Free Republic

A bit of perspective is called for with all the Russia hysteria. Even if Trump's campaign had some contact with Russia, Trump is nowhere near as bought and paid for as Clinton is, or as willing to be influenced by foreignersThe Clinton Foundation accepted millions of dollars from seven foreign governments during Hillary Rodham Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, including one donation that violated its ethics agreement with the Obama administration, foundation officials disclosed Wednesday.Hillary Clinton says foreign leaders are privately reaching out to her to ask if they can endorse her to stop Donald Trump from becoming president...

Actor Harrison Ford was involved in a potentially serious incident Monday in California as he was piloting his private plane, a single-engine Husky, NBC News has learned. Ford, an experienced pilot who collects vintage planes, had been instructed to land on runway 20-L at John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California, but mistakenly aimed for a taxiway, instead. His plane passed over the top of an American Airlines 737 carrying 110 passengers and a six-person crew.

The New York Times reporter who called Melania Trump a “hooker” at a private event on Sunday has apologized, saying he wants to “take ownership of a mistake” he made. Jacob Bernstein, the son of Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein and the late writer-director Nora Ephron, came forward on Tuesday to identify himself as the journalist who repeated what he called “unfounded rumors” about the first lady in a conversation with model-actress Emily Ratajkowski. “Speaking at a party in what I thought was a personal conversation, I nevertheless made a stupid remark about the first lady,” he wrote in a series...

WASHINGTON ― Conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus voted among themselves Monday night to band together and support only an Obamacare repeal that is at least as aggressive as a bill the House and Senate passed in 2015, putting GOP leaders in a bind with their conference and perhaps even threatening the possibility of passing a repeal. The group of roughly 35 to 40 House conservatives voted to take this official position ― meaning it received the support of at least 80 percent of the members and is therefore supposed to be the position of all lawmakers in the group...

Petraeus would be a disaster — a stalwart of the old establishment in an administration that said it would “drain the swamp.” In May 2016, he published what was essentially an anti Trump screed, saying that proposals to restrict immigration from Muslim countries that are hotspots of jihad terror shouldn’t even be made, so as to avoid offending Muslims. He was in favor of using al Qaeda jihadis to defeat the Islamic State, which would give us a region full of al-Qaeda jihadis with American weapons and materiel who hate the United States and want to destroy it. (This is...

Embattled national security adviser Michael Flynn's fate as one of President Donald Trump's senior aides is uncertain following reports that he discussed U.S. sanctions with a Russian envoy before Trump's inauguration. A top White House official sidestepped repeated chances Sunday to publicly defend him. The president, who spent the weekend at his private club in Florida, has yet to comment on Flynn's status. Nor has Vice President Mike Pence, who previously denied that Flynn had discussed sanctions with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the U.S. Pence and Flynn spoke twice on Friday, according to an administration official. Trump has...

(video at link (0:46) New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Raymond Buckley, a candidate for the DNC chair, told his fellow Democrats to “grow up” at a forum in Baltimore. Buckley noted that the Democrats did not concentrate on the issues that actually concern regular Americans. From The Daily Mail: Buckley said the Democrats ‘did not offer a positive message to anyone I … am related to.’ ‘We did not offer a message to my neighbors, we did not offer a message to the people in Indiana or Ohio or Pennsylvania or Kentucky,’ he added, pointing to the states nominee Hillary...

US bishops have welcomed an appeal court’s decision to overturn President Trump’s Muslim travel ban. On February 9, 2017, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a unanimous decision upholding a lower court’s temporary restraining order (TRO) blocking the implementation of several key provisions of Executive Order 13769. The TRO was put in place by the US District Court for the Western District of Washington on February 3, 2017. The provisions that that have temporarily been blocked by the TRO include: a 120 day halt of the US refugee resettlement program; an...

"America needs a new political party, one opposed to isolationism, protectionism, nativism, authoritarianism, and ecologism, and which supports free enterprise, Constitutional government, human equality, liberty, and dignity, and the defensive alliance of all nations committed to such ideals."

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today announced it has obtained 216 pages of documents containing official, sensitive emails of Jeh Johnson and three other top Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials sent through private, unsecured, webmail-based email accounts. The documents include emails discussing high-level meetings Johnson was to have with the Kuwaiti ambassador and Saudi Arabian Interior Ministry officials, as well as a West African $4.5 million online consumer fraud scam. In response to a May 23, 2016, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch after Homeland Security failed to respond to a December 29, 2015, FOIA...

