Free Republic

Wikileaks has gotten their hands on a copy of Obama’s phony TPP trade bill. It contains 29 chapters but only 5 pertain to trade. Wikileaks will be publishing the entire bill and they have already released the chapter on Investment. It’s very interesting. It is written in a such a way as to give multinational companies a huge advantage on trade. If a public hospital is built close to a private one, the private hospital has the right to sue the country for expected losses. That is outrageous. Here is where you can find the chapter on investment: https://wikileaks.org/tpp-investment/WikiLeaks-TPP-Investment-Chapter/page-2.html The...

Republicans in the state Senate have added provisions to an abortion bill that are drawing strong criticism from a key Democrat in the Senate. The bill has already passed the House and would extend the waiting period for abortions from 24 hours to 72 hours. The purpose is to give women more time to consider the decision in the hope it will lead to fewer abortions. The proposal, House Bill 465, passed the House in a 74-45 vote last month. Now, in the Senate, a substitute bill is set for discussion on Wednesday. That substitute abortion bill now includes language...

George Orwell wrote in his preface to Animal Farm that “Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban…At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question, anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness.” This prevailing orthodoxy defines the ideology of the contemporary Left of today. Motivated by abstractions and a vision of a utopian future based upon that which has never existed but which they are convinced they can create, the...

A former Virginia Democratic lawmaker who became a pariah in the state legislature after a sex scandal involving a teenage receptionist has announced that he plans to marry the woman, a day after he acknowledged fathering her 9-week-old baby. Joseph D. Morrissey, 57, told a news conference on Thursday that the woman, Myrna Pride, gave birth to their baby about a week before she turned 19. She is still employed at his law office, he said. [Snip] Morrissey also said that he was father to a total of four children born out of wedlock with different women. Last December, Morrissey,...

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the populist Democrat and foe of big banks, has not listed a $1.3 million credit line against her home with Bank of America on annual financial disclosure documents because of a loophole in federal law, according to a new report. The Boston Herald reported Wednesday that Warren, who is required to disclose financial assets and liabilities, avoided listing it in 2014 because it’s a line of credit — not a mortgage — and the Democrat doesn’t actually owe enough money yet. Here’s how the Democrat’s office explained the situation to the Boston Herald: “An aide for...

Dogma: After Ramadi fell to the Islamic State over the weekend, the Obama administration called its anti-terror strategy a success. If that's hard to fathom, consider what else the president thinks is going well. Nine months ago, President Obama told the nation he had a successful strategy to "to take out ISIL wherever they exist." At a press briefing on Monday, a reporter asked White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest if, given the fall of Ramadi and reports that the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq is moving into Libya, "Would you say that, overall, this strategy has been a...

A better future for poor Americans trapped in Baltimore and across the country must start with a fact-based analysis of how we got here and who has been responsible. Fact: The last Republican city council member in Baltimore City left office in 1942. That is 73 years of solid Democrat city councils. Fact: The last Republican mayor of Baltimore City left office in 1967. That is 48 years of unbroken Democrat control of the mayor’s office. Fact: The Maryland Senate is currently 33 Democrats to 14 Republicans. Fact: The Maryland House is currently 90 Democrats to 50 Republicans. Fact: The...

According to the Washington Post, Hillary Clinton told a group of her fundraisers that she will have a litmus test for her nominees to the Supreme Court (if she should win the presidency): they will have to agree with her that the 2010 Citizens United ruling must be overturned.  In that ruling the Supreme Court held that corporations have First Amendment rights to engage in political speech and to spend money on such speech.  In making her pledge, Mrs. Clinton follows Bernie Sanders, who is also running for president.If Republican critics of Mrs. Clinton wanted to be demagogues about it,...

These tweets are literally posted one on top the other in pro-abortion Democrat Ted Deutch’s Twitter feed: ***(Check out tweets at link)*** The practice of animal crushing is a sexual fetish of the sickest kind. About his introduction of the PACT Act, Rep. Deutch wrote: Too many animals are subjected to unfathomable cruelty and abuse, out of no fault of their own and no recourse for protection. These inhumane acts have no place in our society. House Foreign AffairsYet, incomprehensibly, particularly by comparison – and on the very same day as he introduced his animal cruelty bill – Deutch, pictured...

Damage is estimated at $9 million for the destruction of hundreds of businesses and two homes during the recent unrest in Baltimore — with at least 30 sustaining major damage, according to information released Wednesday. The Small Business Administration estimated the damaged at about $8.9 million to 284 business and $60,000 to two houses, officials told The Baltimore Sun. U.S. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, along with other Maryland Democrats, called for Small Business Administration to assist with the creation of disaster centers in the city and a plan to inform business owners who are eligible for benefits about how to...

