Free Republic

Wait. Isn’t conversion therapy already banned in California? Yes, it is, but it’s still happening anyway. Lawmaker Evan Low of the state’s Legislative Assembly has drafted AB-2943, which aims to add conversion therapy to criminal fraud categories. Low wants to put practitioners of queer conversion therapy in prison, providing a powerful disincentive to people who violate the existing ban.

MASON — A company that recently announced a major expansion project is hiring new employees. Rhinestahl Corporation, which has its headquarters in Mason, is a privately held company serving diverse markets globally through two complementary business units. Founded in 1967, it has more than 180 employees with approximately 10 percent located internationally, according to spokesman Kevin Gold. It has operated within Mason since 2009.

For the men of ODA 1333 and their detachment of around 100 U.S. soldiers and Afghan commandos, the orders sounded straightforward: help secure two Afghan helicopters downed by the Taliban near Ghazni. They knew they would have to take the long way around, because the Taliban had buried so many land mines along the direct road leading into Ghazni that it was impassable. What was usually a 60-mile trip westward from Paktia province would instead cover 160 miles of terrain. The troops loaded up their weapons and clambered aboard hulking RG-33 and M-ATV armored vehicles, which rumbled into the night...

During the Obama Admin, then-VP Joe Biden took his chronically jobless son Hunter on an official trip to China. China gave Hunter a billion dollar check for his "equity fund." Did "middle-class Joe" sell out the United States to China to set his son up in a billion dollar business? Hunter Biden also had connections to jailed crook Allen Stanford WSJ, By Susan Schmidt, Steve Stecklow and John R. Emshwiller, Feb. 24, 2009 12:01 a.m. ET A fund of hedge funds run by two members of Vice President Joe Biden's family was marketed exclusively by companies controlled by Texas financier...

Rep. Joe Kennedy III, D-Mass., announced Saturday that he will mount a primary challenge to Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., next year. The 38-year-old Kennedy -- the grandson of Robert F. Kennedy – formally announced his candidacy at a community center in Boston after weeks of rumors that he was mulling entering the race. [Snip] The challenge to Markey, 73, is likely to leave local Democrats, including 2020 presidential hopeful and fellow Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., with a difficult choice of who to back. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has already endorsed Markey, with whom she has worked closely on the Green...

LOS ANGELES — Barron Hilton, a hotel magnate who expanded his father's chain and became a founding owner in the American Football League, has died. He was 91. Hilton's family says he died Thursday of natural causes in his Long Angeles home. He transformed Hilton into the industry's top brand during his 30 years as its chief executive. Hilton also founded the Los Angeles Chargers in the AFL and oversaw the AFL-NFL merger. William Barron Hilton was born in Dallas in 1927 to Conrad N. Hilton, the founder of Hilton Hotels, and Mary Adelaide Barron.

Rep. Doug Collins‏Verified account @RepDougCollins  Sep 20 "When Democrats allow an outside, private consultant to question a witness this week, they broke House rules and granted those political consultants greater congressional privileges than they gave to elected representatives. Here’s why that’s a problem:"

Ed Rendell recently whacked Elizabeth Warren when she bashed Joe Biden for taking rich donors’ money. The former Pennsylvania governor wrote that he himself had run a “swanky” fundraiser for Warren’s Senate race, for which she thanked him royally. Furthermore, she transferred $10.4 million of her big-money hauls into her presidential campaign while bragging that she was only accepting small donations. Calling that maneuvering sleazy would be overdoing it, but there is certainly something untoward about it. Warren refuses to say what taxes she would raise to cover her “Medicare for All” health care plan. Bernie Sanders’ similar vision —...

4Chan succeeds in liquefying the minds of NPCs.

Sen. Kamala Harris's (D-Calif.) support in polls is showing signs of fading, in the latest sign that her presidential bid is losing momentum after a knockout performance in the first Democratic debate. An NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll this week showed Harris’s support at 5 percent, down 8 points from the last one in July, well behind the top three contenders: former Vice President Joe Biden and Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Perhaps more ominously for Harris, she took fifth place in an Emerson College poll surveying her home state of California on Tuesday, trailing Biden, Warren...

