Free Republic

ATLANTA - President Donald Trump’s ongoing efforts to overturn the 2020 election results - laid out in stark detail in an hourlong weekend phone call with a Georgia election official - are demonstrating his unrestrained determination to maintain a grip on power no matter the consequences for the nation’s democratic traditions. Trump has ventured into uncharted and dangerous territory since his Nov. 3 defeat, becoming the first president who lost an election to try to hang onto his office by rejecting the will of the voters and casting aside results of the Electoral College enshrined in the Constitution. Trump’s refusal...

“Every single American should be wearing a mask when they’re outside for the next three months at a minimum,” said former Vice President Joe Biden at a recent press briefing. “Outside” encompasses a lot, including places where a mask would have exactly zero effect. Normally, this kind of rhetoric is a merely simplified admonition to wear masks generally, but in this press briefing, Biden also endorsed a nationwide mask-wearing mandate, adding this gloomy justification: “The estimates by the experts are it will save over 40,000 lives in the next three months.” More on that estimate in a moment. But first:...

In 2020, something dramatically changed—and not for the better. The sloppy conventional rhetoric aside, it was most definitely not some “pandemic” that succeeded in undermining the economic, psychological, and communal well-being of hundreds of millions (possibly as high as 1.6 billion) of human beings around the planet.  And it was not some virus—“the Virus”—that wreaked havoc in the United States. Rather, it is the mass hysteria over a virus fomented by materially, ideologically, and electorally-motivated political and media elites that accounts for the incalculable suffering of countless human beings. In America, since March and courtesy of state governors and...

After two months of rioting and political chaos, there are still people who claim it all about the death of George Floyd. They're wrong. Video at link

The House of Representatives on Friday passed a historic piece of legislation , allowing members to vote by proxy and conduct hearings remotely for the next 45 days because of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. Under the new rules, which passed mostly along party lines, congressmen and women can give written instructions to another member in the chamber to vote on their behalf. One representative can serve as a proxy voter for up to 10 other members at any given time. Those who choose to work remotely can still participate in open hearings and cast committee votes. Closed hearings, however, will...

The UK must avoid lurching from the coronavirus crisis into a deeper climate crisis, the government’s advisers have warned. They recommend that ministers ensure funds earmarked for a post-Covid-19 economic recovery go to firms that will reduce carbon emissions. They say the public should work from home if possible; and to walk or cycle. And investment should prioritise broadband over road-building, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) says. People should also be encouraged to save emissions by continuing to consult GPs online. The government will reply later, although the Energy Secretary Alok Sharma has already spoken in favour of a...

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Thursday extended Michigan's state of emergency and disaster declaration through May 28, hours before it was set to expire and after hundreds of protesters, some of whom were armed, gathered in the state Capitol building to voice their displeasure with the Democratic governor. Whitmer also took shots at the Republican-controlled legislature for refusing to extend the order earlier in the day. "By refusing to extend the emergency and disaster declaration, Republican lawmakers are putting their heads in the sand and putting more lives and livelihoods at risk," she said in a statement. "I’m not going to...

BRUSSELS - European politicians, CEOs, lawmakers and activists called on Tuesday for green investment to restart growth after the coronavirus pandemic, saying fighting climate change and promoting biodiversity would rebuild stronger economies. “After the crisis, the time will come to rebuild,” said a joint letter signed by 180 political decision-makers, business leaders, trade unions, NGOs and think tanks urging a green stimulus for growth. “The transition to a climate-neutral economy, the protection of biodiversity and the transformation of agri-food systems have the potential to rapidly deliver jobs, growth ... and to contribute to building more resilient societies.” Calling fallout from...

HARRISBURG – Due to the high volume of waiver requests, the Wolf Administration is delaying enforcement of Governor Tom Wolf’s order and the Secretary of Health’s order that all non-life-sustaining businesses in Pennsylvania must close their physical locations to slow the spread of COVID-19. Per Governor Wolf’s and Dr. Levine’s orders, businesses that were non-life sustaining were ordered to close their physical locations on March 19, at 8:00 PM. This order stands, only the enforcement timing will change and become effective on Monday, March 23, at 8:00 AM. hose businesses requesting clarification on whether they are defined as life-sustaining should...

Coal miners including Consol Energy (CEIX -13.9%) and Contura Energy (CTRA +2.1%) must shut their mines in Pennsylvania by tonight after the governor ordered "non-life-sustaining" to close in an attempt to control the spread of the coronavirus. The state's list of "life-sustaining businesses" included oil and natural gas extraction, steel mills and metal production but specifically excluded coal mining. The move has the potential to remove a large volume of coking coal from the global market. B. Riley FBR analyst Lucas Pipes says the worst-case scenario would have operations down through Q2 but "a shutdown lasting a week to several...

