Free Republic

The taxman just delivered a body blow to another member of the Biden family, informing her that she owes thousands of dollars in unpaid back taxes. The revelation, first reported by Fox News, is another indication of the pressure that multiple family members to President Joe Biden are under to profit off his stature and status. A recent tax lien docket by the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue shows that Ashley Biden, daughter to the president, owes $5,000 for unpaid tax bills accrued between 2015 — when Biden was vice president — and 2021, shortly after he took office again. The...

Queen Elizabeth II’s former chaplain issued a warning that King Charles III’s multifaith and multiculturalism threatens to be the end of his own house and the end of the British monarchy as a whole. Gavin Ashenden, who served as chaplain to the queen from 2008 to 2017, spoke to British outlet GB News on Sunday, saying, “I think that if this slow movement into multiculturalism and multifaith goes on, we’ll lose the monarchy, because in the end, I don’t think it will be true to itself.” Ashenden’s comments came after the king’s first royal Christmas message since he assumed the...

China has invested more than £685billion across 42 Commonwealth member states since 2005 as the Communist Party's extraordinary bid for global power continues unimpeded. Foreign policy hawks have accused Britain of being 'completely asleep at the wheel for decades' as China expands its influence in the Caribbean and targets 'weak' Commonwealth states across the planet. By ploughing huge sums of money into poor countries such as Barbados and Jamaica, Beijing hopes to saddle them with such enormous unpayable debts that they are forced to hand over the assets used as security. In some cases, this has included ports in crucial...

Washington -- I could not reach my colleague Wlady Pleszczynski for most of the day on Saturday. He was mysteriously missing. On Saturdays, we talk for at least an hour on the telephone about the past week's events, but not this Saturday. His telephone rang and rang, all for naught. The same was true for two more of my weekend confidants. I had important news to convey to them, but no one was answering the telephone. At the end of the day, I finally roused Wlady. Where had he been? He had been engrossed in the British Broadcasting Corporation's coverage...

Sept. 16 (UPI) — Barbados Governor-general Sandra Mason said Wednesday her Caribbean island nation has decided to remove Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state and declare itself a republic. Barbados, a tourist destination in the eastern Caribbean 700 miles off the Venezuela coast, won independence from Britain in 1966 but has remained a British commonwealth realm.

Here's what you should know ahead of Saturday's competition. Didn't a global pageant just happen? Yes. But that was Miss Universe, a competitor pageant that was founded years after Miss World by a swimsuit company (hence the swimsuit competition). Miss World is one of the four major global beauty pageants, and the oldest, the organization says, at almost 70 years old. Miss World delegates from 111 countries spend a month in London competing in events like "Sport," "Talent" and "Beauty with a Purpose" to secure their spot in the televised finale. Miss Universe lasts only a few days.

Bahamas Paradise Cruise Line ship Grand Celebration transported more than 1,100 Bahamians to the United States, the line said in a statement. Evacuees were taken to Port of Palm Beach in Riviera Beach, Florida, early Saturday, according to the cruise line. The ship was in the Bahamas on Thursday and Friday with nearly 300 first responders, 850 boxed lunches and a total of 225,000 pounds of supplies, including food and water, the line stated.

And ultimately, we may only keep as much as they might allow through the government’s ever-increasing assertion of its ownership, a mandate which becomes more firmly placed with each popular declaration that all property is, somehow, communal. Again returning to Adams, he predicted this: "The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence." And he even provides a description as to how it would happen, which, again, is eerily similar to...

The NAACP on Thursday rescinded its support for Puerto Rican statehood. The civil rights group emphasized Puerto Rican "self-determination" in a statement walking back its endorsement of a bill that would make Puerto Rico the 51st state, which it voted to support on Tuesday. "Puerto Rico should be free to decide its preferred option in a fair and inclusive manner," the NAACP said, adding that it has a "long history of supporting the democratic value of self-determination." In a statement on Tuesday, the NAACP threw its weight behind the Puerto Rican Admission Act after an appeal from Gov. Ricardo Rosselló,...

There are eleven days left until the general election. On September 12, 2018, incumbent Govenor Gina Raimondo and Cranston mayor and 2014 gubernatorial nominee Allan Fung won the Democratic and Republican primaries for governor of Rhode Island respectively. It is clear Governor Raimondo is happy to have Joe Trillo, a third-party candidate, in the Rhode Island Governor General Election who admitted his goal is to take votes away from Fung. Asian Republicans' support is important to Fung for Governor campaign. A vote for anyone else is a vote for four more years of Rhode Island's current incompetence. Governor Raimondo launched...

