Free Republic

Acting in the interests of transparency and justice, President Trump took exactly the right action Thursday night when he gave Attorney General William Barr new authority to disclose information dealing with what Barr has called “spying” on the Trump election campaign in 2016. The president issued a memorandum authorizing Barr to “declassify, downgrade, or direct the declassification or downgrading” of any information relevant to “intelligence activities” connected to the “2016 Presidential election.” President Trump’s action is long overdue and should be welcomed by everyone who advocates more government disclosure about its activities – including journalists, who are always seeking such...

The Utah Supreme Court has suspended a city judge for making "shirty and politically charged" comments from the bench and posting "indelicate" criticism online about President Donald Trump. Judge Michael Kwan will serve a six-month suspension without pay for repeatedly violating the Utah Code of Judicial Conduct. In his 21 years as a Taylorsville Justice Court judge, the Judicial Conduct Commission has issued Kwan two letters of education and the Supreme Court has publicly reprimanded him twice for various violations. One of those reprimands involved Kwan's "crass in-court reference to sexual conduct and a former president of the United States,"...

Lori Lightfoot confronts Chicago's summer killing season The weather turns warm and gunfire rings out. It's Mayor Lori Lightfoot's job to set Chicago's expectations for intolerance of shooting and killing.   Lightfoot Outlines Memorial Day Weekend Safety Plan We trail Mayor Lori Lightfoot as she outlines her safety plan for the holiday weekend and addresses the controversy over her security detail.   Mayor Lori Lightfoot unveils initiative to reduce Chicago violence Chicago's new mayor announced her safety plan for the city, as one of the busiest weekends for police approaches     Mayor Lori Lightfoot, CPD Supt. Eddie Johnson Rally...

The Founding Fathers set up the Electoral College for specific reasons. In this educational video, Reid explains the differences between a Republic and democracy, the importance of representative government, and the concept of the rule of law over emotions. 6 minute video

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court on Friday blocked lower court rulings ordering Republican legislators in Michigan and Ohio to redraw U.S. congressional maps ahead of the 2020 elections, dealing a blow to Democrats who had argued that the electoral districts were intended to unlawfully diminish their political clout. The justices granted requests from Republican lawmakers in both states to put those decisions on hold, halting further action in the cases and the need to rework electoral district boundaries. The justices did not provide any explanation for their brief orders. The lower courts found that the electoral maps in the...

A high school in Littlestown, Pa., has apologized after the yearbook club blurred out two teenagers' pro-Trump apparel in a yearbook photo. "The mistake was not noticed during the editorial preview process prior to print. We apologize on behalf of the yearbook club. It is not the policy or practice of the district to improperly censor speech," Littlestown High School said in a statement to local Fox News affiliate WPMT. The apology comes after 16-year-old Jeremy Gebhart said he and his friend had their "Make America Great Again" hats blurred out of a yearbook photo taken during the school's spirit...

A review of Michael Malice's new book, The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics.

Sirangelo has resigned, and Reuters reports that his "ouster was sealed by increasing skepticism that 2024 was a realistic deadline for moon landings." This also comes after a proposal from NASA to create a separate directorate for lunar missions was rejected by lawmakers. Bridenstine said on Thursday that "given NASA is no longer pursuing the new mission directorate, Mark has opted to pursue other opportunities."

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats says the nation's spy agencies will provide the Justice Department all appropriate information for its review of intelligence activities related to Russian interference in the 2016 election. President Donald Trump claims his campaign was the victim of "spying" and has given Attorney General William Barr full authority to publicly disclose still-secret information collected during the investigation. Some former intelligence officials and Democrats worry that Barr will cherry-pick intelligence to paint a misleading picture about the roots of the probe.

As 23 candidates struggle for attention, one name stands out. Barack Obama is literally more popular than Jesus among Democrats. Unfortunately, neither the former president nor any of the party’s 23 candidates currently seeking the 2020 nomination know quite what to do with that information. Of course, before any serious endorsement conversation can commence, Obama has to finish his book (between rounds of golf and raising millions for his foundation). The writing has been going more slowly than he’d expected, and according to several people who have spoken with him, the 44th president is feeling competitive with his wife, whose...