Law enforcement authorities have charged four people in connection with the theft of more than $870,000 from two public schools in Chicago through a fraudulent billing scheme, records show. Named in arrest warrants were: Jermaine Robinson, 36, of Chicago; Sidney Bradley, 46, of Chicago; Albert Bennett, 49, of Carpentersville; and Paul Simmons, 55, of Calumet City, according to Cook County court records. All four were charged with felony theft of government property, court records show. Cook County Judge Nicholas Ford on Tuesday set bail at $400,000 for Robinson and $200,000 for Bradley, Bennett and Simmons. Bennett and a fifth man...

What Chris Christie should do is announce his decision on running for president on the George Washington Bridge. There, high above the Hudson River, the New Jersey Republican governor can announce that he either is running for GOP nomination for president, or as a result of "Bridgegate," he is jumping.

(Excerpt) One thing we’ve noticed about supporters of gun control is that they tend project their own temper/impulse control/mental health shortcomings onto others. That is, they know that they don’t have the temperament to avoid using firearms when angry, and since they can’t control themselves, they assume everyone else has the same deficiencies. It seems like one of those anti-gun Democrats in Detroit proved his own inability to control his temper early Sunday morning, as he blasted away with a shotgun to his girlfriend’s car over what should have been a simple domestic argument: Sources told Local 4 state...

Police say a state senator from Detroit is suspected of firing many shots at his girlfriend's car over the weekend. Police Chief James Craig says Virgil Smith is in custody Monday. He told reporters that a gun was seized from Smith's home. Craig says the Detroit Democrat has been cooperating with investigators. No one was injured in the shooting, which occurred early Sunday.

DETROIT - Police searched a state senator's home Sunday after he was accused of firing a shotgun following a fight with his girlfriend. Sources told Local 4 state Sen. Virgil Smith, who represents the fourth district, fired several shots into the woman's car. Investigators walked out of state Smith's home with what appeared to be a shotgun wrapped in a garbage bag. Investigators with Detroit police placed it in the backseat of an unmarked car. Around 1 a.m. Sunday police were called to Smith's home for reports of shots fired Sources told Local 4 that early Sunday morning Smith and...

“American liberalism today”, writes Jonah Goldberg, “sees no realm of human life that is beyond political significance, from what you eat to what you smoke to what you say. Sex is political. Food is political. Sports, entertainment, your inner motives and outer appearance, all have political salience for liberal fascists”. While Liberal fascism differs from classical fascism, what unites them are their “emotional or instinctual impulses, such as the quest for community, a faith in the perfect ability of man, the authority of experts, and an obsession with the cult of action, and the need for an all-powerful state”, notes...

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) on Wednesday rejected the idea that Democratic political leaders were responsible for problems in Baltimore. [Snip] Some conservatives have suggested that Baltimore, where riots broke out last week over police mistreatment of minorities, is the result of failed liberal policies. Baltimore last had a Republican mayor in 1967.

Neighborhoods matter. That’s the upshot of two fascinating new studies from Harvard economist Raj Chetty and his colleagues. In the 1990s, the federal government launched an experiment, called the Moving to Opportunity project. It created a lottery for housing vouchers that would allow the winners to move out of high-poverty neighborhoods into low-poverty ones. The project’s initial findings were a disappointment for people — like me — who argue that culture matters quite a lot. It did find that neighborhood poverty was a big factor in determining economic mobility, but researchers saw little evidence that getting poor people out of...

Truth Revolt asks why the new Archbishop of Chicago has the nerve to speak of illegal immigration as if it were ‘God’s agenda.’ Where are truth-loving Catholics supposed to look for a Church that isn’t in the pocket of anti-Catholic hate today? Either it is evil to be conservative or these bishops are pretenders. Is it ‘love’ to hand political power to the true enemies of God and man? True to his claim that immigration reform is “God’s agenda,” Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich has been cozying up to pro-abortion Democrats to get his social justice initiatives underway. On Sunday, the...

An Islamist radical recruited to Somalia from Minneapolis inspired the would-be “Texas Terror” killers, who were gunned down in Garland, Texas Sunday night by a sharp-shooting law enforcement officer before they could carry out their mass-murder plot at an art exhibit sponsored by First Amendment heroine Pamela Geller. It’s just the latest example of how and why Minneapolis—and specifically the congressional district of Muslim Democrat Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) —has become ground zero for the threat to the United States from Islamist terror groups such as ISIS and Al-Shabaab. ... The terrorist threat emanates from the Minneapolis neighborhood known as...