Free Republic

With the fallout over Rep. Ilhan Omar’s controversial comments paralyzing House Democrats, Speaker Nancy Pelosi found herself on the floor Wednesday afternoon asking some of her closest allies what exactly she should do. For 20 minutes, Pelosi huddled with senior members of the Congressional Black Caucus — House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn of South Carolina and Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, and Karen Bass and Barbara Lee of California — to try to determine what kind of resolution the CBC would back that rejected Omar’s remarks about Israel without unfairly singling her out.

NEW YORK Privacy rights versus press freedoms took center stage Wednesday at an explosive federal appeals court hearing in New York, where lawyers argued to unseal confidential court files that could reveal evidence of an underage sex trafficking operation allegedly run by New York multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein and his partner, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reserved judgment in the case, but the panel suggested it was leaning toward the release to the public of vast portions of the court record. The file on the case, which was settled in 2017, contains more...

Zachary Greenberg, the man caught on video punching conservative activist Hayden Williams last month at the University of California at Berkeley, made his first court appearance Wednesday. The 28-year-old was arrested on Friday. Williams, who is a field representative for The Leadership Institute, was recruiting for the conservative group Turning Point USA at UC-Berkeley before he was attacked. Williams was standing next to a table with a sign that read, “Hate Crimes Hoaxes Hurt Real Victims,” talking about the case of actor Jussie Smollett, who is accused of staging a hate crime against himself in Chicago in January, KPIX reported....

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem (Old Testament) 1 Samuel 11 Saul Rescues the City of Jabesh 11 Nahash[a] the Ammonite went up and besieged Jabesh Gilead. And all the men of Jabesh said to him, “Make a treaty with us, and we will be subject to you.” 2 But Nahash the Ammonite replied, “I will make a treaty with you only on the condition that I gouge out the right eye of every one of you and so bring disgrace on all Israel.” 3 The elders of Jabesh said to him, “Give us seven days so we can send messengers throughout...

CNN has bungled another story that was based on leaks the network received while a House Intelligence Committee witness was testifying behind closed doors. CNN reported Wednesday that Michael Cohen provided documents during a House Intelligence deposition showing that President Donald Trump’s Russia lawyers made edits to false testimony the former Trump fixer gave to Congress in 2017. Cohen said in a public House Oversight Committee hearing last week that one of Trump’s lawyers, Jay Sekulow, made changes to the testimony. “There were changes made, additions — Jay Sekulow, for one,” Cohen said. “There were several changes that were made...

This is the last post I’m going to do on AOC, at least for this week…or until she does something else completely idiotic: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: 'I Am As Powerful As A Man' And It Drives Critics 'Crazy.Um, no, that’s not it. It’s the sort of man that you are “as powerful as” – the equally crazy, misguided and venal ones: Bernie, Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, Barack Hussein Obama – that drives us crazy. “The idea that a woman can be as powerful as a man is something that our society can’t deal with,“ the freshman Democrat from New York told...

WINNIPEG, Canada — Former President Barack Obama said Monday these are "challenging times" but he remains hopeful because of the next generation of leaders that he aims to guide. Touching on his "third act," the 44th president spoke of programs that have become a central pillar of his Obama Foundation and its $500 million presidential center project in Chicago. He told a packed arena at Bell MTS Place how he plans to create a "university for social change" that will serve as a hub for young people in the U.S. and around the world who are skeptical of the "old...

As Democrats line up to defend Rep. Ilhan Omar and come up with her excuses for her anti-Semitism, House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., tried to minimize her comments by arguing that she escaped violence in Somalia, so her experience was "more personal" than Jews who merely had parents survive the Holocaust. The Hill reports, "Clyburn came to Omar’s defense Wednesday, lamenting that many of the media reports surrounding the recent controversy have omitted mentioning that Omar, who was born in Somalia, had to flee the country to escape violence and spent four years in a Kenyan refugee camp...

Google’s senior director of U.S. public policy, Adam Kovacevich appeared to describe the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) as a “sideshow Circus,” in a leaked audio recording in which he also argued that Google should remain a sponsor of the conference to “steer” the conservative movement “away from nationalistic and incendiary comments.” The comments came to light in leaked audio files allegedly of a company-wide meeting at Google, part of which is now exclusively reported by Breitbart News. Another part of the transcript was released last Friday on Tucker Carlson Tonight, while further snippets revealing Google’s funding of establishment conservative...

