Free Republic

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has vowed to reject any classified briefing on special counsel Robert Mueller's report so that lawmakers will be able to discuss the findings publicly. That's what Pelosi reportedly told House Democrats during a strategic conference call on Saturday, according to a participant who spoke to the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity. Mueller submitted his report from the 22-month investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election to Attorney General William Barr on Friday. Barr is expected to provide Congress with a summary of the findings as early as Sunday. Pelosi told members of...

THE WOODLANDS, Texas (AP) — A country music singer has died in Texas after his manager says a revolver he was handling during a music video shoot accidentally discharged. Montgomery County Justice of the Peace Wayne Mack says 35-year-old Justin Carter died last weekend at his apartment in The Woodlands, north of Houston. Carter’s manager, Mark Atherton, tells KTRK-TV the singer was using the gun as a prop for a music video he was filming when it went off.

“Empire” sunk to series lows on Wednesday, one week after an already-rough midseason premiere. Those episodes marked the first two original hours of the Fox soap since star Jussie Smollett was arrested and charged with filing a false police report in Chicago. Last night, “Empire” managed a 1.1 rating/6 share among adults 18-49 and 4 million total viewers. The drama’s previous series lows came on Halloween 2018, when the show drew a 1.2 demo rating and 4.2 million overall audience members. The “Empire” midseason return a week ago tallied a 1.3 rating and 4.4 million viewers, per Nielsen, which means...

Why is a beermaker publicly delving into politics, you might ask? It seems like a bone-head move, to paraphrase Joe Biden, but here we are. Boston Beer Company, brewers of Sam Adams beer, are dedicating a new brew to liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and are also supporting the ACLU at the same time. SEE ALSO: Going south? North Korea pulls out of liaison office engagement after Hanoi Summit failure; Update: Trump rescinds new sanctions The roll-out for the new brew will come during an annual non-profit event to support female brewers and beer-industry workers. Called a “pink...

VIDEO Democrat presidential candidate John Hickenlooper appeared on a CNN Presidential Town Hall and told host Dana Bash that he took his mother to watch "Deep Throat" at a movie theater. That statement instantly took Hickenlooper from a nobody to suddenly being in the limelight but at what expense? What could be creepier than watching a porn flick with your own mother? Well, possibly making up a story that you saw a porn flick with your own mother. In this video I discuss discrepancies in Hickenlooper's story which leads to the sick possibility he just made it up from publicity...

The parent company of Fox News has hired a former top aide to Joe Biden as its chief lobbyist in Washington. On Tuesday the new Fox Corp., a spin-off of 21st Century Fox which just merged with Disney, became a standalone public company, controlling television assets such as Fox News and the Fox television network. Broadcasting & Cable reported that new Fox “hit the ground running on day one” with its Washington lobbying operation headed by Danny O’Brien, a well-known Democrat. O’Brien was brought on last October as executive vice president and head of government relations for the Fox Corp....

Multiple Democratic presidential candidates said Thursday that they won’t attend the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual conference in Washington next week. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas, Sen. Kamala Harris of California and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, are among the 2020 contenders who have decided not to attend. Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, who is considering an independent bid for president, will also avoid the AIPAC conference. It comes as the liberal advocacy group MoveOn has called on Democratic presidential candidates to skip this year’s policy...

The Islamic State’s caliphate has officially ended as its last stronghold is liberated The Islamic State declared its caliphate on June 29, 2014. At one point it controlled a territory larger than Britain, and it attracted 30,000 Muslims from 100 different countries to join it. Unfortunately, few, if any, Islamic State jihadis will take its collapse as a sign that their premises were wrong; they will just go wage jihad somewhere else, which is why Western countries are suicidal to take back the ISIS jihadis who are their citizens. This collapse is due to President Trump. When Obama left office,...

Talia Lavin’s undergraduate course “Reporting on the Far Right” will kick off in the fall semester of 2019 New York University has hired Talia Lavin as an adjunct journalism professor less than a year after the former New Yorker fact checker resigned after falsely accusing an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent of having a Nazi tattoo. Lavin’s undergraduate course “Reporting on the Far Right” will kick off in the fall semester of 2019 at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. In its official faculty bio, the university billed Lavin as an expert in “far-right extremism and social justice.” At least one current NYU...