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials tried to hack Indiana’s state electoral system with at least 14,800 “scans” or hits between Nov. 1, 2016, to Dec. 16, 2016, The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has learned. The attacks are the second confirmed IT scanning assault by DHS officials against states that resisted then-President Barack Obama’s attempt to increase federal involvement in state and local election systems by designating them as “critical infrastructure” for national security. Members of the National Association of Secretaries of State voted Saturday at their winter meeting to oppose the designation. They are asking President Donald...

OLYMPIA, Wash — Several lawmakers, including Spokane Rep. Marcus Riccelli, want the state to declare a “climate emergency” and give the governor the power to declare an energy emergency and limit greenhouse gas emissions. House Bill 2829 was read for the first time in Olympia Friday. It states that a climate emergency “threatens our state, region, nation, civilization, humanity, and the natural world.” The lawmakers state that the effects are already being felt and that they “will only intensify without swift intervention.” Those impacts include more intense and frequent wildfires; glacier loss; flooding; drought; dwindling fish runs; insect die-off; Orca...

Watching the Democratic presidential candidates on CNN’s seven-hour town hall on climate change was like attending the shot-put competition at a track meet. It wasn’t even a debate because the candidates agreed on most major points. Any sense of competition came in seeing which would offer the most grandiose plans. One after another, each candidate strained to hurl the biggest, most expensive wad of policy proposals as far as humanly possible. Senator Bernie Sanders set the bar high. “We are proposing the largest, most comprehensive program ever presented by any candidate in the history of the United States,” he declared....

Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg was joined by swelling and excited crowds of American teenagers at a protest outside the UN headquarters in New York on Friday, in a further blossoming of the youth environment movement given extra thrust by the Swede’s transatlantic boat crossing. Some US children said they were at their first ever climate demonstration; others said they had been passionate about the environment for a while but had been galvanized to act by Thunberg’s rising profile. On Friday afternoon, Thunberg and two young activists were spontaneously invited inside the UN for a meeting with a senior leader,...

Combat isn’t black and white -- I know, I’ve lived it. When it was announced over the weekend by the New York Times that President Trump is preparing to pardon multiple veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who have been wrongfully convicted or charged with war crimes, a firestorm of opinions and accusations began to fly. Salon described President Trump’s decision to pardon veterans as taking “imperial overreach to a new level;” The Washington Post’s Editorial Board said “such pardons would send a message of disrespect for the laws of war;” and The New Yorker published an interview with Yale Philosophy Professor Scott Shapiro who argued that pardoning military veterans...

Former President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder won’t tell the truth when it comes to their redistricting strategy, but here it is: Pick a state, any state, and sue until it’s blue. They have spent years and millions of dollars selling the false narrative that Democrats draw “fair maps” while any and all Republican-drawn maps are “partisan gerrymanders.” While rhetorically cute, their primary goal has nothing to do with fighting gerrymandering as they repeatedly claim, but to put redistricting in the hands of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats and lifetime-appointed judges. Their strategy makes sense. There are plenty of unelected...

WSPA) - It's one of the most powerful jobs in the state, but before anyone becomes a South Carolina judge they're judged by a group of private citizens you've likely never heard of. Right now, there are official citizens committes with the power to make or break any judge's career. They use confidential surveys and private interviews to decide whether someone is the right fit for a black robe. Sometimes that means even a sitting judge can be found "unqualified" for the job, not because they're unfair, inexperienced or unfamiliar with the law, but because someone the judge can never...

House Republicans’ use of a century-old legislative procedure that helps the minority party alter or oppose measures advanced by the majority has exposed significant divisions among Democrats. Now some House Democrats want to do away with the procedure, called a motion to recommit. It allows a lawmaker in the minority to move that a bill be sent back to a committee for a particular reason. In a letter to Pelosi and three other Democrat leaders, 17 freshman Democrats ask them to “end abuse of the MTR,” referring to the motion to recommit. The two freshmen, Reps. Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania...

It would be easy to dismiss the Green New Deal as an impossible progressive dream, but that would be a mistake. The Green New Deal is not the bucket list of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow travelers, but a blueprint to turn America into a socialist state. It is the culmination of a 90-year campaign, begun with FDR and the first New Deal. “The first obligation of government is the protection of the welfare and well-being, indeed the very existence, of its citizens,” presidential nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt said at the 1932 Democratic National Convention. Roosevelt said that in...

Over the past 40 years, the federal government has shut down 21 times due to political disagreements over funding. Most of America, including the government itself, goes largely unaffected by a government shutdown. But for federal workers who are furloughed or required to work without a paycheck, a lapse in government funding can cause financial problems, leading some to default on debt or miss rent payments. This can result in real hardships up to and including eviction. The blame for this rests squarely on the lawmakers who fail to fund the government. Remarkably, though, some Democrats in Congress believe that...