Free Republic

The head of the Yemeni Houthi terrorist organization, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, issued remarks on the eve of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan on Sunday guaranteeing to his supporters that he would continue to orchestrate terrorist attacks against commercial ships in the Red Sea despite the holiday season. “We will continue our operations and many of our fundamental and necessary activities must continue,” Houthi promised, according to the Iranian state Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA). Houthi’s terrorist group, formally known as “Ansar Allah,” began a campaign of drone and missile strikes against seemingly random ships attempting to navigate in the greater...

…….. Every four years, as Americans gird themselves to choose a president, there's talk, mainly among Democrats, of leaving the country. I'm off for Canada if unacceptable candidate X wins! And every four years, the promised exodus fails to materialize. It's mostly just therapeutic venting. This time is different. The alarm over Trump's potential triumph in November is far starker than the fears stoked by past presidents. "A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable," a recent Washington Post headline warned. The Atlantic devoted an entire issue to the authoritarian horrors in store for America "If Trump Wins." Every four years or...

Former US President Donald Trump has said he’ll bring back his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, if he wins another four years in the White House in 2024, The Hill reported on Sunday. “I will say, General Flynn, he’s some general. He’s some man. He took abuse like nobody could have handled, and he came out bigger, better, stronger than ever before,” Trump was quoted as having said via phone to the “ReAwaken America” rally. “He’s a leader, and you just stay wealthy and healthy and well, and everything. I want you to have great lives and, General, you...

California Governor Gavin Newsom has failed to keep a December promise to provide 6 million coronavirus tests to screen every child before they would return to school over the holidays — and is calling out the National Guard to help with testing.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday he accepted the Taliban’s repeated promises of safe passage for anyone seeking to flee the country. He spoke after his meeting with Qatari officials on accelerating evacuations in his first trip since the establishment of the self-proclaimed Islamic Caliphate in Afghanistan. Representatives of the terrorist organization told the United States “they will let people with travel documents freely depart,” Blinken informed a news conference in Doha where he and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met their Qatari opposite numbers. “We will hold them to that,” he added, AFP reports.

President Joe Biden has largely delivered on his campaign promise to make curbing climate change a top priority, delighting liberals but irking Republicans who expected a more centrist course given the deal-making profile he cast as a senator. “Joe Biden’s first 100 days have been about promises made, promises kept. If I am an environmentalist, you have to give him high grades,” said Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group and former oil official in the George W. Bush administration. On his first day in office, Biden started the process of reinserting the United States into the Paris Agreement, undoing...

"And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it." - John 14:13-14Everyone struggles with prayer. Whether you are a life-long Christian or someone new to the faith, frustration with our prayer lives is common. We have all had experiences of praying for something or someone and finding little realization to our requests. Thomas Merton once wrote that, in prayer, we will always be nothing more than beginners (Merton, Contemplative Prayer). So, if you have ever...

Even to your old age, I am He, And even to gray hairs I will carry you! I have made, and I will bear; Even I will carry, and will deliver you.

The ex-president reflects on winning the award in his new memoir Former President Barack Obama was taken aback when he found out he was being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, asking "For what?" Details of the moment, along with tales of his political career, are outlined in his new book “A Promised Land," which was released on Tuesday. Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 from the Norwegian Nobel Committee for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people," amidst the backdrop of the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He jokes in the book that...

What would a Deep State hit be without Hillary Clinton, the most crooked woman in Washington DC? The Russian collusion canard failed so Adam Schiff, a Deep State snitch and their stenographers in the media are attacking President Trump with a new whistleblower ‘scandal.’ This new Deep State hit began effervescing last week when House Intel Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) subpoenaed Acting DNI Joseph Maguire and accused him of illegally withholding a whistleblower complaint from Congress that could potentially be ‘covering up the president’s misconduct’ over a phone call he had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

President Trump on Friday dismissed growing scrutiny over a whistleblower complaint that reportedly raised concerns about a conversation he had with a Ukrainian leader, saying the focus should instead be on Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's ties to Ukraine. "It doesn't matter what I discussed, but I'll tell you this, somebody ought to look into Joe Biden's statement," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office during a meeting with the Australian prime minister. Trump said he did not know who the whistleblower is, but derided the complaint as "partisan" and "ridiculous" and asserted that Biden is getting a pass because...