Chris Stigall wasn’t on the radio this morning. His name was just scrubbed from the online schedule on the radio station’s website. And now Philly Mag has confirmed with 1210AM that Stigall no longer works there. The conservative talk show host was at the helm of 1210AM’s popular 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. weekday slot since 2010, when he came to Philadelphia from Kansas City.

The firestorm around Rep. Ilhan Omar’s recent tweets about the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and criticism of Israel has drawn attention to what language rises to the level of anti-Semitism, the shameful double standards for Muslims and people of color, and how anti-Semitism is often hypocritically used as a political bludgeon. GOP leadership has called for an official censure and her removal from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and House Democrats called for a resolution this week denouncing anti-Semitism after Omar recently tweeted, “I should not be expected to have allegiance/pledge support to a foreign country in order...

I'm doing a New York Non-Resident Tax Return and it is the most unfair tax law on non-residents I have seen in over 40 years of doing taxes. New York, with one of the highest tax rates in the USA computes your NY Tax by applying their high rate to all your income on the Federal Return and then allocating the tax based upon the percentage of NY income to total Federal income. The effect of this is to tax your out of state income at the New York higher tax rate which is illegal. Example: $8,500 income from wages...

ABC News has obtained audio of former White House Chief of staff John Kelly during a Wednesday appearance at Duke University in which he revealed that would have worked for Hillary Clinton if she had won the White House. During a Q&A session, Kelly was asked about a scenario in which Trump’s former Democratic rival had won the presidency and asked him to serve in her administration. “If Hillary Clinton had called me, I would have done it,” Kelly said. Kelly was also asked what advice he would give his successor Mik Mulvaney, to which Kelly quipped “run for it”...

An 84-year-old widow claims California officials are threatening to kick her out of a residence for veterans if she doesn't stop hosting a longtime Bible study. Artis Breau and her husband moved to the Veterans' Home of California in Yountville nine years ago. Breau's husband, who died a few years ago, served as a Merchant Marine, Army, in World War II and then, during the Korean War he served in the Air Force. The two met in the 1950s while she worked at the Pentagon as a civilian employee in the Office of the Chief of Staff of the Army...

Presidential candidates Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren have defended fellow Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar as she faces a wave of criticism following her controversial remarks about Israel. Omar, who is one of the first Muslim women in Congress, came under fire for suggesting last Friday that supporters of Israel were urging lawmakers to have 'allegiance to a foreign country'. The first-term Minnesota Congresswoman's repeated criticisms of Israel and a powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington have been widely condemned as anti-Semitic.

I’m all for new voices in the U.S. Congress. But, lately, some of those new voices have been voicing some very old canards. I’m talking about Representative Ilhan Omar, one of the newly elected Democrats who populate the 116th Congress. Omar has attracted much news coverage, and the condemnation of most of her fellow-Democrats, for promoting some ugly tropes about Jews.

(FRANKFORT, Ky.) – Today, the Bluegrass Institute called on the Kentucky General Assembly to censure Rep. Kelly Flood, D-Lexington, for disparaging comments she made during Tuesday’s meeting of the House Appropriations and Revenue Committee, which were directed toward supporters of scholarship tax-credit legislation which would allow poor and learning-disabled youngsters to attend private and parochial schools. “Effectively, you are asking the state to become your next major donor to raise approximately $25 million to reimburse donors who have a crisis of faith in contributing currently for the past 20 years, specifically in this state to private institutions that are funding...

“‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God’” (Matthew 5:8). Purity of heart is much more than sincerity. A motive can be sincere yet can easily lead to worthless and sinful things. The pagan priests who opposed Elijah demonstrated great sincerity when they lacerated their bodies to induce Baal to send fire down to consume their sacrifices (1 Kings 18:28). But their sincerity did not produce the desired results, and it did not enable them to see the error of their paganism because their sincere trust was in that very paganism. Even genuinely good deeds that do...

Remember when President Trump campaigned on a health care platform of eliminating "the lines around the states?" Well, that particular white whale has re-emerged. Driving the news: The Trump administration posted a 15-page document Wednesday asking for public comment on a range of questions related to the interstate sale of health insurance — including questions about using part of the Affordable Care Act to make that change. How it works: Critics see this as a backdoor way to deregulate insurance. If a patient in New York can buy a lightly regulated policy from Iowa, what good are New York's rules...