Free Republic

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., on Thursday threw a cryptic curveball at Brett Kavanaugh, insinuating the Supreme Court nominee could be guilty of a crime even as Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee seek to delay his confirmation. The vague accusation comes after the Senate Judiciary Committee already grilled Kavanaugh and other witnesses and prepares to vote on sending his nomination to the full Senate. The White House blasted the ambiguous charge as a last minute gambit. “I have received information from an individual concerning the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court,” Feinstein said in her surprise statement. “That...

Former President Jimmy Carter isn’t holding back in his assessment of Donald Trump, saying this week that if he could somehow become president again he would reverse all the policies Trump has put in place since taking office. Carter made the remark at Emory University, where he speaks each year to incoming students. The 93-year-old former president said he prays for Donald Trump regularly, though it didn’t appear to be working as Trump would “have to change a lot of things” if his prayers were answered. If he had the chance, Carter said he would make the changes himself. “If...

Serious question here. We know that the Democratic Party is the identity politics party. They like to pander to women, black, Latino, millennial, gay, white women, etc. They nominated and elected the first black man (Barack Obama). They nominated the first woman (Hillary Clinton), but failed. They'll try to run a woman or a Latino candidate, potentially. However, do you see Democrats nominating a lesbian feminist, and could that person win the presidency in the future, especially since the Left controls the media, academia, etc.?

A surefire ideological Kool-Aid test? Those who think Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was wounded during his hearings have heavily imbibed. Democratic senators on the Judiciary Committee set out to prove that Kavanaugh is a mendacious political hack with the strategy of acting like mendacious political hacks. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., offered to sacrifice his political career in a move obviously calculated to serve his political career -- boldly releasing "confidential" committee documents that had already been released and that did nothing to prove Kavanaugh's unfitness. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., hinted darkly at the malignant influence of the Federalist Society...

Federal data released Wednesday show that California has the highest poverty rate in the nation. The Census Bureau's Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) for 2017 estimates that California's poverty rate is at 19 percent. That figure is a slight 1.4 percent drop from last year, but still the highest of any state. The bureau's methodology takes into account the cost of living in a given area. Caroline Danielson, the policy director at the Public Policy Institute of California, said a high cost of living, in particular for housing, had weighed the state down. "The state's high housing costs have weighed heavily...

Republicans on Thursday brushed back Democrats’ attempts to slow down Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, rebuffing motions to subpoena millions of pages of documents and keeping on track for a final committee vote next week. The Democrats’ subpoenas sought to pry loose records from Judge Kavanaugh’s time working in the Bush White House, saying there are issues where they believe he expressed opinions but they haven’t been able to see them. “Torture, Iraq — there were so many things that were brought forward at that time,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee,...

If the House flips, Representative Jerry Nadler would head the committee that could try to oust the president. But he’ll have to be convinced first. BROOKLYN—“Right now, I don’t want to talk about it,” Jerry Nadler told his curious, concerned constituent. “We don’t want to talk about it.” The man positioned to lead the House of Representatives’ impeachment effort against President Donald Trump next year was holding court on a suffocating early August afternoon outside a Walgreens in the Brooklyn half of his New York City congressional district. This was a “Congress on Your Corner” event, and the 71-year-old Nadler—dressed...

Liberal groups are testing a new crowdsourcing tactic in their battle against President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee — and are testing the limits of campaign finance laws with their attempt to force one GOP senator to vote “No.” The initiative has secured pledges of $1.2 million, which the groups say they’ll direct to an opponent of Sen. Susan Collins, should she vote to confirm Mr. Trump’s pick, Judge Brett Kavanaugh. If she votes for the nomination, the donors’ credit cards will be charged. Ms. Collins and her defenders say that sounds an awful lot like bribery, threatening her political future...

Two major Democratic super PACs are launching a joint $21 million digital ad campaign that’ll back Democratic incumbents and candidates in nine competitive Senate races. Priorities USA Action and Senate Majority PAC (SMP) will spend nearly $18 million on top races in Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Missouri and North Dakota. Senate Majority PAC will separately spend $3 million on ads in Montana, Nevada, Tennessee and West Virginia. The digital ads will run on social media platforms like Facebook as well as on audio streaming services like YouTube, Hulu and Spotify. The majority of the digital spots are focusing on taking aim...

George Gatteny [Massachusetts] "I witnessed something today that outraged me! I was driving down Broadway in Somerville. I stopped behind a bus waiting to pull into Clarendon Station. I looked over to my right and saw young people (early to mid 20's) go into the Somerville Veterans Memorial Cemetery. As they approached the statue, I saw them grab the 3 or 4 mini flags that were placed in from of the statue. The guy took the flags and tossed them behind the statue. What I saw him do next pushed me to a point where I said to myself "ENOUGH"....

