Free Republic

Should taxpayers subsidize my new, gigantic beachfront house?  Few people realize this is going on, even though mostly everyone (excepting beach homeowners, real estate and rental agents, tourism promoters etc…) would agree that this is folly.Anyone trucking the family on serial pilgrimages to the Atlantic and the Gulf Coast can see that beach houses are getting bigger and bigger, especially after hurricanes strong enough to cause major (and sometimes complete) destruction.This was documented in the technical journal Nature Sustainability late last year—a mere two months after Category 4 Hurricane Michael (ultimately reclassified as a Cat 5) mowed down pretty much every...

Democratic pollster and political consultant Doug Schoen took the stand at former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig’s trial Friday, telling jurors how he enlisted Craig in the Ukraine-related project that led to the veteran Washington lawyer facing a felony charge of trying to mislead Justice Department officials. **SNIP** Craig’s revered status in the Washington legal community is a key part of both the prosecution and the defense at his trial for allegedly trying to obscure his role when the Justice Department began looking into the report seven years ago. Defense lawyers contend such an effort would be entirely out...

Democratic presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) took flak for politicizing the shooting of police in Philadelphia on Wednesday. She couldn’t even wait more than an hour before pushing gun control. But there is a big problem with her solutions to have more regulations for gun dealers. She didn’t even yet know how the attacker got his guns, but it is delusional to think that any regulations on gun dealers are going to significantly stop drug dealers from getting guns. She announced again on CNN Wednesday that she wants “to take the licenses of gun dealers who violate the law.” What...

Personnel at the New York City prison where accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide last week have not been initially cooperative with investigators from the Department of Justice, a federal source told Fox News Friday. Attorney General William Barr sent two senior DOJ officials to personally visit the Metropolitan Correctional Center and speak with staff from the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) in order to gather information on Epstein’s death after Barr said officials uncovered “serious irregularities” at the jail, a senior DOJ official told Fox News. The officials have been on site since Thursday and the FBI and...

The Green County Prosecutor in Missouri refused to charge Dmitriy Andreychenco with terrorist threat in the first degree. The charge was made in the 2nd degree. Dmitriy was open carrying in a Walmart U.S.A. –-(Ammoland.com)- At about 4:10 p.m. on 8 August, 2019 Dmitriy Andreychenco parked in the parking lot of the Walmart Neighborhood Market in Springfield, Missouri. He took an tactical ballistic vest out of the car, put it on, and slung a AR type rifle. He walked into the store. He was open carrying and testing his Second Amendment rights, as confirmed by his wife and his...

The potential for another Ukrainian revolution festers beneath this year’s deceptively calm presidential and parliamentary elections. It would be the third one in 15 years, following the 2004 Orange Revolution and the 2014 Euro-Maidan uprising. In April, 75 percent of voters elected celebrity comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy to replace the president who had led Ukraine since the 2014 revolution, Petro Poroshenko. Then in July, Zelenskiy’s party won a supermajority in Parliament, introducing single-party rule to Ukraine for the first time since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991—and empowering Zelenskiy to govern without a coalition. Western experts have praised these elections...

**SNIP** But Wyneken said that for the past few years, especially since scorching summers of 2015 and 2016, she hasn’t seen a significant difference in the sex ratios of the species in South Florida: It’s girls, girls and more girls, in every nest. And things are getting worse. July was the hottest month ever recorded in the world, coming in slightly higher than the previous record, which was July 2016, according to data from the World Meteorological Organization and the Copernicus Climate Change Service. There were wildfires in the Arctic, a huge ice melt event in Greenland and 90-degree weather...

The world of IVF and assisted reproductive technology has been a massive social experiment, designed under the pretext of giving couples struggling with infertility the ability to have a family. While helping people get pregnant is a worthy and laudable goal, has the experiment gone too far? Most of the attention has only been paid to the parents, while the effect this has on the children conceived through these methods is largely ignored. More and more of them are speaking out — like one man who was conceived through a sperm donor… and learned he has over 30 siblings. Eli...

**SNIP** “Under the federally-mandated review process, there should be a full study and consideration of ways, first to avoid, then to minimize and then, as a last resort, to mitigate the adverse effects of the plans to build the OPC in historic Jackson Park,” the letter states. Instead, “virtually all the focus” of the City Hall presentation was on “how the city was looking at mitigation. ... They completely skipped consideration of avoidance and minimization,” the letter states. As a result, the meeting “felt a lot like meetings past: an engineered agenda with a pre-determined outcome, paying lip service only...

