Free Republic

The results of the Knesset election are very important to Moscow, and it hopes politicians will be elected who will maintain close ties with Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin said alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Sochi on Thursday. Netanyahu traveled to the Black Sea resort to meet the Russian leader – just five days before the election – in a move widely seen as an effort to woo elder Russian-speaking immigrants who form an important base of support for Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party.

Stalin's first Five Year Plan.

Sen. Kamala Harris' debate performance on Thursday fails to impress many of her party's big money donors and fails to win over some financiers who were on the fence about her candidacy... One source said Friday they had been having trouble persuading their donors to back her candidacy before the debate. The negative opinion didn't change after the debate. "I don't think anything has changed, and it's been grim," this person said.

The Mouth That Keeps on Giving… Earlier this year Democrat leader Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposed an impossible $93 trillion Green New Deal to obliterate and ruin the US economy in the name of global warming junk science. The liberal media has been propping up this lunacy since AOC introduced it months ago. And they wonder why no one trusts them anymore? But AOC was not through. This idiot told an audience this week that Miami will not exist in a few years if we don’t obliterate the US economy.

So, what did these guys do? - Robbed him of his phone - Stripped him naked - Punched, kicked him - Spat on him - Bodyslammed him - Jumped on his chest - Whipped him with a belt - Rode over him with a bicycle - Threw garbage at him Sounds like just another day in Minnesota.

The United States Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost released data regarding the number of gang members apprehended by her men and women in her agency during the 2019 fiscal year through August. According to Provost, BP has arrested at least 445 individuals from the notorious Mara Salvatruchaa gang. "This fiscal year through August, Border Patrol agents have encountered & arrested 933 criminal gang members. Some smuggling, some being smuggled, some sneaking in, and some already here," Provost tweeted. These numbers include the following gangs: MS-13: 445 18th Street: 165 Paisas: 82 Surenos: 68 Latin Kings: 21 Tango Blast: 19 USBPChief...

The nation's top intelligence official is illegally withholding a whistleblower complaint, possibly to protect President Donald Trump or senior White House officials, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff alleged Friday. Schiff issued a subpoena for the complaint, accusing acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire of taking extraordinary steps to withhold the complaint from Congress, even after the intel community's inspector general characterized the complaint as credible and of "urgent concern." “A Director of National Intelligence has never prevented a properly submitted whistleblower complaint that the [inspector general] determined to be credible and urgent from being provided to the congressional...

You might think you already know black – even super-black Vantablack, previously the blackest material known to science – but researchers just came up with a material that takes black to a new level of blackness. The new, as-yet-unnamed ultra-black material is made from vertically aligned carbon nanotubes (CNTs), microscopic carbon strings that are a little like a fuzzy forest of tiny trees, according to the team behind the project. And here's the rub – this CNT material can absorb more than 99.995 percent of incoming light, beating the 99.96 percent that Vantablack is able to absorb. MIT artist-in-residence Diemut...

Full Header: The Three Issues The Democratic Debate Decided To Gloss Over To Prevent Embarrassing The 2020 Field As members of the 2020 clown show debated last night, three questions remained off the docket. Granted, there was a lot of Trump-bashing, some intense moments where the candidates slung mud at one another, and the reiteration of trash left-wing policies. One thing is clear: there is not a single person on that stage last night who can beat Donald Trump. It’s not even close. For the three-hours this breakfast was on, we learned that Democrats want to increase taxes, have a...

BFFs in D.C.? Apparently not U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris of California. According to reports, Feinstein, the senior senator from the Golden State, will throw a fundraiser next month for Democratic 2020 presidential frontrunner Joe Biden -- and not for Harris, another White House contender whose poll numbers suggest she could probably use some high-profile help. Feinstein and husband Richard Blum will co-host the Biden event Oct. 3 in San Francisco, according to a copy of the invitation obtained by CNBC. Feinstein first gave her backing to Biden in January, months before the former vice president made his...

On Thursday, 10 Democratic candidates took the stage for the third debate in the 2020 race for the White House. And let’s just say, crazy town is at full capacity with this crew and the policies they support. You name the problem—genuine or overblown—and they have a big government program or initiative that will fix it. At least, that’s what they claim. The candidates had many opportunities to highlight them during the three-hour primetime spectacle. First up on the docket was healthcare—a topic that continues to be a focus of policy discussions in the primary, and rightly so. Healthcare in...

