Free Republic

The Chinese government has banned African international students from worshiping in Christian churches under the pretext of “preventing foreign infiltration through religion,” a persecution watchdog group has revealed. A group of over 80 African students who are residing in a city in the northeastern province of Liaoning told Chinese persecution watchdog Bitter Winter that in September, the person in charge of the Three-Self church that they attended received a government order prohibiting foreigners from participating in gatherings at the church. “We just want to have a place to congregate,” one student told the outlet. A Chinese believer at the church...

Both House Democrats and the national news media have tried selling impeachment as the nation’s highest priority. According to the latest Emerson poll in Iowa, not even their fellow Democrats are buying that. Only six percent of voters in the key Midwestern swing state see impeachment as the most important issue, and a majority would vote to re-elect Donald Trump rather than vote for the two top Democratic candidates to replace him.Emerson buries the impeachment lead quite a bit, but it’s fascinating. According to pollster Spencer Kimball, a third of Democrats in the state aren’t buying impeachment at all,...

five facts about crime in the United States. 1. Violent crime in the U.S. has fallen sharply over the past quarter century. ... Using the FBI numbers, the violent crime rate fell 51% between 1993 and 2018. Using the BJS data, the rate fell 71% during that span. ... 2. Property crime has declined significantly over the long term. ... FBI data shows that the rate fell by 54% between 1993 and 2018, while BJS reports a decline of 69% during that span. ... 3. Public perceptions about crime in the U.S. often don’t align with the data. Opinion surveys...

Two conclusions leap out from the ratings of televised presidential debates: - the viewing public is already tiring of the Democrats’ presidential field; - the viewing public doesn’t trust and doesn’t want to watch CNN – even when it is televising live events.Writing at Breitbart, John Nolte gathers and analyzes the ratings data. Here is the data on the four 2019 Democrat presidential debates in sequnce:    First debate (on CNN) In June, the first Democrat debate of the year, hosted by NBC, MSNBC, and Telemundo, drew 15.3 million viewers on night one and 18.1 million viewers on night two, for...

Adam Schiff is at it again, tampering with witnesses. Yesterday, he got caught trying to shove words into a witness's mouth, to make him say things he didn't want to say. I wrote about that here.Today, he's doing something just as bad, getting together with other witnesses and working out a pre-coordinated story for the coming show trial. According to Breitbart News: Itinerary for a trip to Ukraine in August organized by the Atlantic Council think tank reveals that a staffer on Rep. Adam Schiff’s House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence held a meeting during the trip with acting U.S....

I just attempted to log into my Facebook account. Facebook is telling me that in order to access my account, I must provide them a Photo-ID. . .not just a photo, either. . .a photo ID. Of course, no way I'm doing that. My question is, has anyone else seen this? Is Facebook attempting to block conservatives with feigned security concerns and inordinate security requirements? Or, has someone hacked into Facebook or is this a phising hack attempt on me? Very strange. It only happens when I attempt to login to Facebook.

Even people and publications favorable to President Trump are urging him to cancel plans to host the June 2020 G-7 Summit at the Trump National Golf Course resort near Miami. For example, the New York Post writes: When you become leader of the Free World, there are some things you have to give up, including any hint of promoting your own properties. It’s not the obscure issue of “emoluments,” nor the folks who (as Mulvaney put it) “will never get over the fact that it’s a Trump property” that you have to think about, sir. It’s that voters expect...

(Same university that taught professors how they prop up white supremacy) Faculty workshops designed to persuade teachers not to grade based upon merit are popping up at universities from Washington, D.C. to the potato capital of the world. Idaho’s Boise State University is hosting an event next week entitled “Inclusive Teaching Means Inclusive Grading, Too.” It’s listed as part of the BUILD certificate program, or Boise State Uniting for Inclusion and Leadership in Diversity. The program’s stated purpose is to help participants gain knowledge of, demonstrate commitment to, and become a campus leader in promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.

So much for the claim from Joe Biden that his foreign-cash-magnet son Hunter "did nothing wrong." Turns out the 'wrong' was all over the place as a U.S. career diplomat, Deputy Secretary of State George Kent, tried hard to raise red flags with Biden himself about Hunter's little Ukrainian cash cow and instead of get taken seriously, got told by Biden's men to beat it. Here's the Washington Post: A career State Department official overseeing Ukraine policy told congressional investigators this week that he had raised concerns in early 2015 about then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son serving on the...

Not that long ago there was a broad political consensus that a fair and economically efficient tax system has a broad tax base and low tax rates. The grand bargain was no special interest loopholes and low tax rates to boost the economy and jobs. As recently as the 1980s, Democrats and Republicans alike joined together to pass a tax reform that lowered income tax rates to 28 percent, while eliminating deductions and carve outs. Nearly every Senate Democrat, including Ted Kennedy, Al Gore, Joe Biden, Bill Bradley, and Howard Metzenbaum, voted for this new tax system. It worked. SNIP...