Two Los Angeles County women believed to be part of a national fraud ring were arrested on suspicion of posing as employees from the Internal Revenue Service in a phone scam that may have bilked several victims out of $900,000, the Fontana Police Department said Friday. A Fontana man received a call on Sept. 4, 2019, from a person who identified themself as an IRS employee and threatened to arrest the victim if he didn’t pay the caller $2,200 in Target gift cards, police said. The victim complied and provided the gift cards to the caller. He later reported the...

The whistleblower who filed a complaint with the intelligence community inspector general did not have direct knowledge of the communications between President Trump and the foreign leader in question.The conversation was reportedly a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. It is alleged that Trump urged Zelensky multiple times to work with his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani to investigate Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden and his ties to an energy company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch. Giuliani has previously urged a top official in Ukraine to look into the ties.An official who has been briefed on the matter, however, told CNN that...

An extended discussion about his son’s business dealings isn’t helpful to Biden’s electability argument. Joe Biden had a chance to excoriate Donald Trump on Friday after a blockbuster report detailed how the president pushed Ukrainian investigators to investigate Biden’s son. Instead, Biden was circumspect and measured in a comment to reporters. Only hours later, after Biden and his advisors weighed more facts and after Democrats renewed calls for impeaching Trump, did the former vice president’s campaign issue a broader and stronger statement. The time it took Biden to unleash his tougher comments – which stopped just short of urging impeachment...

A New York judge on Friday ordered President Donald Trump to provide video testimony as part of an upcoming lawsuit brought by protesters who say they were assaulted by Trump's security guards during a 2015 protest outside of Trump Tower. Judge Doris M. Gonzalez wrote in her ruling that Trump's testimony is "indispensable" to the trial and so he must provide video testimony before the trial is set to begin Thursday. The Washington Post first reported the judge's ruling. The trial centers around a protest in September 2015 in front of Trump Tower in New York City where two protesters...

Democrat presidential hopeful Robert “Beto” O’Rourke responded to those who want to keep their AR-15s by asking why they do not pursue ownership of a bazooka as well. O’Rourke’s comment came after a gun-totting mother in Aurora, Colorado, told him that he was not taking her guns. O’Rourke later took to Twitter and wrote, “A woman in CO told me ‘hell no’ she won’t give back her AR-15. I listened, but by her logic: Why shouldn’t you be allowed to have a bazooka or a tank?”

Kansas City officials, using a new housing inspection law, have moved residents out of a troubled Northland apartment building where they found roaches, severe plumbing problems and other dangerous health violations, the Health Department announced in a news conference Wednesday. In the building, city officials and elected leaders said they saw caved-in ceilings, mold and damp carpets. During their visit Friday, they walked through human excrement in an apartment where sewage had backed up into the toilet, sinks and bathtub. “Disgusting is the best way I can tell you what I saw,” Councilman Dan Fowler, who represents the area, said...

In his introduction of Biden, real estate mogul Neil Bluhm told his guests that rivals Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders “don’t represent the Democratic Party” that Bluhm supports. Sanders’ campaign fired back, “Mr Bluhm is right — the Democratic Party I represent is the party of the working class, not billionaires.” Former Vice President Joe Biden hit three private fundraisers in Chicago on Thursday, prompting some criticism from presidential rival Bernie Sanders over a statement made by one of his hosts — billionaire casino and real estate mogul Neil Bluhm — and highlighting what many see as a major divide...

Washington—Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Friday called on Attorney General Barr to transmit the whistleblower report and any guidance provided to the Director of National Intelligence to Congress as soon as possible.Senator Feinstein released the following statement today:“If media reports are correct that President Trump delayed military aid appropriated by Congress in order to get Ukraine to investigate a political opponent, it’s difficult not to see that as an abuse of presidential authority, plain and simple.“Withholding the whistleblower report that led to these allegations is also unacceptable. The president is essentially saying that Congress has no right to...

The White House campaign of Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) teetered on the edge of being abandoned in coming days, as the candidate on Saturday publicly confirmed the existence of an internal memo which bluntly said that unless Booker could get a surge of donations in the next ten days, his 2020 campaign was doomed. "I want people to see where we are and understand that we have a pathway to victory," Booker wrote on Twitter Saturday morning, "but I can’t walk it alone." Booker's comments came soon after NBC News had reported that the campaign's top aide told the candidate...

Elizabeth Warren - I'm An Indian Too Although the preferred nomenclature is Native American; hindsight is 1/1024