Free Republic

So far, seven months into 2019, eight Republican representatives have announced retirement, six of them during the months of July and August 2019. By comparison, in 2018, 39 congressional Republicans (three U.S. senators and 23 members of the House of Representatives), together with 18 Democrats, did not run for re-election. What is going on with all these Republican retirements? One narrative has it that Republicans were retiring because they were fed up with the toxic political environment or were afraid of losing elections, but these narratives were prematurely formed or they lacked correlation.  There actually are three possible hypotheses...

If only we were more like the Canadians. Gunshots rang out on street corners, in nightclubs and at house parties across the city over the long weekend, injuring 15, Toronto police said Monday. The 14th and 15th victims were shot Monday afternoon in the Lawrence Heights neighbourhood. A man was transported to hospital with serious, but non-life threatening injuries, according to police. Another person later arrived at hospital with a gunshot wound. It was the 12th shooting incident police responded to in the span of three days. The incidents do not appear to be connected, Chief Saunders said. Early Monday...

Acclaimed author and Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison has died aged 88. A friend confirmed Morrison's passing to the Associated Press on Tuesday morning. The circumstances surrounding her death are unclear. Morrison is best known for her novel Beloved, which won a Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award in 1988. The American Academy of Arts and Letters honored Morrison this spring with a gold medal for lifetime achievement in fiction.

China’s state-run media quickly seized on the obsessions of their American counterparts over the weekend by linking President Donald Trump to “white nationalism” and blaming gun violence on the large supply of firearms and loose gun laws in the United States. The Chinese Communist Party’s Global Times worked the “white supremacist” angle on Sunday, citing the manifesto left by El Paso, Texas, alleged mass murderer Patrick Crusius: A hate crime is motivated by prejudice, and the victim is targeted because of their social group or race. Many US states have their hate crime laws. However, the number of hate crimes...

Jordan is supposed to be their transit country; they are seeking resettlement to other countries via the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Australian Special Humanitarian Program. The registration with the UNHCR gives them the protective status of refugee as they await resettlement. Yet, the process of resettlement takes at minimum several months and sometimes even years due to the growing refugee backlog..... "The majority of those stuck in limbo have been waiting more than two years—some since the rise of ISIS in 2014," according to the report. "Since January, the process has become...

“Baltimore City Police are investigating after more than a dozen people were shot in the city. From 1am Friday, until 3am Monday, 13 people including a 12-year-old boy were shot in the city. Six have died.” (WBFF, Baltimore July 29.) “One Thousand Killed in 5 days of Fierce Street Fighting! Commander Che Guevara appealed to Batista troops for a truce to clear the streets of casualties. Guevara turned the tide in this bloody battle and whipped a Batista force of 3,000 men.” (New York Times article on Jan 4, 1959 depicting the famous “battle” of Santa Clara in central Cuba, where the Times...

The U.S. Navy officer was eager to talk. He’d seen his ship, one of the Navy’s fleet of 11 minesweepers, sidelined by repairs and maintenance for more than 20 months. Once the ship, based in Japan, returned to action, its crew was only able to conduct its most essential training — how to identify and defuse underwater mines — for fewer than 10 days the entire next year. During those training missions, the officer said, the crew found it hard to trust the ship’s faulty navigation system: It ran on Windows 2000. The officer, hoping that by speaking out he...

(Excerpt) That’s more than the Dayton and El Paso shootings, respectively. (excerpt) Of the multiple shootings reported in the Windy City over the weekend, two were said to have been mass casualty incidents in the same police district. (excerpt) Gun violence in Chicago reportedly left eight people dead last weekend and 40 others hurt.

On college campuses, accused students often must prove they obtained “affirmative consent” from their partners before and throughout sexual activity. In a few states, it’s the law for college students. The American Bar Association, which sets academic standards for law schools and recommends legislation, is deciding whether it should be the law for everyone. Criminal lawyers and advocates of due process are urging the ABA to reject a resolution that they say would flip the burden of proof from the government to the accused in criminal cases. Mandating affirmative consent would functionally mean the end of the Fifth Amendment right...

Luke 11:4 And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. Why does every tragedy have to be an opportunity for the Democrat Party to trash President Trump and America? Rather than letting America go through her shock of having two mass murderers terrorize their communities we have to hear how it's Trump’s fault and these were his Nazi supporters. There is never any introspection or grieving for the lost, only an opportunity to virtue signal and attack. Within 24 hours the...

