Free Republic

Angela Merkel’s immigration policy was given a largely positive assessment by the Expert Council of German Foundations on Integration and Migration (SVR), though one of its members described the confusing situation at the European level as a “catastrophe.” The panel of nine academics from various fields appeared together at a press conference in Berlin on Tuesday to present their annual migration report. It evaluated policy developments of the past few years, particularly those in response to the so-called “refugee crisis” of 2015-16, when more than one million individuals, mainly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, sought asylum in Germany. The report’s...

A group of North Korean defectors was seen on video being harassed by two men for wearing “Make America Great Again” hats in D.C. In the now-viral video, one man is seen ripping the red hat off another man’s head and throwing it in the air. Another man then stomps on the hat and rips another hat off another man’s head. The video was posted on Twitter last week by a rapper who goes by “Bigalow Black,” but it was deleted after conservative news outlet PJ Media reported the story, the outlet reported. “Not Around Here Pimp…Ain’t None Of That...

Former FBI director James Comey said Thursday that he thinks President Trump likely has committed crimes that could be cause for indictment once he leaves office and, were he not president, likely would already have been indicted. In a CNN town-hall-style meeting, Mr. Comey was asked by host Anderson Cooper whether Mr. Trump acted with corrupt intent to interfere with an ongoing investigation. “It sure looks that way,” Mr. Comey replied, saying he based that judgment on his reading of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report and leaning most heavily on Mr. Trump’s order to White House Counsel Don McGahn to...

The “Donald Trump/Mike Pence Prayer Vigil” and “Heroes and Nation Prayer Thread” have combined to form the AMERICA PRAYER VIGIL prayer thread! Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for our President and Vice President and for AMERICA: Government, Family, Military, Business, Education, Churches, and the Media. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 1 JOHN 5:14 Religion Forum threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind. What You Need To Know About VE Day (May 8, 1945) Winston Churchill- Their Finest Hour Speech...

Kenosha, WISCONSIN: At about 3:00 PM Thursday, Kenosha Sheriff, Police, and Fire Department personnel responded to a residence in the 10900 block of 66 Street for a report of two people shot.Officers located two victims, a 16 year old female and a 39 year old female, with injuries consistent with gun fire. Officers extracted both females from the residence in an effort to get them medical attention. Despite medical efforts the 16 year-old female died on scene; the 39 year-old female was transported to a local hospital and is in serious, but stable condition.

President Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani says he plans to travel to Ukraine in the coming days in an attempt to push for investigations that he says could benefit Trump. Giuliani told The New York Times in a Thursday interview that he plans to ask the country's president-elect to look into the origin of the federal Russia probe as well as former Vice President Joe Biden's past influence on the country. "We’re not meddling in an election, we’re meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do,” the Trump lawyer asserted. “There’s nothing illegal about it,” he added....

Special Counsel Robert Mueller spent more than $732,000 on outside contractors, including private investigators and researchers, records show, but his office refuses to say who they were. While it’s not unusual for special government offices to outsource for services such as computer support, Mueller also hired contractors to compile “investigative reports” and other “information." The arrangement has led congressional investigators, government watchdog groups and others to speculate that the private investigators and researchers who worked for the special counsel’s office might have included Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS, the private research firm that hired Steele to produce the Russia collusion...

HIGHLANDS RANCH, Colorado, May 9, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – One of the teenagers accused of perpetrating Tuesday’s shooting at a public charter school outside Denver is a gender-confused girl while the other has a history of anti-Trump and anti-Christian social media postings, according to news reports that continue to surface about the developing story. The shooting took place at STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Math) School Highlands Ranch and left one student dead and eight injured, NPR reports. "This is something that no one wants to have happen in their community," Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock said. "Two individuals walked into...

Security video recorded a woman shoving a 74-year-old man with a walker off a public transit bus in Las Vegas after he asked her to be nice to other passengers, and she's facing a murder charge after the man died, according to court documents

When the head of Twitter's public policy department told the Senate he'd do more on conservative censorship, making it worse wasn't what most leaders had in mind! Unfortunately, that's exactly what seems to be happening -- to pro-lifers, Trump supporters, and even popular parody accounts. Three weeks ago, Carlos Monje Jr. was apologetic for the mistakes Twitter had made. A month later, he has a lot more to be sorry for. Their stories are different, but several victims of Twitter's bias have one thing in common: no one explained why. Mike Morrisson, who's been running a popular "AOC Press" account...

