Free Republic

Gregory Yee, a hard-charging breaking news reporter for the Los Angeles Times, died unexpectedly Wednesday at the Hollywood bungalow where he lived. His family said the cause appeared to be complications from a respiratory issue. He was 33. ... Hired during the pandemic, he worked from home and did not have a chance to meet many of his co-workers in person. Colleagues said he enjoyed the adrenaline rush and constant novelty of breaking news, and studied the paper’s online analytics to gauge how much time readers were lingering on his stories.

State Treasurer Kimberly Yee is hoping to ride the same political path as the current governor. In a video release Monday, Yee announced she wants to be the Republican nominee for the state’s top executive post in 2022. But Yee, the first Asian-American elected to Arizona statewide office, provided little in the way of actual details of what she intends to do. Instead, her video twice mentioned her loyalty to Donald Trump and his border and economic policies and lashed out at, among others, the “corrupt press” which is attacking our way of life.

PHOENIX - Arizona State Treasurer Kimberly Yee announced she is running for governor. Yee announced on May 17 she has launched a campaign to become the next governor of Arizona.

New reports indicate the reason behind Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-Calif.) resignation as the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee was cognitive decline. According to an article by the ‘New Yorker,’ a few senate staffers reported Feinstein’s short-term memory has deteriorated in the last year. They added she gets upset when she can’t remember or keep up with briefings.

California Democrats are speechless as they watch their prized Sacramento gun control senator, Leland Yee, head to prison for weapons trafficking, accepting bribes, and extorting money. “The crimes that you committed have resulted in essentially an attack on democratic institutions,” Breyer told Yee, who nodded as the judge addressed him. “This is a serious, serious injury to a governmental institution.” Breyer called his involvement in that crime “hypocritical” and “unfathomable” given his past advocacy for gun control. The judge gave him 30 days to surrender to the U.S. Marshal’s Service, which will turn him over to the federal prison system....

San Francisco supervisors Tuesday voted 10-1 to rename Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples' Day despite a last-minute effort to delay the vote in response to objections from some members of the city's Italian-American community. Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who represents the North Beach neighborhood, where the annual parade on Columbus Day has long since been renamed as the Italian Heritage parade, asked the board to postpone a vote on the resolution after receiving a large number of emails from constituents. "I would like some time to figure out a path forward that works for our indigenous native peoples as well as...

While the media is busy focusing on the troubling story of the two American soldiers detained at Guantanamo Bay for alleged espionage, both of whom had Syrian connections, another Syria story has passed them by. The names of Ahmad al Halabi, an American of Syrian descent, and Captain James Yee, a convert to Islam who spent four years in Damascus before returning to active service, are now well known. But the name of Nizar Nayouf, a Syrian journalist and human rights activist that was detained last week by French police in Paris, will most probably stay anonymous.   Nayouf?s only...

THE three main Southeast Asian Islamic terrorist groups have had a strong, secret alliance for almost 20 years, which continues to train Jemaah Islamiah's bomb-makers, intelligence documents reveal. The documents, compiled from interviews with a senior JI defector and other sources, confirm long-held suspicions that two training camps of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the southern Philippines are the nerve centre of regional terrorism. The former JI leader's admissions defy claims by the Philippines Government and the MILF that militant training in the camps ceased four years ago, at the start of delicate negotiations about autonomy for the Muslim...

Leland Yee, a San Francisco Democrat and staunch proponent of stiffer gun-control laws was sentenced today in federal court on corruption charges tied to, among other things, a conspiracy to traffic weapons. Although this is off-the-charts hypocritical of Mr. Yee, a wonderfully sensational corrupt politician story ripe for national news, none of the Big Three broadcast evening news programs last night so much as devoted a news brief to the story. [You may also recall that Yee was behind a spurious smear against Rush Limbaugh in 2011. Read about that here.] Adding to the seriousness of the weapons trafficking charge, as the...

A federal district judge sentenced former state Sen. Leland Yee, a San Francisco Democrat, to five years in prison Wednesday for trading political favors for campaign contributions. He was also fined $20,000. Yee admitted in a plea deal that he was part of a racketeering conspiracy that involved exchanging official acts for money, conspiring to traffic in weapons and money laundering. Specifically, Lee promised an undercover FBI agent favors in return for campaign contributions. During the hourlong proceedings, Yee asked the court for leniency in light of his public humiliation, his wife's severe illness, his admissions of wrongdoing and his...

