Free Republic

A new report from the Federal Trade Commission suggests grocery giants used inflation and supply chain disruptions during the pandemic to drive their profits and keep raising prices. Now, the agency is urging Congress to take a closer look into grocery profits. The data shows food prices in the United States spiked 11% between 2021 and 2022, the largest annual increase in over 40 years. News4JAX asked local consumers about their current spending Friday. “Everything. Everything. Everything that I can think of that I need, you know, it’s expensive,” a consumer said. The prices at the grocery store are high....

The FBI released late Saturday a newly declassified document related to its investigation into the planning of the 9/11 attacks and the possible role Saudi officials may have played...

Monitoring Governor Palin’s pre-ascent to the national political scene was one of the stories that prompted my joining FR while in college. I remember Free Republic being one of the few places online (along with Glenn Beck’s show, to his credit) to profile the rising star governor: her successes navigating Alaska’s international corporate oil scene, her carrying a Down Syndrome baby to term, and before anybody in the media or even GOP establishment knew who she was — her qualifications as a viable for runningmate for John McCain. I stayed up all night before the day of the announcement, praying...

Video at link. (CNSNews.com) - "If they want to do a review, they can do a review, but it's a total distraction," Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said Tuesday, following reports that Attorney General William Barr has asked the U.S. Attorney in Connecticut to look into the origins of the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation. Khanna said James Baker, the former general counsel for the FBI, has made it clear the Trump-Russia investigation "had nothing to do with the (Steele) dossier. "It frankly had nothing to do with the Trump campaign," Khanna said. "It was on actionable intelligence from foreign ambassadors concerned that...

A pair of right-wing provocateurs are being accused of attempting to recruit young Republican men to level false allegations of sexual assault against Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. The details of the operatives’ attempt emerged as one man suddenly surfaced with a vague and uncorroborated allegation that Buttigieg had assaulted him. The claim was retracted hours later on a Facebook page appearing to belong to the man. A Republican source told The Daily Beast that lobbyist Jack Burkman and internet troll Jacob Wohl approached him last week to try to convince him to falsely accuse Buttigieg, the mayor of South...

You don't give up on every state in America. One thing the Democrats do well is that they compete in EVERY state. Look at what they are doing to Virginia, Texas, North Carolina, Arizona, New Mexico, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Tennessee. Changing the demographics. They are plenty of conservative areas in NYC (Staten Island, Bayside, Douglaston), Long Island, Rockland County, Upstate NY; plenty of conservative areas in NJ (Ocean, Morris, Monmouth) that can outvote the liberal areas and cities. Don't move to FL, NC, GA. Fight. Fight, fight, fight, fight. The GOP can win those states if a Democrat screws up big...

A top Democrat on Tuesday threatened not to seat the Republican winner in a closely contested North Carolina House race when the new Congress takes power in January, citing allegations of "serious fraudulent activity" involving possible ballot harvesting. State election officials unanimously refused to certify the results of the race on Friday and may call for a new election, potentially erasing what is now unofficially a 905-vote lead by Republican Mark Harris over Democrat Dan McCready in the fight for the 9th Congressional District. The margin is less than half a percentage point of total votes cast. Incoming Majority Leader...

Over the past five years, in fact, it has become increasingly clear—even to some conservative Christians—that fundamentalist churches face a widespread epidemic of sexual abuse and institutional denial that could ultimately involve more victims than the pedophilia scandal in the Catholic Church. In 2012, an investigation at Bob Jones University, known as the “fortress of fundamentalism,” revealed that the school had systematically covered up allegations of sexual assault and counseled victims to forgive their attackers. Sovereign Grace, a network of “neo-Calvinist” churches, has been facing multiple allegations of child molestation and sexual abuse. In 2014, a New Republic investigation found...

Ted Haggard was once one of the most power evangelical leaders in America. New Life Church leader Ted Haggard was once one of America's most charismatic and powerful evangelical leaders, with an audience of more than 30 million people. Ted began counseling foreign dignitaries and consulting on a weekly basis with President George W. Bush. By 2005, Time magazine named him one of the most influential evangelicals in America. But no one—not even his devoted wife, five children and his Colorado Springs, Colorado-based congregation—suspected that Ted was paying an admitted male escort for crystal meth. In November 2006, Mike Jones...

