Free Republic

It doesn’t seem possible, but the Jussie Smollett case just got more infuriating. As if it wasn’t enough that the “Empire” star was charged with staging a fake anti-gay attack back in January and insulting the character of millions of President Donald Trump’s supporters, Smollett’s attorneys are now insulting the country’s intelligence. In a court motion reported by the Chicago Sun-Times on Wednesday, Smollett’s lawyers are claiming that even if the actor was behind a faked attack, it wasn’t his fault that the Chicago Police Department decided to investigate the case so thoroughly. Seriously. According to the Sun-Times, the bizarre...

Imperial Japan's emperor claimed to be an incarnate divinity who was to be obeyed completely. It was forbidden for his subjects to criticize him. The Imperial Japanese Empire he inherited grew into one of the largest maritime empires in history, becoming the 3rd largest naval power and having the 9th largest economy in the world. In 1910, Imperial Japan annexed Korea, and in 1918 took control of Russian ports in Siberia. In 1937, Imperial Japan's Army killed an estimated 200,000 in Nanking, China. In 1941, over 3,000 Americans died when Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. In 1942, over 20,000 Americans...

SANTA FE – It’s not official yet, but a new tax rate for top-earning New Mexicans appears likely to hit the state’s books in 2021. The higher personal income tax rate was part of a broad tax package approved by the Democratic-controlled Legislature during this year’s 60-day session, but lawmakers tied its implementation to future revenue levels as part of a final compromise. Specifically, the new tax bracket will only take effect if state revenue levels in the current budget year, which started July 1, do not exceed last year levels by more than 5%. That now appears nearly certain...

This letter to the editor in Arizona is real — Trump Derangement Winner Cheryl Boyles ============================================================================== If you think Cheryl Boyles is curled up in a corner somewhere sucking her thumb, think again. Boyles is the Green Valley woman whose letter to the editor last Sunday launched an avalanche of criticism. And since this is the opinion page, I guess I can say it: She deserved every word of it. I told her as much when we talked after Wednesday’s paper came out. We printed 24 letters to the editor, all destroying her overwrought description of a visit to Trader...

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) – A nurse practitioner formerly with Planned Parenthood testified in court Tuesday that she never expected to be covertly videotaped at the National Abortion Federation’s annual meeting. “I believe it’s a protected place where we can speak freely about our work,” said the nurse, identified in court as Doe 7 – one of 14 people whose conversations anti-abortion activist David Daleiden furtively recorded discussing the procurement of fetal tissue. Daleiden and co-defendant Sandra Merritt are each charged with 15 counts of felony invasion of privacy, accused of creating the fake company BioMax and posing as phony procurers...

LABOR DAY To appreciate it, one needs to know the history preceding it. At the time the United States was founded, most people were farmers or worked in trades, such as blacksmiths, cobblers, bakers, upholsterers, etc. Then, the Industrial Revolution began when the Scottish inventor James Watt developed a steam engine to pump water out of coal mines. Steam and water were soon harnessed in the early 19th century to power pumps, railroads, ships, and factories, which mass produced products, such as textiles. This led to the creation of factories which could mass produce items inexpensively. Originally, there was no...

for encouraging his sister to marry a Christian Islamic law forbids Muslim women to marry non-Muslim men. And there will be much, much more of this in America: Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide. The Palestinian Authority gives pardons or suspended sentences for honor murders. Iraqi women have asked for tougher sentences for Islamic honor murderers, who get off lightly now. Syria in 2009 scrapped a law limiting the length of sentences for honor killings, but “the new law says a man can still benefit from extenuating circumstances in crimes of passion or honour ‘provided he serves a...

First Prayer in Congress, September 1774, "The Establishment Clause must be interpreted by reference to historical practices & understandings"-Supreme Court, Galloway "It was enough to melt a heart of stone," remarked John Adams after the First Prayer in Congress. The First Session of the First Continental Congress opened in September of 1774 with a prayer in Carpenter's Hall, Philadelphia. America was being threatened by the most powerful monarch in the world, Britain's King George III. On September 7, 1774, as the Congress began, the founding fathers listened to Rev. Jacob Duche' read Psalm 35, which was the "Psalter" for the...

New Mexico’s oil and gas industry is expected to keep growing at a record pace, resulting in more revenue for the state and billions of dollars in new infrastructure investments to get the commodities to market, according to a study commissioned by industry trade groups. The predictions were outlined in a report presented to state lawmakers during a meeting Tuesday in Roswell. The report, compiled by a national consulting group, was commissioned by the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association and the American Petroleum Institute. Analysts estimate it will take $174 billion of new infrastructure to keep pace with expected...

