Free Republic

A Mississippi church that is suing to stay open during the coronavirus shutdowns was destroyed by arson Wednesday, according to local officials. Fox News reports someone also spray-painted graffiti on the First Pentecostal Church of Holly Springs, including a message that read, “I Bet you stay home now you hypokrits [sic].” Local authorities said there was an explosion in the front of the church, and the building caught fire sometime between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. Wednesday. Marshall County Sheriff’s Department Major Kelly McMillian told the local news that the fire is being investigated as a criminal act of arson....

On the eve of the Nevada caucuses in February, Bernie Sanders and his supporters were feeling invincible. “I've got news for the Democratic establishment,” he declared on Twitter on Feb. 21, the day before he went on to a landslide win in the Nevada caucuses. “They can't stop us.” Since then, not only did the “establishment” stop Sanders - it stamped out the candidacies of a string of left-wing insurgents, leaving the progressive movement reeling and in a state of despair. Three highly-touted liberal House candidates - Jessica Cisneros in Texas, Robert Emmons in Illinois, and Morgan Harper in Ohio...

Has the pursuit of moral triumphalism on the Left led them to abandon their moral compass altogether? Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi makes that argument on his own eponymous site in a lengthy condemnation of the abandonment of civil rights by Democrats and progressives. From Russiagate to COVID-19 all the way into Judge Emmet Sullivan’s courtroom, Taibbi accuses the Left of becoming the authoritarians — perhaps even the fascists, although Taibbi doesn’t use that term — the Left claims to abhor. Of course, one has to ask whether that was the point all along, but Taibbi starts with the presumption...

By their own standards, the House Democrats’ Round 4 “rescue package” is a flop. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi set herself up to fail by instructing her caucus and surrogates to insist that Congress prioritize testing, testing, and more testing in future rounds of coronavirus response funding. At the end of the day, Democrats scrounged up a budget for those tests amounting to less than 1 percent of the $3 trillion package Pelosi introduced this week. Instead of putting their money where their mouth is, they slapped together a leftist wish list dedicated to causes unrelated to the pandemic. It is...

Kara Eastman, a progressive backed by high-profile Democrats including New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, captured victory Tuesday in a Nebraska Democratic congressional primary, boosting the hopes of liberal activists. The win by Eastman – who unsuccessfully sought the seat two years ago -- in the state's 2nd congressional district sets up a highly anticipated 2018 general election rematch with Republicans and serves as a rebound for progressive candidates in 2020 races. Eastman trounced her centrist primary opponent, Ann Ashford, securing more than 60 percent of the vote as she moves forward to November’s election. It...

Like many Americans, I have watched too many movies during this seemingly unending stretch of glorified house arrest. Many of these films I have found on Turner Classic Movies. Even back in the good old days, when I was a free citizen of the United States -- remember that place? -- TCM was my default channel. Yes, I know, leftist TCM maven Ben Mankiewicz co-founded the proudly stupid “The Young Turks,” but he and the other hosts keep their politics out of it. Better still, TCM shows uncut movies others do not dare, Blazing Saddles included. By now, I have...

Democratic leaders in Congress continued on Sunday to remain quiet on the sexual assault allegations leveled against their party’s presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden, even as anger over the accusations mounted from the party’s more progressive wing. Neither House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., nor Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., have made any public comment about the allegations by Tara Reade, a staffer for Biden in 1993, that the then-senator from Delaware sexually assaulted her. Pelosi and Schumer’s offices did not return Fox News request for comment. There is growing anger from both progressive Democrats and supporters of the #MeToo...

The left now has a love affair with death. (All in the name of love, of course.) So it should come as no surprise that there are Trump-haters out there so deranged that they would prefer millions to die from the coronavirus — even a limitless number — in exchange for Trump losing the election in November. Ami Horowitz interviewed people in the East Village of New York and posed the following question: "Would you go for this deal, that the coronavirus lasts longer and is more severe, but the president guarantees to lose the election?" Most people in this...

A slate of progressive youth groups have issued a list of demands they want to see presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden adopt ahead of the general election. Eight progressive groups said in a joint letter released Wednesday that they feared Biden’s centrist policies would alienate younger voters, who trend more liberal, and hinder Democrats’s efforts to unseat President Trump in November. The groups noted that while Biden racked up delegates with a March winning spree, he consistently ceded voters under 45 years old to Sanders in the primaries. SNIP While Sanders, who had garnered the endorsements of all eight...

We most certainly are living in coronavirus hell, but Christians aren't the ones who got us here. If Murphy’s Law promises that “anything that can go wrong will go wrong,” what we’ll call the law of religion — which could rightly be attributed to Jesus himself — assures that “if Christians can be blamed for something, they will be.” It has become abundantly clear the coronavirus is no exception.Heroic nurses, doctors, and first responders are risking their safety to save others. Many private businesses are doing everything they can to preserve their payrolls, with some even stepping up in innovative...