Recently, author and speechwriter Don Watson has questioned the impetus for Australia to become a republic. In the April edition of The Monthly, he wrote: In a world filling with tyrants, Queen Elizabeth and her descendants represent a sort of anti-tyranny. He goes on to note: Our democracy works imperfectly well, and it is hard to see how any of its practical imperfections would be remedied by going republican. In effect, the governor-general, who is appointed by the elected government, acts as a de facto ceremonial head of state, while we maintain the pretence that Elizabeth is the sovereign. Like...

Five dollars was all she was paid by the Atlantic Monthly Magazine for her poem, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," published FEBRUARY 1, 1862. It became Lincoln's favorite song and the Union's theme song. Her name was Julia Ward Howe, the daughter of a Wall Street banker and the wife of Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, director of a school for the blind in Boston, which grew into the famous Perkins Institute. Julia and her husband entertained John Brown in their home and published the anti-slavery journal Commonwealth. In 1861, Julia traveled to Washington, D.C., and saw the city teeming...

Australia's republican movement says membership has surged in the wake of the Brexit vote, as Australians question the benefits of remaining part of “little Britain”. An “AusExit” campaign, including calls to remove the Union Jack from the flag and remove the British monarch as head of state, has gained momentum since Friday, when Britain voted to leave the European Union. Peter FitzSimons, the chairman of Australia’s republican movement, said Australia had belonged to the British empire but the historic ties between the nations had become less relevant because “Great Britain barely exists anymore”. “It’s one thing for the monarchists to...

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money. Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my...

There have been fresh calls for the Republic of Ireland to rejoin the Commonwealth after the success of the recent State visit. Ireland left the Commonwealth in 1949, but recent historic moves including the visit of President Michael D. Higgins to the UK have reopened the debate. Senior Conservative MP Michael Fabricant said yesterday that the proposal “is not so mad as it might at first seem”. “If a country like the Republic of Ireland joined the Commonwealth, what greater message could be sent to countries facing political upheaval and disputes on the other side of the world than an...

London Mayor Boris Johnson has blasted European Union (EU) immigration for favoring Eurozone workers instead of those from Commonwealth nations today. The Conservative politician said Britain needs to look beyond the EU and should forge stronger ties with fast growing economies, in particular Australia. Mr. Johnson said the UK and Australia should set up a “free labor mobility zone” where he feels there are “immense opportunities”. … Mr. Johnson launched his attack on the EU after receiving a letter from Australian Sally Roycroft, who had been working in London schools. The London Mayor said the teacher had been “effectively kicked...

Real estate developer Rodney Lockwood Jr. agrees with Detroit politicians that Belle Isle is a jewel. A tarnished jewel he likes so much that he wants to put together an investor group to buy it for $1 billion, which is more than $1 million an acre for the 982-acre park in the middle of the Detroit River. And then he wants to polish it up with $20 billion in construction projects on the island, which would lead to another $20 billion in construction projects off the island and tens of thousands of temporary construction jobs and tens of thousands of...

'Ronald Reagan issued a last-ditch appeal to Margaret Thatcher to abandon her campaign to retake the Falklands and to hand over the islands to international peacekeepers, according to official documents made public today. Files released by the National Archives at Kew, South West London, under the 30-year rule show that as British troops closed in on final victory, the US president made a late-night phone call to Mrs Thatcher urging her not to completely humiliate the Argentines. However, his request fell on deaf ears as a defiant Prime Minister insisted that she had not sent a British task force across...

Graves of British soldiers of the Royal Horse Artillery at the Commonwealth Benghazi War Cemetery Commonwealth War Cemetery in Benghazi targeted again Headstone damaged, markers removed Digger graves among 198 damaged in February THERE has been another war graves attack at a cemetery in Libya which contains the remains of Australian soldiers. Authorities say a headstone has been damaged and temporary markers removed from some graves at the Commonwealth War Cemetery in Benghazi. "The nationality of the individual buried beneath the headstone that was damaged is not yet known,'' the Department of Veterans' Affairs (DVA) said today. The Commonwealth War...

Defence hunting foreign troops with citizenship for service THE Australian Defence Force is exploiting forced cutbacks in military spending in Britain and other Western countries, embarking on an unprecedented drive to recruit laid-off soldiers, sailors and air crew. Defence, which has struggled to fill recruitment quotas in the face of increasing competition from the lucrative private sector, is seeking highly skilled specialists such as fighter pilots, special forces officers and submarine crews. And as an incentive, it is prepared to offer a fast track to Australian citizenship for so-called "lateral recruits" after just three months' service. The Australian has learned...