Free Republic

The Supreme Court term, which begins Monday, will be the culmination of five decades of efforts by conservatives to seize control of the court.... This will be the first full term with five staunch conservatives: Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.... The court’s most watched case — Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, to be argued on Dec. 1 — could dismantle principles of abortion rights set in 1973... Another area the court will reopen for consideration is gun rights. From 1791, when the 2nd Amendment was ratified, until 2008,...

A number of comedians have spoken out against cancel culture in recent years, including Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Burr, David Spade, Kevin Hart, Michael Che, and Ricky Gervais. But there’s one comic who doesn’t think the trend of funnymen and women losing jobs for politically incorrect jokes is a problem — Jay Leno. The former host of “The Tonight Show” told the Los Angeles Times that stand-up acts have always had to adapt to the new norms, saying, “You either change with the times, or you die.”

Conservative Larry Elder is rising in California and Democrats are terrified.Gavin Newsom and his supporters, including the liberal media are now taking this very seriously because they believe Elder could actually pull this off.The liberal Los Angeles Times newspaper has resorted to begging their readers not to recall Gavin Newsom.Hot Air reports:The LA Times begs Californians not to boot NewsomWe’re one month out from the California recall election and the polls have continued to tighten, though most of them predict Newsom surviving by a slim margin. Perhaps it’s the unexpected closeness of the vote that moved the editorial board of...

By early March 2021, roughly 65 million people in the U.S. — or one out of every five people — had been infected by the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, a new analysis shows. The findings, described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that roughly 60% of coronavirus infections had gone uncounted at that point — adding to a growing body of evidence that the pandemic’s true toll is far greater than official tallies show. “It’s good to see people start estimating how far we potentially could be off,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at the Johns...

<p>Just when I think I’ve seen it all from so-called “progressives” and their allies in the mainstream press in the debate over transgender rights, one of them surprises me with something even more ridiculously idiotic and twisted than the last.</p>

Prosecutors brought an indictment alleging that former Deputy Mayor Raymond Chan, while working for downtown developers, set up a job for the family member of a city commissioner; had his company hire a relative of a City Council aide; and proposed a fake consulting contract with another city staffer’s mother. Such job offers, even modest ones, were a way of greasing the wheels of the city bureaucracy, prosecutors allege. Experts say indirect bribes can be more difficult to uncover than a typical quid pro quo in which someone gives money directly to a government official. In one example, prosecutors accuse...

In a Los Angeles Times Op-Ed on Thursday, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., vigorously defended her earlier call for protesters to "get more confrontational" if former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin hadn't been convicted of killing George Floyd. Waters, in her Thursday Op-Ed, described how she attended a peaceful rally before the verdict and was asked: "What do we do if we don't get a guilty verdict? What should protesters do?" She responded: "We got to stay on the street. And we've got to get more active, we've got to get more confrontational." On Tuesday, Chauvin was found guilty of second-degree...

Let’s not beat around the bush: Political watchers expect the effort to force a recall election against Gov. Gavin Newsom to cross the threshold this week from rabble-rousing to reality, as signature verification efforts are close to wrapping up in elections offices across California.

Sitting on the sprawling Mid-City porch of Casa Zulma, an interim housing facility for formerly homeless transgender women, Coral Dawn casually ticked off the many reasons she has no intention of getting vaccinated for COVID-19. She hates shots. She’s 53 years old and healthy. She doesn’t go out much. She’s skeptical because the coronavirus keeps mutating. Then came a mirthless laugh. “The medical community, as a group, has always made things worse for trans girls,” Dawn said, shaking her head. “So, yeah, I certainly don’t have any affection for the medical community.”

When the Democrats get caught doing not as they say, they often ignore it and act like hypocrites. But some “offenses” they’ve made so grave that they can’t get away with it. Their latest likely victim is Neera Tanden, who The New York Times suggests will be “First Cabinet-Level Casualty of the Twitter Age?” Biden nominated Tanden for Director of the Office of Management and Budget. She has a staunch left-wing background. She served as policy adviser for the Clinton White House, advised Hillary Clinton as senator and presidential candidate, served in the Obama administration, and most recently, served as...

