Free Republic

Lockheed Martin, the nation's top defense contractor, forced 13 executives including a three-star general to complete a three-day Zoom course so they would 'unlearn their male privilege'. The course was led by Portland-based firm White Men as Full Diversity Partners. It was carried out last June, at the height of the BLM movement, and involved 13 Lockheed employees dialing in for 16 hours. Details of the three-day course last June were obtained by City Journal. The 13 employees were Director of Aeronautics Mark Ward, Air Force lieutenant colonel David Starr, Senior Design Engineer Jeff Schweiss, Risk Management and Sustainability Executive...

The father of Michael Brown Jr. accused Black Lives Matter of abandoning the city where the movement first garnered national attention. In a statement Tuesday, Michael Brown Sr., along with other activists, demanded BLM provide millions of dollars for Ferguson, Missouri.

"The Hills" star, who announced the couple's divorce in April, reportedly grew "increasingly impatient" with her husband's lack of ambition; he originally had planned to pursue a career in broadcasting at Fox Sports in 2017 following an eight-year career in Chicago..."He was supposed to take this big job at Fox Sports and have a life after football that would get him up off the couch and do something," the source told Page Six. "Instead, he backed out — this is (three) years ago..."

Like the garbage French elite of long ago, our American garbage elite of today has learned nothing and forgotten nothing. For four years, it has been focused entirely on deep sixing Donald Trump for his unforgivable crime of demanding that our ruling caste be held accountable for its legacy of failure. Instead of focusing on not being terrible at their job of running America’s institutions, our elitists have decided that the real problem is us Normals being angry about how they are terrible at their job of running America’s institutions. So, let’s imagine that they finally vanquish Trump, though every...

I am guilty of speaking badly of the new congresswoman from New York. She is obviously the product of failing educational systems unable to do anything but pump her full of fatuous self-esteem. I’d lay odds she has a large box of participation trophies in her parents’ basement. Though it is fun to bash such a bashable subject, I write to thank her. She has made things clear; things that have been vague and foggy are now utterly transparent. Many let slide Obama’s fuzzy promise to “fundamentally change” America. It was a little hazy -- he never elaborated on it...

The majority of American Millennials identify as socialist, according to surveys by both Reason-Rupe and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. That’s the bad news. The good news is that just 32 percent of Millennials can define socialism. The frequently-wrong but never-in-doubt freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., may indeed be the voice of her ignorant generation. During an interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Anderson Cooper asked Ocasio-Cortez, “When people hear the word socialism, they think Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela. Is that what you have in mind?” He neglected to mention the vicious socialist regimes of Cambodia, Ethiopia, Poland, Romania, North...

When Elon Musk and his team at SpaceX were looking to make their Falcon 9 rocket even more powerful, they came up with a creative idea — keep the propellant at super-cold temperatures to shrink its size, allowing them to pack more of it into the tanks. But the approach comes with a major risk, according to some safety experts. At those extreme temperatures, the propellant would need to be loaded just before takeoff — while astronauts are aboard. An accident, or a spark, during this maneuver, known as “load-and-go,” could set off an explosion. The proposal has raised alarms...

Never underestimate the stupidity of the average Democrat voter in overlooking pure evil and utter corruption in their candidates. Never underestimate the stupidity of the Republican establishment and their natural talent in losing elections when they should have been sure-winners. The proof is in the pudding: Bill Clinton's reelection in 1996 over the GOP establishment's loser, Bob Dole. . Obama's election in 2008 over the GOP establishment's loser, John McCain. . Obama's reelection in 2012 over the GOP establishment's loser, Mitt Romney. And now after we the people rejected the GOP establishment's sure-loser (Jeb Bush) and voted in our own...

None of us knows how this election is going to play out, but the one thing that we can say is that this has been the most entertaining presidential primary season ever. By far the most amusing part has been the utter state of panic the GOP establishment has been in since the voters took a look at their “electability” candidate, Jeb Bush, and started laughing. Since then one nightmare has followed another. If I’d had the foresight, I could have financed my children’s college expenses by selling brown trousers to the US Chamber of Commerce and the GOP Senate...

THE vice president of the United States was unhappy. In 1983, a "Conservative Digest" poll of conservatives found that 64 percent of right-leaning party leaders wanted George H.W. Bush replaced on the 1984 Reagan ticket. "Light reading," Bush scribbled across a cover sheet as he sent a copy to his friend James Baker - adding a frowning face. Reagan would have none of it - he liked and appreciated Bush. But the gulf between establishment and insurgent Republicans has only grown in the ensuing decades. The elder Bush's struggles through the years with a restive right shed light on the...

