Free Republic

A NEW BILL INTRODUCED by seven Pennsylvania Republican state lawmakers could force protesters arrested at demonstrations to pay for police overtime and other fees related to the action. The bill, SB 754, has been introduced by Rep. Scott Martin of Lancaster County; his district has been the site of anti-pipeline protests aimed at the Atlantic Sunrise natural gas pipeline. Under the terms of the bill, “a person is responsible for public safety response costs incurred by a State agency or political subdivision as a result of the State agency’s or political subdivision’s response to a demonstration if, in connection with...

The Boston rally was a watershed event. But not in the way the mainstream media has been portraying it, as a bold stand against white supremacy in the wake of Charlottesville. Rather, it demonstrates the power of propaganda to foment mass hysteria and mob rule. Reality no longer matters. For the media refuses to report this seminal truth: There were no white supremacists or neo-Nazis. None. Not even one. Instead, they engaged in a massive disinformation campaign that spurred over 40,000 “antifascists” to descend upon Boston Common. The alt-left’s goal: to counter-demonstrate against an alleged “white nationalist” rally. Yet, what...

International news agency Reuters was mocked on social media Wednesday after it referred to anti-Trump protesters as "peace activists" in its reporting of President Trump's rally in Phoenix on Tuesday night. Four people were arrested for throwing rocks and bottles at police officers after Trump concluded his speech Tuesday night at the Phoenix Convention Center, according to Phoenix's ABC affiliate. Officers responded with pepper balls, pepper spray and gas. "Pro-Trump supporters face off with peace activists during protests outside a Trump rally in Phoenix," read a tweet, that was later corrected, by Reuters to its 18.5 million followers. Conservative Twitter...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) joined in on the attack of Confederate statues and monuments last week when she released a statement on Thursday asking for House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to remove all Confederate monuments from the U.S. Capitol. On Wednesday morning, Ron Meyer, editor of Red Alert Politics, dropped a truth bombshell during his interview on “Fox and Friends.” Meyer stated: The truth is, the Democrats have a pretty poor history on Civil Rights, including Nancy Pelosi’s own father who was the Mayor of Baltimore — and was one of the people who dedicated statues to Robert...

Leftists like British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn have long had warm words for Venezuela's chavistas. But as famine has racked the country and President Nicholás Maduro has turned dictatorial, those words are coming back to bite them. PAMPLONA, SPAIN—An inspiration, a hero: these are the words leftists in Europe lavished on the late Hugo Chavez for his “Bolivarian revolution” in Venezuela. For British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and left-wing parties like Syriza and Podemos in southern Europe, Chavez’s ascendance was long the clearest challenge to inequality in Latin America, neoliberalism in Washington, and austerity at home. Today, it's a decidedly...

The unusual spate of collisions, two of them fatal, has called into question the US Navy’s level of preparedness, analysts say, and point to potential problems with training, maintenance, or sailors’ workload. WASHINGTON—A recent spate of collisions involving US Navy ships from the Seventh Fleet, two of them fatal, has led the Navy to relieve that fleet’s commander, Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin, reportedly after his superiors lost confidence in his leadership. The latest collision, Monday off the coast of Singapore, was between the guided-missile destroyer USS John S. McCain and a Liberian-flagged tanker. Ten sailors were reported missing, and the...

What is it we are doing in Afghanistan? What do we think we are doing in Afghanistan? All we can say with any confidence is that the former and the latter bear only a theoretical relationship. The United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001 in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11. Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and many of his associates were thought to be holed up there under the protection and the patronage of the Taliban, the jihadist militia cum narcotics syndicate that controlled Afghanistan at the time. U.S. forces marched in, toppled the Taliban, and installed...

Former Obama advisor David Axelrod on Wednesday cautioned against talk that President Trump is unfit for office, saying it opens the door to a potentially “dangerous road.” “The inference was that somehow there should be some effort to remove him, or at least that’s how some people would have heard it,” Axelrod told CNN’s “The Situation Room.” “And I think we have to be very, very careful when we have these discussions because we have a system, a Constitutional system.” Axelrod specifically referenced comments made by former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who said he questions Trump’s fitness for...

KHARTOUM - Russia's ambassador to Sudan, Mirgayas Shirinskiy, was found dead in the swimming pool at his home in Khartoum on Wednesday, the Sudanese police said. The ambassador, who was known to have suffered from high blood pressure, is believed to have died of natural causes, a spokesman for the police told Reuters.

If Republican Senate doesn't get rid of the Filibuster Rule & go to a simple majority, which the Dems would do, they are just wasting time!

