Free Republic

Robert Mugabe, the longtime leader of Zimbabwe who was forced to resign in 2017 after a military takeover, has died. His successor Emmerson Mnangagwa confirmed Mugabe’s death in a tweet Friday, mourning him as an “icon of liberation.” Mugabe was a former guerrilla chief who took power after the end of white minority rule in 1980 and presided over a country whose early promise was eroded by economic turmoil and human rights violations.

Did you watch any of the CNN #ClimateTownHall and Democrat telethon Wednesday night? If you didn't, congratulations! You are a smart and normal human being. If you did, you saw a spectacle the likes of which we can only hope CNN or MSNBC repeats again very soon. Because it was an awful, terrible, no good night for the Democrats. Some ways in I took a break from enjoying my life to tune in and caught Sen. Amy Klobuchar opining on fossil fuels and the economy. Frankly, I'd thought she already dropped out of the race, but there she was. The...

Put it this way: the most benign climate-change plan proposed during CNN’s seven-hour Democratic Party presidential candidate town hall was more authoritarian than anything Donald Trump has ever suggested during his presidency. Democrats were not merely proposing massive societal upheaval but mass coercion. CNN says it’s a “crisis,” though, so Democrats were free to offer one insane Nostradamus-like prediction after the next. Not only is every weather event now a manifestation of global warming, but Beto O’Rourke says our communities will soon be “uninhabitable,” and Pete Buttigieg says the challenge of warming is on par with World War II, a...

PADUCAH — TTEC Holdings, Inc. will be holding its Connect Your Career Fair on Tuesday, Sept. 10. The company will be hiring 100 full-time health care customer experience associates. The fair will be held at the TTEC Paducah location at 2301 McCracken Blvd. from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Most candidates will have immediate, onsite interviews and possibly same-day job offers. Hiring will continue through the month of September. “These customer experience roles are perfect for individuals who are seeking a steady, advancement-opportunity career or break away from hospitality, fast food or retail jobs,” said Jeremie Light, Senior Service Delivery...

A draft U.S. peace deal with the Taliban could result in “another Saigon” in which the Afghan government is toppled from power and its leaders executed after U.S. troops withdraw, warns a former top FBI counterterrorism agent and international security consultant. “If we continue the negotiations only between us and between the Taliban, that is not a withdrawal — that is another Saigon,” said Ali Soufan, one of the FBI’s lead agents targeting al-Qaida before the 2001 terror attack, when the group was headquartered in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban. “Because, you know, we’re telling the Afghan government,...

Just relax and enjoy the song.

I recently was on the Cold War Conversations podcast discussing my book “GPS Declassified” and my father’s role in the early space program and the invention of GPS.

Rio de Janeiro (AFP) - A Brazilian government minister said French first lady Brigitte Macron was "truly ugly" Thursday, only days after the country's president appeared to endorse an attack on her appearance. Brazil's economy minister Paulo Guedes said he agreed with President Jair Bolsonaro's comments about Macron's looks. "The president said it -- it's true," he said to applause during an economic forum. "The woman is truly ugly." Later, an aide said in a statement that Guedes "asks for forgiveness for the joke he made today during a public event... when he mentioned the French first lady." Bolsonaro garnered...

KREAMER, PA — Dealers seem generally positive, though decidedly guarded, in response to the news that Wood-Mode is apparently experiencing a rebirth under a new owner who is optimistic that the cabinet brand remains viable despite being shrouded in uncertainty since the abrupt, mid-May closure of its factory. Dealers contacted by Kitchen & Bath Design News expressed a willingness to give Wood-Mode’s new ownership an opportunity to rebuild frayed relationships, after learning that Pennsylvania businessman Bill French completed the acquisition of Wood-Mode’s assets from the company’s former primary lender. The iconic, 77-year-old cabinet manufacturer had been seemingly destined for liquidation...

September 6 2019 Friday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1 Col 1:15-20 Brothers and sisters:Christ Jesus is the image of the invisible God,the firstborn of all creation.For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth,the visible and the invisible,whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers;all things were created through him and for him.He is before all things,and in him all things hold together.He is the head of the Body, the Church.He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead,that in all things he himself might be preeminent.For in him all the fullness...

