Free Republic

Oh dear, it looks like a popular candidate – who is a thorn in the side of Turkey’s ruling party – won the mayoral election in Istanbul Sunday…for the second time. Supporters of Republican People's Party candidate for Istanbul mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, celebrate in the city after the elections re-do on Sunday. ISTANBUL—An opposition candidate has won a repeat ballot for Istanbul mayor Sunday, ending President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s quarter-century grip on the megalopolis and exposing troubles at his long-dominant ruling party.Mr. Imamoglu had defeated the AKP candidate in the initial March municipal ballot, but electoral authorities had voided the...

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla., June 25 (UPI) -- SpaceX's third-ever Falcon Heavy rocket launched early Tuesday from Florida, carrying 24 satellites in a complex government mission from Kennedy Space Center. It was the first time the military used the world's most powerful rocket, the first nighttime launch for the Falcon Heavy and the first time such a government mission used two SpaceX boosters that have been flown before. The space company also made history by catching one half of the rocket nose cone -- or fairing -- in a net on a fishing boat at sea, as the fairings fell...

Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s choice to be the city’s deputy mayor of public safety is Susan Lee, a senior director at an anti-violence nonprofit who says reducing violence is her mission. Lee, 51, is the senior director of Safe Chicago Network at Chicago CRED (Creating Real Economic Destiny), a nonprofit where former Obama administration education secretary and Chicago Public Schools chief Arne Duncan is managing partner. Lee has worked on anti-violence issues across the country, including in Los Angeles, and said her first priority in the new role “is to establish a basic level of safety in all communities in...

Steve Dunleavy, the hard-hitting, hard-drinking journalist who helped define The New York Post as a crime reporter, editor and premier columnist, died Monday at his home on Long Island. He was 81. The cause was unknown. “Steve Dunleavy was one of the greatest reporters of all time,” said Rupert Murdoch, owner of The Post.

In a recent Nazi outrage, Rashida Tlaib, Democrat Liar of Michigan, stated that the Holocaust has had a “calming” effect on her because the “Palestinians” “welcomed” the Jews into “their” land as a haven from Hitler. The Big Lie — in so many dimensions. New to the fray, South Bend Mayor Buttigieg — an expert on world affairs though still unable to maintain civil equanimity in his own city where African Americans are furious over a recent police shooting — has announced that, if Israel ever extends sovereignty into any part of Judea or Samaria, he will cut off aid...

The PA president says 'there is no potential for a political solution' with Trump Palestinians are ready to return to the negotiating table with Israel, but with two preconditions: the recognition of Israeli occupation of east Jerusalem and the “vision” of a two-state solution, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told foreign reporters in Ramallah on Sunday. The Palestinian president said that he would not ask for anything outside of what is already prescribed by the international community as legitimate, including the most recent United Nations Resolution 2334. Palestinians are ready to return to the negotiating table with Israel, but with...

The son of an alleged New York City mobster who was shot to death at a McDonald's drive-thru in the Bronx in October is accused of calling a hit on his own dad. Sylvester Zottola, 71, an alleged Bonanno crime family associate, was found inside his vehicle riddled with gunshots just before 5 p.m. Thursday, according to police. His car was boxed in when a gunman opened fire, sources told The New York Post in the fall. He had reportedly just ordered a coffee when he was shot. The murder came just months after his son survived an apparent hit....

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn, is backing her freshman colleague, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., over the claim that there were "concentration camps" along the southern border, saying what the U.S. government is doing fits the "general definition." Ocasio-Cortez created a firestorm during Monday's livestream by declaring that the Trump administration was "running" concentration camps, invoking the Holocaust-link "never again" saying and claiming that a "fascist" presidency is currently in office. Amid backlash, the congresswoman insisted that she wasn't referring to Nazi concentration camps, but doubled down on her terminology. During a Thursday interview on Public Radio International, Omar echoed Ocasio-Cortez's stance...

On a warm September day in 1787, Benjamin Franklin emerged from Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Franklin was leaving what has come to be known as The Constitutional Convention. Originally it was simply the Philadelphia Convention, which was intended solely to improve upon the Articles of Confederation, the prevailing government of the time. As legend has it, a man approached him and demanded, “What have you wrought?” to which Franklin succinctly replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” Franklin, known for so many famous quotes he could make Yogi Berra appear to be a mute, delivered that day what might...

