Free Republic

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday that President Donald Trump is “scared” of the impeachment inquiry she launched last week centered on a whistleblower complaint alleging he pressured Ukraine to help investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and interfere in the 2020 presidential election. “I think the president knows the argument that can be made against him, and he’s scared,” Pelosi told ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos. “And so he’s trying to divert attention from that to where [he’s] standing in the way of legislation,” she said. “You say he’s scared … Did you hear the fear in his...

The exchange, provided by former U.S Special Envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker as part of his closed-door deposition before multiple House committees Thursday, shows what appears to be encrypted text messages he exchanged with two other American diplomats in September regarding aid money President Donald Trump ordered to be held back from Ukraine. In the exchange, obtained by ABC News, the concerns are expressed by Bill Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine. Gordon Sondland, the United States Ambassador to the European Union, responds to Taylor, saying, "Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions. The President has...

POLAND is on collision course with the EU over climate change after it vowed to plough ahead with its continued heavy use of coal. Piotr Naimski, Poland’s chief strategic energy adviser, said energy security is higher priority than sticking to EU emission goals. In an act of defiance, he said it was “not possible and not feasible” for Warsaw to meet the EU target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Here is an analysis of the latest The Economist/YouGov Poll for September 28 - October 1, 2019. RealClearPolitics is showing this poll as the Warren breakaway poll. An analysis of the Independent sample population is mixed: it shows some movement on the impeachment question, but is contradictory when looking at the detailed questionsNOTE: This poll was taken before the details of whistleblower coordination with Adam Schiff became public. Sample: Dem: 35 Rep: 24 Ind: 41 This poll is D+11. It is heavily skewed towards Democrats and has a very large Independent sample. We shall see if Democrats are still salting...

Trump must be publicly drawn-and-quartered because he is the leader of the uprising. It should by now be obvious to the meanest intelligence that the Democrats are determined to impeach President Trump with or without credible evidence that he has committed any act resembling “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The “whistleblower complaint” that Nancy Pelosi used as the pretext for launching her ersatz impeachment inquiry contains little but hearsay and fabrication, while her claim that it proves Trump has “violated the Constitution” fails the laugh test. In the end, however, impeachment is less about offenses committed by the president than the...

[...] After the interview, [Bhavendra] Matta discouraged the hiring of Ryu. Matta made a statement to [John] Cuder to the effect that Intel should not hire Ryu because he was “Korean, married, and had a child.” Matta further made a statement to Cuder to the effect of “It would be easier to hire a younger, unmarried Indian man.” … 19. Former Senior Firmware Engineer Ravi Gopalan, who is of Indian descent and was a member of the management of Ryu’s team, openly favored the hiring and promotion of only employees from India. Gopalan’s stated rationale was that “Indians work hard”...

With the fate of Harvard’s affirmative action lawsuit in the hands of a judge, a new study stemming from that suit has raised more questions about the role of wealth, race and access in college admissions at prestigious universities. The study, published earlier this month in the National Bureau of Economic Research, found that 43 percent of white students admitted to Harvard University were recruited athletes, legacy students, children of faculty and staff, or on the dean’s interest list — applicants whose parents or relatives have donated to Harvard. That number drops dramatically for black, Latino and Asian American students,...

Former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko has dismissed allegations from President Trump that he had been pressured by former Vice President Joe Biden to close an investigation into Burisma Holdings, a natural gas company that Hunter Biden sat on the board of. “The former vice president, at least in personal conversations, didn’t raise any requests to open or close any concrete cases,” Poroshenko told Bloomberg on Wednesday. Poroshenko said that Victor Shokin, the prosecutor looking into the case, resigned after “massive campaigns” by politicians and the media, and that went through with the move “to restore public confidence and trust” in...

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards’ decision to hire a chief deputy previously accused of sexual harassment is the target of a new Republican-financed attack ad that aims to dent the Democratic incumbent’s support from women. The 30-second spot released Thursday by the Republican Governors Association’s PAC comes as national GOP leaders step up efforts to keep the Deep South’s only Democratic governor from outright victory in the Oct. 12 election. Vice President Mike Pence plans to travel to Louisiana on Saturday to rally support for defeating Edwards. Read more here: https://www.bnd.com/news/business/article235745342.html#storylink=cpy

Fiery freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will take the stand in Brooklyn federal court next month — explaining to a judge why she blocks people on Twitter. The Bronx-born congresswoman will testify at a Nov. 5 hearing as part of an ongoing lawsuit brought by ex-Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind — who claims the Democratic darling wrongfully blocked him on Twitter because of his “criticism” of her. Attorneys for the freshman lawmaker confirmed she would appear at the 11 a.m. hearing but declined to comment. Hikind, a prominent Jewish leader, sued Ocasio-Cortez in July, claiming the Democrat violated his First Amendment rights...

