Free Republic

Police in Germany launched dozens of raids across the country on Thursday as part of a crackdown on incitement crimes being spread on the internet. The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) has said it searched residences in 13 federal states as part of a coordinated operation. One of the largest operations took place in the western city of Koblenz, where the apartments of 12 suspects were searched in connection to two right-wing extremist Facebook groups. The 12 suspects were between the ages of 45 and 68, and were believed to be responsible for the groups called “The Patriots,” and “Our...

In a story that got no attention because it fit no established 'narrative,' two reporters from the Los Angeles Times exposed a revolting scandal: the foul, inhuman conditions of a vaunted L.A. child migrant center called Casa Libre led by a top open borders advocate billed as a "champion of immigrant rights." In their report, Cindy Carcamo and Paloma Esquivel begin: Los Angeles lawyer Peter Schey has long been a trailblazing courtroom defender of immigrant youth. He helped argue the Supreme Court case that ensured the right of children without legal status to attend public schools. He also helped secure...

House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings' wife reportedly paid her for-profit organization with money from her separate charity as part of a cost-sharing arrangement -- a revelation that is adding to mounting ethical questions surrounding her financial dealings. The Daily Caller obtained documents showing that Maya Rockeymoore Cummings’ charity, the Center for Global Policy Solutions (CGPS), paid over $250,000 between 2013 and 2015 to her similarly named for-profit organization, Global Policy Solutions LLC (GPS). The documents outline a cost-sharing agreement by which the center shares "equipment, facilities, personnel costs and sundry other services.” But the center also pays GPS 5...

New England Patriots players, coaches, team executives and football staff received their Super Bowl LIII championship rings on Thursday night at a private party at owner Robert Kraft's residence -- an event that brought former players and coaches back together for one final celebration.

A sea change has taken place in American political life. The force driving this change is the digital era style of moral politics known as “wokeness,” a phenomenon that has become pervasive in recent years and yet remains elusive as even experts struggle to give it a clear definition and accurately measure its impact. --- In reality, “wokeness”—a term that originated in black popular culture—is a broad euphemism for a more narrow phenomenon: the rapidly changing political ideology of white liberals that is remaking American politics. Over the past decade, the baseline attitudes expressed by white liberals on racial and...

You may have seen reports that a massive asteroid the size of a football field is hurtling toward Earth. Although the European Space Agency (ESA) has placed asteroid 2006QV89 on its Risk List, there's no reason to sound the alarms just yet. First of all, it's probably not as big as you think it is. The object is roughly 40 meters in diameter, according to the ESA. A football field is 48.5 meters wide and 109 meters long. The Risk List might sound scary, but that simply means that ESA calculated a non-zero impact probability. ESA says this particular asteroid...

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said an Obama-era nuclear weapons pact would lapse unless the US took an interest in renewing it. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) pact limits the number of deployed nuclear warheads, missiles and bombers and is due to expire in 2021 unless renewed. […] The treaty limits the US and Russia to a maximum of 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers, well below Cold War caps. It was signed in 2010 by former US President Barack Obama and then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. It is one of the key...

The “Donald Trump/Mike Pence Prayer Vigil” and “Heroes and Nation Prayer Thread” have combined to form the AMERICA PRAYER VIGIL prayer thread! Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for our President and Vice President and for AMERICA: Government, Family, Military, Business, Education, Churches, and the Media. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 1 JOHN 5:14 Religion Forum threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind. Eisenhower Speech - D-Day, June 6, 1944 He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food...

On Tuesday, musician Miley Cyrus teamed up with Marc Jacobs to promote abortion and pump money into taxpayer-funded abortion mill Planned Parenthood with raunchy images of the 26-year-old and sweatshirt sales. In one photo, Cyrus has peeled grapefruits covering her nipples in a topless photo; the image is plastered on a Marc Jacobs hoodie, accompanied with the text, "Don't f*** with my freedom." According to the clothing company, 100% of the hoodie proceeds will be dumped into Planned Parenthood, an organization that kills some 320,000 unborn babies a year.

U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar violated state rules when she used campaign funds to pay for personal out-of-state travel and help on her tax returns and must reimburse her former campaign committee nearly $3,500, Minnesota campaign finance officials ruled Thursday. The Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board said the first-term Democratic congresswoman also must pay the state a $500 civil penalty for using campaign money to travel to Florida, where she accepted an honorarium. The board found Omar’s campaign bought a plane ticket to Boston to speak at a political rally; paid for a hotel in Washington, D.C., where Omar...