David Stephenson, store manager of Cedar City Deseret Industries, promised his team that if they met their sales goals, he would run at least 200 loops around the roundabout outside of their office—and he would do it in his work clothes: a shirt, tie, and slacks. “Where I work, we train individuals to get better jobs,” he explained. “They all face different challenges in their lives, so I’m always looking for any opportunity to show them that you can do hard things, even if some thing seem impossible—or not the smartest thing to do, in my case—you can still accomplish...

... Mr. Pollack believes that “political correctness killed Meadow.” A prominent villain in his narrative is Robert Runcie, who came to Broward from Chicago in 2011 as the superintendent of the county’s public schools. Mr. Runcie introduced a program called Promise—a feel-good acronym for Preventing Recidivism through Opportunities, Mentoring, Interventions, Support and Education—under which students who commit crimes in public schools would no longer be reported to the police by administrators. Under Promise, students would be evaluated and dealt with exclusively within the schools and their associated reform programs. Even felonies as severe as drug dealing, sexual assault and bringing...

The U.S. Department of Transportation last week announced the award of $616.9 million of Federal Aviation Administration Airport Improvement Program (AIP) grants for facilities in 45 states and four U.S. territories. This is the fourth allocation of this year's AIP funding of $3.18 billion. Awards typically range from a few thousand dollars to tens of millions and are determined according to each airport's activity and capital needs. The money goes toward maintenance, repair and new construction of taxiways, terminals and other airport infrastructure. Among the 408 airport infrastructure projects this round of funding will support are a noise mitigation initiative...

In mid-February of 2014, two 17-year-old Marjory Stoneman Douglas students assaulted a 14-year-old baseball player near the high school stadium. They kicked the boy, a police report said, held him to the ground and simulated a sexual assault through the teen's clothing with a baseball bat. One of the assailants was Broward Sheriff Scott Israel's son, Brett Israel, according to the incident report. When the attack was reported to authorities, Brett Israel and the other 17-year-old, Anthony Broderick, were not arrested. They were suspended from the Parkland high school for three days based on the school's conclusion that they had...

The he Broward school district’s repeated, emphatic — and it turns out, false — statements that Nikolas Cruz had not been in a controversial disciplinary program fit a pattern of an institution on the defensive and under siege. Facing significant legal and political exposure over the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the district has tried to keep information from the public and put out untrue and misleading statements, frustrating parents who say this is the time for maximum transparency.

Broward County schools, after over two months of claiming the opposite, admitted on Sunday that confessed Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz had been referred to the PROMISE Program. The PROMISE Program, an alternative discipline program designed to limit on-campus arrests, has been widely reported as ineffective and corrupt. It has come under intense scrutiny in the weeks since the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, but until Sunday, school officials were still denying that Cruz ever had any connection to that program.

Critics have slammed Broward County Public Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie all day amid news that — contrary to Runcie's repeated claims — Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter Nikolas Cruz was involved in the controversial Promise disciplinary program before becoming a mass killer. Now Runcie is pushing back by blaming scattered record-keeping and insisting he gave the best information he had at the time about Cruz's participation in Promise. In a phone interview with New Times this afternoon, the superintendent said the district keeps student data in multiple systems — sometimes only in paper files, which took time to review....

Sheriff admits Nikolas Cruz was in program that enabled classroom-to-casket pipeline. Florida’s Broward County School District revealed Sunday that Nikolas Cruz, who on February 14 gunned down 17 students and wounded 17 others, was part of the PROMISE program, “Preventing Recidivism through Opportunities, Mentoring, Intervention, Support, and Education.” The “Obama-era program” replaced a zero-tolerance policy with leniency toward student crime.  As district official Tracy Clark told reporters Sunday, Nikolas Cruz was referred to PROMISE in 2013 after he vandalized a bathroom at Westglades Middle School. The district had previously denied that Cruz was part of the program and called such reports...

Now is not the time for a bunt. This is the time to swing for the bleachers. I was a house painter for many years. In a profession famous for drunks who show up late, finish late, and inflate prices in between, I found that if I did what I said I was going to do when I said I was going to do it for the price agreed upon, I never ran out of work. As a matter of fact I was always the highest priced and most sought after painter in every market I ever entered with a...