Angela Li and Vivrd Prasanna have achieved the pinnacle of a public university education — she a senior at UCLA, he a freshman at UC Berkeley. Both are children of immigrants, with Li’s parents from China and Prasanna’s from India. *** But when it comes to Proposition 16, the Tuesday ballot measure that would once again allow affirmative action in public education, contracting and hiring, the two UC students and their families sharply diverge. *** Their diverse views reflect the complexity of the affirmative action issue among Asian Americans, who represent more than 50 ethnic subgroups with varying politics, histories...

President Trump has described his campaign rallies as “fun,” “wonderful,” “the Greatest Show on Earth,” and, of course, “BIG.” An effort to calculate whether those events have increased the spread of the coronavirus in the United States suggests that “contagious” and “deadly” would also apply. A rigorous attempt to gauge the after-effects of 18 of the president’s reelection rallies, all held in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, suggests they have led to more than 30,000 additional cases and at least 700 additional deaths. Those casualties would not have occurred if the campaign events had not taken place, according to...

Luntz head explodes.

I have noted before that I grew up in Dubai, one of the United Arab Emirates. From 1980-1990, my family lived in an ungated community in the middle of the city down the street from the Iranian Hospital with the Jumeirah American School just one long block up the road. We walked to school every day. The school changed its name to the American School of Dubai the year after I graduated. It moved locations. The current school at the old location is the Jumeirah Baccalaureate School. My old house is all that remains of my neighborhood. The whole place...

So, let’s talk about Nancy Pelosi’s hair. Or, more specifically, the wash and blowout that the Democratic House Speaker from San Francisco got at a salon there that was shuttered by pandemic rules but somehow managed to open for her — and just her.

Video widely shared on social media shows a man threatening Eden the Doll, Jaslene Whiterose and Joslyn Flawless around 2 a.m. Monday in the 6500 block of Hollywood Boulevard. All three women are influencers with large social media followings. In the video, a man is seen threatening Flawless with a crowbar as he robs her and then hits Whiterose over the head with something as bystanders laugh and taunt the women. Police said the man demanded Flawless’ shoes and bracelet while threatening her with the weapon and struck Whiterose with a bottle — all while making “derogatory remarks” about their...

Things weren’t great before COVID-19, but at least only about 570 families, hungry, broke and on the brink of homelessness, needed help from the volunteers at St. Joseph Center in Los Angeles. Today, that number is about 860. A month from now, it could be in the thousands — or even more. California is rapidly approaching what has been dubbed the “eviction cliff,” or the point where true protection from being evicted during the pandemic will fall away, at least for a short time. If that happens, as many as 1 million families across the state — some 365,000 in...

Three people were taken into custody and two were cited Saturday afternoon outside the Windsor Square home of Mayor Eric Garcetti, where hundreds of protesters converged to demand the mayor cancel rents, according to an LAPD spokesman.

At the beginning of the year, it looked like Jeremy Miller and his 9-year-old daughter were finally going to have a home of their own. They’d been homeless and relying on family, shelters and motels for housing. But he’d found stable work in the Kern County oil fields and had enough money for an $875-a-month, two-bedroom rental in Bakersfield. They moved into the apartment in March, and Miller lost his job within days. The pandemic caused a worldwide drop in demand for oil, triggering mass layoffs in the oil patch. Miller tried to find other work through a temp agency,...

SACRAMENTO — Democrats in the California Legislature have unveiled a new effort to significantly raise tax rates on taxable income of $1 million and higher, an effort they say would provide billions of dollars to improve K-12 schools and a variety of government services vital to the state’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The bill, jointly introduced by 15 Democrats Monday in the Senate, is the clearest sign so far that liberal legislators and interest groups intend to put pressure on business-aligned lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom for new tax revenue before the legislative session ends Aug. 31 — arguing...