Chinatown crime boss Raymond 'Shrimp Boy' Chow - the man at the heart of a federal corruption case that brought down former state Sen. Leland Yee and engulfed City Hall with allegations of 'pay to play' politics, took the center stage in U.S. District Court this week to deny the murder and racketeering charges against him. But anyone expecting his testimony to blow the roof of City Hall or cause Mayor Ed Lee further embarrassment would be sadly disappointed. The trial has largely boiled down to unpacking the nearly decade-old murder of businessman Allen Leung, and whether Chow - who...

Six defendants in the sweeping criminal prosecution of Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, part of a public corruption and organized crime investigation that ensnared a once-prominent Democratic politician, pleaded guilty on Wednesday, prosecutors said.. In a San Francisco courtroom before U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, the defendants entered their pleas to some of the charges filed against them in an indictment that alleged gun-running, a rampant pay-for-play political culture, money laundering, drug trafficking and more. None of the six admitted to racketeering, a count for which former state Sen. Leland Yee, one of the many caught in the wide-ranging federal inquiry,...

**SNIP** Charged with hijacking a community group for criminal gain, Chow claimed last week that federal authorities are giving major City Hall figures a pass while selectively prosecuting the crustacean and his cronies. Mayor Ed Lee, who was among the Bay Area names in a sensational court filing, compared Chow and his lawyers to “orangutans” and denied allegations that he, like Yee, took bribes and flouted campaign laws. But the brief is a San Francisco treat in itself, a colorful feast of felonious finger-pointing, a dim-sum cart brimming with deliciously dastardly dealing. On one page, Chow’s attorneys claim that a...

San Francisco’s mayor was accused by the FBI of taking bribes in exchange for favors, attorneys for a defendant in an organized crime case centered on San Francisco’s Chinatown said Tuesday. In a court filing, Curtis Briggs, an attorney for Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, cites as the source of the FBI’s allegation documents turned over to him by the government as part of the process of mounting a defense for his client. Briggs is seeking to dismiss the indictment against Chow on the grounds that the government is selectively prosecuting him while letting other people caught in its probe go....

The Sacramento Bee reports that former California State Sen. Leland Yee, a gun control advocate rated "A+" by the Brady Campaign, has pled guilty to weapons-related racketeering charges in an organized crime case and now faces 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Talk about hypocrisy. Last year we noted that in 2012, Yee said "no one will convince me it's anything other than a joke to say that having multiple clips and semi-automatic weapons that can shoot 100 or more bullets at a time is necessary in this state or in this country. It's ridiculous."

<p>An ex-California state senator has pleaded guilty to a racketeering charge in an organized crime and public corruption case centered in San Francisco’s Chinatown.</p> <p>Leland Yee entered the plea on Wednesday and could face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison when he is sentenced in October.</p>

**SNIP** The 11,000 strong rebel group, which dates back to the 1960s, aims to carve out greater autonomy in the Philippines for the Muslim minority in the South of the archipelago. The group was cited extensively in a federal case made against Yee and dozens of other defendants last March following a four-year investigation. Yee, ironically known for his gun control legislation, was arrested then on a host of charges including plotting to smuggle guns into the country to be obtained through MILF contacts brokered by his associate, Dr. Wilson Lim . In an affidavit unsealed last year, Yee spoke...

Former state Sen. Leland Yee pleaded not guilty Thursday to an expanded indictment in his corruption case that included two new charges of money-laundering. The San Francisco Democrat was first charged in April, along with more than two dozen other defendants, of accepting $62,000 in bribes from FBI agents posing as contributors in exchange for legislative favors, and for illegally importing firearms from the Philippines.

MANILA, Philippines – More than 30 police commandos were killed in a clash with Muslim insurgents Sunday in the southern Philippines in the biggest single-day combat loss for Philippine forces in many years, officials said.

Former state Sen. Leland Yee’s campaign committee for last year’s secretary of state race has spent $128,000 on attorney's fees since he was indicted on federal corruption charges, he reported this week. The practice is legal, but one ethics expert said it should be restricted. "Unfortunately California’s relatively weak restrictions on the use of surplus campaign funds mean that politicians can turn these accounts into personal slush funds," said Sarah Swanbeck, an advocate for the group Common Cause.