As Al Sharpton ran for mayor of New York City in 1997 and for president in 2003, fires at his offices reportedly destroyed critical financial records, and he subsequently failed to comply with tax and campaign filing requirements.
The first fire began in the early hours of April 10, 1997, in a hair-and-nail salon one floor below Sharpton’s campaign headquarters at 70 West 125th Street. From the start, investigators deemed the fire “suspicious” because of “a heavy volume of fire on arrival” and because many of the doors remained unlocked after hours, according to the New York Fire Department’s fire-and-incident report.
As the fire crept upward into Sharpton’s headquarters, it destroyed nearly everything, including computers, files, and campaign records, the Reverend’s spokesperson at the time told Newsday, adding that “we have lost our entire Manhattan operation.” But a source knowledgeable about the investigation tells National Review Online that Sharpton’s office was mostly empty, and that the damage was not extensive. Top city officials, including then-mayor Rudy Giuliani, said initial suspicions centered on the hair-and-nail salon, not on Sharpton’s campaign, Newsday reported. The fire department sent the case as an arson/explosion investigation to the New York Police Department. By the time of publication of this report, the NYPD had not provided the records requested by National Review Online on December 16, 2014, but it confirmed that the investigation had been closed without an arrest.
FDNY’s report references a “flammable liquid,” and firefighters’ photos of the scene show traces of an incendiary puddle. Another photo captures what appears to be a singed rag that someone is holding next to a fuse box, perhaps because that is where it was found. But a 2003 Newsday article says “the 1997 fire started when a curling iron overheated in an adjoining beauty parlor.” NRO could find no other sources referencing a curling iron as the cause, and the fire department’s reports make no mention of it, either.
As the mayoral campaign continued, Sharpton missed tax and campaign disclosure deadlines. The 1997 fire occurred five days before Tax Day and, the New York Post reported, “just after Sharpton announced that he would open his financial records.” After the fire, Sharpton said he would...
Scandal: Selective editing of her emails by Hillary Clinton staffers have left "months and months" of gaps of missing emails, including those from her trip to Libya from which an iconic picture has gone viral.
We have all seen the photo of Hillary Clinton flying on a C-17 to Libya in October 2011 using a hand-held device to presumably check or send emails, perhaps about her trip, the situation in Libya, or maybe, just maybe, communicating with a foreign Clinton Foundation donor.
We don't know because, as House Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy noted on CBS' "Face The Nation" last Sunday, there are no emails that have been turned over to his committee from that day or from that trip.
There are in fact months and months of gaps in the emails turned over, gaps that may hide unpleasant truths about both Benghazi and foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation.
"Yes, sir, there are gaps of months and months and months," Gowdy told host Bob Schieffer. "If you think of that iconic picture of her on a C-17 flying to Libya, sunglasses on, she has her hand held device in her hand, we have no emails from that day. In fact we have no emails from that trip. It strains credulity to believe that if...
Superstar Sharyl Attkisson breaks down the numbers.
It’s not your imagination. Global terrorism, dominated by Muslim extremist groups, is by far the worst it’s been in modern times.
In the past six years, the United States has added 21 names to its list of foreign terrorist organizations: all but one of them radical Muslim groups. That’s more than the previous 10 years combined.
At the same time, the number of terrorist acts has shattered previous records. Experts predict data for 2014, which is still being compiled, will likely reflect more than 15,000 terrorist attacks: a vast increase over 2013—which was already the deadliest year for global terrorism since data was first collected in 1970.
The Institute for Economics and Peace reported 10,000 terrorist incidents killed 18,000 people in 2013. Nine countries were added to the list of nations where more than 50 lives were lost to terrorist attacks in a single year.
Arab Spring Devolves Into Terrorist Winter
Eleven terrorist groups have been added to the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations since the Arab Spring.
“Arab Spring” is the popular name given to the democratic wave of civil unrest in the Arab world that began in December 2010 and lasted through mid-2012.
It turns out the revolutionary movement created an ideal environment for terrorism to grow and thrive.
“Terrorists realized they could exploit the confusion and vacuum in power created by the uprisings,” says a U.S. intelligence officer stationed in Libya during the Arab Spring movement. He says terrorists used social media to stoke civil unrest and...
While the closing of Sweet Briar College last week caught many people in higher education by surprise, some saw it as a sign of an inevitable college implosion.
For years, entrepreneur and billionaire investor Mark Cuban has warned of a "student-loan bubble" created by skyrocketing tuition and fueled by an endless supply of student loans.
A radical solution to the student-loan problem would be to forgive all student debt, as a viral essay by Robert Applebaum proposed six years ago.
However, Cuban thinks massive student-loan forgiveness would just make the bubble keep expanding.
"Forgiving the debt is the worst thing you can do, because all it does is bail out the universities," Cuban said.
Loan forgiveness would just show students that "Uncle Sam" will forgive their debts, according to Cuban. That would encourage students to keep taking out big loans to pay hefty tuition.
If students' debt is forgiven, he said, "you still have easy money for...
