Free Republic

Government and tech platforms each say the other should be doing more, raising questions about 2020 preparedness U.S. national-security officials traveled to Silicon Valley last week to forge deeper ties with big tech companies in hopes of better protecting the 2020 election from foreign intervention. It didn’t go entirely as planned.At the meeting organized by Facebook Inc. at its headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Shelby Pierson—named over the summer to lead the U.S. intelligence community’s new election-threats group—delivered a blunt message to the assembled executives: You need to share more data with us about your users.The executives and other U.S. officials in...

Democrats advanced a new measure this week to encourage states to pass “red flag” laws. These so-called extreme risk protection orders authorize removing guns and ammunition from individuals deemed as dangerous by some anonymous, unaccountable person, but it would not include the ready-made lists of gang members. Republicans tried to add an amendment including known gang members, but the Democrats will not permit the inclusion of gang databases. It’s odd since gangs are the ones causing most of the so-called gun violence. They would agree to include the names of white supremacists, but not other terror groups.

Brace opened the Newsboys Lodging House at 9 Duane St., in the building then owned by the New York Sun. At this location, he would do much more than provide a clean bed. He opened savings accounts for the kids, gave them books and healthy food — all part of a larger vision. “Those who have much to do with plans of human improvement,” he wrote, “see how superficial and comparatively useless all assistance or organization is which does not touch . . . the inner forces which form character.” Many of his charges (including girls, housed in their own “industrial school”)...

Poor abused refugees. See the video.

WSJ: Saudi Aramco (state oil company) "has determined that its facilities were hit by missiles", and up to 15 structures at Abqaiq plant were damaged (according to a US official)

A Florida man who dragged a shark to its death from a high-speed boat has been jailed for 10 days. Robert Benac III will pay a $2,500 fine, perform 250 hours of service at an animal shelter and lose his fishing licence for three years after pleading guilty to misdemeanour of animal cruelty. Benac accepted the plea deal just as he was about to go on trial on Thursday for a more severe felony charge of aggravated cruelty to animals, according to The Bradenton Herald. A second man, Michael Wenzel, accepted a similar plea deal over the incident in February...

ABC host George Stephanopoulos mentioned Cruz's warning that Texas could be a potential background state in the 2020 presidential election and noted that five Republican House members from the state have come forward saying they would not seek reelection next year. Cruz claimed that the third Democratic presidential debate in Houston on Thursday was a "very bad night" for Democrats because the candidates did not mention the economy's relative strength through the third quarter of this year. "If you look at Thursday night, the entire night of the debate, not a single Democrat talked about jobs, not a single Democrat...

...‘The closest we’ve ever seen to a coup’ House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., promised that guilty parties will be held accountable after Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz releases his report on the FBI's alleged abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in the Russia investigation, and predicted that former bureau leaders James Comey and Andrew McCabe will face criminal charges after what he described as an attempted "coup" to take down President Trump.[snip]"We came the closest ever to this country having a coup, and now we need accountability," McCarthy told Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures." "I respect...

Though millions around the world continue to enjoy the James Bond films, some believe that Ian Fleming's famous, womanizing MI6 agent has not aged well. A number of people, including former Bond actor Pierce Brosnan, believe that it is time for the franchise to introduce a female James Bond to reflect the fact that times have changed. Of course, not everyone agrees. Valerie Leon starred as a Bond girl twice: once in 1977's The Spy Who Loved Me with Roger Moore and again in 1983's Never Say Never Again with Sean Connery. She recently appeared on Good Morning Britain to...

New research shows crime rates dropped substantially in areas with marijuana dispensaries, running counter to fears that pot shops drum up crime. The study, published this month in the journal of Regional Science and Urban Economics, analyzed crime data from Denver between January 2013 and December 2016. Colorado, which legalized medical marijuana nearly two decades ago, kicked off sales of recreational pot in 2014. ”The results imply that an additional dispensary in a neighborhood leads to a reduction of 17 crimes per month per 10,000 residents, which corresponds to roughly a 19 percent decline relative to the average crime rate...

