Free Republic

“I was just so emotional just because it was my happiest place, being with him next to the storms,” Joey Krastel said of the engagement. A massive tornado in Kansas may seem like one of the most unlikely — and certainly one of the most dangerous — places for a marriage proposal, but for experienced storm chaser Joey Krastel, it was a real and exhilarating way to show his love for his boyfriend. Krastel, a meteorologist and risk analyst for the Maryland Emergency Management Agency, saw his first tornado when he was four. After getting over his initial fear, he...

Alarmed by the Department of Justice probe into the intelligence community’s spying on the Trump campaign and presidency, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif) urged Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats “to resist exposing our guardians to undue scrutiny.” “While Attorney General Barr’s assertion that spying on a campaign is a ‘big deal’ may sway ignorant voters, it is out-of-step with modern day reality,” Schiff contends. “Every advanced nation has used secret police to protect itself from outside threats. This is the normal way of doing business. For Barr to go on a spree of declassification is an unparalleled...

Mexico's president on Saturday said he's open to negotiating with the United States after President Donald Trump threatened to slap tariffs on all Mexican imports over immigration. "I believe we will be able to reach an agreement, because reason is with us," Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said at a news conference in Veracruz, insisting that Mexico wants to maintain a good relationship with the United States.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez bashed US foreign policy during a private meeting with Bronx community leaders, prompting two military veterans to storm out. “She knocks the country, she knocks the president. And that’s not what America is about,” said Silvio Mazzella, a Vietnam War vet and treasurer of Community Board 11. Anthony Vitaliano — an Army veteran who worked in the NYPD for 38 years, and commanded the Bronx’s homicide detectives — was sitting between Ocasio-Cortez and a staffer for the freshman Dem. “I just couldn’t hear her BS anymore,” the former CB11 chairman said. “I just got up, got my...

President Trump: social problems are not resolved with taxes or coercive measures. How to convert from night to morning to the country of fraternity to the world's migrants in a ghetto, is a space closed, where it is stigmatized, mistreated, persecuted, expelled and canceled the right to justice to those who seek with effort and work to live free of misery? The Statue of Liberty is not an empty symbol. With all respect, although it has the sovereign right to express it, the motto "United States first" is a fallacy because until the end of time, even over national borders,...

Had the pleasure to see Roky perform on several occasions: he was a unique talent and extremely underrated.

Now-former Special Counsel Robert Mueller is trying to have it both ways. When Mueller told reporters Wednesday that “if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that,” he overstepped his bounds as a prosecutor. Mueller was insinuating that President Trump has not been exonerated of wrongdoing, while refusing to explicitly declare the president guilty of any crime. As Alan Dershowitz noted in The Hill, FBI Director James Comey was “universally criticized” for attempting a similar political dance during the Hillary Clinton email investigation. At the time, Comey had said that there...

Democrats across the ideological spectrum want their party to dedicate one of its presidential primary debates to climate change — despite the risk of exposing their own divides. At least five presidential candidates have backed fellow presidential contender Jay Inslee's idea for a climate-centric debate, in a sign of the issue's growing profile among Democratic voters. But a public debate might also force Democratic contenders to confront policy differences they have so far papered over, including how quickly they would push the U.S. to shift away from the fossil fuels that provide union jobs. The candidates would also face pressure...

The Clintons may have left a certain Washington address almost 20 years ago, but -- unlike most of their presidential predecessors -- the family has kept a home in the US capital since leaving the White House. Now, Hillary is offering a rare glimpse into the pair's urban retreat, after she opened the doors of the neo-Georgian residence to Architectural Digest. A series of exclusive photographs for Architectural Digest's site show off the property's airy conservatory and sizable swimming pool. An accompanying interview also sees the former Secretary of State recalling her first encounter with the home in 2000, the...

Dan Freemyer, the pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, has obviously been drinking very deeply of Progressive Leftism's poisonous propaganda of the lie. To cheers from the crowd at Baylor University's 2019 commencement, Freemyer delivered a poison-loaded prayer to a 'god' that is not the Holy Triune God but pagan Progressivism's golden calf: "God, give them the moral imagination to reject the old keys we are trying to give them to a planet that we are poisoning by running it on fossil fuels and misplaced priorities – a planet with too many straight, white men like me behind...

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (Reuters) - The gunman who killed 12 people at a Virginia Beach municipal building before dying in a gun battle with police was identified on Saturday as a disgruntled city engineer and co-worker of most of the victims. All but one of the victims from the mass shooting in the coastal resort community were employed by the city, officials said at a news conference, while the other was a contractor seeking a permit. Four people were wounded. The gunman, DeWayne Craddock, had worked for the city’s public utilities department for about 15 years, Virginia Beach Police Chief...

