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US VICE PRESIDENT Mike Pence has touched down in Ireland this afternoon. Air Force Two, the plane which carries the vice president and the second lady landed in Shannon Airport at around 4.30pm this afternoon. Pence will meet with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar tomorrow as well as President Michael D Higgins during his visit. The meeting with Varadkar for lunch and talks will take place in Farmleigh House with Varadkar saying today that his parents and partner Matt Barrett will also be present. Pence is arriving in Shannon early this evening and will stay overnight in Trump Doonbeg – the Co...

John Kerry’s stepson rushed to play damage control at the State Department after his business partner Hunter Biden cut a deal with an oligarch-owned Ukrainian gas company in 2014, according to internal State Department correspondence obtained by the Washington Examiner. The correspondence adds to the questions about Biden's business activities, which have dogged the 2020 Democratic primary campaign of his father Joe. Hunter Biden's long history of drug and alcohol abuse, which contributed to his divorce and his dismissal from the Navy Reserve, has also attracted unwelcome publicity for the Democratic front-runner. An email released to the Washington Examiner shows...

SPARTANBURG, S.C. - Joe Biden pledged to erect an "absolute wall" between the presidency and his family's business dealings and said he has never discussed business with relatives, following an event here on Wednesday. "I have never discussed, with my son or my brother or with anyone else, anything having to do with their businesses. Period," he said. "And what I will do is the same thing we did in our administration. There will be an absolute wall between personal and private [business interests] and the government. There wasn’t any hint of scandal at all when we were there. And...

‘This Pontificate Is Worse Than the Falklands War’ Far from reviving Catholicism in Buenos Aires, this pontificate has deflated it. “Immediately after his election church attendance seemed to go up a little bit,” said one Argentine Catholic. “But now it has gone down. Parishes which once had perpetual Eucharistic adoration no longer have it. The situation in Buenos Aires has gone from bad to worse.” Another Argentine Catholic tells me, “I stopped going to daily Mass because the quality of it has become such a joke.”Indeed, many of the Catholic institutions in Buenos Aires seem either ghost-townish or in the...

Post #6. With so many rats running for president in 2020 it's hard to keep up with who's in and who's out. Hopefully, this post will help. Below is a list of declared candidates, their occupation, the date they dropped from the race (if they did) and misc. notes.This thread will be reposted each week, likely on Monday, with the dropouts from the previous week and newly declared candidates noted. The dust biter(s) from last week: Kirsten Gillibrand. Newly declared candidates from last week: None, thankfully.Please let me know via FReepmail if you find errors. Thanks! upchuck Nbr Name Occupation...

Union bosses, closely tied to the Democrat Party, say American union workers sticking with President Trump in 2020 and his economic nationalist agenda is “a serious problem” for them. A report by the Wall Street Journal reveals how union bosses and Democrats are looking to peel off Trump’s support from American union workers who back his agenda, where most recently he has demanded multinational corporations move their production in China to the U.S. The Journal reports: “It’s a serious problem for us,” said Alan Netland, president of the North East Area Labor Council in Duluth, Minn., which represents 40,000 union...

Because He Thinks He Can F-Word His Way to the White House Red State’s Alex Parker wrote over the weekend about how failed U.S. Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke is campaigning for the “hip” vote with his frequent use of the f-word (including saying it unbleeped on live TV) to describe his frustration with the debate over gun rights in the aftermath of recent massshootings. In response to what we’re being led to believe is the rising popularity in Democratic circles for the struggling 2020 presidential candidate to use the f-word, the Beto campaign has come out with a new t-shirt in order to capitalize on the alleged momentum....

The Supreme Court as we once knew it—as a national institution that could at least sometimes stand apart from partisanship—died last year. The ongoing fight over its corpse spilled into public view last week. On Thursday, 53 United States senators—every member of the Republican caucus—wrote a “letter” to the clerk of the Supreme Court assuring the justices that the Republican Party has their back. The Democrats, the senators told the Court, pose “a direct, immediate threat to the independence of the judiciary.” The spat is about guns. The Court has granted review in a Second Amendment case entitled New York...

[Catholic Caucus] Seattle bishops’ response to suicide caused grave scandal, not just ‘confusion’ August 30, 2019 (CatholicCulture.org) — After the publication of an an AP story about a man who received a blessing in a Catholic church just a few days before committing suicide, the Seattle archdiocese released a statement that read in part: The Associated Press story about Mr. Fuller is of great concern to the Archbishops because it may cause confusion among Catholics and others who share our reverence for human life. Confusion? The AP story was not confusing at all; its message was crystal-clear. A man had received a blessing...

The chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission has raised new concerns about the legitimacy of elections like that of President Trump, who lost the popular vote but won an Electoral College victory. Ellen Weintraub, who has stepped up criticism of Trump’s claims of voter fraud, said she is worried that Americans will lose faith in elections where the Electoral College and not the popular vote rules. Appearing on MSNBC, she said that when she explains the U.S. system to foreign observers, they appear confused. Weintraub said she explains that typically a presidential candidate wins both the Electoral and popular vote...