We are very sad that any law enforcement officer would face threats for doing his or her job and we are distressed that the Michigan attorney general has suffered in this way. https://twitter.com/kenkolker/status/1126550761910018050/video/1 We hope Michigan's bishops quickly and harshly condemn this hatred. Violence is never the answer. For decades, police and prosecutors who pursued clerics who commit and conceal child sex crimes have been stonewalled, and Church officials have contributed to the unhealthy atmosphere that leads to threats of violence. While the Church hierarchy often postures as being the victims of governmental overreach, the reality is that they were often treated with too much deference in the...

Very funny video....Hillary going to jail ala Orange is the New Black. Orange is the New Democrat

The FBI’s sworn story to a federal court about its asset, Christopher Steele, is fraying faster than a $5 souvenir T-shirt bought at a tourist trap. Newly unearthed memos show a high-ranking government official who met with Steele in October 2016 determined some of the Donald Trump dirt that Steele was simultaneously digging up for the FBI and for Hillary Clinton’s campaign was inaccurate, and likely leaked to the media. The concerns were flagged in a typed memo and in handwritten notes taken by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec on Oct. 11, 2016. Her observations were recorded exactly...

The reusable robotic vehicle, which looks like a miniature version of NASA's space shuttle orbiters, launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Sept. 7, 2017. It's unclear what exactly the spacecraft is doing up there. X-37B missions are classified, and Air Force officials tend to speak of project goals in general terms, as this excerpt from the X-37B fact sheet shows: "The primary objectives of the X-37B are twofold: reusable spacecraft technologies for America's future in space and operating experiments which can be returned to, and examined, on Earth." Still, the Air...

A US national Wednesday pleaded guilty to the charges of helping and supporting Pakistan-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba involved in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Michael Kyle Sewell, 18, who was arrested in February, admitted to encouraging an individual, identified in court documents only as coconspirator 1, to join Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). He now faces up to 20 years in federal prison and a fine of up to USD 250,000. The sentencing is scheduled for August 12. According to the guilty plea, Sewell provided the coconspirator, who he spoke to on social media, with contact information for an individual he believed could...

Soon after the November attack at Ohio State University, we learned the Somali Muslim perpetrator had been welcomed to the United States as a refugee by Catholic Charities of Dallas. This bit of news caught my attention because years ago I worked there for a brief time. In the early 1990s after graduating from college, I served there for a year as part of a volunteer stipend program, helping immigrants caught here illegally prepare their cases for immigration court. My roommates worked on the refugee resettlement side, helping newly arrived families with refugee status...

Former FBI Director James Comey said Thursday that "it sure looks like" President Donald Trump had criminal intent to commit obstruction of justice during special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. At a CNN town hall in Washington, Anderson Cooper asked Comey whether, based on the redacted version of Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, he believed Trump had criminal intent to commit obstruction. "It sure looks like he did, in connection with a couple episodes -- the direction to (former White House counsel) Don McGahn to get the special counsel fired is to my mind a flaming example"...

A judge sentenced an Oregon man to federal prison Monday for attempting to bribe an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer into deporting his estranged wife and stepdaughter. Antonio Oswaldo Burgos, 48, met and married his wife in El Salvador. The couple, along with the woman’s daughter, eventually moved to Portland, Oregon. Their relationship began to deteriorate, however, and the two started the process of divorce by spring 2018, The Washington Post reported. It was during this time that Burgos devised a plan against his soon-to-be ex-wife.

Department of Energy's scientists announced this week that they have designed a plastic that can be recycled over and over again. Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory wrote in Nature Chemistry that they had designed new plastic, called polydiketoenamine or PDK, that could be disassembled down to the molecular level and reassembled into different shapes, textures or colors multiple times. Modern-day plastics are reinforced with chemicals to make them more resilient and often end up making the material more difficult to fully recycle. ..... < snip > < snip > ..... Even the most recyclable plastic is only being...

WikiLeaks source Chelsea Manning was released from Virginia jail Thursday more than two months since being found in contempt for refusing to testify in front of a federal grand jury. Manning has been served with another subpoena to testify next week, however, and could be held again in contempt again and jailed accordingly, her legal team said in a statement. “Today marked the expiration of the term of the grand jury, and so, after 62 days of confinement, Chelsea was released from the Alexandria Detention Center earlier today,” her lawyers said late Thursday. “Unfortunately, even prior to her release, Chelsea...