Free Republic

Donald Trump wants to regulate social media, while Democrats want to regulate political spending. Both are prepared to sacrifice freedom of speech on the altar of fairness, balance and equality. The president's plan for fighting anti-conservative bias on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook is still in flux. But it reportedly includes siccing the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission on companies that are deemed to be removing content for political or ideological reasons. According to a summary of a proposed executive order obtained by CNN, one possible approach involves reinterpreting Section 230 of the Communications...

The president of the United States, Donald Trump, never said there were "fine" Nazis or Ku Klux Klansmen. This is one of the two great lies of our time — the other being that all Trump supporters are racists — and perhaps in all of American history. I cannot think of a lie of such significance that was held as truth by so many Americans, by every leading politician of one of the two major political parties and disseminated by virtually the entire media. The major news media need to understand these are important reasons that half of America...

Scott Jenkins is the sheriff of Culpeper County in Virginia. In that capacity, and pursuant to requests from the federal government, he turned an illegal immigrant over to ICE once that immigrant finished serving his criminal sentence. The illegal immigrant had been arrested for driving without a license and for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. The Culpeper County Jail received a detainer from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and an administrative arrest warrant from the Department of Homeland Security, there being probable cause to believe Rios was a “removable alien.” The detainer asked the local jail to...

Carlos Marza's unceremonious exit from Vox, non-Voxsplained.

Last week, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) — campaign chair for his twin brother, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro — tweeted the names and employers of the top Trump donors in San Antonio, Texas. He even singled out the owner of Bill Miller Bar-B-Q, a popular restaurant chain. While Castro clearly intended harm to those he doxxed, the barbecue chain experienced an impressive outpouring of support.Castro's tweet condemned the barbecue chain's owner for "fueling a campaign of hate that labels Hispanic immigrants as 'invaders.'" Twitter screenshot of Joaquin Castro doxxing tweet, with the names whited out. At least one of...

There are passages in the State Department's latest reports on human rights and religious freedom in the People's Republic of China that read as if they ought to be in some futuristic horror story — not in a federal agency's factual explanation of how freedom is curtailed in the world's most populous nation. First, there are the multitudinous surveillance cameras and the facial recognition software that makes them so useful to China's communist regime. "According to media reports, the Ministry of Public Security used tens of millions of surveillance cameras throughout the country to monitor the general public," said the...

For the liberal media, conspiracy theories are fine so long as they’re the stuff of liberal fairy tales. MSNBC’s Hardball illustrated that point on Tuesday night as MSNBC legal analyst Paul Butler wildly asserted that, since Donald Trump was President and Bill Barr was Attorney General, the two have, “in some ways...facilitated [Jeffrey] Epstein's suicide.” Host Chris Matthews certainly wasn’t expecting that when, after introducing Butler, he complained about Trump’s “chutzpah to just say — to throw out Bill Clinton and try to trash his name into this mess” regarding Clinton’s closeness with Epstein. Butler asserted that “Donald Trump is...

I asked this question on social media, where I interact with people across the political spectrum: What happens on Nov. 4, 2020, the day after the election? It’s a legitimate worry. Based on what happened after November 2016, the day after this next election will tell us where our democracy stands. Because we’re setting the stage where whichever side loses they may feel justified in claiming it was rigged or illegal, and the 2020 winner is illegitimate. This is hardly unfounded considering both what we know and what we are seeing coming. First, on the Left. Given that the Left...

Uber set two dubious quarterly records on Thursday as it reported its results: its largest-ever loss, exceeding $5 billion, and its slowest-ever revenue growth. The double whammy immediately renewed questions about the prospects for the company, the world’s biggest ride-hailing business. Uber has been dogged by concerns about sluggish sales and whether it can make money, worries that were compounded by a disappointing initial public offering in May. For the second quarter, Uber said it lost $5.2 billion, the largest loss since it began disclosing limited financial data in 2017. A majority of that — about $3.9 billion — was...