Starting next month, Mary Landrieu is going to have a lot more time on her hands. That can be a great thing if you’re really looking forward to finally catching up on the Grand Theft Auto online game series, but such pursuits don’t really do much to pay the bills. The soon to be former Senator probably won’t have to worry about that too much, though. She’s reportedly a very hot topic on K Street . Mary Landrieu may have lost her Senate seat, but the Louisiana Democrat is a hot commodity on K Street. Several headhunters, veteran lobbyists...

According to proposals on the table at the Texas Department of Transportation, the highway system around Downtown Houston may be subject to a significant transformation. This well may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the city to reconnect neighborhoods long bifurcated by highway IH-45 while also improving traffic capacity of the highways. How to change and improve the highway system is of great debate. As the Department of Transportation follows through on its federally required processes to propose and examine alternatives to the expansion of IH-45, also called the North Houston Highway Improvement Project, itÂ’s winnowing the options quickly. Now is...

Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas likes to present himself as a deficit hawk—a red-state conservative who “believes that Congress must be a good steward of the taxpayers’ money,” as his official website declares, and that “fiscal responsibility is the cornerstone for good governance.” So the revelation in the National Journal that the 61-year-old Cornyn is collecting three different state-government pensions while receiving his federal salary as a senator (a total of $239,383 in taxpayer-funded largesse) is slightly off-message, and just a tad inconvenient, as he gets ready to run for a third term next year. “There’s a lot of...

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ favorite pro-Obamacare nonprofit held a Democrats-only congressional briefing earlier this year, according to emails obtained by nonprofit watchdog Judicial Watch. Enroll America president Anne Filipic, a former Obama White House aide, exchanged emails with Debra Curtis, a Democratic staffer on the House Ways and Means Committee. [snip] Enroll America, an activist nonprofit devoted to enrolling Americans in the Obamacare health insurance exchanges, has benefited from Sebelius’ fundraising efforts.

Gov. Chris Christie has warned potential investors there is no guarantee the state will make its required pension payments in future years, an admission that underscores a looming financial crisis he and future governors face as retirement costs are expected to explode before the decade ends. The disclosure, buried in a 156-page bond prospectus for investors, also casts doubt on one of the key commitments Christie and leading Democrats made to public employees as part of the 2011 health and pension reform: Workers would shoulder a greater share of pension costs in exchange for the state making required payments to...

Federal employees—who work on average a month less than private-sector workers and get paid more—are lobbying for higher pay. Government unions know that Congress is looking for ways to nip and tuck the federal budget, and they’re counting on being left out of the deal. “The Federal-Postal Coalition—a group representing more than two dozen federal employee unions—pleaded with Congress on Monday to spare their members in any deal related to the ‘fiscal cliff,’” Government Executive reports. Government unions went all out to re-elect the President—the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) spent more than any other outside group on Obama’s campaign....

Judges in Colorado and Minnesota have dismissed court challenges by retired public workers whose pensions had been cut — developments that may embolden other states and cities to use pension reductions as a tool to help balance their budgets. The two lawsuits sought to reverse reductions in the cost-of-living adjustments that Colorado and Minnesota had previously promised to retired public workers. Generally speaking, once lawmakers have agreed to provide certain pension benefits to public workers, it is difficult, if not impossible, to roll them back because of protective language in state laws and constitutions and years of court interpretations. Public...

Republican leaders in Congress think so, and they are calling for an overhaul of the entire federal pay system to help slash government spending. Democrats and other defenders of the government work force say federal workers are actually underpaid compared with their private counterparts. A closer look at the data shows that both sides have a point but that supporters of federal workers are a bit closer to reality.... That argument is backed up by a 2002 study of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. It found that federal salaries for most professional and administrative jobs lagged well behind compensation offered...

Yesterday we noted the details of a bill introduced by Wisconsin's new Tea Party Republican Governor Scott Walker that would increase payments from public sector employees while eliminating collective bargaining powers for unions (including teachers)—while also introducing unprecedented executive powers to terminate state employees with little due process. In passing, Walker mentioned plans to call in the National Guard, if necessary. It's an announcement that rankled many (maybe intentionally), including the 100,000-member "voice of America's 21st century patriots" organization VoteVets: "Veterans are strongly objecting to Governor Scott Walker's inappropriate threat…."

How glorious is the tea-party movement? Some talk of its purity of heart, its patriotic spontaneity, and its abundance of republican virtue. To hear others tell it, the movement is but a few steps away from sacred. After attending the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, the prominent blogger Glenn Reynolds wrote last week in the Washington Examiner that the movement amounted to "America's Third Great Awakening," a massive popular rising against "politicians and parties" that have "grown corrupt, venal and out-of-touch." How strange, then, that this flowering of populist integrity should have been tended and pruned and succored by...