Free Republic

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the latest star of the Democrat effort to undo the 2016 election, is still at work on the National Security Council. While Trump supporters on the NSC like Rich Higgins and Ezra Cohen-Watnick were forced out, Vindman won't be. NSC staffers who criticized Obama holdovers or sought to expose their misbehavior are gone, but Vindman is still there while undermining Trump. And that’s the SNAFU of things on the NSC. The National Security Council has been ground zero in the campaign against President Trump from the beginning. General Flynn’s appointment as National Security Advisor had touched...

Whistleblowers, Republican congressional members, and some former intelligence officials cite mounting concern that the White House may not release the House Intelligence Committee’s FISA abuse memo as the FBI pushed against plans to make it public based on false allegations that the memo contains information that would harm U.S. national security, sources tell this reporter.The memo alleges severe abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by employees of the FBI and Department of Justice but FBI Director Christopher Wray Wednesday warned against the release of the memo issuing a public statement from the FBI that the bureau has “grave concerns...

The FBI said Wednesday that the bureau has “grave concerns” about the classified memo that purportedly reveals government surveillance abuses, but White House Chief of Staff John Kelly says it is going public, anyway. “With regard to the House Intelligence Committee’s memorandum, the FBI was provided a limited opportunity to review this memo the day before the committee voted to release it,” the FBI said in a statement. “As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.” But earlier Tuesday, Kelly told Fox News in an exclusive interview...

The mysterious workings of a Pentagon office that oversees clandestine operations are unraveling in federal court, where a criminal investigation has exposed a secret weapons program entwined with allegations of a sweetheart contract, fake badges and trails of destroyed evidence. Capping an investigation that began almost two years ago, separate trials are scheduled this month in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., for a civilian Navy intelligence official and a hot-rod auto mechanic from California who prosecutors allege conspired to manufacture an untraceable batch of automatic-rifle silencers. The exact purpose of the silencers remains hazy, but court filings and pretrial...

The agency's needless new ozone standard could cost Americans $270 billion annually. In a town famous for inaction, Washington is gearing up to take action on a major policy issue. But there's a hitch: The outcome could be the most expensive regulation in the nation's history, possibly tanking the economy and costing jobs at a time when businesses, manufacturers and families are making a comeback. Later this year, the Environmental Protection Agency will decide whether it should tighten the air-quality standard for ground-level ozone. There are several things about this possible new standard that are alarming. No single regulation has...

Inspector general's office accuses EPA of blocking internal probes citing national security WASHINGTON (AP) -- A unit run by President Barack Obama's political staff inside the Environmental Protection Agency operates illegally as a "rogue law enforcement agency" that has blocked independent investigations by the EPA's inspector general for years, a top investigator says.

‘The House should sharply reduce IRS funding until the agency is more responsive.” Well, I’d have omitted everything after “funding” but this was still an astute observation, offered at the conclusion of Thursday’s excellent Wall Street Journal editorial. I’m grateful to have smart guys on the team, even if slumming with us power-of-the-purse radicals may get them booted from the GOP’s “We’re only one-half of one-third” circle of submission. The editors were exercised over the revenue agency’s latest shenanigans, which include covering up its past shenanigans — the willful targeting of conservative groups in order to frustrate their opposition to...

A lawsuit filed against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by seven states is seeking to force the federal agency to impose stringent new regulations on residential wood-burning heaters, which they claim “can increase particle pollution to levels that cause significant health concerns.” (See EPA wood-burning lawsuit.pdf) The lawsuit, filed last month in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by the attorneys general of Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont, is directed against currently unregulated “indoor and outdoor wood boilers,” which have become an increasingly popular way to heat homes, particularly in rural areas.

The recent uproar over armed EPA agents descending on a tiny Alaska mining town is shedding light on the fact that 40 federal agencies – including nearly a dozen typically not associated with law enforcement -- have armed divisions. The agencies employ about 120,000 full-time officers authorized to carry guns and make arrests, according to a June 2012 Justice Department report. Though most Americans know agents within the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Federal Bureau of Prisons carry guns, agencies such as the Library of Congress and Federal Reserve Board employing armed officers might come as a surprise. The incident...

The FCC has announced its plans to deem and pass Net Neutrality. Specifically, The FCC will defy a court order to stop regulating the Internet by nonsensically deeming the Internet not to be an information service, and regulate it under Title II of the Communications Act. That sounds mild but it has disastrous consequences. Title II of the Communications Act gives the FCC strong and broad powers. If the FCC is allowed to put the Internet in the US under those powers, then the Obama administration will have total power to tax Internet users, regulate content on Internet servers, and...

WASHINGTON – Officials tell The Associated Press that the Environmental Protection Agency has concluded greenhouse gases are endangering people's health and must be regulated. The EPA will announced its findings at a news conference Monday. The announcement is timed to boost the Obama administration's arguments at an international climate conference — beginning this week — that the United States is taking actions to combat global warming, even though Congress has yet to act on climate legislation. Under a Supreme Court ruling, the so-called endangerment finding is needed before the EPA can regulate carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases released...

The EPA is about to announce that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, something that has in many ways been inevitable since the boneheaded SCOTUS ruling in Mass. vs EPA (which essentially found that the Clean Air Act was always intended to be Kyoto-on-steroids.) With thanks to my colleague Will Yeatman, here's a brief summary of what this means, and why you should be appalled. Under the Clean Air Act, an “endangerment” finding means that the EPA will have to grant a waiver to those states (such as California) that want to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from automobiles. The EPA...

Rachel Porcaro knows she's hardly rich. When you're a single mom making 10 bucks an hour, you don't need government experts to tell you how broke you are. But that's what happened. The government not only told Porcaro she was poor. They said she was too poor to make it in Seattle. It all started a year ago, when Porcaro, a 32-year-old mom with two boys, was summoned to the Seattle office of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). She had been flagged for an audit. She couldn't believe it. She made $18,992 the previous year cutting hair at Supercuts. A...