LEHIGH ACRES, Fla. - A Florida man cleared a canal like “The Dukes of Hazzard” before crashing the vehicle Wednesday and running from the scene, investigators said. Authorities said Robert Foley, 35, jumped the water in a Nissan Versa and kept going until he hit a parked truck, WFTX reported. Foley then fled the scene. Helicopters were used to find him. He was taken to a hospital, where he was treated for a broken back, WBBH reported. Foley was later arrested and charged with driving under the influence and hit-and-run, according to jail records. His license was previously revoked, WBBH...

Barron County (WQOW) – A Cumberland woman is charged with theft after police say she stole nearly $30,000 from an ATM at her work. Amber Hirsch was charged Wednesday in Barron County. According to police, the owner of the Cumberland BP station told police that between January and April, more than $29,000 was taken from the store’s ATM. The owner said it was Hirsch’s job to re-fill the machine at the beginning of her shift. Officers found surveillance video showing Hirsch putting some of the money in her purse. Video also shows her scratching and scanning lottery tickets during...

I never thought I would write this, but the publisher of The New York Times, A.G. Sulzberger, is right. Sulzberger wrote an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal in response to President Trump's claim that his newspaper committed "treason" by publishing a story about U.S. efforts to compromise Russia's power grid should Moscow again try to meddle in U.S. elections. The Times says it consulted National Security officials who raised no objections to its publication. It is one thing for the president to criticize sloppy, inaccurate and biased reporting by the media, including The New York Times. It is quite...

Today’s Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends) The depravity of the Democrats has now reached serious mental illness levels. – It is no longer enough for Democrat politicians to express their disdain for American values, no longer enough for them to propose programs or make outrageous accusations designed specifically to divide and Balkanize our nation along racial, sexual, religious and gender lines. The competition for that space has become so feverish that they now feel compelled to ramp things up to another level in order to attract attention onto themselves from an equally-despicable media establishment. Thus, we see things...

The conceit of our age is that we can alter reality at a whim. We’re really that smart and powerful.We not only can control the planet’s weather, but we can defy God’s essential design for life, reflected in nature and cultures trillions of times a day.This being Pride Month, we’re all supposed to take pride in any and all departures from the normal, so it might be worth a look at where that will take us.Lacking the sheer muscularity of the American reflex toward liberty, Great Britain, along with other Western European nations, is venturing into thought control at a...

Every now and then we need to remind ourselves of the threat to and America and Americans from within the country. Over the last two years we have seen the systematic attacks on the Trump administration as well as on American history. Things like statues being taken down, our voices stifled and the medias bias that permeates our air waves. For this, I wanted to bring forth for your reading displeasure the 1963 entry into the congressional record of the 45 Communist Goals taken from Skousen's book, The Naked Communist.

Visualizing 150 Iranian dead from a missile strike that he had ordered, President Donald Trump recoiled and canceled the strike, a brave decision and defining moment for his presidency. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, John Bolton and Vice President Mike Pence had signed off on the strike on Iran as the right response to Tehran's shootdown of a U.S. Global Hawk spy plane over the Gulf of Oman. The U.S. claims the drone was over international waters. Tehran says it was in Iranian territory. But while the loss of a $100 million drone is no small matter, no American pilot...

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In order to make arguments for nationalism, we have to define it. The first definition in Merriam-Webster is "loyalty and devotion to a nation." But in a second paragraph, it adds, "especially: a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups." Let's be clear: If the second paragraph is the only definition of nationalism, nationalism is always a bad thing. Furthermore, I acknowledge that this definition is what some people have in mind when they call themselves...

Liberals are going nuts. They’re furious. All because President Donald Trump is doing exactly what he said he’d do during his campaign and is reshaping the judiciary in the United States. The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday advanced the nominations of 17 of President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees, including a Ninth Circuit pick who faced questions about his ties to California. Daniel Bress received approval from the committee with a 12-10 vote, over the objections of Senators Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris, both California Democrats, who said Bress does not have close enough ties to California to occupy one of...

This week, Sen. Bernie Sanders upped the ante on free stuff the legion of Democratic presidential candidates are promising voters. In what he called a “revolutionary proposal,” Sanders says that if elected he would forgive “all student debt” — that’s $1.6 trillion worth — and end “the absurdity of sentencing an entire generation to a lifetime of debt for the ‘crime’ of getting a college education.” It would be hard to devise a plan that would shower more benefits on the wealthy than this one. Just 12% of college debt is owed by those in the bottom quarter of income...