Free Republic

Tiangong-1, which has been orbiting Earth since September 2011, ceased functioning on March 16, 2016. To date, the spacecraft has maintained its structural integrity. The space lab's operational orbit is under constant and close surveillance by China. Its current average altitude is 217 miles (349 kilometers), but its orbit is decaying at a daily rate of approximately 525 feet (160 meters), according to the U.N. notification. ... The lab's re-entry is expected between October 2017 and April 2018, according to the U.N. The Aug. 2 notice from the Aerospace Corporation pegged re-entry as occuring in January 2018, with a margin...

Two Chinese tourists were arrested in Berlin for making Hitler salutes outside the German parliament on Saturday. Criminal proceedings have been started against the middle-aged men for using symbols from a banned organisation. The pair have been released on bail of €500 (£450; $600) each. Germany has strict laws on hate speech and symbols linked to Hitler and the Nazis. The men - aged 36 and 49 - could face a fine or a prison sentence of up to three years, according to police. ...snip.. A police spokeswoman told AFP news agency that the men could leave the country during...

Every few years, the media gets low on ammo and decides they’re going to make a collective push to talk about bringing a single-payer healthcare system to the United States. And every few years, people who understand economics and business have to point out to them that it won’t work. This is one of those times. What is Single-Payer Healthcare, Anyway? When a term gets used so frequently for so long, it’s easy for there to be some misunderstanding. While the idea of single-payer healthcare gets thrown around a lot, would you be surprised that many people don’t even...

<p>Mayor Bill de Blasio plans to push for a tax on wealthy New Yorkers to pay for improvements needed to address the crisis engulfing New York City’s subway, city officials said on Sunday, the latest salvo in the battle between Mr. de Blasio and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo over who bears responsibility for repairing the deteriorating transit system.</p>

It's been just a little over a year since the tarmac meeting between Bill Clinton and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch - the one in which they merely discussed grandchildren. Shortly after the meeting, the American Center for Law and Justice submitted a FOIA request to the Comey FBI requesting any documents relating to the meeting but were told that "no documents responsive to your request were found." What a difference a year makes. It turns out that hundreds of pages of documents existed, and they reveal a shocking coordination between the FBI and DOJ to downplay the meeting and the efforts of...

In a move that surprised many U.S. Catholics, Archbishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, head of the Vatican science and social science academies, announced an upcoming conference. It’s called “Security of Nations and Defending the Common Good: Immigration, National Sovereignty, and Citizenship.” The event will be held in Rome November 2-4. It will feature academics who study how to reduce the flow of people from one country to another. Also invited are specialists in border security and wall construction. Keynote addresses feature several leading Republican politicians from Texas who back Donald Trump’s immigration policies. Sorondo defended the move, saying: The Church clearly...

Recorded temperatures at the Bureau­ of Meteorology’s Thredbo Top automatic weather station have dropped below -10C in the past week, after action was taken to make the facility “fit for ­purpose”. A record of the Thredbo Top station for 3am on Wednesday shows a temperature reading of -10.6C. This compares with the BoM’s monthly highlights for June and July, both showing a low of -9.6C. The BoM said it had taken immed­iate action to replace the Thredbo station after concerns were raised that very low temperatures were not making it onto the official record. Controversy has dogged the bureau’s automatic...

When Huey Long was running for office in Louisiana, he told crowds that as a boy on Sunday mornings, he would hitch the family horse to a buggy to take his Catholic grandparents to Mass and then ferry his Baptist grandparents to church. When a surprised friend said, "I didn't know you had any Catholic grandparents," Long replied: "Don't be a damn fool. We didn't even have a horse." Long was governor and a U.S. senator in the 1920s and '30s, an innocent age when politicians carefully rationed their lies, dispensing them for specific purposes and striving to keep them...

Mark Kent, Lyndia Kent and Red Smith discuss the 11 California Counties that have more registered voters than residents

Antifa’s activists say they’re battling burgeoning authoritarianism on the American right. Are they fueling it instead? Since 1907, Portland, Oregon, has hosted an annual Rose Festival. Since 2007, the festival had included a parade down 82nd Avenue. Since 2013, the Republican Party of Multnomah County, which includes Portland, had taken part. This April, all of that changed. In the days leading up to the planned parade, a group called the Direct Action Alliance declared, “Fascists plan to march through the streets,” and warned, “Nazis will not march through Portland unopposed.” The alliance said it didn’t object to the Multnomah GOP...

