Free Republic

The shrinking in size of two national monuments in Utah by President Trump through executive order was a long overdue rebuke to federal land grabs that have enabled federal control of vast swaths of American land, particularly in the West. As the New York Times noted in 2016: The United States government owns 47 percent of all land in the West. In some states, including Oregon, Utah and Nevada, the majority of land is owned by the federal government. Of course, it used to own nearly all of it…. East of the Mississippi… the federal government owns only 4 percent...

The floodgates opened against Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., on Wednesday, making his continued service in the Senate untenable, whether he realizes it yet or not. Eight women have accused Franken of unwanted touching and kissing. Over 30 Democratic senators have called on him to resign, including the top two Democrats in the chamber. But there are four main reasons Franken’s party is abandoning him now, as the reckoning over sexual misconduct against women moves from Hollywood to the nation’s capital. The number of accusations were growing and the details were getting worse. Franken looked like he might survive Leean Tweeden’s...

There is no underlying crime that is being investigated!! "4th Amendment – The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." Government is not permitted to dig into citizen’s past to find something that they can call a crime, nor are they permitted to expose personal information with the sole purpose of damaging a person’s...

New Name....

POINT HOPE, ALASKA, is tiny and ill-provisioned, an Arctic backwater so inaccessible that basic groceries have to be flown in and gasoline can only be brought in by barge during the summer. The town is remote not only geographically, but also digitally: Its internet connection is so slow that teachers must spend hours downloading course material that most of us could pull off the internet in minutes. But Point Hope's luck is changing. High-speed internet is coming, and with it the benefits of ties to the world: Improved education and health care, more options for consumers, new customers for local...

Bias on the Mueller Team.

One of the first police officers to respond to the Pulse nightclub massacre is losing his job with only months to go before he’s entitled to full pension benefits. He called on Florida lawmakers to do more to support first responders who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. The Eatonville Town Council agreed unanimously Tuesday night to pay Cpl. Omar Delgado some $1,200 in accrued sick time when his job ends at year’s end, the Orlando Sentinel reported. Delgado was lauded as a hero for saving nightclub shooting victim Angel Colon during the June 2016 shooting, which killed 49 people. He...

Heavy Stuff

Attorneys for a prominent Florida eye doctor used a statistician to challenge the government's assertion that he stole $100 million from the federal Medicaid program. The amount Dr. Salomon Melgen stole will help determine the length of his sentence. The government said its estimate is based on a random sample of 310 patients. But University of North Florida math professor Donna Mohr testified Wednesday the sample wasn't random, making the extrapolation faulty. U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra didn't say whether he will accept Mohr's testimony. Marra had been expected to sentence Melgen on Thursday after both sides make arguments, but...

Here’s the latest version of Fake News: President Trump ruined the mid-east peace process. The assertion is a world-wide headline, but for it to have a shred of truth, there would have to be a peace process to ruin. But since there isn’t one, and hasn’t been one for years, the anti-Trump media is exposed again. But hold on, Trump is more than just innocent of a false and foolish charge. By acknowledging what everybody in Israel already knows, that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish state, and by putting in motion the process of moving the American...

Low-income Medicaid patients in New Mexico may soon have to pay more for certain brand-name drugs or if they visit the emergency room to receive routine medical care, under a reform plan submitted Wednesday to federal regulators. The state Human Services Department applied for federal authorization of new copayments and monthly premiums in an effort to conserve state spending on Medicaid health care for the poor and disabled. Human Service Secretary Brent Earnest said New Mexico's waiver application also would expand services for substance abuse disorders and phase out retroactive health care coverage by 2020 for newly enrolled patients.

President Trump's son-in-law and designated Middle East peace envoy, Jared Kushner, told the Brookings Institution's Saban Forum last weekend that a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is key to solving larger goals, such as stopping Iranian aggression and Islamic extremism. If he believes that, he has fallen into the trap numerous and more seasoned diplomats have experienced. The most obvious impediment to peace in the region is a religious one. A visceral hatred of Jews is promoted in Palestinian media and many mosques and schools throughout the region. The destruction of Israel and elimination of Jews from land...

This is a tale of FBI power misused and presidential trust misplaced. Last week, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump's confidant on matters pertaining to national security from June 2015 to February 2017 and his short-lived national security adviser in the White House, pleaded guilty in federal court in Washington, D.C., to a single count of lying to the FBI. Under the terms of his plea agreement, Flynn, who had faced nearly 60 years in federal prison had he been convicted of charges related to all the matters about which there is said to be credible evidence of...

I’ve said it many times before, and it remains true today: If Donald Trump were up against anyone other than the people he’s up against, he’d be in trouble. As it is, the president’s opponents (or enemies, depending on how they classify themselves) are his greatest asset. The professional pearl-clutching class has engaged their fainting couches too often in fits of faux outrage that their screams and protestations now fall on ears that aren’t deaf, they’re indifferent. When Brian Ross of ABC News “reported” former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was prepared to testify Trump had ordered him to make...

Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., hospitalized for an undefined stress-related illness, announced his retirement after serving more than 50 years in the House. Two other Conyers -- a son and a great-nephew -- immediately announced plans to vie for the elder Conyers' seat. The great-nephew said, "His doctor advised him that the rigor of another campaign would be too much for him just in terms of his health." Despite his sudden retirement, Conyers "vehemently" denies all accusations that he ever committed sexual harassment. "My legacy can't be compromised or diminished in any way by what we are going through now," Conyers...

Add this infamy to all the other crimes of the liberal establishment – its poisonous influence has converted the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in the eyes of the American people, from a proud institution dedicated to upholding the law into just another suppurating bureaucratic pustule. Where once we saw FBI agents as heroes – many of us ancients grew up watching Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.., every Sunday night – now we see careerist hacks looking to suck-up to the Democrat elite while bending the law and subverting justice to do it. Truly, everything liberals touch dies. The revelations about Oh-So-Special Agent...

Don’t be so caught up watching the granules moving at your feet that you fail to step back and recognize the entire landscape is shifting. It Has Begun… and there’s so much of it, it’s hard to believe it is just another Wednesday. When candidate Donald Trump said: …“and we will win, and you will win, and we will keep on winning, and eventually you will say we can’t take all of this winning, …please Mr. Trump …and I will say, NO, we will win, and we will keep on winning”, I can guarantee you there was only one person...

The clock is ticking. At midnight on Friday, the government will have no operating budget; a shutdown is possible. In fact, that’s exactly what President Trump alluded to today, while blaming the Democrats for using immigration to gum up the works (via CNBC): "It could happen," Trump said during a Cabinet meeting at the White House, in response to a reporter's question about the Friday deadline for a spending bill to fund the government. "The Democrats are really looking at something that could be very dangerous for our country," Trump said. "They are looking at shutting down. They want to...

GOP lawmakers say they have heard new stories about political bias or interference within the FBI on the eve of new testimony Thursday by FBI Director Christopher Wray. Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) said Wednesday he interviewed a recently retired FBI supervisor who told him he was instructed by Deputy Director Andrew McCabe not to call the 2012 Benghazi attack an act of terrorism when distributing a report on the FBI findings to the larger intelligence community. The agent found the instruction concerning because his unit had gathered incontrovertible evidence showing a major al Qaeda figure had directed the attack and...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrat Al Franken will resign from the U.S. Senate on Thursday, Minnesota Public Radio reported, after more than half of his Senate Democratic colleagues urged him to do so in light of sexual misconduct accusations.