American liberals universally bemoan our “crumbling infrastructure.” Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders both do so while campaigning. So did Barack Obama as president. We hear the refrain from the Teamsters and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. CNN, PBS, CNBC, and VICE News echo the phrase. So do HuffPost, the Nation, the Los Angeles Times, the Harvard Business Review, the Guardian, Mother Jones, the Progressive… [author pauses, catches breath]… Jacobin, the New Republic, the Atlantic, the… Screw it—the point is, the left is on record with concern about the state of America’s transportation systems and other public...

The Progressive believes in precisely two things: his own magnificence and the constructive power of brute force. In combination, they lead him naturally from the role of pestiferous busybody to brutal dictator. Where the productive man dreams of the things he might create if only left alone by his fellows, the Progressive dreams of the world he could create if only the lives and property of his fellows were at his disposal. The roots of his pathology lie in that oldest and most destructive of all human vices, the desire for the power to rule over other men. As naked...

Victory! Court Orders Hillary Clinton Deposition on Emails and Benghazi Attack Documents Government’s Record-Keeping Failures Risks Lives, Costs Billions Chicago Leaders Defend Freeing Illegal Alien to Sexually Assault Toddler Progressive Policy Drives Rising Crime in New York Victory! Court Orders Hillary Clinton Deposition on Emails and Benghazi Attack Documents We’ve been in court for years over Hillary Clinton’s emails — as you know, we are persistent for justice. The great news is that U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth has granted our request to depose the former secretary of state about her emails and Benghazi attack documents. The...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's progressive candidates did not have a “super” Tuesday in the first congressional primaries of the 2020 cycle. The Democratic establishment, on the other hand, could breathe a sigh of relief after three primary challengers from Texas and California underperformed in highly anticipated contests against longtime Democratic incumbents and establishment darlings. A favorite of progressives across the country, Texas congressional candidate Jessica Cisneros, an immigration lawyer, came just short of recreating the AOC primary upset of her own when she attempted to unseat nine-term incumbent Henry Cuellar, who represents the Texas 28th district south of San Antonio. She...

As if San Francisco were not disgusting enough with its corruption, poop patrols, and unpunished street crime, there's now this sort of brutality going on: (tweet video of an Asian man been harassed and beaten by thugs) According to the Daily Mail: The video begins with one onlooker walking towards the man, wielding a pole and using it to hit him on the head. Others laugh and jeer as the victim runs away.

Why doesn’t this surprise me? People lament the violence in cities that have been under one-party political rule for decades. But voters keep electing people who not only fail to make things better but also make things worse. Take Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot for example. Voters elected another cookie-cutter, anti-law and order politician, and the violence that was bad before she took office may be getting worse. But, of course it’s not her fault or the fault of bad policies. No. The fault belongs to—you guessed it—the police. Who didn’t see that one coming? No cop, that’s for sure. But...

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Yes We (Still) Can and cohost of Pod Save America, a sharp political playbook for how Democrats can take on Trump, McConnell, Fox News, and the rest of the right-wing circus dominating American politics. There is nothing more important than beating Donald Trump in 2020, but defeating Trump is just the start of this timely book. Un-Trumping America offers readers three critical insights: first, Trump is not an aberration, but rather the logical extension of the modern Republican Party; second, how Democrats can defeat Trump in 2020; and third, preventing...

Latinos are a coveted voting bloc in the battleground state of Florida — but they're not one group when it comes to their countries of origin and the issues on which they focus. To that end, a progressive political action committee has been releasing a series of ads targeting specific Latino groups as the voting registration deadline approaches. Forward Florida Action has begun airing Spanish-language radio ads this month across the state encouraging voters to register as Democrats before the Feb. 18 deadline to participate in the presidential primary. One radio ad targeting Puerto Ricans tells prospective voters that as...

With a win in New Hampshire, a maybe-win in Iowa last week, and a month-long surge into second place nationally, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is now in strong position to win the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. It’s been a long road for the curmudgeonly man from Vermont, who spent years toiling on the fringes of official Washington. Of all things, the event that ultimately launched him into the Democratic Party’s mainstream turned out to be a binary 2016 primary contest with Hillary Clinton, a match-up in which the contrast ultimately benefited him more than her.So, here we are, in...

A Richmond school may soon be named after former first lady Michelle Obama, officials with the West Contra Costa Unified School District said. Board members will consider renaming Wilson Elementary School following a request by the school's PTA president Maisha Cole and a Jan. 23 meeting of an ad hoc committee, which recommended the change. District officials said if the board approves the change, it will be the first time in Northern California a school has been named after Michelle Obama and the second school in the state to get such a name. Wilson Elementary School was named after Woodrow...