Free Republic

Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a new law that will allow voters to register on election day at any polling place in the state. According to the Governor, “this will overcome some serious deficiencies that previously held the number of ballots cast below what could’ve been achieved.” Among the deficiencies cited by the Governor were “the disenfranchisement of procrastinators. Why should people who can’t plan ahead be barred from voting? Under this law, anyone can wait until the final hour and still be allowed to vote. Another defect of previous law was its failure to adequately allow for enthusiastic voters...

Everybody thought we had to keep our troops around so the Turks wouldn't invade Northern Syria and kill off all the Kurds. Everybody wanted them to negotiate with the Kurds and figured the only way to do that was little by little, by getting allies to reason with Turkey and hem and haw and maybe buy her off as in times past. Meanwhile, we had to keep the two ancient enemies, Kurds and Turks, apart. Negotiations would ever happen only if our troops stayed. Trump saw the situation differently. As beautifully laid out by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse, removing our...

The sanctuary state is at it again. California Governor Gavin Newsom has been burning through pens signing a raft of new bills into law at the close of his first legislative session. In addition to dozens of new gun laws, he also signed a bill further undermining federal immigration laws. This took the form of a bill that will allow illegal aliens to serve on government boards and commissions. A second measure claims to ban federal immigration officers from making arrests in courthouses. They seem to have missed the one where each illegal alien gets a free house and...

SEATTLE -- They say misery loves company. But for the Seattle Mariners, misery is theirs alone. You might pardon Seattleites for rooting for the St. Louis Cardinals in their futile attempt to reach the World Series this year. Not because we're fans of Paul Goldschmidt or Yadier Molina, but because they were our last hope to keep the hometown Mariners from a rather dubious distinction. But the hopes died when the Washington Nationals completed their sweep of the Cardinals in the NLCS Tuesday night. The Nationals are World Series bound for the first time in their franchise history, and the...

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) on Wednesday told reporters that a whistleblower at the center of the House impeachment inquiry hasn't yet agreed to meet with his Senate panel. Asked if his panel would look into the content of the whistleblower's complaint — which is focused on President Trump's attempts to get the Ukraine government to investigate the Bidens — Burr said he first had to "go through the process of the whistleblower complaint." "I don't know," he added, asked how long that would take. "Tell me when I'm going to get access to a whistleblower who has...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- As Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives work through an impeachment inquiry regarding alleged abuses of office by President Donald Trump, approval of Congress is now at 25%. That is up from 18% in September, prior to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announcing the impeachment inquiry following news of possible wrongdoing by the president in communications with Ukraine. The increase in approval of Congress over the past month is the result of a 15-percentage-point jump among Democrats (from 19% to 34%) as well as a smaller increase among independents (from 19% to 25%). Republicans' rating of Congress...

Though sales have been brisk throughout the Trump era, they’ve surged during certain events, according to NPD Bookscan...

A MYSTERIOUS supermassive black hole in a distant galaxy is spitting high energy particles after being fed by an object that has never been seen before. The baffling phenomenon has put existing theoretical models on their head, and astrophysicists are puzzled as to what is creating such a regular excretion of material from within the bowels of this supermassive black hole. According to the paper titled, 'Nine-hour X-ray quasi-periodic eruptions from a low-mass black hole galactic nucleus', the energy erupts from the black hole every nine hours and last for one hour and it's that precision which has baffled scientists.

Kathy Griffin is concerned for her safety following the fake Donald Trump massacre video that went viral. “The same groups that came after me two and a half years ago will be reinvigorated,” Griffin said on Tuesday’s The Wendy Williams Show. “Frankly, we don’t know how people take that video. It’s really, really violent. People’s heads get blown off.” The clip was a parody of a scene from Kingsman: The Secret Service. Trump’s face was superimposed into the video, and it depicted him murdering his political enemies, including Griffin. Griffin made the rare television appearance to promote her new film,...

A storm will strengthen rapidly and bring a dose of drenching rain, high winds and even some high-elevation snow to the northeastern United States into Thursday. The latest indications are the storm will strengthen at a fast enough pace into Thursday to be classified as a bomb cyclone. The barometric pressure has to fall at least 24 millibars, or 0.71 of an inch of Mercury, in 24 hours for the bomb cyclone criteria to be met.

