Free Republic

US Attorney General Merrick Garland, who works for President Joe Biden, desperately wants the world to know that the government’s investigation of his boss’ son is utterly apolitical. America’s top law-enforcement official is so desperate, in fact, that he has appointed a special counsel to handle the case. That’s right. No mere employee of Garland’s US Department of Justice (DOJ) is going to be leading the criminal investigation of Hunter Biden. Garland on Friday assigned a special counsel to the case because he wanted to demonstrate to Americans the DOJ’s “commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters.”...

The convoluted congressional budget process has few fans. But the 1974 legislation that created today’s system did have one virtue: It reined in Richard Nixon’s claims that the president could simply refuse to spend congressionally appropriated money by “impounding” funds whenever he felt like it, as Kevin Kosar explained in Politico: Presidents since the founding had [refused to spend funds], including Lyndon Johnson. It seldom was a big deal, so long as the amounts were small, the rationales for impoundment were sound, and appropriators were consulted. Nixon, however, didn’t keep it small: He impounded tens of billions of dollars, often...

"When a world famous physicist rushed to post groundbreaking pictures from the new James Webb Space Telescope of a distant planet, the first ever taken of it, people sat up and took notice. And by default anything such a person said is given great deference. You don’t expect someone like that to post something you later discover was a joke all along. But his approximately 92000 followers on Twitter learned that is exactly what it was. In this case it wasn’t really harmful as after an hour of teasing them all about Spanish charcuterie not existing anywhere but Earth, and...

Update (1210ET): Following Blinken's earlier urging to focus on Russia's "actions" on the ground and "not just what it says" coming out of the Istanbul talks, some top officials are charging that Russia's potential "compromises" being offered are but a ploy to buy more time on the battlefield. Via Newswires: "Western official says nothing we have seen so far has demonstrated that Russia is particularly serious about peace talks and seems to be more of a tactical exercise to play for time." Concerning a draft ceasefire deal in the works, each side has confirmed they will return to their respective...

The full extent of an unprecedented FBI effort to beat the criminal underworld at its own encrypted-communications game became clearer Tuesday following a two-day takedown, with some 800 arrests worldwide and San Diego racketeering indictments against 17 high-level targets, according to federal authorities. Dubbed Operation Trojan Shield, the effort was largely led by FBI agents and federal prosecutors in San Diego who covertly created a closed-loop encryption cellphone service, called ANØM, and then convinced trusted voices already embedded in criminal syndicates to distribute the customized phones. The agents secretly read each message that poured in — 27 million in all....

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday vacated two lower court decisions that blocked the government from excluding illegal aliens during the process of allotting congressional seats While the Supreme Court's Dec. 18 decision will allow the Trump administration to pursue the policy of excluding illegal aliens from the apportionment base, the ruling stated: "Consistent with our determination that standing has not been shown and that the case is not ripe, we express no view on the merits of the constitutional and related statutory claims presented. We hold only that they are not suitable for adjudication at this time."

Interesting story, apparently some people are using some tactic to trick Amazon into sending calls to them first. I don't understand it all, and it links to a Bloomberg story, so I am not copying even Business Insider, just to be cautious, but feel free to link to the story. I am sure lots of FReepers understand it.

Desperate Democrats are looking to employ the prosecutorial dirty trick of overcharging President Trump with multiple articles of impeachment, reports the far-left Washington Post. What we have here, although the fake Washington Post will never say so, is Democrats once again playing politics with something as serious as impeaching a duly elected president, something as consequential as overturning a national election.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday suggested his planned meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un take place at the Peace House on the border between North and South Korea, the same site as Kim’s historic meeting last week with South Korea’s president. “Numerous countries are being considered for the MEETING, but would Peace House/Freedom House, on the Border of North & South Korea, be a more Representative, Important and Lasting site than a third party country? Just asking!” Trump wrote in a post on Twitter.

The torching of an African American church in Mississippi Tuesday evening has some people wondering if it could be the work of Hillary Clinton’s campaign dirty tricksters. Clinton campaign managers have been caught on tape bragging about hiring people to cause violence at Trump rallies. One Hillary operative even went so far as to fake being punched by an elderly man in the audience. The Clinton campaign has been described as “panicked” over the lack of enthusiasm in the African American community for the controversial candidate. People have suggested that the Clinton campaign might have hired someone to set fire...

Senate Bill 539, which would prohibit the naming of public buildings and roads in California after Confederate leaders, advanced from its sole policy committee Tuesday on a 7-1 vote. It heads next to the Assembly Appropriations Committee for fiscal consideration.

Has to be watched..BTW have a tissue ready

4 Girl Chair Trick!

So the question comes down to really the difference between being Persian, full blooded, and wanting to see Iran someday or calling yourself Mexican and maybe one day "returning" to Mexico, for a visit. How many Mexicans could possibly visit Mexico and return to America the country of the birth? Is there a parallel to Persians and Do called Mexicans?

Gav and Dan find an interesting way to destroy their bev bottles while showing off some cool science. Follow Gav on Twitter - https://twitter.com/GavinFree Follow Dan on Twitter - https://twitter.com/DanielGruchy Beer Bottle Cavitation at 2500fps - The Slow Mo Guys

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) Thursday (Nov. 21) will introduce the Cybersecurity Act of 2013. The act passed out of the Senate Commerce Committee unanimously in July and will now be attached as an amendment to the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act--the Defense Department's budget bill--with the blessing of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). The bill is supported by a number of industry groups, including the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, CTIA, and US Telecom. When the bill was introduced, NCTA praised that fact that while putting the National Institute of Standards and Technology's in charge of developing cybersecurity standards...

On the surface, the House GOP was in pep-rally mode as they headed into one of their most serious conflicts with President Obama since Republicans took the House in 2010. Lawmakers have been bragging about the unity behind closed doors since Speaker John Boehner embraced the strategy of trying to defund Obamacare through the government-funding bill. And at a rally after the vote, dozens of lawmakers cheered lustily as Majority Leader Eric Cantor delivered a remarkably political speech that specifically targeted a series of vulnerable Senate Democrats up for reelection. Underneath the surface, the same fault lines are still there...

"The White House, they had been so confident they were going to sign immigration reform this year, for the first time I'm hearing that there is some doubt seeping in, that they think maybe the House won't act. What they need is, they need something to sort of force Boehner like at the last minute bring it to the floor the same way the fiscal cliff deal happened. The problem is there is no trigger at the end of the year, there isn't the end of this Congress there isn't this. So I don't know how this happens at the...

I got a call from Lieutenant Monique Patterson, the cop caught in the love triangle between former chief Warren Evans and Ralph Godbee two years ago. She said she had some text messages showing that she had sex with Godbee in exchange for a promotion. One text message from Godbee to Patterson said, "I want you, I think you, I breathe you, I taste you, I smell you, need I go on?" Another text message from Godbee to Patterson read, "I need a face to face so you can see that I say what I say because I'm in LOVE...

Now even Bo, the nation’s first pup, is being used to raise money for his the reelection campaign of his owner, President Obama. Cute for sure, but not everybody’s wagging their tail over what is the first use of a presidential pet to raise campaign cash. On the Obama-Biden campaign website, Bo is featured because it is the third anniversary of his adoption. “It’s a promise Barack made to his daughters--that if he won the election in November 2008, he would buy them their long-awaited puppy. On April 14, 2009, Barack followed through on his promise to Malia and Sasha--the...