to receive the first set of 50 lashes tomorrow. Badawi will be flogged after Friday prayers tomorrow and continuously over a period of 20 weeks as the remainder of his sentence is carried out, according to Amnesty International.

Omar al-Saeed had called for a constitutional monarchy and attacked the ruling family over its human rights record. A Saudi judge has sentenced [him] 300 lashes and four years in prison. Saeed did not have legal representation at the secret hearing when he was sentenced on Sunday, ACPRA said in a statement on its website. US-allied Saudi Arabia is ruled by the al-Saud family together with powerful clerics from the country's Wahhabi school of Sunni Islam. King Abdullah is the prime minister and he appoints the government, which includes top princes in the roles of foreign, interior, defence and intelligence...

Asians were accused of practicing witchcraft on their employersA Saudi court sentenced two Asian housemaids to 10 years in jail and ordered their lashed 1,000 times each after they were found guilty of indulging in sorcery at their employers’ houses in the Gulf Kingdom, a newspaper reported on Monday. Their Saudi employers reported the two maids to the Gulf country’s feared religious police, saying they had discovered that their families had been harmed because of sorcery practiced by the maids against them. Members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice who searched the two houses...

BAMAKO - Tuareg rebels and Islamist militants have joined forces in northern Mali and say they will create an independent Islamist state. The groups took advantage of a military coup in Bamako to seize control of the territory in early April. Resistance is growing in the north to the efforts to introduce Islamic law. In the northern Malian town of Gao, court is in session. Commissioner Abdoulaye Maiga begins by reading from the Quran in the roadside courtyard outside the former police station. Once an area businessman, Maiga is a member of the militant Islamist sect Ansar Dine that residents...

Mexican President Felipe Calderon said in an interview Friday that last month’s massacre of 72 migrants doesn't undermine Mexico's moral authority to demand better treatment for its own migrants. "Of course we have the moral authority, because Mexican officials are not shooting Central American youths at the border, but U.S. agents are shooting Mexican migrants," Calderon said in an interview with the Spanish-language Univision network. "If we are talking about responsibility, at the root of this, in the case of immigration, is the lack of immigration legislation in the United States that would recognize this phenomenon," Calderon said.

JIZAN, Saudi Arabia, Feb. 19 (UPI) -- A Saudi Arabian court handed down a 120-lash sentence to a man who was simultaneously married to six women -- two more than the legal limit. The man, whose name was not released, told the Jizan province court he did not know he was violating Shariah, Islamic law, by having more than four wives at the same time, the BBC reported Friday. The defendant, a member of the Saudi Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, a religious police force, was also ordered to read two chapters of the Koran...

Former Alaska governor and GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin blamed out-of-touch Washington elites with trying to foist an ill-advised healthcare overhaul on Americans that betrays the nation’s traditional ideals, principles, and values. Speaking to an enthusiastic crowd of 1,300 Florida Republicans at an Orlando, Fla., fundraiser Friday night, Palin repeatedly said that Democrats and President Obama are speaking down to Americans, rather than listening to their genuine concerns. “These days, the left lectures us, and they apologize for us, and they mock, and they spend the better part of a year talking down to us,” Palin said, referring to the...

A 13-year-old girl has been sentenced to 90 lashes and two months' prison in Saudi Arabia after she took a mobile phone to school. A court ordered the girl to be flogged in front of her classmates following an assault on the school principal, according to the Saudi daily newspaper Al-Watan. After the assault she was discovered to have concealed a mobile phone, breaking strict Saudi regulations banning the use of camera-equipped phones in girls' schools.

Empire Strikes Back Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had some choice words in response to Newsweek magazine's prediction that he would be ousted in a military coup in 2010. Chavez called the publication "the empire's magazine," saying in a televised address that: "They feed on hatred and the wishes of the imperialism that they represent — big money, big newspapers, the TV stations of the global bourgeoisie."

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – A Saudi court on Saturday convicted a female journalist for her involvement in a TV show, in which a Saudi man publicly talked about sex, and sentenced her to 60 lashes. Rozanna al-Yami is believed to be the first Saudi woman journalist to be given such a punishment. The charges against her included involvement in the preparation of the program and advertising the segment on the Internet. Abdul-Rahman al-Hazza, the spokesman of the Ministry of Culture and Information, told The Associated Press he had no details of the sentencing and could not comment on it. In...

NEW YORK (AFP) – President Barack Obama bluntly warned Monday that some Wall Street bosses were ignoring lessons of the financial crisis, as he demanded a new age of prudence after bloated years of unchecked excess. "The old ways that led to this crisis cannot stand," the US leader said, in an outspoken address delivered in the shadow of US finance firms he blamed for unleashing global contagion. "History cannot be allowed to repeat itself." A year after Lehman Brothers failed, triggering the meltdown, Obama also called on Congress to act this year on regulatory reforms he hailed as the...

PHOENIX (AP) - President Barack Obama took on both the defense establishment and freespending lawmakers on Monday, saying they were draining the defense budget with "exotic projects." "If Congress sends me a defense bill loaded a bunch of pork, I will veto it," he declared in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. He accused members of Congress of using the defense budget to protect jobs back home, including on wasteful projects he said were diverting money needed for U.S. military forces battling everything from nuclear weapons to "18th century style piracy and 21st century cyber threats."

CAIRO -- A 75-year-old widow in Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to 40 lashes and four months in jail for mingling with two young men who are not close relatives, drawing new criticism for the kingdom's ultraconservative religious police and judiciary. The woman's lawyer told The Associated Press on Monday that he would appeal the verdict against Khamisa Sawadi, who is Syrian but was married to a Saudi. The attorney, Abdel Rahman al-Lahem, said the verdict issued March 3 also demands that Sawadi be deported after serving her sentence.

CAIRO, Egypt — Demonstrators in Cairo demanded Tuesday that Saudi Arabia release an Egyptian doctor sentenced to 15 years in prison and 1,500 lashes after he was convicted of malpractice — reportedly after treating a Saudi princess. His wife said she feared the punishment would kill him. Raouf Amin el-Arabi, a doctor who has been serving the Saudi royal family for about 20 years, was convicted last year of giving a patient the wrong medication. Egyptian newspapers reported that he was accused of driving a Saudi princess "to addiction."