    DALLAS — A Dallas man was charged Wednesday with operating a large-scale human trafficking organization.Tremont Blakemore, 40, was charged by criminal complaint with sex trafficking through force, fraud and coercion; he made his initial appearance before Magistrate Judge Rutherford Sept. 11.  According to victim statements detailed in the complaint, Blakemore — who goes by the street name “Macknificent” — may have trafficked hundreds of women across the United States between 2011 and 2018.Blakemore allegedly cultivated an “environment of paranoia,” demanding near constant updates from the victims he forced into commercial sex and doling out severe physical punishment from...

Top 2020 Democratic contenders Kamala Harris and Julian Castro announced on Sunday that Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh "must be impeached," after a new, uncorroborated and disputed allegation of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh surfaced in a New York Times piece. ~snip~ Nevertheless, Democrats announced a new effort to topple Kavanaugh. Impeaching Kavanaugh would require a majority vote in the Democratic-controlled House, and a highly unlikely two-thirds vote in the GOP-majority Senate would then be needed to remove him from the bench. "I sat through those hearings," Harris wrote on Twitter. "Brett Kavanaugh lied to the U.S. Senate and most...

Stop being so transparent about your desire to confiscate guns, Beto. All you do is help the Republicans. That was the concern of CNN's Chris Cillizza on Friday in "Beto O'Rourke just did Republicans a massive favor on guns." According to Cillizza, O'Rourke by announcing that he wants gun confiscation, is validating what conservatives have been claiming has been the true goal of Democrats and the left. This has Cillizza frustrated especially when looking at the 2020 election and how it provides ammunition (pun intended) to the Republicans about the ultimate goal of Democrats.

Global warming hysteria has driven a lot of stupid investment in purportedly “green” energy production that turns out to create new problems. Wind farms that kill millions of birds because migratory birds follow the same winds that are ideal for wind power, for instance. Bald eagles, normally illegal to kill in the United States, are allowed to be slaughtered by wind farms. Then there are the massive lithium batteries needed for electric cars, full of toxic heavy metals, that pose a huge problem of disposal when they wear out after about ten years. And the solar energy farms that eat...

The pills arrived in thousands of mailboxes across the country, round and blue, with the markings of pharmaceutical-grade oxycodone stamped into the surface. Prosecutors would later call them "poison" — counterfeits containing fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid that has written a deadly new chapter in the American opioid epidemic. They were shipped from the suburbs of Salt Lake city.

It is not an unusual sentiment in this blue-collar corner of Pennsylvania: “I voted Trump last time, and I’ll vote Trump next time because there’s a lot of loonies out there.” What is unusual is that Gary Reese, 75, served as the Democratic mayor of Kingston, a town in Luzerne County at the heart of what used to be the state’s coal belt, in the 1990s. “The Democrats used to be about the working man,” he continued. “Now, they sound like communists.” Luzerne County emerged as one of the bellwethers of Mr Trump’s unlikely 2016 victory, a place where a...

Over a Million Households Climbed to Middle Class Under Trump, Census Data Shows More than 1.2 million American households moved to above $50,000 in annual income between 2016 and 2018, according to Census Bureau data released on Sept. 10, a sign of a growing middle class.

The phrase “social credit system” or “social credit score” is relatively unknown to Americans. But in the People’s Republic of China, the communist government has been developing such a system for the last decade, and are looking to roll it out nationwide by 2020. The Chinese government intends to use social media data, surveillance, and purchasing trends to develop a “score” for its citizens to gauge their “buy-in” to the state. Presumably, the better the score, the more “benefits” citizens are entitled to receive from the government. Conversely, a bad score would severely handicap your life, punishing you for your...

New York's governor says the state is banning all flavors of e-cigarettes except tobacco and menthol

President Donald Trump leapt to the defense of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh Sunday after allegations of sexual misconduct that had once threatened to torpedo his nomination to the bench resurfaced. "He is an innocent man who has been treated HORRIBLY," Trump said on Twitter, referring to the accusations as "lies." The president also accused critics of attempting to influence Kavanaugh's opinions and suggested that Kavanaugh "start suing people for liable, or the Justice Department should come to his rescue." (Trump apparently meant "libel," and later re-issued the tweet with the correct spelling of the word.) Kavanaugh was nominated by...