There is no one in Hollywood who delights in offending Catholics more than Harvey Weinstein: he has made a long list of anti-Catholic films. Now he is at it again, putting the final touches on his latest contribution to Catholic-themed films, Mary Magdalene. No release date has been set. In December, the online edition of the Hollywood Reporter asked rhetorically if the movie, starring Rooney Mara, “will spark controversy among conservative Christians?” Co-producer Iain Canning said it wouldn’t. Time will tell if he is right, but one thing is certain: Weinstein is laying the groundwork for a fight. Weinstein is...

Is this woman not a moron or what? The Russian hacker recorded the conversation. This is just golden. Listen to how stupid this Democrat is. This is the leadership of the Democratic party along with Nancy Pelosi.

(Many yummy recipes at link.) Tortellini is a signature dish from the Italian region of Bologna, where they claim to have created this stuffed pasta packed with flavor. Ravioli, tortelloni and tortellacci are all part of the same family of stuffed pasta. The most common fillings for tortellini are ham, white meat and Parmesan cheese. An organization called The Learned Order of the Tortellini in the city of Bologna has its members wear to the meetings red and gold hats that are shaped like tortellini. They also wear a ribbon, around their neck that has a gold shaped tortellini hanging...

Second eaglet pecks its way out; two hatchlings now in the eagles’ nest at Berry College. From Berry College Eagles’ Facebook page: “B9 is finally here! The little eaglet hatched sometime in the wee hours of the morning and is currently snuggled close together with B8! Great screencap by Deanna George.” Earlier photo: That’s eaglet B8 next to the now “pipped” shell of its sibling as B9 is taking steps to exit its shell. From Berry County Eagles’ Facebook page: “This great screencap taken by Rebecca Ahmad shows off our little B8 and the confirmed pip in egg #2!

What should conservatives do in the aftermath of violent protests like this week’s riot at the University of California, Berkeley? It’s time for self-defense according to commentator Lauren Southern of TheRebel media who issued a call for those who value freedom of speech. Southern blasted the “violent ideologues from the left” who trashed the Berkeley campus and shut down a planned speech by Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos. These “scum of the earth,” she said, “beat women and sucker-punch innocent, peaceful people” while believing they are acting “for the greater good.” “It is time to get mad,” the best-selling author declared....

We recently came across the following question on Quora: “ If every state of the USA declared war against each other, which would win?“ We’ve published the full answer from Quora user Jon Davis, a Marine veteran who is now a writer and blogger on military, veterans, and Middle Eastern affairs. In Oct. 2014, Davis’ answer was optioned by a Hollywood producer for a potential television series. These are the accounts of the Second American Civil War, also known as the Wars of Reunification and the American Warring States Period.

More than a decade ago, federal and state officials and some of California’s largest water agencies rejected concerns that the massive earthen spillway at Oroville Dam — at risk of collapse Sunday night and prompting the evacuation of 185,000 people — could erode during heavy winter rains and cause a catastrophe. Three environmental groups — the Friends of the River, the Sierra Club and the South Yuba Citizens League — filed a motion with the federal government on Oct. 17, 2005, as part of Oroville Dam’s relicensing process, urging federal officials to require that the dam’s emergency spillway be armored...

The devastating mass stranding event that saw more than 650 pilot whales beach themselves in New Zealand over the weekend is finally over, with 17 survivors making it back to a large pod of more than 200 individuals seen 6 km (3.7 miles) offshore. But things are just getting started for the clean-up crew, because hundreds of carcasses are now strewn across Farewell Spit beach, and the public has been banned due to fears of spontaneous whale explosions caused by gas build-up. "These things explode from the stomach, and if you're standing right there, it's not very nice getting a...

The retired schoolteacher hung the first poster board in his living room long ago, a record of achievements that filled him with pride: education certificates from his native Jamaica and New York City; a 1970s magazine article about new teachers that begins, “Richard Lewis: dashing, debonair, youthful and energetic.” Mr. Lewis is 70 now, his vitality sapped by time and, more than that, recent events. He spent much of last week showing off a second poster board in his living room in the Tilden Houses in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. He made the board for his youngest son. “Mr....

The nearly century-old American Civil Liberties Union says it is suddenly awash in donations and new members as it does battle with President Donald Trump over the extent of his constitutional authority, with nearly $80 million in online contributions alone pouring in since the election. That includes a record $24 million surge over two days after Trump banned people from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. The organization said its membership has more than doubled since the election to a record of nearly 1.2 million, and its Twitter following has tripled. “It feels like we’re drinking from...