Free Republic

If there is any doubt about the scope of how children are being used as pawns in the migrant surge, take a look at this story from the Washington Examiner: In a pilot program, approximately 30% of rapid DNA tests of immigrant adults who were suspected of arriving at the southern border with children who weren't theirs revealed the adults were not related to the children, an official involved in the system's temporary rollout who asked to be anonymous in order to speak freely told the Washington Examiner Friday

Full Headline: A Billionaire Commencement Speaker at a Georgia College Announced That He Will Pay Off the Class of 2019's Student Loan A billionaire commencement speaker at Georgia's Morehouse college announced he would be paying off the graduating class's student loans. Robert F. Smith, a technology investor and philanthropist who's CEO and chairman of Vista Equity Partners, told the 400-member Class of 2019 in his Sunday speech at the all-male historically black college that he would be creating a grant to wipe the graduates' student debt. "My family is going to create a grant to eliminate your student loans," Smith,...

Anti-money-laundering specialists at Deutsche Bank recommended in 2016 and 2017 that multiple transactions involving legal entities controlled by Donald J. Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, be reported to a federal financial-crimes watchdog. The transactions, some of which involved Mr. Trump’s now-defunct foundation, set off alerts in a computer system designed to detect illicit activity, according to five current and former bank employees. Compliance staff members who then reviewed the transactions prepared so-called suspicious activity reports that they believed should be sent to a unit of the Treasury Department that polices financial crimes. But executives at Deutsche Bank, which has...

Looking for experienced-based recommendations on vacuum food sealers. 1. brand and models 2. size(s) 3. why I need/don't need the hand-held vacuum attachment 4. bag sizes that make sense a. primary use case is dry goods b. if you recommend, I will also try wet foods. 5. brand and size oxygen absorbers 6. brands to avoid And whatever other gems you might have from doing this yourself. This will be our first step into truly LONG-term food storage. One of the goals is using a vacuum sealer (aside from shelf-life) is to reduce the cubic volume required to store what's...

Market manipulation could be behind the fact that California drivers pay more for gasoline than the rest of the country, the Lost Angeles Times reports, citing a statement by the California Energy Commission. “The Energy Commission has identified a number of possible causes that could explain the residual price increase in California, ranging from refinery outages to potentially market manipulation,” the statement, sent to Governor Gavin Newsom, said. The commissions said it has identified several possible reasons for the fact that as of Friday, drivers in California paid an average of US$4.05 per gallon of gasoline, which was US$1.20 higher...

Speculation has been mounting in France over the role former U.S. presidential aide Steve Bannon is playing in the European election. The ruling party of President Emmanuel Macron has expressed unease over Bannon’s support for the leader of the far-right party Rassemblement National (National Rally), Marine Le Pen. The head of Macron's La Republique En Marche (LREM) campaign, Stéphane Séjourné, tweeted that Bannon was behind “an attack on the sovereignty of the election... it makes you want to throw up.” Nathalie Loiseau, who heads the LREM candidate list for the elections, said, “[Bannon] does not even hide his desire to...

San Francisco is the nation’s leader in property crime. Burglary, larceny, shoplifting, and vandalism are included under this ugly umbrella. The rate of car break-ins is particularly striking: in 2017 over 30,000 reports were filed, and the current average is 51 per day. Other low-level offenses, including drug dealing, street harassment, encampments, indecent exposure, public intoxication, simple assault, and disorderly conduct are also rampant. Many in law enforcement blame the crime wave on Proposition 47, which in 2014 downgraded possession of illegal narcotics for personal use and theft of anything under $950 in value from felonies to misdemeanors. Anti-incarceration advocates...

Republican Congressman Justin Amash said President Trump deserves to be impeached. A closer look at the representative’s finances, however, show his motives may be personal. One America’s Joseph Dupnik has more. See video at https://youtu.be/u9gAOOGQqmc From Wikipedia: "Born in Grand Rapids, and raised in Kentwood, Michigan, Amash is the son of a Palestinian Christian father and a Syrian Christian mother.[2]" Amash ran for the Michigan House of Representatives in 2008 in Michigan's 72nd House District. During this time, he donated to the campaigns of Congressman Ron Paul and John McCain.

It is a common theme in our post-Christian age to tar the early Church with certain atrocities against philosophy and science. One of the accusations most commonly trotted out is that the Christians burned the world-famous library at Alexandria. This "perniciously persistent" myth is tidily demolished by David Bentley Hart in a 2010 article in First Things. But even if the myth were true, the Roman Christians had a model to follow in that Hellenistic pagans themselves consigned Christian books to the flames during the persecutions. For a period of about eight years in the early 4th century AD, it...

Hollywood has-been Jim Carrey has moved from rabidly opposing guns, which kill guilty people at least sometimes, to rabidly supporting abortion, which kills only innocent people. His latest contribution to the national debate is a cartoon of an unborn baby, sporting Alabama governor Kay Ivey's face and a thumbs-up, just about to get sucked out of the womb by an abortionist's vacuum aspirator.  The business end of the tool is already pulling at the skin on Ivey-baby's face, making it easy for the viewer to imagine the skin coming off, followed by the brain, with arms and legs to follow....