Where does evil come from? Joker offers the most banal answer imaginable — budget cuts for social workers — but it’s a devastatingly effective portrait of a serial killer in formation, bringing to mind a long, sickening line of American psychos.More than any comic-book movie to date, Joker, directed with a fierce commitment by Todd Phillips, eschews entertainment and dares to repel a sizable proportion of the potential audience. With an awful foreboding, it drills into the psychic pain of Arthur Fleck — failed clown, failed standup comic, failed human. Joaquin Phoenix gives one of the creepiest performances ever...

The massive corruption and rampant anti-Americanism unleashed by the Obama/Hillary era socialist-democrats is almost overwhelming. Corruption was top down throughout our government from President Obama and his cabinet and dept heads. Obama, Biden, Kerry, Hillary, Clapper, Brennan, Lynch, Holder, Comey, and the list goes on and on. And this corruption also runs through the congress and is covered up by the complicit leftist media. And the democrat crime family tentacles run internationally. If they ever get around to following the obvious money trail throughout the world left by Obama/Biden/Kerry/Hillary, et al, it’ll reveal the biggest government scandal ever in world...

State of Emergency Declared in Ecuador Amid Protests 21:56 03.10.2019(updated 22:04 03.10.2019) Protesters took to the streets of Ecuador's major cities on Thursday, blocking major roads in Quito and Guayaquil to protest the scrapping of fuel subsidies, part of the government's austerity measures aimed to reduce the fiscal budget. Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno took to Twitter Thursday to say that he had declared a state of emergency in the country over nationwide protests which have paralysed the country, saying that his decisions introducing austerity measures "were firm," and that the state of emergency was aimed at reigning in "those who...

The deranged employee who stabbed four people to death — including three cops — inside a Paris police headquarters had converted to Islam 18 months ago, according to a report. The unidentified, 45-year-old IT worker attacked three members of the police force’s intelligence division Thursday inside two different offices on the first floor, then went into a stairwell and assaulted two women, French TV station BFMTV reported.

A Republican attorney filed a lawsuit on Tuesday demanding that two California agencies develop a better system to verify the citizenship of people who register to vote through the Department of Motor Vehicles. In the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in Sacramento, Harmeet Dhillon alleges Secretary of State Alex Padilla is violating federal law by not verifying citizenship information from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles. She wants the DMV to send Padilla more records related to citizenship to demonstrate that only eligible people are able to register.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders hasn't left the hospital since Tuesday night, and is still recovering from an operation to place two stents in a blocked artery. But the 78-year-old socialist firebrand, the oldest person in the 2020 field, plans to be on stage for a Democratic presidential primary debate on October 15 in Ohio. 'Bernie is up and about, his wife Jane said in a statement. 'Yesterday, he spent much of the day talking with staff about policies, cracking jokes with the nurses and doctors, and speaking with his family on the phone.' 'His doctors are pleased with his progress,...

The World Trade Organization ruled in favor of the United States Wednesday in a long-running dispute with the European Union over subsidies to Airbus, paving the way for the U.S. to hit the EU with $7.5 billion in retaliatory tariffs........ The U.S. and EU have been fighting since 2004 over whether their respective aerospace industry policies toward Airbus and Boeing amount to unfair practices. The WTO's ruling said the EU subsidized Airbus by giving it preferential treatment on interest rates. "The Appellate Body upheld the Panel’s findings that Airbus paid a lower interest rate ... than would have been available...

Attorney General William P. Barr is set to press Facebook on Friday to create a so-called back door to its end-to-end encryption on WhatsApp and other messaging platforms, which would give investigators access to now-secret communications, including from terrorists and other criminals as well as whistle-blowers, journalists and others. Mr. Barr and his British and Australian counterparts are set to send a joint letter to Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook CEO, arguing that law enforcement needs a way to break the companies’ encryption to fight terrorism, international organized crime and child exploitations, according to a copy of the letter reviewed by...

A 'Handmaid's Tale'-themed wedding photo sparked outrage online. The photographer says that's the point. A wedding photo depicting a scene from the Hulu series "The Handmaid's Tale" has triggered backlash online from some who say the image is insensitive and misses the point of the show. However, the photographer said that's the point. The image, taken in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada, shows newlyweds Kendra and Torsten in front of the filming location for the "hanging wall," which is a site of morbid corporal punishment where bodies of those who have committed a crime in the ultra-religious state of Gilead, a sort...

In the conspiracy-obsessed echo chambers of conservative talk radio and far-right websites, Sen. Mitt Romney has some explaining to do - answering for ties to the Ukrainian gas company that put Joe Biden's son on its board, and accounting for conversations with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi about Republican support for impeaching President Donald Trump. In reality, neither claim is true. No meaningful ties exist between Romney and Burisma, and he had no such conversation with Pelosi. The flood of baseless attacks and misleading innuendo buffeting Romney, which began after he became a rare Republican to express concern about Trump's interactions...