Free Republic

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department will back off its sentencing recommendation for Roger J. Stone Jr., President Trump’s former campaign adviser and longtime friend, a senior department official said Tuesday, with senior department officials intervening to overrule front-line prosecutors who tried the case. The move is highly unusual and is certain to generate allegations of political interference. It came after federal prosecutors in Washington asked a judge late Monday evening to sentence Mr. Stone to seven to nine years in prison on seven felony convictions for trying to sabotage a congressional investigation that threatened Mr. Trump. Early on Tuesday, Mr....

Here's hoping 2020 is the best year yet!! Now that he has been forever acquitted, President Trump should put the failed partisan impeachment attempt behind him, then concentrate on winning the 2020 election with wide coattails. Then bide his time as the cases against the various coup plotters wind their way through the justice system. Highest priority political items: Win the election, hold the senate, take back the house!! And then continue the work of making America great again: Build the wall, enforce the law, deport them all!! End DACA!! End sanctuary cities!! End anchor babies!! Continue cutting regulations, cutting...

The event felt less like a campaign rally and more like a curiosity. It’s not a curiosity anymore. Monday night's rally was a celebration, and unlike any any political event I’ve ever experienced. Four years ago, I walked in from a freezing New Hampshire blizzard into my first Donald Trump for president rally. We knew a few things — at least we thought we did. At the time he wasn’t just a long shot, he was frankly an impossibility. The event felt less like a campaign rally and more like a curiosity. It’s not a curiosity anymore. Monday night’s rally...

The Justice Department is preparing to change its sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone after top brass were “shocked” at the stiff prison term initially being sought, according to a senior DOJ official. Federal prosecutors had recommended that Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentence Stone to between 87 and 108 months in prison for his conviction on seven counts of obstruction, witness tampering, and making false statements to Congress on charges that stemmed from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. “The Department was shocked to see the sentencing recommendation in the filing in the Stone case last night,” the official told...

President Donald Trump directed the Department of Interior to open up more federal lands for energy production and recreation, including in Utah where he downsized massive amounts of land put off limits by the Obama administration. The Department of Interior announced the finalized plan last week even as environmentalists challenge Trump’s 2017 proclamations to return the boundaries Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante monuments to be consistent with the Antiquities Act of 1906.

"Wasted Days and Wasted Nights" is an American country and pop song originally recorded by Freddy Fender in 1959, and re-recorded by him in 1975. It is considered by many to belong to the swamp pop idiom of south Louisiana and southeast Texas that had such a major musical impact on Fender."Wasted Days and Wasted Nights" was certified gold for sales of one million units by the Recording Industry Association of America. The song was a major hit in New Zealand. In 1975, it spent a total of 12 weeks in the number one position in the New Zealand...

Only married couples can have sex, according to a legal loophole still on the books in Virginia. Democratic state legislators in the Virginia House of Delegates repealed the “crime of fornication” last week—in the state that has long used the slogan, “Virginia is for lovers” to attract tourists, Fox 40 reports. Currently, fornication is a Class 4 misdemeanor and carries a fine up to $250. “It’s a stupid law. It’s crazy,” Democratic delegate Mark Levine, who introduced H.B. 245, said. “No one should think they can be prosecuted for this common practice.” […] “Now that the Democrats are in power,...

A Chinese lawyer who had been documenting the coronavirus outbreak in the city of Wuhan has not been seen or heard from since last week, and friends and family say they fear he may have been forcibly quarantined by the Chinese government. The lawyer, Chen Qiushi, 34, made a series of social media posts about the outbreak in Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic, starting on Jan. 25, several days after the city was locked down by the Chinese government to help stop the spread of the virus, which has killed over 1,000 people in China. Calling himself a...

Radical anti-American financier George Soros recently unveiled a scheme to sink $1 billion into a new global university to fight nationalism and climate change, twin phantoms he emotes are “threatening the survival of our civilization.” Why is this a bad thing? Because global warming is a hoax and nationalism –at least in a good nation like the United States— is a good thing, and because Soros is a living, breathing malignancy who has devoted the past several decades of his life to advancing evil in the world. If America is indeed “one nation under God,” as the Pledge of Allegiance...

Actor Corey Feldman’s new documentary called ‘(My) Truth: The Rape of 2 Coreys’ is set to release on March 9. According to reports, in the film, the musician and former teen star will expose the details of the most “emotionally trying” period of his life. There is one catch, however. Viewers will only have one chance to watch the much-anticipated film. Specifically, ‘(My) Truth: The Rape of 2 Coreys’ will air only once, and curious viewers across the world will have to view it at the same time. The documentary will stream live at 8 pm PST (11 pm EST).