Far-left CNN decided to hold a town hall with fake Hispanic Beto O’Rourke and the results were as disastrous as you might expect. Only 719,000 people tuned in. I know what you’re thinking — you’re thinking this town hall must have aired in the morning, or on a Sunday night, or opposite the Game of Thrones finale… Nope, nope, nope, nope… Tuesday night prime time… and only 719,000 tuned in. If you are looking for something to compare it to, during that same hour, Fox News attracted 2.4 million viewers, while MSNBC earned 2.3 million. But somehow the news get...

European Parliament member Nigel Farage on the fallout from British Prime Minister Theresa May's resignation.

NEW YORK — Former Vice President Joe Biden was reportedly one of the few Obama administration officials who participated in secretive meetings during the early stages of the Obama-era intelligence community’s initial operations regarding suspected Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. The number of Obama administration officials who were allowed access to the Russia intelligence was also highly limited, The Post reported. At first only four senior officials were involved, and not Biden. Those officials were CIA Directir John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Attorney General Loretta Lynch and then-FBI Director James Comey. Their aides were all...

Full Title: DONALD TRUMP GIVES WILLIAM BARR POWER TO DECLASSIFY INTELLIGENCE INFORMATION IN 'A CORRUPT ACT OF POLITICAL RETRIBUTION,' EXPERTS SAY Donald Trump has given Attorney General William Barr permission to declassify intelligence information about the origins of the Russia investigation, a move legal experts say is a gross abuse of power. “In a corrupt act of political retribution, our president has ordered his utterly compliant attorney general to root out Deep State demons that exist only in the unhinged mind of our nation's leader,” Gene Rossi, a former federal prosecutor, told Newsweek. The White House released a statement on...

Last week, police arrested two teenagers, Josue Fuentes-Ponce and Joel Escobar, and charged them with the murder of 14 year-old Ariana Funes-Diaz. She was killed in a tunnel, beaten with a baseball bat and slashed with a machete. She was found naked. Reportedly, the killers, members of MS-13, ordered her to strip before they murdered her. According to authorities, Fuentes-Ponce and Escobar killed the girl because they were worried she would report them to police. She had lured a man to Northwest Washington, D.C., where he was beaten, robbed, and interrogated about his gang affiliations. This was not the first...

The U.S. Supreme Court has blocked lower court rulings that invalidated, as partisan gerrymanders, Ohio’s map for congressional districts and Michigan’s maps for congressional and state legislative districts.

A tweet showing aggressively anti-Trump actor John Cusack sitting down during a military salute at the Cubs’ Wrigley Field raised some eyebrows yesterday: “Here’s [John Cusack] staying firmly seated during tonight’s military salute at Wrigley Field.” John clearly did NOT like getting called out. He instantly blocked the original poster. And then he went absolutely HAYWIRE. The man managed to argue that he was simply not standing YET, that patriotism is for chumps, and that Wrigley Field is promoting the military industrial complex, all in one very twisted twitter rampage

By supporting a nonprofit that favors rationing health care, biotech giant Johnson & Johnson appears to violate its founding principles, a conservative shareholder activist says. The activist brought this contradiction to the attention of the corporation’s CEO at a shareholder meeting last month, in what he hopes will become a model practice for other conservatives. Conservatives can be effective in challenging liberals’ efforts to move major corporations to the left if they simply acquire some stock and speak up with facts, David Almasi, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, said in a phone interview with The...

The target was an “Al Qaeda cell” in a Baghdad house in the dead of night—with an unknown number of military-aged males inside. The intelligence was good, but not great. That night, we landed via Blackhawk helicopters with night vision goggles and raided the house. Not much went as planned. The BOLO (“Be On The Lookout”) suicide vehicle that day was a white Toyota—the most common vehicle in our area. The masked Iraqi informant knew way too much about the enemy to be friendly—but we followed him anyway. House to house we hunted bomb-makers and insurgent leaders. We captured some,...

“Oh god, I’m scared,” David Letterman says. He’s pacing backstage before his interview with Kanye West for the first episode of his Netflix show’s second season. The first season of My Next Guest Needs No Introduction kicked off with President Barack Obama, but Letterman seems genuinely more nervous about sitting down with Kanye. The hour-long conversation that follows—this episode along with four others all start streaming next Friday, May 31—is not only one of the best interviews Letterman has ever conducted, it’s also one of the most coherent and engaging interviews Kanye has ever given, even if it does go...