Australian Minister for Defence Linda Reynolds, Japanese Minister of Defense Takeshi Iwaya, and U.S.Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan, convened a trilateral defense ministerial meeting in Singapore on June 1 on the margins of the 18th International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) Asia Security Summit (2019 Shangri-La Dialogue). The ministers were united in their shared commitment to do more together in support of security, stability, and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region. This was the eighth meeting among the three nations’ defense leaders. Minister Iwaya and Acting Secretary Shanahan congratulated Minister Reynolds on her appointment to Minister for Defence following Australia’s...

The defense ministers of Australia, Japan and the United States affirm their countries’ alignment in strategic interests and universal principles, including a commitment to democracy, human rights, free trade, and the rules-based international order. Together, the three countries recognize the importance of enhancing engagement with our Indo-Pacific partners, in order to foster regional prosperity, resilience and transparency in a time of geostrategic change. The trilateral relationship complements the strong and effective bilateral defense relationships between each of the three countries, and enables us to pool our resources in support of peace, security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region. The three...

BALTIMORE -- Footage from Baltimore Police body cameras and the downtown CitiWatch surveillance network shows groups of youths gathered Saturday night at the Inner Harbor randomly breaking into fights with each other — and at times committing more serious assaults. It shows clusters of kids casually chatting on the promenade around the water, but also sprinting along sidewalks and into traffic. It shows a large group fighting in the middle of Pratt Street, a half-dozen youths attacking a bicyclist on the ground, one teen jumping on the roofs of two cars, and another randomly kicking a passerby in the face...

Readout of Meeting Between Vietnam Minister of National Defense Ngo Xuan Lich and Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan Secretary of Defense Spokesperson LTC Dave Eastburn provided the following readout: Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan met today with Vietnam Minister of National Defense Ngo Xuan Lich on the margins of the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. The two leaders reaffirmed the comprehensive partnership between the United States and Vietnam and highlighted historic progress in the bilateral defense relationship. They agreed to continue building practical defense cooperation, particularly in the area of maritime security, and underscored the importance of close...

Readout of Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan's Meeting With Thailand Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Prawit Wongsuwon Secretary of Defense Spokesperson LTC Dave Eastburn provided the following readout: Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan met today with Thailand Minister of Defense Prawit Wongsuwon on the margins of the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. The two leaders reaffirmed the enduring alliance between the United States and Thailand. They reviewed the state of bilateral security cooperation, with a focus on shared priority areas of maritime security, defense and military exchanges, and modernization of the Royal Thai Armed Forces. They...

Watch Our Expert Panel Discussion: ‘Investigating the Investigators’ Hillary Clinton was Warned Twice against Using Unsecure BlackBerrys and Personal Emails U.S. Government Wastes Billions on ‘Fragmented, Overlapping or Duplicative’ Programs Watch Our Expert Panel Discussion: ‘Investigating the Investigators’ I moderated a Judicial Watch panel of experts this week to probing into the targeting of President Trump and the attacks on our Republican form of government through the illicit use of the spy agencies. The panel also discussed the corruption at the FBI, corrupt handling of the Clinton email investigation, the Obama administration’s hand in the Russia investigation hoax, the...

An analysis of the media campaign to vilify European leaders willing to protect their continent and countries.

Federal regulators need to explain why they’ve granted a perpetually-floundering California credit union that serves organized labor permission to raise money from investors—especially considering those regulators haven’t given the same green light to a strong and growing credit union that serves rural Idahoans. Credit unions are member-owned nonprofits and generally can use only retained earnings for expansion plans. If a credit union wants to grow using secondary capital from investors, it must first seek permission from the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), which is supposed to evaluate the credit union’s stability and financial position before giving the green light. A...

UK: Jews in fear after pro-Palestinian group supported by Jeremy Corbyn forces Jewish shops closed “British Jews have spoken of their fear after a pro-Palestine group supported by Jeremy Corbyn forced Jewish-owned shops to close by staging aggressive rallies outside them.” Corbyn also was recently ‘saluted’ by Hamas who thanked him for his support of a pro-Palestinian march. And three months ago, Corbyn stood up to block efforts by the UK Home Office to ban his “friends” Hizballah from the UK. How any freedom-loving, human rights supporting, Israel recognizing individual could possibly support the jihadist Palestinian cause given its infamous...