A 13-year-old Oklahoma girl visiting Mexico with her family has been killed in yet another cartel ambush on a long and lonely stretch of highway just south of Falcon Heights, Texas. After nine U.S. citizens were killed in the Mexican border state of Sonora in November, President Donald Trump threatened to label cartels terrorist organizations. When it came to it, however, he holstered the executive pen and backpedaled out of the saloon at the request of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who desires to embrace the cartels with “abrazos no balazos”—hugs not bullets.Now comes word that a 13-year-old Oklahoma...

Joe Biden is heading south. The former vice president abruptly announced on Tuesday morning that he won’t spend primary night in New Hampshire as planned and instead is flying to South Carolina to headline a newly scheduled kick-off rally in the state he’s long considered his campaign firewall. “We’re going to head to South Carolina tonight,” Biden told reporters as he visited a polling station with voting underway in the state that holds the first primary in the race for the White House. “And I’m going to Nevada… we’ve got to look at them all.” The campaign confirmed Biden is...

Barely a day passed after the presidentÂ’s acquittal in the Senate before he took action to transfer three figures connected with the effort to oust him. President Trump directed the transfer of both Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and his twin brother Yevgeny Vindman from the National Security Council. He also directed the recall of Ambassador Gordon Sondland.The president had a duty to make these changes to ensure the integrity of our system of self-government the same way presidents have immediately acted to expel past administration officials who used their posts to undermine and criticize the policies of the elected...

Elizabeth Warren is seen on video walking around in a diner saying hi to people and it seems like no one really cares. If you watch the expressions, or lack thereof, on people's faces, you'll notice a lack of excitement. In fact, some of them barely pay any attention to Warren and she makes her way through the diner in what appears to be a very boring moment.

On Monday, former Gov. Deval Patrick (D-Mass.), one of the latecomers in the 2020 Democratic race, insisted that former Vice President Joe Biden's support among black voters "has always been soft." A new national poll from Quinnipiac seemed to confirm that idea, showing Biden's support among black voters cratering and diverting to other candidates. "Well, I love Joe, but that support has always been soft," Patrick said in an interview Monday. "I think that’s mostly about name recognition, I totally get that, and he’s earned it. But I’ve spent more time in South Carolina than any other candidate… [and] it’s...

Screenshot from WCNC video, cropped and scaled by Dean Weingarten An armed victim, armed Samaritans, and the police all worked together to arrest young, violent, criminal suspects and stop a crime spree in Charlotte, N.C.The details of the events are recorded in the reporting of WCNC, but they take some careful reading to untangle. It probably started on January 29th. That is when the car the criminals used in their crime spree was reported stolen. We do not know the precise time the offenders stole the white Toyota Camry they used in their crimes.Early in the morning of 4...

Astronomers have never before seen fast radio bursts being emitted in such a regular pattern, and still don't know their origin. Astronomers have detected alien signals - that is, signals from a foreign galaxy - being emitted in an unusually regular 16-day cycle. Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are not in and of themselves unusual - the first was detected in 2007 - but previous observations have shown them to be mostly emitted at random. While there have been some bursts which repeated, as astronomers discovered previously, they have never been seen repeating in such a steady cycle. The origin of...

The battle for the Bronx and Queens congressional seat currently held by far-left Democratic freshman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just got more interesting. Former CNBC anchor Michelle Caruso-Cabrera filed Monday to run for Congress in New York’s 14th district. She will run as a Democrat challenging AOC in the party’s primary. Caruso-Cabrera has for many years been a supporter of free markets and a skeptic of big government. Her 2010 book was titled You Know I’m Right: More Prosperity, Less Government. That sets the stage for a battle of ideas in the 2020 primary. “I am the daughter and granddaughter of working...

Audio of Mike Bloomberg's 2015 speech at the Aspen Institute has gone viral. In his talk, the former New York Mayor who's now running for the Democrat presidential nomination, says that "you can just Xerox (copy)" the description of the murderers and their victims (male, minorities, ages 16-25) and hand it over to the cops. As is always the case with Bloomberg, he had the video of the speech blocked. Sadly for him, however, there are people who have the audio recording."95 percent of your murders -- murderers and murder victims fit one M.O. You can just take the...

For all the breathless coverage, the New Hampshire Democratic primary is truly dinky — awarding only 24 pledged delegates, one percent of the 1,990 needed to win. That is even fewer than Iowa. It’s barely worth fighting for, except that, especially in the wake of the Iowa fiasco, New Hampshire will punch above its weight. The first four contests, including Nevada, will award a total of 155 pledged delegates. If the candidates perform as predicted by today’s polls, Sanders will lead on the cusp of Super Tuesday with 34 delegates, followed by Biden (33), Buttigieg (25) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren...