Free Republic

Mayor Ted Wheeler’s decision to pull police officers from area high schools ranks as a relatively modest change on the long list of reforms needed to build public confidence in Portland Police. While the removal of school resource officers will affect three Portland-area school districts, it doesn’t address criticisms over police bias and lack of accountability that black Portlanders have highlighted for decades. It shows that the objections students lodged more than a year ago with the Portland School Board over schools’ relationship with Police are gaining traction today. And the decision, announced as protests over the police killing of...

Sad to say, the Reading Wars continue in the USA. Millions of children are made to memorize sight-words, a proven road to illiteracy. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of websites, continue to assert things that are the opposite of truth. For example, we are told that English isn’t a phonetic language and students have no choice but to memorize the vast English language one sight-word at a time. Nonsense, as Rudolf Flesch famously explained in his 1955 bestseller "Why Johnny Can't Read.” Why does this destructive charade go on? The official experts continue to disorient the public with incorrect theories, fake research,...

The future of many climate change and renewable energy projects across the United States is in serious doubt as states slash budgets due to the fallout from the CCP virus crisis. With fiscal black holes looming and taxation and other income having been decimated, state governors look set to cut back where they can to ensure the provision of essential services. Rebates for EVs and funding for renewables such as wind and solar are at the top of the chopping list.< A prime example is California. Gov. Gavin Newsom faces a $54 billion budget shortfall due to the CCP (Chinese...

Socialism or capitalism for health care? We know that leftists root for the former. They are fools to do so. I've been practicing medicine for over 30 years under various economic systems. The V.A. I worked at is almost a liberty- free, hard-left system, with doctors and patients grinding through the day under piles of government laws regarding when, where, how much, and who will get medical care. The waste and inefficiencies are in plain sight there. Its socialist organization is why thousands of our precious veterans have died prematurely or suffered intolerable waits for the expensive and generally mediocre...

The National Football League has said players should be allowed to protest during the national anthem as rallies against racial discrimination continue. "We were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest," NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said. The NFL had previously banned players from dropping to one knee, a practice started by Colin Kaepernick in 2016. In a video, Mr Goodell denounced racism in the US in comments that came shortly after a number of players urged the NFL to take a stronger stance on racism and police brutality in the...

At first blush, the George Floyd riots appear to have little to do with socialism. After all, socialism is about government control, while the riots — instigated by leftist agitators affiliated with antifa — claim to oppose the “fascism” of police abuses. Yet bestselling author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza explains the connection in his new book released Tuesday, United States of Socialism: Who’s Behind It. Why It’s Evil. How to Stop It (a documentary is coming soon). In an interview with PJ Media, D’Souza explained how socialism morphed into an identity politics movement, how it relates to antifa, and why...

The hypocrisy of mega-rich celebrities calling for reparations for slavery is astonishing. Black Entertainment Television Founder Robert Johnson, as summarized by CNBC, said that the “U.S. government should provide $14 trillion of reparations for slavery to help reduce racial inequality.” He’s currently worth an estimated $550 million.

The Hague (AFP) - Thousands of protesters rallied in the Dutch and Irish capitals on Monday against the death of a black man during an arrest by police in the United States. Defying coronavirus restrictions, demonstrators in both Amsterdam and Dublin carried signs saying "Black Lives Matter", referring to the death of George Floyd in Minnesota. The protests that have roiled US cities for six nights have now spread around the world, with rallies as far afield as London and New Zealand. Around 3,000 protesters packed Dam Square in the centre of Amsterdam, standing close together despite coronavirus social distancing...

If I am not mistaken, the two great Catholics in Australian history, in terms of seniority as Catholics, are Cardinal George Pell and St Mary of The Cross. I don’t think what was done to Pell was as bad as what the English and their fellow travelling freedom haters did to Joan of Arc., but there are interesting parallels. If you know the story of Ned Kelly, you will know how Victoria Police have always had an English anti freedom streak deep within them. The police force of the Socialist Left Government of Premier Daniel Andrews elevated the corrupting PC...

Beware America. The nanny state is real in Victoria, Australia. They think government can replace freedom. They employ ten people to do work that didnt need ten people and then those people get in everybody's way and break their own laws. They want a utopia where there is no death, but if God sends a plague people are going to die. I am not saying that getting the balance right between "safety" and the economy is easy. But I believe in freedom. The false safeties of socialist parasites make me sick.

The coronavirus pandemic has prompted the United Nations to delay until late 2021 a crucial climate summit that had been scheduled for Britain this year, officials said on Thursday. This year’s meeting, known as the COP26 summit, had been billed as the most important climate change summit since the 2015 talks that produced the Paris Agreement. Hundreds of world leaders had been expected to respond to public pressure for stronger global climate action by delivering pledges to slash greenhouse gas emissions more rapidly. The summit will be rescheduled to Nov. 1 to 12, 2021, the UN’s climate body decided, dates...

The European Union’s chief diplomat suggested Monday that China was supplanting the United States as the world's No. 1 superpower and urged European countries to develop a united strategy for dealing with Beijing. "We only have a chance if we deal with China with collective discipline,” EU High Representative Josep Borrell told colleagues at virtual gathering of German diplomats, according to The Associated Press. “We need a more robust strategy for China, which also requires better relations with the rest of democratic Asia,” added Borrell, the former Spanish foreign minister.

Venezuela, a country already in crisis, is preparing for the looming coronavirus pandemic. The price of food has increased by 80% since lockdown and fuel is being rationed. It's unheard of in a country that sits on the world's largest oil reserves

The World is under attack from something much worse than the Corona Virus: It is under attack from a Socialism Mind Virus. Dennis Prager calls the actions taken against the ChiCom virus as ‘the greatest mistake in the history of humanity’. I find it hard to come up with a counter example. The Income Tax amendment is what I consider the worst mistake America has ever made but it was not worldwide. With so many economies pounded into the dirt I have little doubt more will die because of the actions taken than will die of the actual virus....

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Five Iranian tankers likely carrying at least $45.5 million worth of gasoline and similar products are now sailing to Venezuela, part of a wider deal between the two U.S.-sanctioned nations amid heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington. The tankers' voyage came after Venezuela's socialist leader Nicolás Maduro already turned to Iran for help in flying in chemicals needed at an aging refinery amid a gasoline shortage, a symptom of the wider economic and political chaos gripping Latin America's one-time largest oil producer. For Iran, the tankers represent a way to bring money into its...

Melony Wagner, owner of the Charles Village Pub in Baltimore, reports that her effort to reopen are being impeded by employees refusing to return to work. "The unemployment benefits augmented by the federal stimulus money they're getting exceeds the amount they made in wages and tips before we were ordered to shutdown," she said. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) boasted that "this restaurant example vindicates what I've been saying for years. Unemployment compensation is a better source of income than jobs. This may be inconvenient for people like Ms. Wagner, but it is her own fault for trying to operate...

Sweden has taken the rap for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Pictures taken from a certain angle of busy parks and bars, showing Swedes basking in the sunshine after a long, wet winter, suggest many people, especially the young, are carrying on as usual. Nothing could be further from the truth. "There is a view in the British tabloids and some other media that life in Sweden is normal, and that Sweden is pursuing a coronavirus strategy based on developing herd immunity, but this is wrong," says James Savage, CEO, and Publisher of The Local, the English digital newspaper...

President Trump and 50 governors now face a critical choice. Since March 16, 33 million Americans have filed for unemployment, and more than 83,000 American deaths have been attributed to the COVID-19 virus. So what to do? How many more weeks, months, or even years should current sheltering-in-place orders continue? When can or should they be lifted? The administration’s virus taskforce has recommended only a gradual lifting of stay-at-home orders and has established criteria for full re-opening that could take months to satisfy in many states. Yet Trump also insisted that even though “some people [will] be affected badly. ....

Rush Limbaugh said these next four months are going to be a "veritable war" like we have not seen.... On the Tuesday broadcast of his nationally-syndicated radio program, Limbaugh said Democrats will (SNIP) blow up their own country's jobs to ensure a Trump loss in November. RUSH LIMBAUGH: I’ll tell you something else that’s starting to send red flags up. You probably have already noticed this. All these blue state governors that want to keep their states locked down, it’s purely political. But what are they depending on? They’re depending on the red states — the red states that are...

Senate Judiciary Committee Member John Kennedy, R-La., channeled actor Jack Nicholson Tuesday to describe his response to the latest coronavirus stimulus bill pushed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. "Go sell crazy somewhere else, we're all stocked up here," Kennedy told "Hannity," quoting Nicholson's character Melvin Udall in the 1997 movie "As Good As It Gets."