Free Republic

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is now purportedly looking into whether the United Arab Emirates, with perhaps help from a top adviser, tried to gain political influence by putting money into Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign -- a tack that would indicate Mueller’s investigation continues to expand beyond whether campaign officials colluded with Russia. Mueller’s investigators in recent weeks have questioned the adviser, Lebanese-American businessman George Nader, and asked witnesses for information about whether the UAE tried to buy political influence by giving money to the Trump campaign, according to The New York Times. Nader has been a frequent visitor...

Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader, voted “No” for a judicial nominee based on one thing only…His skin color. In a nation that has allegedly moved past judging people by the color of the skin, Schumer’s actions show that the Democrat party under his leadership is still the party of racism and identity politics. Why no calls of “racist!” or demanding that he step down? Because this particular prejudice was directed against an eminently qualified man who just happens to be white. Marvin Quattlebaum was, nonetheless, voted in 69 to 29 to the U.S. District Court for the District of South...

(Conservative Tribune) – Political motivations often lead to bad policy — in the case of the Broward County School District, political motivations led to deadly policy. A look at the past seven years since Scott Israel became the head of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office reveal his agenda for self-advancement by making the school district in his jurisdiction appear safer. His actions proved to do the exact opposite. During his reelection campaign in 2016, Israel proudly toted his accomplishments of “sharply reduc(ing) violent crime and burglary rates,” as well as his “innovative initiatives” to keep students in school and out...

Former President Barack Obama denied that his administration had any scandals that embarrassed him or his team. It is unclear why Obama clarified that there were no scandals “that embarrassed us.” “There were mistakes,” he admitted. “We’d screw up, but there wasn’t anything venal during eight years. I know that seems like a low bar, but you look at the presidency; that’s no small thing.” Conservatives remember the Obama years differently, citing the Fast and Furious scandal, the IRS scandal, wiretapping journalists, the terror attacks in Benghazi, delivering pallets of cash to Iran, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s...

Talk about a facepalm moment. Is it the media’s stupidity or stacking sandbags because they know this National Rifle Association initiative could gain traction? You decide. The NRA wants more armed guards in schools. Teachers should be allowed to carry as well. After the tragic Sandy Hook shooting, the school board voted to approve this proposal. This is not an alien concept. A lot of schools have resource officers; Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the site of the most recent school shooting on February 14, had such officers. They failed to engage the shooter, Nikolas Cruz. Scores of teachers in...

Good Morning/Afternoon,MEGARushReadyForMondayAndTheOngoingGunControlDebateDITTOS!

Thanks, Obama. The former president appeared at a sports analytics conference hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Friday. But if you were not an attendee at the event, don’t expect to hear much about what Barack Obama shared. Officials managing the 12th annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center put strict rules in place that extended beyond barring the media from divulging Obama’s insights. An e-mail sent to those heading to the venue for the “conversation with Obama” read like a line from the movie “Fight Club”: The first rule of seeing the...

When some major police incident occurs, it is most often my practice to withhold comment until I can be sure that most of the facts surrounding it have been revealed. A horrific event like a school shooting like that which occurred in Parkland, Fla., arouses the impulse to weigh in with opinions based on incomplete or even false information. It is best to resist this impulse. Others, of course, with endless hours of air time to fill, and with agendas to push along, are unable to resist it. There may be more egregious examples of this, but I don’t see...

The Navy is investigating allegations of a drug ring at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., involving roughly 10 midshipmen, according to a senior Naval Academy official with knowledge of the investigation. Three midshipmen are accused of selling cocaine, ketamine (a powerful sedative) and LSD to their classmates purchased on the dark web using Bitcoin, according to three midshipmen currently enrolled at the school. No formal charges have been brought against the midshipmen during the investigation, which began nearly three months ago after a midshipman reported the drug dealing to authorities. Midshipmen sources estimated the number of students under...

A new study suggests the number of guns trafficked from the United States to Mexico is higher than previously believed, underscoring the uncertainty that surrounds the cross-border weapons trade, as well as its impact on violence in Mexico. According to a recent report (pdf) on arms trafficking by Mexico’s governmental research service, known as the CESOP, an estimated 2,000 weapons illegally enter Mexico from the United States every day. The report says 85 percent of the approximately 15 million weapons that were in circulation in Mexico in 2012 were illegal. The report — which is based largely on numerous international...

Rock n' Roll. The soundtrack to rebellion. Across the decades, the motif has held, and the mythology of the rebellious rocker striding into the political arena to shatter the establishment with some deftly played power chords still stirs the imagination. Sadly, the new world might not be ready for the revolution, because this week, after 116 years in business, and following years of attacks, fines, and losses incurred by federal bureaucrats, Gibson, the legendary manufacturer of electric guitars, revealed that it could face bankruptcy in July. .......the feds claimed was a violation of the Teddy Roosevelt-era “Lacey Act”, which was...

The vicious MS-13 gang, stifled under former President George W. Bush, exploded during the Obama era fueled by 300,000 illegals, including those given amnesty under the DACA program, and has now been linked to crimes in 22 states, according to a new report. Since 2012, 207 murders have been tied to the gang called “Mara Salvatrucha,” and there are over 500 cases nationwide of MS-13 members being charged in major crimes, according to the report from the Center for Immigration Studies.

Setting aside Iran’s ballistic missile threats, support for terrorism and regional destabilization when crafting the nuclear deal was not a concession but “strategic thinking” on the part of the negotiators, former Secretary of State John Kerry said Sunday. As he has done frequently since leaving office, Kerry used the opportunity of the Munich Security Conference to defend, at length, the Obama administration’s 2015 nuclear deal which President Trump has threatened to abandon. Kerry said that the U.S. recognized that the agreement being negotiated was not dealing with other problematic issues, including human rights abuses, missiles, arms shipments, support for Hezbollah,...

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — After Tnuza Jamal Hassan was stopped from flying to Afghanistan last September, she allegedly told FBI agents that she wanted to join al-Qaida and marry a fighter, and that she might even wear a suicide belt. She also said she was angry at U.S. military actions overseas and admitted that she tried to encourage others to “join the jihad in fighting,” but she said she had no intention of carrying out an attack on U.S. soil, according to prosecutors. Despite her alleged admissions, she was allowed to go free. Four months later, the 19-year-old was arrested for...

On January 5, 2018, a person close to Nikolas Cruz contacted the FBI’s Public Access Line (PAL) tipline to report concerns about him. The caller provided information about Cruz’s gun ownership, desire to kill people, erratic behavior, and disturbing social media posts, as well as the potential of him conducting a school shooting. Under established protocols, the information provided by the caller should have been assessed as a potential threat to life. The information then should have been forwarded to the FBI Miami Field Office, where appropriate investigative steps would have been taken. We have determined that these protocols were...

Users on an anonymous image board discovered there appears to be a sperm cell drawn onto Barack Obama's forehead in his official presidential portrait, which now hangs in the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery. Some may simply discount it as a vein, but oddly enough the artist who painted this portrait, Kehinde Wiley, has a history of adding semen into his art: [See examples in the article]

There is indeed a student loan crisis. And the numbers show it is entirely the doing of President Obama, with an assist from his supporting cast in the Democrat-run Congress. The crisis has its origins in 2010, when President Obama essentially nationalized the national student lending program by signing a law he had proposed and Congress passed that muscled banks out of the picture as lenders. Banks had been providing government-backed student loans, but Obama, in all of his community organizer wisdom, figured distant government bureaucrats could do it better than bankers and save taxpayers money. It’s laughable, sure, but...

Iran unveiled a series of new homemade nuclear-capable ballistic missiles during military parades held over the weekend, a move that experts view as a bid to bolster the hardline ruling regime as dissidents continue efforts to stir protest. On the heels of an encounter between an Iranian drone and Israeli forces, Iranian leaders showcased their ballistic missile capabilities, which includes a nuclear-capable medium-range missile that appears to share similarities with North Korean technology, according to experts. The nuclear-capable missile can strike Israel even when fired from Iranian territory, raising concerns about an impending conflict between Tehran and the Jewish state that...

If you’re reading The Hill, chances are you’ve heard the scary statistics or doomsday predictions about government spending. Or you’re heard it from the Congressional Budget office or Congressional Research Service or CBS, or you’ve heard it from House Speaker Paul Ryan or Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney. In short, there is no shortage of professionals sounding the alarm over spending. If you’re like me, each time you’ve heard those, you’ve wondered, “How is that possible?” or “How did we get here?” or “If that were true, Congress wouldn’t be getting away with it.” Well, it’s...

The US president's daughter-in-law, Vanessa Trump, was taken to hospital as a precaution after opening an envelope containing white powder, police say. The letter was addressed to Donald Trump Jr., Mr. Trump's eldest son, at his apartment in Manhattan........