Free Republic

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg claimed last month that “everything that we have proposed has been paid for, and we have proposed no tax increase on the middle class.” The South Bend, Ind., mayor is incorrect on both counts: He hasn’t said how he’d pay for all his proposed spending. He has endorsed one explicit tax increase on the middle class, and his recent retirement plan provides an outline for another. Add it up, and middle-class workers could face a trillion dollars in new taxes. To support family caregivers, Mr. Buttigieg’s retirement plan restated his prior commitment to enact “an...

Kudos to Margaret Brennan of CBS for asking Adam Schiff on Sunday about his release of phone logs of his political opponents. Mr. Schiff dismissed any criticism, and his reason is revealing about the balance of power in Washington. “The blowback has only come from the far right,” Mr. Schiff said. “But look, every investigator seeks phone records to corroborate, sometimes to contradict, a witness’s testimony.” Yes, but executive-branch investigators who want to get data from private telecom companies typically must obtain some kind of judicial order. Mr. Schiff did it himself. Prosecutors are also supposed to limit the release...

While Trump has continuously blasted the impeachment inquiry, calling it a “one-sided sham process” and blocking his highest-profile officials from testifying before a Democratic-dominated House, the president has also said he would "love" for his administration officials to testify in the Senate. “It will be fair in the Senate,” he said ahead of the first House impeachment hearing.

... PG&E’s collapse has exposed the California Public Utilities Commission’s failure to hold the utility accountable on safety. The CPUC for years focused attention elsewhere, on setting rates and pushing for cleaner power. Now, the agency tasked with regulating utility safety is struggling to refocus on the issue while also grappling with its failure to prevent the state’s second electricity crisis in two decades. “The PUC is reactive,” says Janice Grau, a retired administrative law judge for the commission. Of the weather patterns that led to deadly power-line failures and blackouts, she says: “There wasn’t anyone at the PUC who...

I can no longer remember when I first used the line, but, as I've said many times before, sometimes a society becomes too stupid to survive. Back when President Trump was Candidate Trump, he famously proposed a soi-disant "Muslim ban" on entry to the United States "until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on". Which was a rationale to which I was rather partial - because a failure to "figure out what the hell is going on" is a big part of why we're where we are a generation after 9/11. Mohammed is now in...

Three Jesuits, Two Eras, One Enduring Faith On Martyrs Hill in Nagasaki Given the whirlwind of troubles afflicting the Church today — the worship of pagan idols at the Amazon Synod, the ongoing cover-up of clerical sex crimes, the theft of half a billion dollars from Peter's Pence — some of the faithful might be tempted to throw up their hands, drop all pretense of being truly Catholic, and join the gulled masses on their merry ride to Hell. Thank God we have the witness of the martyrs. Nishi-Zaka Martyrs Monument In the last week of November 2019, Pope Francis trod...

SOURCES: Biden tells 'AXIOS ON HBO' he will slap restrictions on Hunter if elected... Denies stuttering to blame for screwups... Adds Warren to veep list... Airs 6:30 PM...

House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday and admitted to host Chuck Todd that impeachment is about preventing Trump from being reelected in 2020.

Investigative reporter Conchita Sarnoff, the author of “Trafficking” on the Jeffrey Epstein case, joined Shannon Bream in July to discuss the Jeffrey Epstein’s arrest. Sarnoff is a leading expert on the Epstein scandals. During their discussion Sarnoff told Shannon Bream that Bill Clinton flew on the Lolita Express 27 times. Then she dropped this BOMB!… Sarnoff said that ALMOST EVERY TIME that Clinton was on the plane via the pilot logs there were underage girls on the plane. Conchita said Clinton refused her request for an interview.

Two famous actors passed away today. Rene Auberjonois was 79. He played a snooty staffer opposite Robert Guiiaume in the 80's series 'Benson'. He was slightly morer famous for playing the shape-shifting Founder 'Odo' on 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine'. The other was Carrol Spinney, who was 85. You probably don't know him by face, but you definitely knew him as his characters. He was the first and original 'Big Bird' and 'Oscar the Grouch' on 'Sesame Street' providing both the voices and puppetry for the characters. He only gave up being the characters not that long ago.

WASHINGTON — Almost from the moment that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her lieutenants decided this fall to pursue the impeachment of President Trump, they made a fateful judgment: If the president intended to do nothing but stonewall and subvert their inquiry, they were not going to be the ones politely sticking to lofty traditions. Mr. Trump’s lawyers have made a similarly cold calculation. After a year of defying without consequence Congress’s attempts to investigate the president’s conduct, they have no intention of taking part in what they view as an illegitimate impeachment, initially conducted without a formal House vote in...

