Free Republic

Turkish autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdogan is coming to Washington, DC, on May 16 loaded for bear.  He has an ambitious agenda and apparently feels he can achieve it all because he holds “trump” cards against the President of the United States. Erdogan and his proxies have publicly said they want to convince the United States to jettison its budding alliance with the Syrian Democratic Union (PYD) and its armed wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Kurdish group that has become the tip of the spear in the fight against ISIS in Syria. On this point, they will encounter resistance...

Goonies actress Martha Plimpton is slammed after boasting at a pro-choice event that she had her 'best abortion' in Seattle when she was 19 The Goonies star made the comments in June during a Q&A session in Seattle Plimpton underwent the procedure when she was 19 in 1989 at a Planned Parenthood She joked to the cheering crowd: 'If I could Yelp review it, I totally would' Plimpton, 46, is a passionate abortion advocate and activist She received insults from Twitter critics who said the comment was 'tacky'Actress Martha Plimpton has sparked controversy by saying she had her 'best abortion'...

Almost 55 months after confessing felonious conduct, Teamster money-laundering scandal figure, Jere Nash, has finally been sentenced. U.S. Dist. Judge Thomas P. Griesa (S.D.N.Y., Nixon) sentenced Nash Apr. 9 to a mere two years probation for his role in a series of schemes which lead to the embezzlement of some $885,000 from the Int'l Bhd. of Teamsters' treasury and to $538,100 in illegal campaign contributions to the failed reelection campaign of expelled IBT president Ron Carey. The sentencing appears to have been hush hush: the four N.Y.C. major dailies and the two Washington, D.C., dailies apparently did not cover the...

"It was right after the revolution," George continued. One afternoon, Hemingway told him, "There's something you should see." The nature of the expedition was a mystery; Hemingway made a shaker of drinks, daiquiris or whatever. They got in the car with a few others and drove some way out of town. They got out, set up chairs and took out the drinks, as if they were going to watch the sunset. Soon, a truck arrived. This, explained George, was what they'd been waiting for. It came, as Hemingway knew, the same time each day. It stopped and some men with...

Meet the woman JPMorgan Chase paid one of the largest fines in American history to keep from talking By Matt Taibbi | November 6, 2014 "It was like watching an old lady get mugged on the street," she says. "I thought, 'I can't sit by any longer.'" Fleischmann is the central witness in one of the biggest cases of white-collar crime in American history, possessing secrets that JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon late last year paid $9 billion (not $13 billion as regularly reported – more on that later) to keep the public from hearing. Back in 2006, as a...

Single-issue people. They're out there... on every thread. No matter what the topic, they try to link it to their pet issue in some way, shape, or form. They are... The Thread Hijackersâ„¢. While little can be done to stop them, and it is probably best to ignore them, I find it much, much more fun to mock them. Sure, being passionate about an issue you care about is a good thing, but thread hijacking is annoying and, to be honest, turns off people who might otherwise agree with you. So, on to the mocking. I'd like to coin the...

It still happens on the Wrigley Field concession lines. It happens as he walks down Michigan Avenue. It even happened, in all places, while sipping a lager in an Oxford pub. "Sidd Finch! You're Sidd Finch! Hey Sidd, can I get your autograph?" After 20 years, for Joe Berton, the line remains a little blurred. Ninety-nine percent of his waking moments are spent as Joe Berton, mild-mannered junior high school art teacher in Oak Park, Ill. But that other 1 percent, he is still Sidd Finch, baseball's greatest pitching prospect. It was 20 years ago this week that Sports Illustrated...