Someone with the highly contagious illness arrived March 5 on United Airlines flight 240 at Terminal 7, Gate 76A and was in the airport from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., the L.A. County Department of Public Health said in a news release. The next day, the measles patient visited the Enterprise Rent-A-Car at 1719 Wilshire Blvd. in Santa Monica between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m., the agency said. Last week, officials said a passenger who had a layover at LAX on Feb. 21 could have exposed other travelers in the Tom Bradley International Terminal B and Delta Terminal 3. Authorities...

Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., hinted Monday the coming release of documents that will "show" U.S. ambassadors conspired with the FBI and the Justice Department to harm President Trump. “It's additional information that is coming out that will show not only was there no collusion, but there was a coordinated effort to take this president down,” Meadows told Fox News’ Sean Hannity. “We talk about the 'Deep State.' There are players now, even ambassadors, that are sitting ambassadors that were involved in part of this with the FBI-DOJ.” Meadows did not name any ambassadors. “As we look at this, it's time...

Meghan McCain, on "The View", defended her father, the late Sen. John McCain, against disparaging comments from President Donald Trump. Over the weekend Trump reiterated jabs he's made at the senator over the years, calling McCain "last in his class," in a post on Twitter. On 'The View' Monday, Meghan McCain said Trump "spends his weekend obsessing over great men" because "he will never be a great man." "My father was his kryptonite," McCain said.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has expressed his opinion on Saturday's fracas between an anti-immigrant senator and the teenager who smashed an egg on his head during a press event. Morrison said Sunday that Senator Fraser Anning should feel the full force of the law for allegedly punching the teen who egged him.

Jeb Bush believes a Republican should challenge President Trump for the nomination in 2020 — slamming the president's "dangerous" policies on trade and other issues. In the latest salvo between the two former rivals, Bush, who ran unsuccessfully for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016, made the comments Saturday during an interview with ex-Obama adviser David Axelrod. Bush, whose father George. H.W. Bush was the 41st president of the United States and his brother, George W. Bush, was the 43rd, reportedly added that Republican voters should be given more of a choice between different ideologies. "And our country needs to...

Rioters looted and torched shops and businesses on the famed Champs-Elysees avenue in Paris on Saturday, on the 18th weekend of French "yellow vest" protests, characterised by a sharp increase in violence after weeks of dwindling turnout. President Emmanuel Macron cut short a skiing trip in the Pyrenees to return to Paris for a crisis meeting, as hooded protesters went on the rampage in Paris, leaving a trail of destruction in the touristic heart of the city.

A far-right Australian senator who was internationally criticized after he blamed Muslims for the Christchurch mosque shooting attacks was smacked across the back of his head with an egg on Saturday by a teen protester. After being struck by the egg during a press conference in Melbourne, a shocked Sen. Fraser Anning then smacked the teen in his face in response.

New Zealand’s government is responding to the Christchurch attacks by pledging to ban all semiautomatic rifles. The Newstalk ZB reports that Attorney General David Parker announced the pending ban on semiautomatic rifles during a vigil in Auckland. He couched the announcement in comments about “a dimming of enlightenment” in various places around the world. The Guardian reports that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern also plans to “focus on the ease with which legal weapons can be modified to become military-style assault rifles, which are more strictly controlled.”

Friday on CNN’s “New Day,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said President Donald Trump’s rhetoric was “a factor” in the mass shooting at two New Zealand mosques that left 49 dead. Partial transcript as follows: BLUMENTHAL: A heartbreaking day, and of course our prayers go out to the people of New Zealand, particularly the loved ones and survivors and victims. But words do have consequences and we know that at the very pinnacle of power in our own country people are talking about good people on both sides. CAMEROTA: You mean the president talking about it. I mean I know it’s...

REP. ALEXANDRIA Ocasio-Cortez is better known to Americans, but her unfavorable ratings are climbing faster than her favorable marks, a new poll from Gallup found. The congresswoman from New York, who has a large following on social media, has been a frequent target of Republican attacks and the subject of much media attention, even as she has butted heads with the establishment in her own party. [ SEE: Political Cartoons on the Democratic Party ] While half of Americans had not heard of or had no opinion of Ocasio-Cortez in September, more than 7 in 10 U.S. adults now know...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) voiced her support on Thursday for lowering the federal voting age to 16, telling reporters during a press conference that doing so would be a boon to voter engagement in the U.S. Pelosi said Thursday that lowering the voting age would drive interest in politics among younger Americans who are learning about the subject in high school. The Speaker said that changing the voting age to 16 would help drive a higher level of voter awareness and turnout. "I myself have always been for lowering the voting age to 16," Pelosi said. "I think it's...