Baltimore activists' attempt for a murder-free weekend proved to be too much to ask of the city, with at least three people shot, two of them killed, in less than 72 hours since guns were ordered to be put down.  Activist Erricka Bridgeford promoted the campaign as a "Baltimore ceasefire" and "Nobody kill anybody" weekend that began on Friday and ends Sunday night, garnering the support of thousands on social media since May. The city made it through Friday with no shootings reported, drawing hope from participants the campaign might see some success. But by Saturday, two men -- ages...

It is little wonder that people like the Obamas, the Clintons, Justin Trudeau, Theresa May, Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron and the growing, elite group of emerging, 'socialist' kings and queens are all real tight buddies What made America the greatest economic and social powerhouse in the world was the ability to work for what you want and to enjoy the fruit of that labor. It is called incentive. Karl Marx loved to sit in coffee shops and whirl out plans for a government that he had no intention of living under. In his spare time he constructed a long, drawn...

Former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein has weighed in on North Korea’s ballistic missile tests and has a message for dictator Kim Jong-Un – It’s not you, it’s us. In a series of media appearances, Stein has come to the defense of the rogue nation insisting they are victims of American propaganda and have been “cornered” into pursuing a nuclear weapons program. “The demonization of North Korea is part of the run-up to regime change. It’s part of demonizing a government that we then want to exercise regime change on,” Stein said Sunday in an interview on MSNBC. Taken...

Gallup's job creation index at +37 in July—a record high Optimism for small-business owners about their business situation is at the highest level seen in a decade, according to a poll from Gallup. Business owners were asked about their current business situation and how they felt about their businesses' future. While business owners are historically more positive about the future than their current situation, the results from this poll show a large uptick in how businesses feel about their current situation. "The overall increase in the index this quarter is mainly the result of an uptick in present situation...

If you've spent any time at a major conservative event where Fox News is in attendance, you'll see what could be considered a hooker convention. That's not to say that there aren't women who are dressed and act conservatively, but for the most part the women there look like they're for sale, and if you spend any time watching Fox News, you'll see what they're looking for. Women bleach their hair blonde because that's what the higher ups believe their viewers want to see. It appears the woman behind numerous allegations at FNC is a lebisan activist named Caroline Heldman...

The 2001 discovery of the seven million-year-old Sahelanthropus, the first known upright ape-like creatures, was yet more proof of humanity’s place among the great apes. And yet Mike Pence, then a representative and now US vice president, argues for the opposite conclusion.For him, our ideas about our ancestors have changed, proving once more that evolution was a theory, and therefore we should be free to teach other theories alongside evolution in our classrooms. How to respond? The usual answer is that we should teach students the meaning of the word “theory” as used in science – that is, a hypothesis...

Previously, we have written how important it is to restructure our health insurance system after the dishonest, unnecessary and destructive law passed by a fully-partisan vote known as Obamacare. We have defined the fact that this is a team effort by Republicans which would orient the insurance market back toward consumer choice and save us from a downward spiral toward government control over the entirety of our healthcare system, handing over the future of our individual health to faceless know-it-all bureaucrats. Yet despite that, three senators -- Murkowski, Collins and McCain -- vainly thought they were wiser than everyone else...

President Trump claims California allowed millions of noncitizens to vote in the 2016 elections. This allegation, while totally bogus, has put California on the defensive as Trump and his allies use the lie to justify a new federal commission devoted to making it harder for all Americans to vote. Californians should go on offense — by embracing Trump’s ugly lie and transforming it into a beautiful civic truth. Let’s make our state more democratic — by guaranteeing California’s noncitizens the right to vote in local and state elections.

The Television Critics Awards last night apparently had some drama after all. According to a Tweet from Ellen Thompson, the wife of TV Line’s Dave Nemetz, actress Elisabeth Moss– a Scientologist since birth — walked out of the room when Leah Remini won the award for reality TV. Remini’s A&E TV series “Aftermath” tells the story of how brutally Scientology has treated its followers. Moss has never been a vocal Scientologist, unlike Tom Cruise, John Travolta and a number of other celebrities. She’s kept it mostly to herself. But Remini’s series obviously hit a sore spot for her. Here are...

The Huffington Post’s Yashar Ali reported Friday that FOX News’ Eric Bolling sent numerous female co-workers lewd text messages. Bolling has since been suspended and now Yashar reports law firm, Paul Weiss, will investigate the matter. The firm has raised campaign funds for Hillary Clinton and Obama officials, such as former DHS Chief Jeh Johnson“Breaking: Per Fox News Spokesperson, Eric Bolling has been suspended. An investigation will be conducted by law firm Paul Weiss,” tweeted Ali.Washington Free Beacon reports: The firm, Paul, Weiss, has long been tied to the Clinton family, with its employees donating hundreds of thousands to its...