Steve Bannon, the figure most frequently touted as the Machiavellian mastermind behind President Donald Trump’s connection with his populist base, left the White House late last week. But his absence has shown no signs of hampering the support Trump enjoys among those core supporters. All indication in the past five days has been that those voters like Trump for Trump and it makes little to no difference who stands beside him inside the White House. Rhetorically speaking, the president’s marathon address in Phoenix yesterday—in which he bashed the media, coyly suggested he’d pardon Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and threatened...

From The Hill: House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), who was close to Trump during the 2016 campaign, is warning that Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and McConnell could lose their jobs if they fall short on tax reform and funding the U.S.-Mexico border wall. “Bottom line: if Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell can get the president’s agenda done, they can probably keep their jobs,” Meadows said in an interview. “If Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell can’t get the president’s agenda done, I don’t know that they get to keep theirs, nor do I know if I get to keep...

There are Trillions of Dollars at Stake. CTH has been highlighting the hidden motivation for years.  Opposition is all about the economics folks. Against President Trump’s promise to renegotiate trade deals, withdraw from TPP and TTIP, walk away from the fraudulent economic scheme within the Paris Climate Treaty, and renegotiate or pull out of NAFTA.  Well,… it’s called a strategy session folks: President Trump uses economic leverage as a national security policy; and to understand who opposes President Trump specifically because of the economic leverage he creates, it becomes important to understand the objectives of the global and financial elite who run and operate...

A federal court in Texas on Wednesday struck down the state's controversial voter identification law, granting an injunction that bars state officials from enforcing the measure. U.S. District Judge Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos ruled that the law was enacted with the intent to discriminate against black and Hispanic voters, saying that it violates the Voting Rights Act. Texas state lawmakers passed a watered down version of the voter ID law this summer. The judge issued an injunction barring enforcement of that measure as well. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said after the ruling Wednesday that he will appeal the ruling,...

Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake is in trouble from all sides. With a dismal approval rating of 18 percent, he faces a primary challenge from former state Sen. Kelli Ward. At the federal level, President Trump torched Flake for being weak on borders, crime, and being a “non-factor” in the Senate. The president also called him toxic. In July, the Arizona senator’s vulnerabilities were highlighted by FiveThirtyEight, where the publication said it might not be a bad investment for Democrats to find someone to run against Flake since the state is shifting left, he’s never been popular, and he barely won...

Workers in Charlottesville, Va. shrouded statues of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson in black on Wednesday as the city grappled with an outbreak of deadly violence at a white nationalist rally earlier this month. Workers used ropes, poles and cherry-pickers to hoist what appeared to be a black tarpaulin over both statues as onlookers took photos and video. Some in the crowd surrounding the Lee statue cheered as the cover was put in place.

A confrontation occurred between Indian and Chinese soldiers along a disputed border in the western Himalayas, Indian officials said on Tuesday. The PTI news agency said soldiers threw stones, causing minor injuries to both sides, as Chinese troops tried to enter Indian territory near the Pangong lake. Beijing maintains that their soldiers were inside Chinese territory. [snip] The two nations fought a war over the border in 1962 and disputes remain unresolved in several areas, which causes tensions to escalate from time to time.

Yesterday, we wrote about new developments in an exceptionally strange case involving a circle of former IT staffers for House Democrats who are caught up in a federal criminal investigation.  We noted that the New York Post's sources say that the FBI is now looking into whether the Awan cabal may have sold off sensitive data collected from the House servers they maintained to foreign intelligence services in Islamabad, Moscow, and potentially elsewhere.  Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy, whose summary of bizarre imbroglio mess we linked, knows a thing or two about how federal indictments work.  He's the man who...

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A man attacked a 51-year-old woman and accused her of being racist in what police are investigating as a hate crime. The attack happened about 5:45 p.m. Sunday in the 2900 block of Archwood Avenue in the city's Brooklyn Centre neighborhood. The man, whose photo was released in the hopes that someone can identify him, is black and the woman who reported the attack is white, police said. The man walked up to one woman without saying anything and punched her, knocking her to the ground, police said. The man then yelled at the woman and accused...

A 96-year-old World War II veteran hailed as an American D-Day war hero after surviving a fierce battle against the Germans on the cliffs of Normandy has admitted he was actually in northern Ireland at the time, according to a French nonprofit organization. George G. Klein was treated as “one of the great celebrities” during the 73rd anniversary of the Normandy battle during a ceremony there last month, where he was honored as one of the 90 surviving members of the elite 2nd Ranger Battalion that battled the Germans on the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc on June 6, 1944.