Nichols was found dead in his home. A gun was on a table across the room. Former Republican lawmaker Linda Collins-Smith was found dead earlier this week in Arkansas. The Oklahoman reported: Police are investigating the fatal shooting of a former state senator. Jonathan Nichols’ body was found in his Norman home, and a gun was on a table across the room, law enforcement sources told The Oklahoman. Norman police responded to a report of an individual with a gunshot wound at 8:44 p.m. Wednesday to the 3900 block of Annalane Drive, according to Norman police. Once inside the residence,...

A federal judge denied the request by Michael Flynn’s lawyers to withdraw from his case. Attorneys for President Trump’s former national security adviser said in a court filing Thursday that Flynn was “terminating” them as their counsel. “General Flynn has notified the undersigned that he is terminating Covington & Burling as his counsel and has already retained new counsel for this matter,” Robert Kelner and Stephen Anthony wrote. Judge Emmet Sullivan denied the motion, saying it did not comply with local court rules and the attorneys’ “failure to indicate the manner in which the motion was served upon Mr. Flynn.”...

Prosecutors have released a less-redacted version of an FBI memo describing the interview agents had with President Trump’s national security adviser Michael Flynn in January 2017. The document shows that Flynn told investigators that Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak asked him during a Dec. 28, 2016, phone call to set up a “VTC,” an apparent reference to a video teleconference, between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Flynn told investigators that Kislyak requested that the video conference occur on Jan. 21, the day after Trump was inaugurated as president, according to the memo. Flynn has since pleaded guilty to lying...

The sweet taste of the tears of liberal butthurt, appetizer course

The former Minnesota cop convicted of fatally shooting an unarmed Australian bride-to-be has proposed a bizarre sentence to “honor” her. Mohamed Noor, 33, filed a motion Wednesday asking a judge to lock him up for weeklong stints that overlap with 40-year-old Justine Ruszczyk Damond’s birthday and the anniversary of her death, according to news station KSTP.

Under a new agreement, uniformed police officers will be allowed to participate in Sacramento PRIDE events this weekend, and a new set of police department policies will be enacted to build trust with the LGBTQ community. The move, announced in a Thursday news release by the Sacramento Police Department and Sacramento LGBT Community Center, reversed a decision the center announced last week that uniformed officers would not be allowed to participate in order to protect LGBTQ people, especially transgender people and LGBTQ people of color who “experience fear and anxiety provoked by the uniform.”

Former vice president and 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden reversed his support for the Hyde Amendment on Thursday at a gala hosted by the Democratic National Committee in Atlanta. Biden said that recent extreme abortion restrictions in various states prompted him to change his stance. “I can’t justify leaving millions of women without the health care they need... If I believe health care is a right, as I do, I can no longer support [the amendment],” he said.

The Catholic Church spent more than half a million dollars trying to stop lawmakers from extending the statute of limitations on sex abuse cases, a new report reveals. From 2011 to 2018, the church spent $633,000 on lobbying efforts in the Garden State alone. They spent more in neighboring states: $5.32 million in Pennsylvania, $2.9 million in New York and $875,000 in Connecticut. The lobbying expenses could pale in comparison to what the church might pay if more victims of clergy sex abuse come forward and seek compensation. The report commissioned by the law firms of Seeger Weiss, Williams Cedar,...

California police are reminding drivers to lock their car doors after a bear let itself inside an unlocked vehicle near Lake Tahoe and destroyed the interior. The bear couldn't escape as easily as it had entered the vehicle and became trapped inside, the Placer County Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday. "The bear had somehow locked the doors and broke the handles off, so they couldn’t open it from the outside," Sgt. Dave Hunt told FOX40 Sacramento. While trapped inside, the bear apparently ripped the seats apart, tore open the glove compartment and pulled down part of the ceiling. The animal also urinated, defecated and spit all over the destroyed...

In a part of America that is rich with historic Orthodox churches, a new one, faithful to the local architectural tradition, is now under construction. In the spring of 2018 I travelled to Spruce Island, where St. Herman of Alaska lived from 1808 until his death in 1837. I had come to design a new chapel for Saint Michael’s Skete. This small monastic brotherhood (a dependency of the monastery at Platina in California) occupies a remote site high up a mountainside. Founded in 1983, the skete has several monastic buildings able to host a handful of monks and summer visitors,...