Free Republic

Australian officials appear desperate to hide video evidence of a recent manifestation of anti-Christian hatred. Whereas Facebook was more than willing to aid in Australia's global censorship initiative, Elon Musk's X has indicated it will not comply. This resistance has enraged Australian officials, prompting legal action and one senator to even declare that Musk should be imprisoned. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel, the survivor of the Islamic terror attack, cut through all the noise Wednesday, noting that he is not "opposed to the videos remaining on social media" and that freedom of speech is a "God-given right." A 16-year-old Islamic terrorist...

President Joe Biden suggested Friday he would have liked to fight former President Donald Trump when they were children, echoing similar rhetoric he has used, fantasizing about a physical confrontation with his rival. During an appearance on Sirius XM’s Howard Stern Show on Friday, Stern and Biden were discussing Biden’s stuttering difficulties as a child when he said he would have liked to meet Trump “head to head” “in the neighborhood.” President Biden says he would’ve liked to meet “head to head” with Trump in the neighbohood as a kid. pic.twitter.com/gZ3Tpa5nfB — New York Post (@nypost) April 26, 2024 “But...

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.) abruptly announced on Friday that he will not seek reelection, after initially planning to run for another term. Posey’s announcement — if made earlier — could have easily attracted a spirited Republican primary, with politicians from the state’s Space Coast region already eyeing the seat once Posey retired. Florida’s 8th congressional district is a solid Republican seat. Instead the 76-year-old incumbent’s announcement came shortly after qualifying officially ended and after his hand-picked replacement — former state Senate President Mike Haridopolos — had already quietly jumped into the race. In a statement posted online,...

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's address to the Oxford Union in the UK was interrupted by a pair of pro-Palestine demonstrators, days after she said such protests have a 'Russian tinge' to them. The California Democrat was giving an address to the debating society in Oxford as the protestors walked just in front of her podium and silently held up Palestinian flags, until being escorted out by security. Outside the building some 250 demonstrators chanted 'free Palestine' and 'end the genocide.'

Oral argument before the Supreme Court this week showed why it is nonsense to claim that anti-vagrancy laws violate the Constitution‘s Eighth Amendment provision against “cruel and unusual punishment.” Indeed, in the vernacular sense, what is cruel and unusual is a judicial edict that says law-abiding citizens must put up with public spaces featuring major health hazards, including even the plague. Yet that’s what some lower courts, bizarrely, say citizens must do. By any normal reading, the Eighth Amendment is intended to forbid overly harsh penalties, not to determine what sorts of conduct can or can’t be outlawed. Unfortunately, the...

President Joe Biden’s administration is delaying its potential plan to ban menthol cigarettes after concerns about the political implications ahead of the 2024 election. The administration planned to announce Friday that it will delay its decision on the rule, people familiar with the matter told the WSJ. While the administration plans to argue that it needs to consult more outside groups on the implications of the rule, there is no current timeline to revisit the issue, the sources told the WSJ. Health and Human Services (HHS) Sec. Xavier Becerra confirmed the news in a statement Friday afternoon, saying the potential...

Top aides to Biden secretly hatched a plan this past fall to replace White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre by recruiting outside allies to nudge her out the door ... Jean-Pierre, who made history in May 2022 by becoming the first black and first openly gay person to hold the position, had developed the exasperating habit of reading canned answers directly from a binder to reporters at her regular briefings — offering what her superiors viewed as a less-than-compelling pitch for the 81-year-old Biden as he readied his re-election campaign. De facto White House communications chief Anita Dunn, 66, the...

The lawyer representing special counsel Jack Smith on Thursday asserted that the reason former President Donald Trump is the first president to face criminal charges is because his predecessors did not commit any crimes. Department of Justice counselor to Smith, Michael Dreeben, went before the Supreme Court to argue presidents should not have constitutional immunity from prosecution for official acts conducted during their presidency. Dreeben suggested that no president until Trump has ever committed crimes when Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas questioned him about no other president having faced prosecutions. “Over the not-so-distant past … certain presidents have engaged in...

WASHINGTON — President Biden recalled Friday that “lovely women” mailed him “very salacious pictures” when he was a young and unmarried senator — and that he handed the images over to the Secret Service — in a bizarre interview with Howard Stern. “A lot of lovely women — but women would send very salacious pictures and I’d just give them to the Secret Service. I thought somebody would think I was —” the 81-year-old president said before trailing off. It’s unclear why the Secret Service, whose role is to protect the president and investigate counterfeiting and fraud, would have any...