“‘Take courage, son; your sins are forgiven’” (Matthew 9:2). Jesus’ ultimate words to the paralytic, “your sins are forgiven,” represent the greatest of all divine miracles and definitely the most desirable for the one who hears them. This is the holy Son of God forgiving the sins of an unholy man. He could control nature with a word, and with these words He dismissed the man’s sins and graciously made him right with God. The verb translated “are forgiven” means send away or do away with. David declares, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has...

For more than 150 years, it has played a key part in the maritime, economic and cultural story of these islands. As of 5.15pm yesterday, however, Harland & Wolff ceased to exist as a company. Once the greatest shipyard in the world — producing some of the most famous ships in British history — the Belfast institution had seen its workforce dwindle from 35,000 to just 125 employees. They have now received redundancy notices and, this morning, the firm of accountants appointed as administrators, BDO, will file for insolvency.

It was two days of contrast that tell us about America 2019. In El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, following the mass murders of Saturday and Sunday morning, the local folks on camera -- police, prosecutors, mayors, FBI and city officials -- were nonpartisan, patient, polite and dignified in the unity and solemnity of their grief for their dead and wounded. But for the Democratic presidential candidates, the El Paso atrocity was like a loose football in the Super Bowl. A mad scramble broke out over who would be first and most savage in indicting President Donald Trump for moral...

Trace Lysette posed nude for Women's Health Naked Strength issue on Monday. The stunning actress - who identifies as transgender - gave her fans a charge as she left little to the imagination during the outdoor photo shoot. And the 32-year-old opened up to the publication about why it was important for her to pose nude: 'Trans women, and women in general, have so many constraints placed on our bodies.'

Could an emerging technology reshape the battle lines in the abortion debate? Since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, that fight has been defined by the interlocking, absolute values of choice and life: For some, a woman’s right to choose trumps any claim to a right to life by the fetus; for others, it’s the reverse. But what if we could separate those two — what if a woman’s choice to terminate a pregnancy no longer meant terminating the fetus itself? That is the promise of artificial wombs, a technology that has already shown some success in tests on...

A group of protesters supporting gun control gathered outside the home of Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. where one expressed that someone should "stab the motherf---er in the heart." The protest took place on Sunday night in the wake of mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. McConnell is currently recovering from a fall he had over the weekend, leaving him with a fractured shoulder. Approximately 25 demonstrators stood on the sidewalk near McConnell's Louisville home, shouting "No Trump, no KKK, no Fascist USA!" while others called him names like "Murder Turtle" and made loud noises by...

Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke told podcast host Jon Favreau that he supports the idea of making gun licensing and mandatory buybacks part of the conversation revolving around the El Paso and Dayton shootings. Favreau commented on gun licensing and mandatory buybacks in Australia and asked if O’Rourke would support them as president? O’Rourke responded, “Yes. And I’m open to them right now as a candidate.”

On July 29, President Trump tweeted: “Just remember, Iranians never won a war, but never lost a negotiation.” In just 12 words, Trump leveled a multi-layered, ahistorical insult against both his predecessor, Barack Obama, and Iran. More importantly, the remarks betray a dangerously ignorant understanding of Iran that could result in another careless Middle East war of choice. The tweet invokes a clichéd, colonial-era stereotype that Iranians, like other Middle Eastern peoples, are wily swindlers—rapacious, greedy bazaar merchants who aim to take advantage of honest and unsuspecting Westerners. Trump is hardly the first American leader to dabble in such denigrating...

Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley (D) jabbed President Donald Trump Monday for mistakenly offering condolences to another Ohio city, Toledo, in his planned address on the two mass shootings that unfolded over the weekend. At the end of his 10-minute speech, President Trump, reading from a teleprompter, said, “May God bless the memory of those who perished in Toledo.” The president correctly referred to Dayton during other parts of his scheduled remarks.

The World Resources Institute (WRI), which is supported in part by the U.N., is encouraging humans to give up eating meat. Doing so, they believe, will not only help with food supplies but will also combat climate change. Become a vegetarian or watch the world starve to death and burn is the messaging, I guess. Writing in their report, the WRI project claims: [C]onsumption of animal-based foods to rise 68 percent between 2010 and 2050, with an 88 percent increase in consumption of ruminant meat (meat from cattle, sheep, and goats). These trends are a major driver of the food,...