At her concerts, Linda Ronstadt used to imagine that audience members were whispering to one another about what a terrible singer she was. She was an unusual rock star in several ways. Few others were as careful about keeping their distance from the insanity, and fewer turned away from arena adulation and the pop charts to do standards, operetta, and Mexican folk songs. Ronstadt was the most spectacular female singer of the rock era, her voice a thing of astonishing clarity and power and color. Due respect is here, in the documentary Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice. What...

Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski predicted Thursday that President Trump will win by a wider electoral margin next year compared to his 2016 victory. “My prediction is Donald Trump will win by a larger electoral margin than he did in the 2016 election,” Lewandowski told Hill.TV. He was also optimistic about Trump’s ability to win three states that he lost in 2016: New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Nevada. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton won all three states by a slim margin. Trump received 304 electoral votes to Clinton's 227, for a 77-vote margin of victory.

The Trump administration is moving forward with a proposal to revoke part of California’s authority to set its own automobile gas mileage standards, a government official said Thursday, confronting a state that has repeatedly challenged the administration’s environmental rollbacks. The Environmental Protection Agency was preparing paperwork for the White House for the move, meant to help the administration set a single, less rigorous mileage standard enforceable nationwide, according to the official, who is familiar with the regulatory process and spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan has not been made public. President Donald Trump has pushed for months to...

An American Airlines mechanic was arrested Thursday on a sabotage charge accusing him of disabling a navigation system on a flight with 150 people aboard before it was scheduled to take off from Miami International Airport earlier this summer. The reason, according to a criminal complaint affidavit filed in Miami federal court: Abdul-Majeed Marouf Ahmed Alani, a veteran employee, was upset over stalled union contract negotiations. None of the passengers and crew on the flight to Nassau were injured because the tampering with the so-called air data module caused an error alert as the pilots powered up the plane’s engines...

U.S. college students are using marijuana at the highest rates in 35 years, according to a report released Thursday. About 43% of full-time college students said they used some form of pot at least once in the past year, up from 38%, a University of Michigan survey found. About 25% said they did so in the previous month, up from 21%.

An American Airlines mechanic was arrested Thursday on a sabotage charge accusing him of disabling a navigation system on a flight with 150 people aboard before it was scheduled to take off from Miami International Airport earlier this summer. The reason, according to a criminal complaint affidavit filed in Miami federal court: Abdul-Majeed Marouf Ahmed Alani, a veteran employee, was upset over stalled union contract negotiations. Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article234766107.html#storylink=cpy

 Starting next year, most new homes and buildings in San Luis Obispo will be all-electric and without natural gas hook-ups. The SLO City Council approved an overhaul of its building code on Sept. 3 that includes strong disincentives against building new natural gas infrastructure, a move that city leaders claim will help SLO get closer to its net-zero emissions target by 2035. The local code amendments—collectively called the Clean Energy Choice Program—follow a statewide push among progressive cities to electrify buildings. SLO's code, which goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2020, doesn't outright ban new buildings with natural gas, as a recent...

President Donald Trump talked with reporters about his administration’s effort to build the wall at the southern border on Sept. 4 and said he expects the wall to be completed at key places by the end of 2020. Talking with reporters at the Oval Office, the President said his administration is currently building or replacing “very large sections of the wall” and it is happening “rapidly.” His comments came a day after the Department of Defense (DOD) said it was freeing up $3.6 billion in funds to build the wall that were previously budgeted for other projects. “We’re building different...

In a piece for the magazine’s October issue, Hill insists that black athletes are doing blacks no good by allowing “white” colleges to use the student’s athletic prowess to raise funds to benefit the college. After noting that 2018’s top college prospect Kayvon Thibodeaux brought a lot of notoriety to a historically black college when he was looking colleges over, Hill pointed out that the NCAA and the “white” colleges that participate in the conference make billions a year off the sweat of black athletes. “Almost all of these schools are majority white,” Hill disparagingly wrote, “in fact, black men...

Anthony Avalos was the fastest runner in his fourth-grade class at El Dorado Elementary School in Lancaster. He earned a place on the honor roll, and his teacher, Harmony Bell, noticed an uncommon emotional maturity for a boy his age. He often collected his thoughts before speaking, asking Bell if he could step out of the room and take a few deep breaths. When a new student joined the class, he asked to move to a neighboring seat, hoping to be the friend the newcomer needed. Yet Bell saw that Anthony was often nervous about something. He held his Bible...