Free Republic

The highlight of the Dems’ debate this week must have been the 30-second advertisement run by Elizabeth Heng’s New Faces GOP PAC (video below). In the ad Ms. Heng explains the true meaning of socialism to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her followers. Gary Saul Morson gives a longer account of the phenomenon in “How the truth dawned.”

Long, long ago… in the early middle ages in fact… the English monarchy established the concept of sanctuary in English law. In those days, if an accused criminal was being chased down by the police, he could run into the first church he could find, grab hold of one corner of the altar, and claim sanctuary, gaining protection from the law for an extensive period of time. Other countries have had variations on the concept, but this English method is the best known. For over a thousand years, up until the English Civil War in fact, this was the law...

Finance ministers of the 28 European Union countries met in Helsinki on Friday to discuss measures to finance and encourage environmentally sustainable growth. The meeting took place on the same day the governing coalition parties in Germany met to decide on climate measures targeting the transportation sector to ensure the country meets its 2030 goals to combat the climate crisis. Spending toward that end could approach a reported €75 billion ($83.6 billion). […] The EU, says German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, must find a way to put a sensible price on carbon dioxide emissions, optimally on an international level. “I...

U.S. President Donald Trump said Saturday he had spoken to Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about a possible mutual defense treaty between the two nations, just days before Israelis go to the polls.

It’s one thing that Trump advocates and Trump opponents apparently agree on: Trump will win again in 2020. That’s according to the results of our unscientific poll at SharylAttkisson.com. Most of those who chose to weigh on this poll say they like Trump. But 12% who dislike Trump also responded. All together, 95% of respondents said that– as of today– they believe Trump will win. Eighty-five percent (85%) said they like Trump and believe he’ll win. Twelve percent (12%) who answered the poll dislike Trump but most think he’ll win anyway. Ten percent (10%) said they dislike Trump but believe...

The Australian federal police have raided the Canberra home of intelligence officer Cameron Gill... Cameron Gill was also listed as an adviser to then defence materiel minister, Mal Brough, in defence documents recording a meeting with former US ambassador John Berry in 2015. It is unclear whether Wednesday’s raid is connected to the Smethurst story, which reported that the heads of the defence and home affairs ministries had discussed draconian new powers to allow the Australian Signals Directorate to spy on Australian citizens for the first time.

Sarah was 26 years old when she got the shock of a poorly-timed, positive pregnancy test. Already a mother of three, she was concerned about the course of her life. Her boyfriend insisted she have an abortion, so she scheduled the appointment, fearing being a single mother of four and feeling she needed to “save face,” succumbing to the father’s pressure to “take care of this.” Sarah was given two pills to complete the abortion. But after she took the first pill, she dissolved into tears. “It was awful,” she told The Catholic Telegraph. When she looked at her other...

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is facing a new sexual misconduct allegation that appears to echo a previous accusation lobbed against him.

MONACA, Pennsylvania — All Darrin Kelly wanted for the energy workers in Western Pennsylvania was that the Democratic presidential hopefuls would talk to them before going to war against shale. That opportunity slipped away last Friday when Elizabeth Warren joined Bernie Sanders in calling for a total fracking ban. “On my first day as president, I will sign an executive order that puts a total moratorium on all new fossil-fuel leases for drilling offshore and on public lands. And I will ban fracking — everywhere,” Warren tweeted. They may look like ordinary construction cranes to someone unfamiliar with the history...

Edward Snowden will join two U.S. news shows in the coming days to promotes the release of his memoir. Snowden, the 36-year-old former intelligence analyst who was responsible for leaking information about the National Security Agency's global and domestic surveillance programs, currently lives in Russia after he applied for political asylum following he fled from the U.S. He is set to join both "CBS This morning" and MSNBC's Brian Williams on Monday, where Snowden will face questions about his 2013 disclosure of leaked documents as well as his book, "Permanent Record," set to be published on Sept. 17. "Edward Snowden,...

