Free Republic

CHICAGO - Backstage, as she prepares for a not-so-intimate “fireside chat” about gun safety in front of hundreds of people, Kamala Harris is unscripted and seemingly at ease, no notes or teleprompter in sight. She’s comfortable offering condolences and counsel to those who’ve lost loved ones to gun violence - who stream in wearing red shirts emblazoned with “Moms Demand Action” or “Students Demand Action.” She holds their hands and looks into their eyes. “We speak their names,” she whispers to one woman. **SNIP** Her tenure as Joe Biden’s No. 2 has not been known for relaxed and warm moments...

Cher is the latest Hollywood celebrity to explode over Georgia’s new voter integrity law, claiming inaccurately that the law takes away voting rights of black Americans. She also lashed out at Republican lawmakers, calling them “evil” and “bigots.” In an emotional tweet on Sunday, the actress and pop star accused Republicans of stripping the voting rights of black people and depriving them of “racial and economic equity.” Cher wrote that Republican politicians are “infected” with a “deadly pandemic of their own making.” They are “evil, soulless, bigots” and “don’t care.” LinkOn Thursday, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) signed into law...

Liz Cheney, the third ranking House Republican, on Tuesday called on the Republican party to "make clear we aren't the party of white supremacy." Cheney's remarks came during an event hosted by the Reagan Institute. "It's very important for us to ignore the temptation to look away," Cheney said. "And it's very important, especially for us as Republicans, to make clear that we aren't the party of white supremacy. "You certainly saw anti-Semitism. You saw the symbols of Holocaust denial... you saw a Confederate flag being carried through the rotunda," she said, referencing the January 6 assault on the U.S....

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Wednesday that she wasn’t buying billionaire presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg’s attempt to distance himself from his 2015 remarks about “stop and frisk,” a controversial anti-crime policy that was used when he was mayor of New York City. “People's lives were ruined,” Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., told reporters on Capitol Hill about the Bloomberg policy, according to The Hill. “So are those folks going to get their records expunged? With a tweet? They're not. So I think that we need something a little bit more than that.” “Stop and frisk was a uniquely and largely Bloomberg-administration policy,” she...

Apparently, the occasionally operating cortex kicked in yesterday, and the experience of mental activity temporarily threw Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez off her memorized talking points. She was in the midst of lecturing a crowd of Bernie-supporters, pacing around the stage with a hand-held microphone, engaging the crowd the way a fifth-grade teacher might lead along the children she is indoctrinating. But as she was building up to some sort of prepared punchline, she said, "Here's the deal" and then drew a blank. She actually used the expression "here's the deal" three times before coming up with the payoff.

Controversial Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez left millions of Americans scratching their heads this week; saying she was “shook” and stunned by her own garden and declaring “food that comes out of the dirt” is “like magic.” “Look! Oh my god, look at this! I am shook. Honestly, gardening, food that comes out of dirt, it’s like magic. The tomatoes died though… This is so exciting!” said Ocasio-Cortez in her video.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the socialist congressional candidate from New York who touts honesty and authenticity as her greatest strengths, used to describe herself as a follower of Adam Smith, the so-called father of capitalism -- and said that terms like “feminism” and “empowerment” were “relics from the past.”

Things got awkward on CNN on Friday when anchor Wolf Blitzer seemed to criticize one of the network’s reporters over the quality of her White House sources. In a dialogue with Gloria Borger, Blitzer told the veteran White House reporter that sources who told her that former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus would not be fired on Friday “are not good sources.”

Former First Daughter Chelsea Clinton touted herself as "a working model of what a young woman needs to do to succeed in today's world. I know that a lot of women in my generation are pretty bummed about my Mom's loss to Donald Trump. But they need to get off their duffs and get going. Just do what I did." "One thing that I highly recommend for others is to get a job with a major television news outlet," she suggested. "These jobs are very rewarding. My starting salary at NBC News was $600,000. This type of salary will enable...

Pelosi: Gorsuch ‘Against Employees’ Rights, Clean Air, Clean Water, Food Safety’—Even Autistic Children. Video at link.

