Free Republic

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...

Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, a Republican candidate for US Senate, has cast doubt on former President Barack Obama's citizenship repeatedly and as recently as December 2016, fueling the debunked "birther" movement that sought to delegitimize Obama's presidency. Moore, who started questioning the legitimacy of Obama's citizenship back in 2008, last year told a meeting of the Constitution Party that he personally did not believe Obama was a natural-born citizen. "My opinion is, there is a big question about that," Moore said when asked how he defines natural-born citizen as it relates to qualifications for president. CNN's KFile reviewed...

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...

WASHINGTON – The Republican Party should have done more to shut down the birther movement that Donald Trump led, one GOP senator said Sunday. “I wish that we, as a party, would have stood up, for example, when the birtherism thing was going along,” Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “A lot of people did stand up but not enough.” Long before he was a presidential candidate, Trump led an effort to discredit President Obama by doubting he was a US citizen. Obama was born in Hawaii.

It is in the personal realm that Garrow’s account is particularly revealing. He shares for the first time the story of a woman Obama lived with and loved in Chicago, in the years before he met Michelle, and whom he asked to marry him. Sheila Miyoshi Jager, now a professor at Oberlin College, is a recurring presence in “Rising Star,” and her pained, drawn-out relationship with Obama informs both his will to rise in politics and the trade-offs he deems necessary... Garrow, who received a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Martin Luther King Jr., concludes this massive new work...

On Aprll 13, 2011, a viewer sent the following to Bill O’Reilly. He addressed it during the email segment of his show: John Knox: Arlington, VA: What about Obama having a Connecticut social security number. He never lived there. Bill O’Reilly: But his father lived in Connecticut for several years, John. Babies sometimes get numbers based on addresses provided by their parents. Why did O’Reilly mislead, and what is the lie?

The outdoor jail that was Mr. Arpaio’s marquee undertaking was a travesty. Ostensibly established to save money and deter criminals, who presumably would want to avoid sweltering in desert heat, it failed on both counts. In fact, closing the encampment will save taxpayers some $4.5 million annually. And in a recent study, the inmates there said they preferred the facility, the heat notwithstanding, to the cramped cells in conventional jails. In announcing that the encampment would be closed, after 24 years, Mr. Arpaio’s successor, Paul Penzone, a Democrat, said, “Starting today, the circus ends, and the tents come down.” Mr....

Surely. What's this?

An Obama has joined the birther movement. Malik Obama, Barack Obama's half-brother, tweeted image of what appears to be Barack's birth certificate. Except it's not from Hawaii, but rather Kenya. "What's this?" he tweeted. The document is from the "Coast Province General Hospital" in Mombasa, British Protectorate of Kenya, and is for Barack Hussein Obama II, who was born on the "4th day of August, 1961."

Chelsea Clinton, daughter of failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, tweeted Saturday her outrage over the birther conspiracy theory about former President Barack Obama, despite it being reportedly started by her mother's 2008 presidential campaign. The former first daughter wrote on Twitter that she is "still outraged anyone tried to ‘birther' President Obama." Her comment was a response to CNN host Jake Tapper, who called out White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer for criticizing a New York Times reporter for misstating his birth place. Clinton did not mention that one of her mother's former campaign staffers floated the birther controversy during...

The White House petition: The former Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin was a highly-decorated Army flight surgeon who questioned whether or not the orders he received from Obama were legitimate. Court-martialed, imprisoned, expelled from the Army and denied pay, pension and benefits, Terry was merely following his officer's oath and constitutional duty. It is an outrage that this was allowed to happen. Obama refused to answer Terry's letter and ended up producing a forged birth certificate. Terry who was a medical doctor is a valuable asset to the American military and the fact that his military chain of command and his...

“I first came to Chicago when I was in my early 20s, still trying to figure out who I was,” President Obama told the nation on Tuesday. After eight years of his presidency, many others are still trying to figure out who, exactly, this guy is. His farewell address offered few clues but his own books and those of his narrator confirm that the president is not exactly who he claims to be, the son of the Kenyan Barack H. Obama. As the senatorial candidate told the Democratic Party convention in 2004:

On Monday night’s edition of Fox News’s “Special Report,” host Bret Baier reported that former Maricopa County Sheriff Joseph Arpaio was “off the job tonight,”...Fox News has maintained a complete blackout of the investigation, launched in August 2011. As with the Associated Press and other mainstream outlets, Baier did not provide any information from the final presser on December 15 revealing that two document examiners from two different disciplines arrived at the same conclusion: that the anomalies found in the Obama birth certificate image which exactly replicate nine items from a long-form birth certificate belonging to a woman born in...

There is no way to have a properly functioning democracy without an informed public. But time after time polls show that far too many Americans believe in conspiracy theories. A recent poll conducted by The Economist/YouGov found that a person’s political preferences are a major factor in determining whether they’ll believe a conspiracy with Trump voters being especially susceptible to them. First, the poll found that Americans of all political stripes are ill-informed on some major issues. Do you believe there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that the U.S. never found? 53% YES / 47% NO Do you...

The chief investigator for Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s probe of the validity of the image Barack Obama released as his birth certificate says evidence suggests the involvement of the Hawaiian government in the alleged fabrication. WND reported last week that Arpaio and his chief investigator on the Obama birth certificate issue, Mike Zullo, held a news conference to reveal evidence they say shows the document was fabricated on a computer. They conclude it is not a copy of any original Hawaiian document, and while their investigation did not address whether Obama is a “natural-born citizen” as the Constitution requires for presidents,...

Full title: On the heels of electoral defeat, Sheriff Joe Arpaio attempts to revive debate over Obama's birth certificate Zullo proceeded to play a short video called “Nine Points of Forgery,” in which an unnamed stentorian voice alleges various problems with Obama’s birth certificate. Specifically, there were identical markings on both Obama’s birth certificate and on that of a woman born at the same hospital two weeks later named Johanna Ah’Nee. The angle on an “X” used to mark a box in both could not have been made by accident, and had to be a forgery in Obama’s, the voice...

Brought to you by Desert Diamond: http://ddcaz.com Sheriff Joe Arpaio Press Conference on Obama Birth Certificate to be streamed LIVE this afternoon.

President-Elect Donald Trump is back-pedaling on earlier claims that President Obama's birth certificate is a fraud. Now one of Trump's biggest supporters, outgoing Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, is making headlines once again over the issue. The sheriff, who's been at odds with the administration for years, says he's investigating the legitimacy of Obama's birth certificate since 2012. Now Arpaio is set to make another announcement in that ongoing probe on Thursday afternoon. In a press release on Wednesday, MCSO stated, "Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Chief Investigator Mike Zullo will be presenting their newest revelations to the years'...