A Google insider who anonymously leaked internal documents to Project Veritas made the decision to go public in an on-the-record video interview. The insider, Zachary Vorhies, decided to go public after receiving a letter from Google, and after he says Google allegedly called the police to perform a "wellness check" on him. ... Vorhies described the incident to Project Veritas: "they got inside the gate, the police, and they started banging on my door ... And so the police decided that they were going to call in additional forces. They called in the FBI, they called in the SWAT team....

San Francisco and Santa Clara counties filed the first lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's new rules to deny green cards to migrants who use Medicaid, food stamps, housing vouchers or other forms of public assistance.

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NEW YORK — The details of how Jeffrey Epstein died in his Manhattan jail cell over the weekend have yet to be released, but medical officials have performed an autopsy on the high-profile inmate accused of sexually abusing underage girls and paying them hundreds of dollars in cash for massages. Epstein’s abrupt death Saturday cut short a criminal prosecution that could have pulled back the curtain on the inner workings of a high-flying financier with connections to celebrities and presidents, though prosecutors have vowed to continue investigating. Epstein, 66, had been denied bail and faced up to 45 years behind...

On the heels of his recent victory in the ring, professional boxer and politician Manny Pacquiao recently used the Bible to defend his pro-death penalty position in a senate hearing. Pacquiao’s defeat over boxer Keith Thurman in July was followed by a different battle Wednesday as a member of the Philippines Senate. He used his first Senate speech to argue for capital punishment, proclaiming it lawful and moral “especially in the eyes of God.” “When the government punishes, it’s not an individual act. That’s approved by God. That’s what the Bible says,” Pacquiao said, according to South China Morning Post....

Q: When we see Serena holding Nichole, it might also call to mind the picture of Melania Trump holding the El Paso baby who was orphaned in the recent shooting. A: I don’t blame you for seeing similarities there. Anyone who feels the same way about the presidency and everything that brings up, they’re going to look at that picture and think of Serena immediately. I totally get it.

In his book, “The Reason for God,” Tim Keller argues that Christianity is the only truly global religion. Indeed, within a few generations of Christ, the Christian faith had spread across much of the known world—from India to North Africa to furthest reaches of the Roman Empire and into the barbarian lands of Northern Europe. Yet up until a hundred years or so ago, for all kinds of historical and sociological reasons, Christianity became a predominantly Western religion. The missionary efforts of the last hundred years began to change that, and now Pew Research predicts that Africa will be the...

Bullets fired at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices in Texas were a "targeted attack" against federal employees, the FBI has said. Several shots were fired at around 03:00 local time (08:00 GMT) on Tuesday at the offices in San Antonio. Two neighbouring buildings came under fire, but no injuries were reported, the FBI said in a statement. In a statement, ICE blamed the shootings on "political rhetoric" and "misinformation" about the Trump administration's detention policies. ICE under the Trump administration has been heavily criticised for its treatment of undocumented immigrants held at detention centres near the US-Mexico border....

A few months after detecting an "unusually high" level of methane on Mars, researchers have yet to figure out what's causing the spike. According to a study published in Scientific Reports, researchers from Newcastle University in the U.K. have ruled out that the spike could have been caused by wind erosion of rocks that had trapped the methane from fluid inclusions and fractures on the Red Planet's surface. "The questions are -- where is this methane coming from, and is the source biological?" principal investigator Dr. Jon Telling said Telling added that over the last decade, winds on Mars have...

The Dow slid more than 400 points Wednesday after the bond market, for the first time in over a decade, flashed a warning signal that has an eerily accurate track record for predicting recessions.

Has there been a cover-up in Jeffrey Epstein’s death — and if so, to benefit who? CBS News reported last night that surveillance video in the Metropolitan Correctional Center shows that guards falsified records of welfare checks on Epstein, especially after authorities took the unusual step of removing his cellmate and not replacing him with another. Now two of the staffers have been suspended as well as the warden replaced, and a couple of the guards have retained attorneys: Corrections officers may have falsified reports saying they checked on Jeffrey Epstein as required by protocol, according to a law...