SOMERVILLE, MASS. (WHDH) - Police are working to identify a person of interest after an Arlington man claims to have witnessed a man urinating on multiple American flags at the Somerville Veterans Memorial Cemetery on Monday. George Gatteny says he was stopped behind a bus on Broadway near Clarendon Station when he saw two people near a memorial statue, including a man who he claims urinated on four miniature American flags that were torn out of the ground. “He undid his pants, took himself out and started urinating on the flags,” he told 7News. Gatteny, shocked by what he was...

Senate Democrats submitted a record number of written questions to President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, in a move Republicans said was the latest attempt to delay confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh. The 1,278 questions are four times more than the number asked of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, Mr. Trump’s first high court pick, last year. Indeed, it’s more than the combined total for every justice in U.S. history, said Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the committee, asked 241 questions herself...

Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court has prompted one of the most contentious battles on Capitol Hill since Donald Trump became president. ... Chuck Schumer and the 10 Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee threw every punch at Kavanaugh they could muster, not to mention a few knees in the groin. The party’s progressive wing demanded no less -- a failure to engage in this fight would have made them targets from an array of liberal groups and activists. But Senate Democrats faced another dilemma, too: The prospective justice’s confirmation process is occurring in the heat of a hotly...

Former President Jimmy Carter is cautioning Democrats that their path to defeating President Donald Trump depends on independents and moderates. Speaking at his presidential center in Atlanta on Tuesday, Carter said U.S. policies on immigration, the environment and human rights will not improve while Trump is in office. Carter also noted polls showing independents souring on the Republican administration....

Since the election, there has been ample speculation about how Trump “happened.” Last week, Obama offered his hypothesis: resentment and paranoia on the right. He lamented the destruction of the Republican Party and the ensuing demise of America because of the divisiveness and bigotry propagated by the president and those who support him. It seems that most on the left agree with Obama’s view. Progressives purport that enthusiasm for Trump is bolstered by “white fragility”— an insecurity that white voices, once dominant, are now being drowned out by increasingly influential minority groups bolstered by demographic changes. Trump is their “white...

Citing the "common interests we share with China," eighty California State Assembly members have unanimously passed a bill to declare the legislature's support for "a mutual defense treaty to deal with the threat posed to both our nations by the Trump regime." Assembly member Evan Low (D-Campbell) said "the Trump Administration's policies constitute a mortal danger to every Californian. It is our natural right to sever the political bonds with his tyranny and seek new guards for our liberties. Given the military might of the armed forces controlled by Trump it is imperative that we, much like the confederation of...

Republicans might have to part with some hard-earned fundraising to shore up Texas, but they might not be alone in defending previously safe territory. A new poll out last Friday in California shows the gubernatorial race to be unexpectedly close, and not just between two flavors of progressives. The leading Republican contender is within five points of Gavin Newsom, a result that might force Democrats to shift funds away from other states: If California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom was expecting an easy race for the governorÂ’s mansion, a poll released Thursday didnÂ’t carry much in the way of good...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) revealed that though even she agrees that Democrats need “new blood,” she is not going anywhere so long as Donald Trump is president. In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that will air Monday evening on CNN International and PBS, Pelosi said she agrees that “it’s time for new blood and we should move on” and added, “If Hillary Clinton had won, and the Affordable Care Act was protected— I feel very proprietary about that—I was happy to go my way,” “But to have no woman at the table and to have the Affordable...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) mockingly said in a speech last weekend that she threatens Trump supporters all the time, defending her comments in June that said people should confront members of President Trump's administration. Waters said she was not threatening Trump supporters or constituents when she called on people to confront Trump Cabinet members and supporters in June — and said Trump was wrong to accuse her of doing so at the time. "I did not threaten [Trump] constituents and supporters. I do that all the time, but I didn't do that that time," Waters said to laughter from...

If there are legal grounds to support it, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jenny Wilson said Monday that she "will support moving toward impeachment" of President Donald Trump. "If the (special counsel Robert) Mueller report comes out with a grounds toward impeachment, I think we are in such chaos as a nation, we cannot heal until he's gone," Wilson told the editorial boards of the Deseret News and KSL. That said, Wilson said she awaits the release of the Mueller report on the yearlong investigation into the president's conduct. "I'm not favoring impeachment at this moment in time," she said. But...