Free Republic

SALEM, N.H. – They’re both highlighting their ideas to curb gun violence as they run for the Democratic presidential nomination. But Beto O’Rourke says that Sen. Cory Booker’s new proposal to mandate the federal licensing of all gun owners goes too far. Asked by Fox News this week if he agreed with the U.S. senator from New Jersey, O’Rourke answered, “I don’t know that we need to take the additional step of licensing every single firearm to every single owner. I think that may be too far.”

Full speech...not edited as far as I can tell. Apologies if already posted. I'm learning.

From the moment the central claim of the Russiagate conspiracy was decimated by the Mueller report, Democrats have generated a series of manufactured outrages to keep the conspiracy dream alive. Why the theatrics? Well, the scope of the Trump “collusion” theory has radically contracted from its heyday. What was once “Donald Trump personally colluded with Vladimir Putin to steal the 2016 election for the Kremlin!” is now “Why won’t the attorney general release the entire unredacted version of a report that exonerates the president of collusion!” It doesn’t have quite the same bite.

It is a "constitutional crisis," says Jerry Nadler. President Trump is "self-impeaching," says Nancy Pelosi. "We should be putting people in jail," says another Democrat, Gerry Connolly. In the wake of the House Judiciary Committee citing William Barr for contempt, the Democrats are using increasingly fiery language against a president who seems determined to defy their subpoenas.

Late night host Jimmy Kimmel mocked Democratic lawmakers on Thursday night for their ongoing efforts to obtain President Trump's tax returns. Kimmel began by telling his audience about a bill that the New York state Senate passed Wednesday that would assist Congress in retrieving the president's tax records. "The New York state Senate yesterday passed a bill that would allow Congress to finally see Donald Trump's tax returns, which would mean... nothing. It will make no difference whatsoever," Kimmel said. "It's not that we don't know he's a fraud -- everyone knows that. The problem is half of America doesn't...

Anita Hill took aim at Joe Biden once again Thursday, arguing that the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct might have begun sooner if the Democratic Party's 2020 front-runner would have done a better job of handling her claims of sexual harassment against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas more than 30 years ago. Writing in the New York Times, Hill slammed the former vice president and U.S. senator from Delaware, who was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991 when Hill accused Thomas of sexual harassment during his Supreme Court confirmation process. “If the Senate Judiciary Committee, led then by...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday evening reiterated his edict that the case is closed when it comes to Russia, choosing not to publicly back a rogue subpoena from Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) when offered the opportunity by Fox News’s Sean Hannity. While McConnell was clear in restating his view that the case is closed, contradicting Burr’s rogue subpoena of President Donald Trump’s eldest son Donald Trump, Jr., he also did not criticize Burr. Hannity asked McConnell: “What is Senator Burr doing? Did he not hear your message?” In response, McConnell replied: Well, I think...

A civil rights attorney, local Democratic Party official and former San Francisco city supervisor is in hot water after repeatedly using the N-word during a public meeting last month. Angela Alioto has apologized but is facing calls for her removal from the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee over the incident during an April DCCC meeting with African-American union members. Without self-censoring, Alioto had used the N-word during that meeting while responding to a remark from an African-American woman about hearing the racial epithet in the workplace. “Full disclosure, I’m a civil rights trial lawyer,” Alioto said in a video...

Former FBI Director James Comey defended President Barack Obama's handling of Russian interference during the 2016 election, placing more blame on Republican lawmakers for not wanting to disclose Russia's involvement to the public sooner. During a televised town hall, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper asked Comey about President Trump's repeated criticism of his predecessor for not taking more action against Russia on his watch. "What should have been done more? Could more have been done? You were at the FBI at that point," Cooper said.

An indictment was unsealed today charging a former intelligence analyst with illegally obtaining classified national defense information and disclosing it to a reporter. Daniel Everette Hale, 31, of Nashville, Tennessee, was arrested this morning and will make his initial appearance today at the federal courthouse in Nashville. Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers, U.S. Attorney G. Zachary Terwilliger for the Eastern District of Virginia and Acting Special Agent in Charge Jennifer L. Moore of the FBI’s Baltimore Field Office made the announcement after the charges were unsealed. According to the indictment, Hale was enlisted in the U.S....

Insists that monitoring Clinton’s illicit use of private email ‘wasn’t really part of my job,’ but adds, ‘I wish she had used a State Department account’ (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released the transcript of a court-ordered deposition of Jacob “Jake” Sullivan, Hillary Clinton’s senior advisor and deputy chief of staff when she was secretary of state, in which the top staffer admits that both he and Clinton used her unsecure non-government email system to conduct official State Department business. A full transcript of the deposition is available here. Judicial Watch’s court-ordered discovery centered upon whether Clinton intentionally attempted...

About Ranked-choice voting (RCV) is a type of ranked preferential voting method used in single-seat elections with more than two candidates. How it works Ballots are initially counted for each voter's top choice. If a candidate has more than half of the vote based on first-choices, that candidate wins. If not, then the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. The voters who selected the defeated candidate as a first choice then have their votes added to the totals of their next choice. This process continues until a candidate has more than half of the votes. When the field is...

President Trump said the U.S. would move ahead with increasing tariffs on Chinese goods while leaving the door open for a trade deal. The U.S. increased tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods to 25% Friday as President Trump ratcheted up pressure on Beijing and threatened to impose additional levies on virtually everything China exports to the U.S. The tariff hike went into force hours after U.S. and Chinese negotiators met Thursday in hopes of getting the troubled trade talks back on track.

The Trump administration is hiking duties on $200 billion worth of Chinese products to 25% from 10%... Industries and businesses affected by the tariff hike will not feel the effect right away: it will apply to goods exported after May 10, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. It will not affect products already in transit to the United States. Trump has prepared to put even more pressure on China as he pushes for an agreement. The president has threatened to slap 25% tariffs on $325 billion in Chinese goods that remain untaxed.

7 minutes

FLORIDA NEWS: In the first 3 months of 2019, Republicans added 3,850 voters to the rolls, while democrats saw their numbers drop by 9,672.

A Spanish jihadist cell funded itself through tax fraud on chicken, cheese and chocolate sold in Denmark, according to an investigation published Tuesday led by non-profit European newsroom Correctiv. The cell had raised at least €8 million ($9 million) through the scheme since 2005 and spent it sending 24 Moroccans and two Spaniards to Syria, Mali and Libya to fight for the Islamic State group, said online newspaper El Confidencial, a Correctiv member. […] Through contacts with jihadists in Denmark, the group formed ties with 42 mainly Danish firms and managed to put its members or supporters in senior compnay...

Arabic-speaking ‘recruitment’ videos the British government made in the 1960s show a more tolerant nation than today’s hostile environment In the current climate of Islamophobia, I wonder how many British people are aware of a series of films made in the early 1960s, which were expressly designed to encourage people from Arab countries to come to Britain to work or study. The four films, all in Arabic, were made on behalf of the Foreign Office, and all begin with a mosque skyline and melodic chants of “Allahu Akbar”, the start of the Muslim call to prayer. They are unapologetically religious,...

Lucky for John Kerry that no one has ever been convicted (or even prosecuted since 1852) for violating the 18th-century Logan Act, which bars private diplomacy against US interests. Because what the former secretary of state has been doing to pressure President Trump against withdrawing from the Iran deal sure looks like a textbook violation. The Boston Globe reports that Kerry in recent weeks has engaged in “unusual shadow diplomacy” to “apply pressure on the Trump administration from the outside,” holding meetings and phone calls “below the radar” with Iranian and European leaders. Kerry doesn’t deny the meetings, but claims...

President Trump tore into James Comey on Thursday night, hours after the former FBI director suggested in a wide-ranging CNN town hall that he be prosecuted. Trump knocked Comey in a tweet as "a disgrace to the FBI" while predicting that he "will go down as the worst Director in its long and once proud history." "He brought the FBI down, almost all Republicans & Democrats thought he should be FIRED, but the FBI will regain greatness because of the great men & women who work there!" he added. The remarks were the latest salvo in the pair's fractious relationship...