Clips tagged #Swamp Shocking pic shows Epstein, Weinstein & Maxwell at Beatrice's 18th birthdayDEPRAVED Jeffrey Epstein, his alleged pimp Ghislaine Maxwell and disgraced film mogul Harvey Weinstein grin at Princess Beatrice’s Windsor Castle party. The astonishing image, obtained exclusively by The Sun on Sunday, shows how the trio were invited into the seat … WOW: Epstein investigator tells Watters that Bill Clinton was on Epstein’s jet with underage girl stewardessesEpstein Investigator tells @jessebwatters that Bill Clinton was on Epstein’s Jet while underage girls were stewardesses. #FoxNews Epstein Investigator tells @jessebwatters that Bill Clinton was on Epstein’s Jet while underage girls...

House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Doug Collins (R-GA) on Sunday blasted Chairman Jerry Nadler, saying Monday's scheduled impeachment hearing needs to be postponed. According to Collins, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) handed over thousands of pages of documents less than 48 hours before Monday's scheduled impeachment hearing. "This is how desperate, how desperately focused they are on impeaching this president," Collins told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo. "Last week we had our first hearings with the law professors and Jonathan Turley put it to bed about how they're actually abusing power. The next morning Speaker Pelosi comes on and...

[Catholic Caucus] Sheen beatification delay an act of ‘sabotage,’ Peoria official writes After the Diocese of Rochester last week confirmed it had requested that the beatification of Venerable Fulton Sheen be delayed, a longtime Peoria diocese official is accusing the Rochester diocese of repeatedly “sabotaging” Sheen’s sainthood cause.“Under the veneer of the Rochester diocese’s call for caution, more than an overwhelming majority of people would conclude that it is an unexplainable act of sabotage — a sabotage that simply hurts the faithful,” Monsignor James Kruse, an official in the Diocese of Peoria involved in advancing Sheen’s cause, wrote in...

“Boom! These jobs numbers are absolutely incredible and breathtaking in the number of jobs being created and as you point out the historically low unemployment rate across the board,” Crowley said in reaction to these statistics in an appearance on Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM 125 the Patriot Channel this weekend. “What it shows is President Trump’s economic freedom agenda is working, literally working, as a record number of Americans are in the workforce and unemployment is at a 50-year low. Unemployment among key groups—African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, and women—are at or near all-time lows. The jobs being created,...

Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey on Tuesday proposed investing $100 billion in historically black colleges and universities and other minority-serving institutions, a broad proposal in a Democratic field that has offered varying plans to prop up this longstanding yet struggling arm of the educational system. Many H.B.C.U.s, as historically black colleges and universities are commonly known, have faced widespread financial woes recently, with some schools losing accreditation and facing plummeting enrollment. Mr. Booker’s proposal comes at a precarious time for his presidential campaign: Despite crossing the 200,000 individual-donor threshold last month, he is still short four qualifying polls for...

The Fulton Sheen Fiasco Once again, FrancisChurch toys with the faithful Under this lax and political pontificate, almost everything in the Church looks arbitrary and slipshod, including canonizations, which Pope Francis has been using to remake the Church in his own liberal image. He quickly canonized Óscar Romero, whose cause stalled under previous pontificates, and two liberal popes not known for any exceptional sanctity, John XXIII and Paul VI. He canonized Pope John Paul II too, but that was a fait accompli. As much as Pope Francis might have liked to stop it, he couldn’t. (Observers noted his dourness...

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) appeared on CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday to discuss impeachment. Throughout the course of the interview, Schiff argued that the House's articles of impeachment should reflect the most serious crimes. "We have weighed in, all the chairs, Chairman Nadler and his staff, into what we would think would be appropriate in these articles. I can't go into those particular discussions but I can tell you, as a former prosecutor, it's always been my strategy in a charging decision – and an impeachment in the House is essentially a charging decision – to...

Much of what we accept as legal in medical billing would be regarded as fraud in any other sector. ... Companies are permitted by insurers to bill for “durable medical equipment,” stuff you receive for home use when you’re in the hospital or doctors’ office. That yields some familiar marked-up charges, like the sling you can buy at Walgreens for $15 but for which you or your insurer get a bill for $120 after it is given to you at urgent care. The policy has also led to widespread abuse, with patients sent home with equipment they don’t need: My...

In a recent post-election post-mortem in the Jackson Free Press, editor Donna Ladd advances ideas about why Democrats lost almost all power in the Mississippi state government. One of her thoughts has to do with cowardice in the Mississippi Democratic Party, in the way that white men who control the party have been too timid to advance progressive values, or even uphold a plank in the national party platform for the bodily autonomy of women.