Two British political operatives were reportedly in contact with the Russian ambassador to the U.K. while they campaigned for and met with President Trump in 2016, CNN reported. Arron Banks and Andy Wigmore played prominent roles in the successful 2016 Brexit campaign for the U.K. to leave the European Union (EU). After the U.K. voted to leave the EU in June, Banks and Wigmore attended a Trump rally in Mississippi with the leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, Nigel Farage, who was a prominent supporter of leaving the EU. Trump introduced Farage, who was speaking at the event, as...

(Reuters) - Former President Barack Obama, back on the campaign trail on Thursday for the first time since he left the White House, called on voters to reject a growing “politics of division” that he said was corroding American democracy. Without mentioning Republican President Donald Trump by name, Obama told campaign rallies in New Jersey and Virginia that voters could send a powerful message about the type of politics they want by backing Democrats in Nov. 7 elections in the two states. “What we can’t have is the same old politics of division that we have seen so many times...

Calling her firing from CNN “censorship,” comedian Kathy Griffin said in a press conference Friday that she would stand up for free speech in the face of fallout from a controversial image of President Trump she tweeted this week. “I am not afraid of Donald Trump. He is a bully,” Griffin said. While Griffin expressed remorse for posting an image of herself holding a bloody mask of Trump, she also accused Trump and his family of “bullying” her, and hit out at CNN, which on Wednesday fired her from its New Year’s Eve broadcast. Fallout from her tweet was quick...

Supporters of Sens. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) took to social media to slam the freshman senators for blaming leftists shutting down a Trump Chicago rally on GOP frontrunner Donald Trump. “I think a campaign bears responsibility for creating an environment, when the candidate urges supporters to engage in physical violence — to punch people in the face. The predictable consequence of that is that it escalates and today is unlikely to be the last such instance. We earlier today in St. Louis over thirty arrested. That’s not how our politics should occur,” Cruz said Friday....

San Bernardino struggled with hate groups before shooting - MSM deflection begins http://m.nydailynews.com/news/crime/san-bernardino-struggled-hate-groups-shooting-article-1.2453422 San Bernardino struggled with hate groups before shooting Tobias Salinger NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Today, 10:04 PM ET  The Anti-Defamation League has cited examples in both San Bernardino County and neighboring Riverside County of the Comrades of Our Race's Struggle, the Inland Empire Skinheads, the Nazi Low Riders and a splinter group called Public Enemy Number One. Police in San Bernardino said in 2009 that they had probed murders, home invasions and drug trafficking linked to members of the Inland Empire Skinheads over a seven-year period,...

Celia Roady is a lawyer and a partner at Morgan, Lewis and Bockius LLP. Roady is now admitting that she was contacted by Lois Lerner on May 9th. Lerner on the 9th asked Celia Roady to ask the planted IRS question discriminating against conservatives and she agreed. Celia Roady, who released a statement to Fox News says there were no discussion thereafter on the topic of the question. Also, Roady claims that she hasn’t spoken with Lois Lerner about this issue before that May 9th phone call. Finally, Celia Roady says that Lerner did not tell herr how she would...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Thursday the United States and Britain bore part of the blame in the Iraq oil-for-food debacle by allowing unsupervised oil exports that Saddam Hussein exploited. Annan, addressing a seminar on the United Nations and the media, said most of the money Saddam earned was by oil sold to Jordan and Turkey outside of the $67 billion U.N. program. Only countries like the United States and Britain had interdiction forces that could have stopped it. But he said they "decided to close their eyes to Turkey and Jordan because they are...

FOX News says President Bush will speak about Terri's death 15 minutes from now.

Rights out of focus as science blinds By David Scofield Kim Jong-il leaps from the nuclear closet and the world reacts with rapt attention. Even United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan's personal envoy to North Korea, former Canadian diplomat Maurice Strong, has indicated that Pyongyang's withdrawal from the six-party talks and declared nuclear arsenal is "a very real bump in the road" - a departure from last spring when he optimistically declared that Kim Jong-il wants "a nuclear-weapon-free Korean Peninsula". As has been repeated by foreign ministers and editorial writers the world over, this sort of portentous tactic is not...