TORIES are set to rip up years of convention and depose Speaker Bercow at the next election - after his furious blast at Michael Gove last night. The Conservatives are getting ready to break with long-standing rules and line up a Brexiteer to take on the Commons Speaker in his Buckingham constituency, according to The Telegraph. At the moment it's a tradition that no other major party runs any candidate against the Speaker, giving them a clear shot at winning. In 2010 only Nigel Farage, then Ukip leader, and several independent candidates ran against him. This means there's not a...

The connection between decay and the politics of progressivism has become painfully clear. It was my penultimate summer in California when two friends from Germany crossed the pond to visit. They rented a room in San Diego not far from the beach, nestled in a palm-tree lined suburb. At some point between setting their bags on the curb and checking in to their summer digs, a man was gunned down behind their rental in an alleyway drive-by. It was a random act of violence as far as San Diego’s finest could tell, and conspicuously at odds with those ubiquitous “Coexist”...

John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" - "The monster was hideous to behold...scales...wings like a dragon, feet like a bear...out of his belly came fire & smoke" What would it be like to be imprisoned for 12 years just for preaching the Gospel without a license from the government? This was the fate of John Bunyan, author of the world renown book Pilgrim's Progress. John Bunyan was born in Bedford, England, in 1628, nearly a century before the Europe's Age of Enlightenment. He worked as a poor, unskilled tinker by trade. In 1644, at the age of 16, Bunyan joined the Puritan...

WASHINGTON — Like whisperers in a tempest, conservative-minded officials across the breadth of Donald Trump’s government are letting it be known what they think of him, and some of it isn’t pretty. But they are speaking oh so softly, in a kind of code, to a country that may only hear shouting. Jim Mattis is just the latest in a string of leading lights from the conservative establishment to throw shade at Trump. As with others — the chief justice, a special counsel, various Republican lawmakers who hope to have a political future — the ex-Pentagon chief’s words are subtle,...

On the heels of a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about backyard chickens spreading illness to people in 49 states comes a harrowing tale about a woman who was killed by a rooster that delivered a lethal strike to a varicose vein in her leg.

The oath of military enlistment states: "I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." Who were some of the most famous "domestic" enemies? In July of 1775, General Washington appointed Dr. Benjamin Church as the first surgeon general of the Continental Army. Three months later, Washington discovered Dr. Benjamin Church had been spying for the British. He wrote coded messages of the Continental Army's plans and leaked them to British officer, Major Crane . When Dr. Church was exposed as the leaker, Washington...

Barack and Michelle Obama have been accused of “deplorable behavior” by a Los Angeles entertainment attorney for filing a “meritless petition” amid a trademark dispute over the name of their company, Higher Ground Productions. The legal team representing the Obamas filed a petition to cancel the trademark of an e-book publishing company called Higher Ground Enterprises, much to the chagrin of the publishing company.

A series of resurfaced tweets from Dr. Jamie R. Riley, the University of Alabama’s assistant vice president and dean of students, show he once believed the American flag and police in America are racist. “The [American flag emoji] flag represents a systemic history of racism for my people,” Riley wrote in a September 2017 tweet. “Police are a part of that system. Is it that hard to see the correlation?” In another 2017 tweet, Riley, who has served in the position at the University of Alabama since February of this year, claimed white people do not understand racism because “they...

. A Labour MP, Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi, made an impassioned speech. (It is customary for members of parliament to make speeches in the form of a question, sort of.) According to this article in the Guardian, Dhesi is the “first turbaned Sikh MP” ever to sit in the House of Commons. He was referring to a column that Boris Johnson wrote in August 2018, after Denmark had banned the burka....It was headed, “Denmark has got it wrong. Yes, the burka is oppressive and ridiculous — but that’s still no reason to ban it.” In the course of this column, Johnson...

LOVELAND —A Loveland High School teen is back in class today after Thompson School District (TSD) officials apologized and cleared him of a report to “Safe2Tell,” claiming he made a threat on the school, that was actually a family outing at a shooting range. On Wednesday, TSD Superintendent Marc Schaffer notified the parents of Nathan Myers that he could not return to school until the district completed a full investigation after Nathan posted a Snapchat video on Tuesday of several handguns and an AR-15 belonging to his mother. The guns were being packed for a family shooting trip to the...

Developed in conjunction with Molotov Cocktails, Inc., the preferred provider of makeshift explosives for the leftist protestors, the throwable incendiary weapons are made with real, organic, locally harvested pumpkin spice. They taste and smell like pumpkin spice, which is important for the angry white people who make up Antifa. "Now, when your political opponents are burning in agony, you can enjoy that pumpkin spice smell you love so much," said Ned Patterson, CEO of Molotov Cocktails, Inc. "Nothing says fall like a good, old-fashioned, violent protest coupled with the scent of pumpkin spice."