Deborah Ramirez had the grades to go to Yale in 1983. But she wasn’t prepared for what she’d find there. A top student in southwestern Connecticut, she studied hard but socialized little. She was raised Catholic and had a sheltered upbringing. In the summers, she worked at Carvel dishing ice cream, commuting in the $500 car she’d bought with babysitting earnings. SNIP During the winter of her freshman year, a drunken dormitory party unsettled her deeply. She and some classmates had been drinking heavily when, she says, a freshman named Brett Kavanaugh pulled down his pants and thrust his penis...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s free child-care plan would be offered to families making less than twice the poverty-line income (less than $51,000 for a family of four), while wealthier families would have child-care costs capped. The program could cost $700 billion over a decade, while a tax on the ultra-wealthy to pay for it could raise near-$3 trillion over the next decade. Corporations have been increasing their child-care benefits and services in recent years as a way to meet today’s labor market needs, help the early education of the next generation of workers and be less reliant on government.

Liberal comedian Bill Maher and filmmaker Michael Moore on Friday night clashed over how to defeat President Trump in the 2020 election. During an appearance on Maher's HBO show, Moore argued in favor of liberal policies such as "Medicare for All" and bolstering "the Squad," a group of freshman progressive lawmakers, while Maher argued for a more centrist approach. "You were ahead of the curve for so many years," Moore said on the show. "Why pull back now, Bill?" “Because the country isn’t there,” Maher replied. The host later said that Trump wants to make the Squad the face of...

Today, former homosexuals and transgender individuals will gather for a Freedom March in Orlando, Florida to tell their stories of finding freedom in Christ. To a nation engulfed in the sexual revolution, their stories are both inspirational and counter-cultural. Last year, they marched in California to counter AB 2943 - a bill that would have made it illegal to sell counseling services, conferences, and potentially even books that help people voluntarily overcome unwanted same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria. Tens of thousands of Californians called, emailed, and lobbied their state legislators to stop AB 2943 from becoming law. At the eleventh...

The New York city council is planning to repeal a two-year-old ban on “gay conversion therapy” to avoid a costly uphill legal fight. The New York Times reports that the city’s openly gay Council Speaker Corey Johnson introduced a bill on Thursday to repeal a measure passed in 2017 banning the sale of “services intended to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.” With a conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court makeup, Johnson doesn’t seem to want the law to be tested in the legal system. He vowed that the council would act quickly to repeal the law. “Obviously I didn’t...

Illinois clearly is the pioneer in the not yet existent deceased rights movement, which I have heard is having trouble with turnout for its rallies.  But if the dead ever do rise from their graves in a zombie apocalypse, as so often dramatized on cable television, they will no doubt demand that other states follow the lead of  Illinois. They're not dead, they're a constituency: Illinois Policy reveals that the state has spent $4.6 million on Medicaid for dead people: An audit by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services' Office of Inspector General, or OIG, found Illinois spent $4.6 million on Medicaid...

Tampa, Fl - On September 10, students at the University of South Florida (USF) participated in a national day of action that was called by National Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) to speak out against the Trump administration’s attacks on undocumented immigrants. The event was hosted by Tampa Bay Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Over 30 students and staff attended. During President Donald Trump’s tenure, his administration has engaged in escalating attacks against undocumented immigrants. Some of these attacks include Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detaining undocumented children in horrid camp conditions indefinitely, and building urban warfare training...

President Trump is a horrendous racist. And it’s time for Democrats to stop calling him one. Counterintuitive? Yes. But substantial evidence shows that labeling Trump “racist” backfires against Democrats. It energizes his supporters without providing any additional motivation to Democrats, and it drives soft partisans — voters who could be up for grabs in 2020 — into Trump’s arms. This doesn’t mean letting Trump off the hook for being the racist he obviously is; I’ve been using the term for four years because it objectively describes him. But this means talking about his racism in a different way: Say that...

Why the British system is, well, horrible for physics... It's called the slug.

Former Attorney General Eric Holder spoke out defending the Obama administration from critics on the far-left about its deportation efforts while warning 2020 presidential candidates that the U.S. needs borders. “The emphasis there was on people who had criminal records, people who posed a danger, a public safety risk,” Holder, who served under former President Obama, said of the Obama administration’s policy in a CNN interview released Saturday. “Democrats have to understand that…borders mean something,” he added. In the interview, Holder expressed disagreement with some 2020 Democrat candidate proposals to make illegally entering the U.S. a civil rather than a...