An MSNBC guest questioned the intelligence of Trump voters on Friday, asking if anyone who attended President Trump's rally in Manchester, N.H., can "point out Greenland on a map?" On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump has asked his advisers whether the U.S. can acquire Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, during "meetings, dinners, and passing conversations" because of Greenland's "abundant resources and geopolitical importance." However, "The Beat" managing editor Tiffany Cross expressed concern when she heard that "the descendants of colonizers" are flimsily considering "taking land from indigenous people." "This is something, you know his supporters are like...

The Mexican government said Friday it is busing migrants who have applied for asylum in the United States to the southern Mexico state of Chiapas. About 30,000 migrants have been sent back to northern Mexican border cities to await U.S. asylum hearings under a policy known as "Remain in Mexico" under which they have to wait for hearings months away. But few provisions have been made for them to be housed or seek legal representation, and many cities on the northern border are among the most dangerous in Mexico... ...The Associated Press reported that in July, Mexico had begun busing...

"Real Time" host Bill Maher doubled down Friday on his desire for the U.S. economy to fall into recession in hopes of blocking a second term for President Trump -- telling his panel of guests any hardship that results would be "very worth" it. "I've been saying for about two years that I hope we have a recession and people get mad at me," said Maher, a multimillionaire who would likely be well insulated from a financial downturn. “I’m just saying we can survive a recession," he continued. "We've had 47 of them. We've had one every time there's a...

First Let me clarify that when Kirsten Gillibrand says she wants to ban Assault Weapons she means AR-15’s. Unfortunately, a lot of politicians like Gillibrand think the AR in AR15 stands for Assault Rifle, which it doesn’t it stands for Arma Lite Rifle, but she doesn’t care because her job right now is to prove to the world how anti-gun she is. Because she’s like a dying fish on land, flipping and flopped all of the place struggling to get some air for her failing campaign. Keep America Tactical

The US justice department has issued a warrant to seize a detained Iranian oil tanker, a day after a judge in Gibraltar ordered it to be released. The Grace 1 supertanker, which is carrying 2.1m barrels of oil, was detained on 4 July on suspicion of illegally transporting oil to Syria. A last-minute legal attempt by the US to keep the tanker detained was rejected by Gibraltar on Thursday. Iran previously called the detention of Grace 1 an "illegal interception".

August 17 2019 Saturday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1 Jos 24:14-29 Joshua gathered together all the tribes of Israel at Shechem, and addressed them, saying: "Fear the LORD and serve him completely and sincerely. Cast out the gods your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. If it does not please you to serve the LORD, decide today whom you will serve, the gods your fathers served beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose country you are dwelling. As for me and my household, we will...

A gun rights group in San Diego sued Thursday to block California from enforcing an assault weapons ban, citing a federal court ruling earlier this year that struck down a state prohibition against high-capacity magazines...The lawsuit...likened the term assault weapon to "a politically concocted pejorative term" for weapons lawfully used "in virtually every state,"...further asked the court to declare California's definition of an assault weapon unconstitutional and issue an order permanently barring enforcement of laws that prohibit them based on magazine capacity.

I have to admit, he sounds legitimate. Need to get him in front of Congress ASAP.

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – State Representative Daniel Forestal (D-Indianapolis) has been formally charged by Marion County prosecutors for operating a vehicle while intoxicated, resisting law enforcement, and a felony charge of impersonating a police officer. Witnesses who spoke with FOX59 on Tuesday said they were shocked to learn that the man driving around the neighborhood Saturday was in fact a State Representative. James McGuire and his wife told police they were walking in their neighborhood on Saturday, when they say Forestal flashed a badge, and asked where the drug dealers were. "He's like, ‘I'm official. I can get rid of them....

A New York airport security worker is without a job because of a two-word message she wrote on a piece of paper. In the security video of the incident Neal Strassner requested himself, as he passes through a metal detector, the TSA agent hands him a note. Not thinking much of it, Strassner continues to go about boarding his flight when the agent calls back to him to open it. Strassner says the note read, "You ugly." "You never really know where somebody is in their day or their head. The more you think about it the more you realize...

https://www.greathillpartners.com/portfolio/gizmodo/ I just happened to read about a new media company, which is seeming to be different. I do not know much about it, and might be totally wrong about this. But they seem to be creating something of a shock wave in their takeover of several sort of, relatively well known media outlets. Including, ironically, the Onion.