<p>It’s the video pop superstar Ariana Grande probably doesn’t want you to see.</p> <p>TMZ obtained video from a donut shop in Lake Elsinore, California on Saturday. It shows Grande with her new boyfriend, backup dancer Ricky Alvarez, and a couple of friends. Grande appears to lick a donut left on a tray on top of the display case when employees weren’t looking. The video also shows Grande making out with Alvarez.</p>

Former Likud MK Moshe Kahlon will indeed be running for the Knesset – and on Wednesday evening, he introduced his new party to Israelis. The party's name will be “Kulanu,” meaning “all of us.” The name is reminiscent of the campaign phrase used by Ehud Barak in his campaign for the Prime Minister's position in 1999, when he said that he would be the leader of “kulam” - everyone. Kahlon did not announced the names of any of the candidates who would be running with him. However, he said, his slogan to the voters would be “Be like Kahlon” (“Tihyu...

KATY PERRY @katyperry So INCREDIBLY sad to hear that there were 100 volunters for UNICEF on flight #MN17 Sending our prayers to all of the families affected :( UNCIEF have assured the public that no employees or volunteers for the world organisation were onboard the MH17, Malaysian Airlines flight that was shot down over Ukraine last week after Katy Perry, an ambassador for the company, tweeted that 100 volunteers had died in the accident. ** snip ** With 54 million followers, more than any other Twitter user, Perry's tweet obviously caused confusion and for many, probably panic. It's unclear where...

Sandra Fluke sounds the alarm over "potentially catastrophic" Hobby Lobby case Social justice attorney Sandra Fluke, now running for California State Senate, sounded the alarm Tuesday about the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case, which pits the religious objections of the owners of corporations against Obamacare’s “contraception mandate.” In an opinion piece in The Washington Post, Fluke called the case a “potential catastrophe for women’s rights,” arguing that “corporations cannot have religious views” and a rule in the favor of religious objections would set America on a dangerous course. USA Today reports that the first day of the hearings did not...

"I’m worried…We have another deadline looming: the October 17 deadline for needing to lift the debt ceiling…I fear that some of the Tea Party-inspired members of the House want to wait until that deadline comes to exact greater leverage for their political agenda." "....I think when we see Tea Party members of the House willing to close, to shutter the government, and Tea Party members of the House who have articulated that they would allow the government to default on its debts, that you have a level of extremism that is unparalleled by any other faction in either house."

While many Americans were tuned into news coverage of the massive damage from tornadoes ravaging the state of Oklahoma, Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse took to the Senate floor to rail against his Republican colleagues for denying the theory of anthropogenic global warming. Whitehouse spent 15 minutes chastising GOP senators and justified his remarks by alluding to states that seek federal assistance in the wake of natural disasters. “So, you may have a question for me,” Whitehouse said. “Why do you care? Why do you, Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, care if we Republicans run off the climate...

Former Kadima chair Tzipi Livni held a news conference at 12:00 noon to announce that she is running for the 19th Knesset at the helm of an independent party, "The Movement – Headed by Tzipi Livni." Livni met Monday with another former Kadima chair, Ehud Olmert, and informed him of her decision. According to a Maagar Mochot poll published Thursday, a list headed by Livni would garner nine Knesset seats and "steal" seats from Labor, which would get only 19, and Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid (Future) party, which would get 4 seats. Lapid has offered Livni the Number Two position...

Via Business Insider, your feelgood video of the day. Think of it as a companion piece to Gallup’s new poll showing the steep decline in respect for the media over the past 20 years. She’s out to prove that Romney’s the real offshorer-in-chief despite ample evidence to the contrary; Sununu’s having none of it, and her reaction is so feeble that he can’t help but giggle. I don’t think he’s laughing to spite her either; he’s genuinely tickled by the transparency of the game being played. You can afford to laugh, I guess, when confidence in television news stands at...

That's right. The "Republican take" was none other than uber-ditz Meghan McCain. TOTALLY! Among her pearls of wisdom: "Mitt Romney is, like, the most experienced candidate. He will be the nominee, and it's time that people learned to just deal with it." "We are going through each nominee one at a time like when you're...speed dating". "Herman Cain has never held public office before, and I find that, like, so disturbing". "Romney...Mitt..Romney...the best...Romney...." (ok I skipped the rest because I couldn't take it)

Following the president’s speech where he promised to end “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” Meghan McCain – pro-gay rights pundit and daughter to Sen. John McCain – weighed in on the Daily Beast blog. Now, I cannot speak for my brothers, but I know many men and women who serve in the military. Let’s give them more credit. Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, I suspect it could be said that there is no homophobia in foxholes either. I find it hard to imagine that when a soldier is in a Humvee fighting terrorist insurgents, that the thing on...