A woman has been charged with terrorism offences after allegedly scoping out St Paul's Cathedral for a place to plant a bomb, police have said. Safiyya Amira Shaikh, from Hayes, Middlesex, was charged on Wednesday following an investigation by the Met's Counter Terrorism Command.

Rand Paul sharply criticized fellow Senate Republican Lindsey Graham for suggesting that U.S. troops should remain in northern Syria. "Lindsey Graham has been wrong about almost every foreign policy decision of the last two decades," the Kentucky senator said during a Tuesday morning appearance on MSNBC. "He was wrong about the Iraq War. The Iraq War was a mistake. It made Iran stronger, allowed more chaos, more instability, and more terrorism. He was wrong about the war in Libya. It lead to more chaos and more terrorism. He is wrong about this." Paul was referring to tweets from the South...

his is one of the cramped cells at the prison Felicity Huffman will call home for the next two weeks as she serves time for her role in the college admissions scandal. The 56-year-old actress reported to the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California, on Tuesday to begin her 14-day sentence. The minimum-security women's prison is known to locals as 'Club Fed', and has a reputation as one of America's cushiest lock-ups - but it's still a far cry from her sprawling Los Angeles mansion. A photograph of one of the cells shows the tight quarters with barely any floor...

White-bellied tree pangolins are being hunted illegally in large numbers in West Africa. Photo courtesy of Justin Miller/Pangolin Conservation ========================================================== ORLANDO, Fla., Oct. 16 (UPI) -- Researchers from Florida and Illinois are leading a global effort to understand and protect the world's most trafficked mammal -- the little-known pangolin. Also called a scaly anteater, the cat-size pangolin is hunted and killed for its scales and meat in Africa and Southeast Asia. New research includes the so-called "Pango-Cam" attached to their backs to provide crucial information about the pangolin diet and territory. Without quick efforts to understand how to breed the...

The White House is warning Chinese shipping companies against turning off their ships’ transponders to hide Iranian oil shipments in violation of U.S. sanctions, two senior administration officials said. “We’ve been messaging very heavily to the shipping companies, you don’t want to do this, it’s not worth it,” said one official, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity. “It’s incredibly dangerous and irresponsible behavior.”

A leading Latino political organization is launching its first-ever incumbent protection campaign, designed to prop up five Hispanic representatives who flipped formerly Republican districts. The Latino Victory Fund (LVF), which played an important role in fundraising and promoting the members in 2018, launched Wednesday the "Our Champions" campaign to protect the seats held by Democratic Reps. Gil Cisneros (Calif.), Mike Levin (Calif.), Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (Fla.), Xochitl Torres Small (N.M.) and Antonio Delgado (N.Y.). Mayra Macías, executive director of the Latino Victory Fund, called the five lawmakers "our community’s voice in Washington." "Now more than ever, we need their diverse backgrounds...

Norwegian authorities are warning shipowners and operators about the dangers associated with lithium-ion battery systems after a fire and subsequent gas explosion on board a diesel-electric ferry in Norway.

The White House is launching a new effort to slow the speeding Democratic impeachment push, but its noncooperation strategy is being constantly thwarted by a daily stream of explosive secrets being spilled behind closed doors on Capitol Hill. Current and former officials are painting an ever more damning picture of a wider than originally perceived scheme by President Donald Trump and his crew to pressure Ukraine that they warned could amount to a trampling of US law. Vice President Mike Pence launched a new effort Tuesday to bolster White House hopes of stalling the House inquiry long enough for Trump...

In a long-awaited decision, federal trial judge Allison Burroughs has ruled that, while Harvard does consider a student’s race in determining who gets in and who doesn’t (“the use of race in and of itself is admitted”), nonetheless Harvard is not breaking the law. That outcome was not surprising, and the judge’s opinion is unlikely to change many minds or alter the case’s expected trajectory to the Supreme Court. Judge Burroughs found that “Race is only intentionally considered as a positive attribute.” But if race is a positive attribute for favored groups, then does it not follow that it is...

Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) signed a measure Wednesday permitting New York state to press charges against those who have received presidential pardons. The measure was passed to prevent President Trump's ex-aides facing prison time or potential sentencing from receiving pardons and avoiding criminal punishment, NBC News reported. The network added that the legislation was a direct response to the president's consideration of giving his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, a pardon. Manafort is serving in a federal prison after being convicted on bank fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy charges. The Manhattan District Attorney's Office has also indicted him on state...