[Catholic/Orthodox Caucus] Do not act with tyranny towards God’s creation, Pope Francis says 'Let us say ‘no’ to consumerist greed and to the illusion of omnipotence, for these are the ways of death,' the Pope said In a message for Sunday’s World Day of Prayer for Care of Creation, Pope Francis encouraged Catholics to make simple changes to their lives so that God’s creation is treated with respect.“Too many of us act like tyrants with regard to creation. Let us make an effort to change and to adopt more simple and respectful lifestyles!” he said in the September 1...

Customs and Border Patrol agents have returned a traveler to China after finding weapons in his luggage, officials said Friday. A Chinese national arrived at Detroit Metropolitan Airport from Beijing on Aug. 18 and declared that he wasn’t carrying any prohibited items, said agents with Customs and Border Patrol. During an examination of the traveler’s luggage, officers discovered undeclared ballistic armor and other tactical apparel, they said. Agents also discovered evidence that the traveler had a collection of weapons at his U.S. residence, including high capacity magazines and bump stock devices. Investigators searching his U.S. residence found “a significant cache...

A mischaracterization of the Tueller Drill — the so-called 21 foot rule — deprived Michael Drejka of a potentially effective defense. On Friday, August 23 , 2019, a Florida jury convicted Michael Drejka, the handicap parking spot shooter who killed Markeis McGlockton, of manslaughter. As a result, at his September 10 sentencing hearing the 48-year-old Drejka will likely be sentenced to a mandatory minimum of 25 years to life in prison, without possibility of early release. My problem with this outcome has nothing to do with the fact that Michael Drejka was found guilty—maybe he was guilty. My problem with...

The man shot and killed while trying to break up a fight that he noticed after his youth football team’s game concluded was a beloved and respected coach who had an impact far beyond the field. Police say 36-year-old Norzell Aldridge of Cheektowaga died at the hospital after a shooting just after 7 p.m. Saturday on Koons Avenue and Sycamore Street, on Buffalo’s east side. A source close to the football organization tells News 4 Aldridge had been stepping in to protect young people during a fight when he was shot in the chest. The shooting happened not far from...

    ~The FReeper Canteen Presents~ Road Trip: Fort Rucker, AlabamaFort Rucker is a U.S. Army post located primarily in Dale County, Alabama, United States. It was named for a Civil War officer, Confederate General Edmund Rucker. The post is the primary flight training installation for U.S. Army Aviators and is home to the United States Army Aviation Center of Excellence (USAACE) and the United States Army Aviation Museum.The U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence is the dominant military facility at Fort Rucker. Training, doctrine, and testing are all key parts of the Center's mission to develop Army Aviation's...

Fair warning, industrious reader: You may want to request off from work now. CNN has carved out nearly eight full hours for a climate change town hall featuring a smattering of the gajillion still declared Democratic presidential candidates. Scheduled for September 4, the event will run from 5 P.M. to midnight, when, presumably, viewers who tuned in for the entire spectacle will immediately commit felo de se. That makes Senator Cory Booker's face the last many doleful viewers will see before the fatal act. How fitting. The event is called a "town hall," but it's not clear what town it...

President Trump deserves enormous credit for his exceptional commitment to free speech at the G7 summit in Biarritz, France. Foreign leaders, like our own illiberal, liberal activists, are chomping at the bit to introduce ever more online censorship. At the G7, European leaders introduced a measure that would have drafted tech companies into the role of government censors, forcing them to police online content and remove anything that bureaucrats deem to be insensitive. Emmanuel Macron struggled in vain to conceal his disappointment as he announced that the United States had refused to sign on to his pet G7 compact, which...

Comparison: Tesla Model 3 vs. 20 Chinese EVs That Sort Of Look Like Ford Raptors But Have 'Jeep' On Them the Tesla Model 3, a sleek four-door electric sedan with about 258 horsepower and a range of around 220 miles. The Fur-RAPTOR has a 1200W motor, which I think comes to around—can this be right?—under two horsepower or so? I’m not certain, but it’s not that much. And this thing is cheap: $1,650 gets you one, which is why we’re able to get 20 and still be well within our $35,000 budget. Wht the hell do you need to go...

See the Lincoln-Douglas debate #6. Stephen Douglas: We then adopted a free State Constitution, as we had a right to do. In this State we have declared that a negro shall not be a citizen, and we have also declared that he shall not be a slave. We had a right to adopt that policy. Missouri has just as good a right to adopt the other policy. I am now speaking of rights under the Constitution, and not of moral or religious rights. I do not discuss the morals of the people of Missouri, but let them settle that matter...

The Trump Organization has promised to fund a new school and a health centre in order to win permission for a luxury housing estate near Donald Trump’s Aberdeenshire golf resort. The local council’s head of infrastructure, Stephen Archer, recommended councillors approve plans from Trump Golf Scotland to build 550 luxury homes and holiday villas in the first phase of a new development. Archer said the Trump Organization had agreed to part-fund a new health clinic in the town of Ellon, about eight miles (13km) away, plus a primary school and a new waste and recycling centre in nearby Balmedie. It...