Vice correspondents Lani Levine and Elle Reeve have been accused of breaking into a bedroom in the Philippines home of 8Chan owner Jim Watkins with a camera crew. The accusation was made by the verified 8Chan Twitter account, which said that the reporters and their crew entered Watkin’s bedroom before being ordered out of the property. Reeve is best known for her work in the Charlottesville documentary for Vice News. Earlier this month Vice published an article about 8Chan referring to it as the place where “racists get radicalized.” “Sites like 8chan and others where racists can get radicalized online...

Billionaire investor Robert F. Smith's commitment to pay off the student loan debt for graduates of the historically black Morehouse College covers millions of dollars, the school said. "When you have to service debt, the choices about what you can go do in the world are constrained," Morehouse President David A. Thomas said Sunday. "(Smith's gift) gives them the liberty to follow their dreams, their passions." Thomas told CNN on Monday that the exact amount of student loan debt to be covered was still being calculated. Smith's gesture, which Thomas called "a liberation gift," will enable graduates to have more...

This is a subject we’ve been tackling here for a while now. With the advent of Uber, Lyft and other gig-economy outfits, a lot of pressure has been put on taxi drivers that don’t deliver a similar quality of service. Part of the resulting economic distress has come from a simple lack of customers, but the problem runs deeper than that. Under the traditional, corrupt system of taxi “medallions,” the municipal government has been able to regulate how many people are able to attempt to earn a living by offering rides. In exchange, they had to pay an increasing amount...

[Catholic Caucus] Blessed Are The Unbalanced? by Ed Faust “…the Gospel — I believe you understand me — is an ‘unbalanced’ doctrine.” – Pope Francis, May 10 address to diocesan assembly in Rome.Pope Francis believes we understand him, but his faith in this respect is hardly justified, for there has never been a pope who has said more, and said it with less clarity, than the present one. There has grown up around Francis a cottage industry of interpreters who try to make sense of his daily vagaries and obscurities.Part of the difficulty in understanding Francis arises from his lack...

THE earliest-known work of art created by Michelangelo when the Italian artist was just 12 years old has been discovered. The sketch, which depicts a robed man in a chair, was identified by leading Italian Renaissance scholar Sir Timothy Clifford. Sir Clifford believes the legendary artist, who painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling and carved the statue of David in marble, created the work when he was just a young child. Describing it as “the earliest drawing efforts of a youth who would one day emerge as one of the most remarkable artists that has ever lived,” Sir Clifford thinks it...

The world's crankiest cat, whose permanent scowl inspired countless memes, a best-selling series of books and a movie, has passed away at the age of seven. Grumpy Cat - real name Tardar Sauce - shot to fame in 2012 in a YouTube video that received 15.7 million views, and went on to amass a $100M fortune for her former-waitress owner Tabatha Bundesen. But her family from Morristown, Arizona, took to Instagram this morning to announce the news that she'd died on Tuesday from a urinary tract infection, saying: 'Some days are grumpier than others'. The internet sensation was born with...

Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan says he enlists social media to do something unusual: explain why he bucks his party in terms his constituents can understand. The 39-year-old Republican, who was the youngest member of the freshman class in 2011, states his approach succinctly: “I defend liberty and explain every vote here.” The simple formula has turned the libertarian, who rode into the House on the tea party wave, into something of a sensation. In 2012, the Independent Voter Network called Amash the “coolest member of Congress.” Amash’s latest decision — to state publicly that President Trump engaged in activity...

The Left and mainstream political science identify Italian fascism and German National Socialism as right-wing ideologies. Their motivation is clear: they do not want to be associated with regimes that brought civilization horror and suffering on an unprecedented scale. The Left traditionally substantiates its point of view with two theoretical propositions. First of all, fascism and Nazism do not belong to the Left because those regimes did not institute total collective ownership on means of production as Marx prescribed. Secondly, nationalism and racism have traditionally been features of the right, whereas the Left is perceived to comprise internationalists. Thus, Stalin...

When Democrats in the House aren’t using their majority status to ceaselessly pester and harass POTUS Donald Trump, which is often, they are spending their political capital on activism rather than legislation that would advance the success and status of our constitutional republic. That was in evidence again last week as the House passed (with eight Republicans) a bill that will, if it becomes law, destroy female sporting events in high school. First, a little background. In the early 1970s, Congress passed a series of Educational Amendments that included a section called Title IX. According to Feminist.org (yeah, I know,...

In France, for example, 1068 attacks on Christian institutes, symbols or churches were recorded in 2018 an increase of 17 percent compared to 2017. The same trend is visible in Germany where not only anti-Semitism is on the rise again but also violence against the Christian community. In March alone, four churches were vandalized or torched in Germany while the perpetrators don’t hide their identity as they write Islamic expressions as “Allah Hu Akbar” on walls and doors of Christian institutions. In the German state of Bavaria 200 churches were attacked in 2017 while observers say that the number of...