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced Friday that the US is sending Ukraine its largest aid package to date — worth $6 billion — that will include munitions for Patriot missile defense systems that Kyiv has said could change the course of the war, but not the systems themselves. The massive package comes just two days after a separate $1 billion tranche for Ukraine was announced upon President Biden signing a $95 billion foreign aid supplemental funding bill into law. “The announcements this week underscore America’s enduring commitment to Ukraine’s defense,” Austin said after a meeting of the Ukraine...

FULTON COUNTY, Ga. - A new lawsuit has been filed against several prominent figures in Fulton County, including Commissioner Marvin Arrington, District Attorney Fani Willis, the Fulton County Ethics Board, and Fulton County itself. Georgia Rep. Mesha Mainor, the victim in a criminal case involving stalking, filed the lawsuit. She alleges mishandling of the case by Commissioner Arrington initially and later by DA Willis. [snip] The lawsuit provides a timeline dating back to January 2019 when Mainor hired businessman Corwin Monson as a campaign volunteer. Despite their prior association, Mainor dismissed Monson in February 2019 due to his disruptive behavior,...

Judge Juan Merchan on Thursday afternoon said he will consider four new Trump gag order violations as he weighs whether to hold the former president in contempt. ..... Snip..... [Amee Vanderpool @girlsreallyrule · Merchan signed an Order to Show Cause compelling Trump to attend a hearing on three new alleged gag order violations. (Below 1 & 2) Merchan has yet to rule on the prosecution's earlier motion alleging ten violations and now there are new ones. (3 & 4) 8:19 AM · Apr 26, 2024]

Biden admin expands Title IX to include ‘gender identity,’ sparking conservative backlashThe Biden administration’s updated Title IX regulations extend the discrimination prohibition to encompass ‘sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics.’The Biden administration published on Friday changes to the Title IX discrimination law to now include “gender identity,” setting the stage for legal fights with nearly half the states, which have passed laws to protect women and children from the transgender ideology.The newly published Title IX regulations expand the federal government’s prohibition against “discrimination” to now include under its umbrella “discrimination based on sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, gender...

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said the U.S. Supreme Court should be moved to the Republican National Committee (RNC) headquarters, after some conservative justices suggested being open to arguments in favor of presidential immunity from prosecution for former President Trump. “They’re politicians who are not even subject to popular election, unlike me,” Raskin said during his Thursday appearance on MSNBC’s “The ReidOut.” “They should move the Supreme Court over to the RNC headquarters because they’re acting like a bunch of partisan operatives.” Raskin’s assessment comes as D. John Sauer, the attorney representing Trump in Thursday’s arguments regarding the former president’s immunity,...

Have they found a crime yet? I don’t see one.

Monica Lewinsky went viral on Wednesday after joining a social media trend involving one of Taylor Swift's new songs as she referenced her time in the White House with former President Bill Clinton. Lewinsky's post, which had over 6 million views as of Thursday morning, references one of Swift's new songs, "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?" off her new album, "The Tortured Poets Department." Social media users started sharing lyrics from the song, "you wouldn't last an hour in the asylum where they raised me," along with an image referencing a personal memory or anecdote from their past. Lewinsky...

NEW YORK (AP) — President Joe Biden said Friday that he is willing to debate his presumptive Republican opponent, Donald Trump, later this fall – his most definitive comment yet on the issue. The comment came during an interview with the Sirius XM radio host Howard Stern, who asked Biden whether he would participate in debates against Trump. “I am, somewhere. I don’t know when,” Biden said. “But I’m happy to debate him.”

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Thursday about whether former President Donald Trump is immune from prosecution on charges of attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election, as Special Counsel Jack Smith has accused him of doing. A majority of the Supreme Court justices appeared to agree with Trump’s attorneys’ arguments that a president does enjoy some level of immunity that continues past the term of office. Conservative Justice Samuel Alito was one of them, citing the “old saw about indicting a ham sandwich” while questioning the government’s Michael Dreeben. “[T]his case will have effects that go...

Pro-life Americans must not settle for half measures in defense of the unbornWhile Democrats continue to be held in thrall to abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood, Republicans seem to hope that remaining in a state of superposition will somehow help the electoral math in November.The Guttmacher Institute worries intensely that it is no longer able to co-opt half of the pro-life movement, hoping that incrementalist measures — long derided as the pro-regulation arm of the abortion industry — might become the norm. By its own admission, so-called 15-week bans are nothing of the sort when 97% of abortions occur...

A documentary about Hamas’s sexual crimes on and after October 7 has been published on YouTube, featuring testimonies from survivors, released hostages and first responders. The aim of the film, titled ‘Screams Before Silence’ and fronted by former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg, is to highlight sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas during and after the terror group’s devastating massacre on southern Israel, when terrorists killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 253, triggering an ongoing war in Gaza. Clips from the hour-long film have been published in recent months, including interviews with female hostages released in a November truce. Warning...