Free Republic

Former Obama administration Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said on Thursday that economic warfare is one of his biggest worries as the global economy becomes more interconnected... Hagel said President Trump Opens a New Window. is advancing the trade war Opens a New Window. with higher tariffs on China and Mexico that will result in the reduction of economic efficiency and living standards. “When you start down the path of tariffs and trade wars, there will be consequences, definitely, but there’ll also be unintended consequences that will have a devastating effect on our economy, on the economies of the world,” he...

Mark Hemingway at Real Clear Investigations recently wrote a solid piece about the “data problem” with getting clean voter rolls and eradicating voter fraud. He’s right, there is a data problem. And a management problem. And a competence problem. After all, government runs elections and government is pretty famously awful in all of those categories. But those are manifestations of a deeper problem that is going to dog the country in 2020 and almost assuredly beyond. One of our two major parties opposes any attempts to enforce voting laws and block illegal voting, and has even begun making overt attempts...

The left flank of the Democratic Party is ramping up efforts to target and isolate pro-life Democrats, as the party base mobilizes over restrictive new abortion laws being passed in states across the country. While the party once tolerated both pro-life and pro-choice Democrats inside the tent, those with pro-life views are being told they aren’t welcome anymore. The shift comes as the policy debate becomes increasingly polarized. Conservative Alabama passed a virtual ban on abortions last month — and some Democratic presidential candidates have openly supported the right of a woman to terminate a late-term pregnancy. “As a party,...

New York IB Credit Risk team to Plano, TX including interns who just accepted offers for the New York office." Another source inside the bank tells us that they have heard this around the office, meaning that a bunch of NYC i-bankers are about to learn how to live large in Dallas, And it makes sense that Jamie is shifting some mid-level i-bank jobs to The Lone Star State considering that JPM made a tax incentive deal with the local government to build the Plano campus. That agreement involved creating a certain number of jobs created with a median salary...

U.S. and Mexican officials are discussing an agreement that would ramp up Mexico’s immigration enforcement effort and allow the U.S. to deport asylum seekers as both sides work to clinch a deal that will avert tariffs on Mexican products, according to an administration official. It’s not clear if President Trump, who is traveling in Europe, or Mexican leaders would accept the terms of such an agreement. Delegations from both countries held staff-level talks in Washington on Thursday, one day after a meeting convened by Vice President Mike Pence did not result in a deal to avert sweeping tariffs on Mexican...

Those who pushed for the severe restrictions on guns in Australian society can no longer claim the one success they had touted as a result of their expensive, intrusive, experiment. They claimed there had not been any mass murder with firearms since the law was passed.The latest mass public shooting/murder occurred in Darwin, Australia.  From the west.com: Four people are confirmed dead and police are investigating five crime scenes after a mass shooting in Darwin tonight.Northern Territory Police said four men are confirmed dead and one woman has also been taken to the Royal Darwin Hospital with gunshot wounds,...

The U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to take up the highly publicized case of Barronelle Stutzman, a Washington state florist who declined to participate in a same-sex "wedding," citing her views on traditional marriage. The State of Washington said what Stutzman (pictured), owner of Arlene's Flowers in Richland, did is against the law. Today the Washington Supreme Court upheld that decision again after a six-year legal battle. "While I know this isn't the last word on the case, it pains me to see my own state continue to come after my flower shop, my home, and every penny I...

Cook County judge made unwanted sexual advances toward a court reporter, made inappropriate sexual comments about a prosecutor and tried to kiss a police officer — a pattern of harassing behavior toward women, a state board that oversees judges said in a complaint Thursday. The Judicial Inquiry Board charged that Judge Mauricio Araujo’s alleged conduct spanned from spring 2012 through fall 2018 and was directed “toward women with whom he has interacted in professional settings and in his official judicial capacity.” The board alleged that Araujo asked the court reporter “how much money” she wanted to have sex with him;...

A substitute teacher working at an Iowa high school was taken off the sub list a few weeks after telling students that they had horrendous grammar during class. S. Keyron McDermott opened up her piece in a local newspaper saying the high school terminated her last fall for telling students that their grammar skills were subpar – by around 10 years. “Last Halloween, I dressed up like a teacher – not exactly an alter ego; I have a certificate – went to the local high school, and substituted in Family & Consumer Science,” McDermott wrote in an op-ed for the...

A prominent governor running in the Democratic primary is at serious risk of getting shut out of the party’s first presidential debates — while a meditation guru and obscure tech entrepreneur take the stage for the most important event of the race so far. That’s the state of play less than a week before the deadline to qualify for the debates on June 26-27 under the rules set by the Democratic National Committee. Presidential hopefuls have until June 12 to cross one of two thresholds to qualify for the primary debates, and 13 of the 20 slots available are set....