We study history to learn from it. If we can discover what worked and what didn’t work, we can use this knowledge wisely to create a better future. Studying the triumph of American industry, for example, is important because it is the story of how the United States became the world’s leading economic power. Free markets worked well; government intervention usually failed. The years when this happened, from 1865 to the early 1900s, saw the U.S. encourage entrepreneurs indirectly by limiting government. Slavery was abolished and so was the income tax. Federal spending was slashed and federal budgets had surpluses...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) isn’t taking another presidential run off the table — at least for 2024. The Republican lawmaker — who dropped his 2016 presidential bid after trying to win over voters against now-President Donald Trump in the Republican primary — is open to a future presidential run. In hopes of becoming the Republican nominee in 2016, Cruz fell short, as his support among voters declined in comparison to those backing then-front-runner Trump. A Gallup poll conducted in late April of 2016 shows Cruz at a 45% unfavorability rating among Republican voters, jumping from an unfavorability rating in the...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates—Drones claimed by Yemen’s Houthi rebels attacked the world’s largest oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia and a major oilfield operated by Saudi Aramco early Saturday, sparking a huge fire at a processor crucial to global energy supplies.

The chief executives of major US companies sent Senate leaders a letter on Thursday, urging Congress to expand background checks on all gun sales and issue stronger “red flag” laws. The letter, first shared by the New York Times, is backed by 145 CEOs of well-known retailers, technology companies, and financial institutions, including Dick’s Sporting Goods, Levi Strauss, Reddit, Twitter, and Uber. The move demonstrates how top corporate leaders are taking a united stance toward gun violence in the wake of recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. Gun violence is “a public health crisis that demands...

Lots of people—including Congress—are worried about fake videos and imagery distorting the truth, purporting to show people saying and doing things they never said or did. I’m part of a larger U.S. government project that is working on developing ways to detect images and videos that have been manipulated. My team’s work, though, is to play the role of the bad guy. We develop increasingly devious, and convincing, ways to generate fakes...

This week, the California legislature passed Assembly Bill 5, which defines so-called gig economy workers as employees instead of independent contractors. Though aimed at transportation-network companies (TNCs) Uber and Lyft, the bill, taking effect in 2020, could have wide-ranging effects on California’s economy—and the nation’s. By forcing new-economy companies to adopt rules developed for twentieth-century employees, California is missing an opportunity to create a new class of worker, a hybrid of independent consultants and traditional employees. AB5 is intended to ensure that TNC drivers receive minimum-wage and overtime protections and that companies pay workers’ compensation and other payroll taxes. Unlike...

The Pentagon’s emerging secret space defense programs are being developed in large part to counter a rising threat to U.S. orbital assets from both Russia and China, though the latter poses the more significant risk, according to Defense Department officials. Writing at Forbes, senior aerospace and defense contributor Loren Thompson reported that a recent briefing to Trump Cabinet members by a top Air Force commander was highly classified and covered threats to American space-based military and civilian assets posed by Moscow and Beijing, both of whom are building counter-space capabilities aimed at blinding the U.S. military in a conflict and...

*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos. On Thursday morning, Republican Senator Ted Cruz attended a breakfast gathering for the Christian Science Monitor where he warned, the Texas could absolutely be in play in 2020 now there’s a couple of quotes from Ted Cruz at that breakfast meeting that I want to read, and again, I have to go ahead and admit wholeheartedly I agree with most of what Ted Cruz says here and here it is. I think the Texas election in 2018 is powerful foreshadowing for what to expect across...

House Democrats this week advanced a new measure to encourage states to pass “red flag” laws, known as extreme risk protection orders, that authorize removing guns and ammunition from dangerous individuals. Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee amended the measure during a Wednesday mark-up to authorize the federal government to issue extreme risk protection orders in some instances, but they rejected an amendment that would have red-flagged anyone who law enforcement lists as a gang member. “The majority of violent crime, including gun violence, in the United States is linked to gangs,” Rep. Ken Buck, a Colorado Republican who sponsored...