Mexico has been the largest source of migration to the United States for most of the past half-century. Under Trump, Central American families began crossing in record number, predominantly from Guatemala and Honduras, which Homeland Security officials blame on "loopholes" in U.S. laws that limit the government's ability to detain and rapidly deport migrant families seeking protection. U.S. authorities took nearly one million migrants into custody during the 2019 fiscal year that ended Sept 30, including nearly 500,000 who arrived in family groups. Most of the Mexicans arrested at the border were single adults - often recent deportees caught trying...

What lofts lack in walls, they typically make up for in style. This converted loft in a former manufacturing building in West Oakland features ample natural light for a reduced price of $619,000. But if windows are something you require, this one isn't for you.

My wife has just been released from the hospital after a 3 week stay. Since most FReepers have never sought health care under a socialist system I thought I would share my experience. As a requirement to emigrating to Spain, which we did in 2016, you have to buy health insurance good for at least one year. After that you can buy into the Spanish health care system for 150 Euros per month if you are under 65 and 165 Euros per month if you are over 65. My wife is a British citizen but wasn't retirement age at the...

Largely autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan is a Sharia-based society, per its own Constitution, (Articles 6 & 7): This Constitution confirms and respects the Islamic identity of the majority of the people of Iraqi Kurdistan. It considers the principles of Islamic Sharia as one of the main sources of legislation… It is not allowed to enact a law inconsistent with the provisions of the fundamentals of Islam. (Articles 6 & 7) Not surprisingly, given historical Sharia mores, the attendant legacy of Islamic attitudes towards non-Muslims, overall, including Jews, and Islam’s own intrinsic theological Jew-hatred, here are the current prevailing conditions for the...

A group of House Republicans introduced legislation Friday to reduce foreign interference in U.S. elections, including by making online political ads more transparent. SNIP The Honest Elections Act would expand the prohibition on foreign nationals contributing to campaigns to include state and local initiatives and referendums. It would also codify existing Federal Election Commission guidance to require that all online political advertisements include a disclosure of who paid for them, such as with a “click-through” option, where the individual could click to a second page for information on who purchased the ad. The bill would also prohibit any federal dollars...

“Dis-evangelized” Amazon. The Numbers of a Catholic Church Reduced By Half At the press conference on Monday, October 14 Paolo Ruffini, prefect of the Vatican dicastery for communication, was asked why updated statistical data have not been released on the religious affiliation of inhabitants of the Amazon, seeing the impetuous growth of the Evangelical and Pentecostal Churches, at the expense of the Catholic Church.Ruffini replied that all the information in the possession of the Vatican offices has been made available to the accredited journalists, and that in any case the synod has to address rather more important questions than statistical...

The military announced Thursday it has retired the 8-inch floppy disks that were used to receive a presidential order to fire nuclear missiles. Lt. Col. Jason Rossi told c4isrnet.com that it has retired the floppy disks used on its dated 1970s computer with a “highly-secure solid-state digital storage solution.” The computer — called Strategic Automated Command and Control System, or SACCS — is an old system designed to receive nuclear force action messages and is considered unhackable because it predates the creation of the internet.“You can’t hack something that doesn’t have an IP address. It’s a very unique system — it...

Drive-thru windows at fast-food restaurants, banks and other businesses have long represented the convenience for which American businesses are renowned. But the ease of idling in a vehicle while waiting for your order is now associated with another development: climate change. As a result, some communities across the U.S. are banning drive-thrus, citing the additional carbon emissions that are released. Minneapolis this summer banned construction of new drive-thrus, while officials in Long Beach, California, have imposed a six-month ban on new drive-thrus while they study the issue. Similar ordinances restricting or prohibiting fast-food windows have also been adopted in communities...

We keep hearing, from the industry and from the Indian press, that denial rates in the H-1B program are rising sharply, that more and more of the dreaded questions about applications (the Request for Evidence (RFE) process) are being asked by DHS staff, and that the post-RFE approval rate in the H-1B program is falling.So there must be a smaller number of H-1B approvals, right?Well, no. The number of initial approvals of H-1B applications has risen over the last five years by more than 100,000.In FY 2015, based on a dataset used both by the Times of India and by...

Political Correctness Erases History and Turns Heroes Into Villains Another Columbus Day is behind us. Again it is obvious that Columbus, a former hero, has been vilified. It’s primarily because of  terrible things that came after he opened up the new world to the old.Our culture has turned Columbus the hero into Columbus the villain. It’s one of many examples of the ongoing “war on history” of our times.Columbus Day is no longer celebrated in the “District of Columbia” (named after him), noted Jarrett Stepman. Stepman writes for The Daily Signal (Heritage Foundation). He’s just written a book, entitled, The War on History: The...