I have often said that said that if ultrasound pictures of the unborn had been available in 1973, the Roe v. Wade decision would have been quite different. It is hard to talk about “lumps of tissue” and “collections of cells” when one can actually see a leg kicking, a hand reaching, a mouth sucking. Or listening to a heartbeat. Since then four decades of medical advances have changed the meaning of the word “viable” when applied to the unborn. They should also have changed the meaning of the word “human”. Consider the case of the world’s tiniest baby born...

The “Clean Energy Jobs Bill,” as backers have dubbed it, is one of the most sprawling and potentially impactful pieces of legislation to ever come before Oregon lawmakers. It envisions a wholesale reduction in Oregonians’ use of fossil fuels, and an associated decrease in greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. Almost three quarters of the revenues expected from the bill would come from increases in transportation fuel prices. The Legislative revenue office expects that to translate to about to about 22 cents a gallon increase at the pump in 2021, when the policy kicks...

Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals announced today that the company expects to pay $15.4 million in a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department after allegations that Questcor Pharmaceuticals, which Mallinckrodt acquired in 2014, had bribed doctors and their staff to prescribe an incredibly expensive drug. Two whistleblowers came forward in April to accuse Questcor of trying to boost profits for Acthar, a medication primarily for infants with seizures. Questcor raised the price of the medication by almost 100,000 percent (not a typo) from just $40 in 2000 to $38,892 today, despite the fact that Acthar has been on the market since 1952. Mallinckrodt...

General Dwight D. Eisenhower arrived in London January 2, 1944 to command Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) and to direct the last five months of planning for D-Day; the most difficult and complicated military operation ever attempted. He brought with him a confident, battle tested team that had led successful landings in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy. He was able to expand the landing front from three to five divisions, to select his own division commanders, to enlist the help of the French Resistance, and to direct the strategic bombers for a campaign isolating the area of assault by...

While the dishonest “mainstream media”, as well as Democrats and even some Republicans in Congress, bash POTUS Donald Trump over his threat to begin imposing a 5 percent tariff on all imported goods from Mexico beginning next week, more evidence that he’s exactly right to do so has emerged. For years Mexico has done its level best to export its own poverty to the United States, doing virtually nothing to stem the illegal flow of its citizens north of the border. The reason was simple: Money. One of Mexico’s historic revenue streams in addition to energy (oil) and tourism has...

This is a very interesting development and may well indicate a change in strategy; or, even more interesting, the execution of a pre-planned strategy, for General Michael Flynn. There is a possibility, with legal distance happening as a result of Weissmann and Mueller’s investigation concluding, that Michael Flynn may be shifting to offense. Two separate court filings today show: (1) Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn has fired his legal team and retained new counsel; and, (2) the DOJ is filing the evidentiary documents (possibly Joe Pientka 302 and Kislyak transcript?) under seal.

RUSH: Let me try another way of putting D-Day in perspective. Now, numbers are hard to remember on the radio. The number of soldiers landed on the beaches at Normandy on D-Day was 129,710. By the time you add the paratroopers and the pilots of aircraft that were flying over, bombing, transport, and all of the crew that were on the ships that crossed the channel, we’re looking at a total of 150,000 Allied troops who were part of the mission. 150,000. That number was outmanned and outgunned by the Germans. There was a lot of deception. I’m gonna get...

A 8.5-million- pound boulder that demolished a Colorado mountain highway May 24 will stay in place and the road will be rebuilt around it, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said. Photo courtesy of Colorado Department of Transportation ============================================================== DENVER, June 5 (UPI) -- Colorado has a new Instagram-worthy landmark. An 8.5-million-pound boulder that rolled off a cliff and demolished a section of mountain highway has been renamed "Memorial Rock," Gov. Jared Polis said. It would have cost the Colorado Department of Transportation $200,000 to blow up the boulder with dynamite and haul it away, but instead the department will rebuild Highway...

Washington (CNN)A majority of Americans say they think Donald Trump is going to win a second term, according to a CNN Poll conducted by SSRS, even as the President's reviews on issues other than the economy remain largely negative. The new poll finds 54% say their best guess is that Trump will win the 2020 election, 41% feel he will lose. Americans are slightly more apt to say Trump will win now than they were to say Barack Obama would win a second term in May 2011, in a survey conducted just after the death of Osama bin Laden (50%...

A 90-year-old D-Day veteran’s ditty about the Allied forces landing at Normandy is beating out songs by artists like Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber and Ed Sheeran on Amazon’s singles chart in the United Kingdom, a report said. Jim Radford, who was a 15-year-old galley boy in the British Merchant Navy at the time, said he has been “overwhelmed by the response” to the song, “Shores of Normandy,” he wrote 50 years ago, ABC News reported on Wednesday. The Normandy Memorial Trust rereleased the song he penned after returning to the French beaches on the 25th anniversary of the landings to...