Free Republic

Read Gov. Brown's full letter below. Dear Secretary Nielsen and Secretary Mattis: Pursuant to your request, the California National Guard will accept federal funding to add approximately 400 Guard members statewide to supplement the staffing of its ongoing program to combat transnational crime. This program is currently staffed by 250 personnel statewide, including 55 at the California border. Your funding for new staffing will allow the Guard to do what it does best: support operations targeting transnational criminal gangs, human traffickers and illegal firearm and drug smugglers along the border, the coast and throughout the state. Combating these criminal threats...

Happy freaking Bacon Day, ya filthy animals. Now, you could be like everyone else and just go out and eat a bunch of bacon, or you could live your own truth and celebrate with one of these items below instead. Simply eating bacon is no longer enough today. Thankfully you can also drink, smell like, and floss with the flavors of your favorite breakfast meat. Is this a good thing? We don't even know, but the point is, the following products are very real and more likely than not, you need them to celebrate this glorious day. 1. Bacon Body...

Today, the National Day for the Victims of Communism, marks 100 years since the Bolshevik Revolution took place in Russia. The Bolshevik Revolution gave rise to the Soviet Union and its dark decades of oppressive communism, a political philosophy incompatible with liberty, prosperity, and the dignity of human life. Over the past century, communist totalitarian regimes around the world have killed more than 100 million people and subjected countless more to exploitation, violence, and untold devastation. These movements, under the false pretense of liberation, systematically robbed innocent people of their God-given rights of free worship, freedom of association, and countless...

Editor’s Note: Feel free to copy, paraphrase, or edit any of the content of this letter. I encourage anyone who wants to make their displeasure known, to contact the NFL, their sponsors, and their media outlets. Let them know what you think.   Dear NFL, (Sponsors, and Media associates), I regret to inform you that until further notice, I won’t be attending any NFL games, view or listen to your broadcasts, nor read, listen to, or watch any NFL related media. As a decades-long football fan, it’s a choice I don’t make casually. This kneeling thing has gotten so far...

A nine-member bench of India's Supreme Court announced the ruling in a big setback for the Narendra Modi-led government, which argued that privacy was not a fundamental right protected by the constitution.(Emphasis mine) The ruling comes against the backdrop of a large multi-party case against the mandatory use of national identity cards, known as Aadhaar, as an infringement of privacy. There have also been concerns over breaches of data. Critics say the ID cards link enough data to create a comprehensive profile of a person's spending habits, their friends and acquaintances, the property they own and a trove of other...

Trey Parker, a co-creator of the Comedy Central staple “South Park,” says the next season of the not-for-children cartoon is going to be scaling back on political humor, according to an interview with the Los Angeles Times. Parker, who also voices several characters in the long-running satire, thought showrunners were falling into the “same trap” as "Saturday Night Live," he tells the the Los Angeles Times in an interview published Thursday. He didn’t want the show to turn into CNN, where viewers can just “tune in to see what we’re going to say about [President] Trump.” {..snip..}

With President Donald Trump’s nominees on their way to the Senate, labor and employment attorneys say the National Labor Relations Board is poised to roll back regulations with its first Republican majority in nearly a decade. Management-side attorneys and anti-union advocates are hopeful Obama-era regulations will be scuttled in favor of business-friendly practices.

At an event in the White House, flanked by several members of Congress and industry officials as well as Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, Trump signed the executive order that re-establishes the council, last active at the end of the administration of President George H.W. Bush in 1993. ... Trump had previously announced that Vice President Mike Pence would serve as the head of the space council once it is reestablished. Pence stated on several occasions, dating back to the signing of a NASA authorization bill in March, that the president would soon sign the order re-establishing the council, with...

DALLAS (AP) — Vic Schaefer and his Mississippi State Bulldogs didn’t get much time to celebrate what might be the greatest shocker in women’s basketball history. Not when there’s one more game to win, not when there’s a national championship on the line against SEC rival South Carolina.

Trump 61,469,976 46.72% Clinton 62,793,044 47.73% Johnson 4,304,885 3.27% Stein 1,322,576 1.01% Total 131,572,381 (2012 - 129,237,642) (2008 - 131,473,705)

Former Reagan Budget Director David Stockman on the need to rein in America's mounting debt. "We'll hit the next recession with nothing to break the fall." On the GDP, "The growth in the baseline is totally unrealistic." Stockman also discusses a new Federal Reserve Chief, "Get the Keynesian money-printers out".

Trump succeeded in refashioning himself as a populist champion.

A titanic clash of the sexes leaves Democrat Hillary Clinton with a small 45 - 41 percent lead over Republican Donald Trump in the race for president, according to a Quinnipiac University National poll released today. When third party candidates are added to the mix, Clinton gets 40 percent with Trump at 38 percent, too close to call, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University Poll finds. Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson gets 5 percent and Green Party candidate Jill Stein gets 3 percent. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont leads Trump among all American voters 48 - 39 percent, but trails Clinton...

Americans must turn their eye to local contests and boot the feds out of the county and state where they don't belong The onslaught to destroy home rule, replacing state authority with federal overlordship, is being waged with a vengeance by the Administration in D.C. Tenthth Amendment be damned is Obama’s mantra. He has encouraged the Department of Justice to go after states working to secure First Amendment rights and individual privacy rather than enforce law by charging the presumptive democrat nominee with the felonies she’s unequivocally committed. Judicial terrorism against states has become the trademark of Obama’s tenure, from...

"Donald Trump's Secret Service detail and private bodyguards had the last laugh on Friday as hundreds of protesters swarmed at the front of a San Francisco airport hotel trying to block him from coming in for a speech at the state Republican Party's annual convention. Instead of partnering with uniformed police in riot shields trying to push the hordes back, they did a law-enforcement head fake – leading the billionaire across a grass highway median and in a back-door loading dock at the Hyatt Regency hotel in the suburb of Burlingame. The move left Trump feeling like he was crossing...

As Cleveland prepares to host the Republican National Convention this summer, it's bidding on millions of dollars of security equipment and tactical gear for its police.

Zero women at the table. #shocking

Perturbed by their failure to truncate the Trump campaign, National Review is now doubling down in a coming issue with a truly toxic article (behind a pay wall) by roving editor, Kevin D. Williamson. Williamson apparently thinks blue-collar workers whose lives get turned upside down when their jobs disappear due to economic downturns or their manufacturing jobs getting shipped offshore or their mines closing due to new more restrictive government regulation, are all a bunch of worthless bums and crybabies who should just load up the pickup and become the new Okies. I'd give up Mexican food for a year...

A new Reuters poll of Republicans shows that GOP frontrunner Donald Trump has expanded his national lead over rivals since his Jan. 19 endorsement by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. The new poll of 2,508 Republicans, taken over several days, showed Trump at 40 percent and Cruz sharply down to 10.5 percent. That's a 29.5-point margin. Reuters' Jan. 19 results showed Trump at 33 percent to Cruz's 16 percent, which was a 17-point margin. The Reuters poll is here, and can be adjusted to show the candidates' popularity among various subgroups. For example, Trump scored 38.4 percent among marrieds, 39...

A special election will be held March 15 to fill the remainder of the term of former state Rep. Tim Krieger. Krieger, a four-term Republican from Delmont resigned last month after being sworn in as a Westmoreland County judge. His terms runs to the end of the year. Krieger's 57th District seat includes Greensburg, South Greensburg, Southwest Greensburg, Youngwood, part of Hempfield and Salem townships and Delmont. Officials from Westmoreland County's Democratic and a Republican committees will nominate candidates to run in the special election. Voters will return to polls on April 26 for a primary election when candidates will...