Free Republic

The Trump administration is heading to court this week in two lawsuits charging that the president is violating the Constitution by profiting off of his hotels and other businesses while in office. The cases revolve around the Constitution’s once-obscure emoluments clauses, which critics say President Trump has flouted, giving foreign diplomats an opening to curry favor with him by patronizing his businesses. On Monday, a panel of judges on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments over whether members of Congress can sue the president for alleged emoluments violations, and on Thursday, the full 4th Circuit Court...

As many as 20 people may be injured after White Island erupted on Monday afternoon. The volcanic eruption began at around 2:15pm on Monday. A group of people believed to be tourists were on the island at the time. St John has confirmed to Newstalk ZB that they have reports of up to 20 injured in the eruption.

The skeletal remains are thought to date from the 15th Century, when Clan Ross and Clan Mackay fought out a terrifying rivalry in the area that arguably peaked with the Battle of Tarbat in the 1480s, Then, Clan Ross cornered a raiding party of Clan Mackay with many killed in the encounter. Survivors of the attack sought sanctuary in the church, but the Rosses set fire to it, killing all those hiding inside... She said the men and skulls were buried in the most prominent part of the church, in the mouth of the crypt directly under the nave. Dr...

The Supreme Court agreed Dec. 6 to hear a challenge to a Delaware law invalidated by a lower federal court that regulates the partisan makeup of that state’s courts. The Supreme Court granted a petition brought by Gov. John C. Carney, a Democrat who has held the post since January 2017. Carney is appealing a loss at the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, which struck down the state law on April 10. Current law provides that no more than 50 percent of the judges on the Supreme Court, Superior Court, “or those courts together with the Court of Chancery, may...

Rep. Denny Heck, D-Wash., said one of the reasons for his announced retirement from the House of Representatives is that a growing number of Republicans and Democrats in Congress "simply don't believe in compromise, don't believe even in principled compromises" anymore. In an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press with Chuck Todd" to be broadcast Sunday, the four-term representative of a district that includes the Washington state capital, Olympia, also said he will "go to my grave not understanding how some of my colleagues could simply turn the other way and overlook the president's behavior and his misdeeds." "My soul...

Experts say deepfakes will be used to swing the 2020 election. deepfake video featuring an actor made to look and sound like the comedian Joe Rogan surfaced last week, stunning for its audio and visual accuracy. And Rogan was a great choice: He’s put out hundreds of hours-long video podcasts. There is a lot of material to work with. If you’re not yet aware of what a deepfake is in the first place, it’s a way of using artificial intelligence to create fraudulent audio or video that sounds and/or looks like a particular person. In this case, we’re seeing a...

... several in the newsroom here took bets on which one is pregnant. We were all wrong, except for Stephen Kruiser. The pregnant one is in the pink. "Fifty bucks says that pic was taken before she was pregnant," Kruiser said.

Law scholar Alan Dershowitz predicted the next Democrat elected president of the United States will be impeached as a result of the same "open-ended" criteria the party is currently using to impeach President Trump. "They have created open-ended criteria which bear no relationship to the word of the Constitution itself," Dershowitz said Sunday on Fox News. "If President Trump is impeached, it will set a terrible precedent, which will weaponize impeachment, and the next Democrat who gets elected will be impeached." How many foreign policy decisions have been made by presidents over the years in order to help them get...

Journalist Tareq Haddad said on Saturday that he had resigned from his position at Newsweek because the outlet "suppressed" details -- potentially "inconvenient" to the U.S. government -- surrounding a chemical weapons watchdog's report on the 2018 attack in Syria. "Yesterday I resigned from Newsweek after my attempts to publish newsworthy revelations about the leaked OPCW letter were refused for no valid reason," Haddad tweeted, referring to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Haddad's tweet came as the OPCW defended itself amid concerns about its reporting on the April 7, 2018, chemical weapons attack in Syria --...

In May 2019, the Elizabeth Warren campaign disclosed a list and descriptions of her legal work. In December 2019, the campaign updated this page to include compensation for that work wherever possible. These disclosures include all of the cases Elizabeth Warren worked on that we have been able to identify and all of the income from each case we have been able to determine from public records, Elizabeth Warren’s personal records, and other sources. Principles of Bankruptcy Counsel Amicus Consultant Expert Witness Mediator

Nearly 100 mayors across the United States are begging President Trump to import as many refugees to the country as possible in order to “bring cultural vibrancy and diversity” to American communities.In a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last month, about 88 mayors — from Denver, Colorado to Columbia, South Carolina — urged Trump to end his latest executive order that gives American communities more veto power over whether they want refugees resettled in their communities.The mayors said that more refugees are needed to bring about “cultural vibrancy and diversity” to their often small towns, though they admit refugees are an initial...

Time, and history, will tell if Donald Trump is “better” or “greater” than Abraham Lincoln. But if he is re-empowered in 2020 to actually make great Republican principles work, Trump would be the Lincoln we deserve. recent poll, widely reported, found that a slight majority of self-described conservatives say Donald Trump is a better president than Abraham Lincoln. God only knows what such a response means, in an age when our mass media considers it their democratic duty to dox and fire ordinary people for their opinions, and when most historians regard it as unprofessional to teach American history in...

Longtime Cardinals catcher Ted Simmons and MLB Players Association executive director Marvin Miller were elected to the Baseball Hall Of Fame, as announced tonight on MLB Network. Simmons and Miller were inducted via the “Modern Era” veterans committee, a 16-person panel focusing on people whose largest contributions to the sport fell between 1970 and 1987.

POPE BUSTED: Bishops Denounce Vatican's U.N. Allies From the Editor’s Desk, Michael Matt takes a hard look at the big event nobody in the Vatican seems to want to talk about—the Nairobi Summit on the 25th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo). This Bill and Melinda Gates/UN Population Fund affair was all about contraception, family planning, reproductive rights and…. the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Yes, that’s right—the very same goals Pope Francis and Jeff Sachs have been promoting inside the Vatican for years. So, why did the Vatican have to back away from their friends...

CHICAGO (AP) - Rapper Juice WRLD, who launched his career on SoundCloud before becoming a streaming juggernaut and rose to the top of the charts with the Sting-sampled hit “Lucid Dreams,” died early Sunday after a “medical emergency” at Chicago’s Midway International Airport. The rapper, whose legal name was Jarad A. Higgins, was 21. Authorities have not released details about his cause of death. He was pronounced dead at a hospital around 3:15 a.m. and taken to the Cook County medical examiner’s office several hours later, according to office spokeswoman Natalia Derevyanny, who said an autopsy would take place Monday....

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Actor Anthony Hopkins said he avoids talking publicly about politics because he believes “actors are pretty stupid.”The Oscar-winning star of The Silence of the Lambs and the upcoming Netflix movie The Two Popes spoke in a conversation with fellow actor Brad Pitt for the latest issue of Interview magazine.“People ask me questions about present situations in life, ” Hopkins said.“I say, ‘I don’t know, I’m just an actor. I don’t have any opinions. Actors are pretty stupid. My opinion is not worth anything. There’s no controversy for me, so don’t engage me in it, because I’m not going to participate.'”Unlike many of his Hollywood peers, Hopkins has studiously...

BISMARCK, N.D. — Reuben Panchol was forced to leave war-torn Sudan decades ago as a child, embarking on an odyssey that eventually brought him to the American Midwest and left him eternally grateful to the country that took him in. “I am an American citizen, a North Dakotan,” said Panchol, a 38-year-old father of four. “And without North Dakota, I couldn’t have made it.”

Brutal. That's the way to sum up the Daily Beast description of wealthy Democrat candidate for president, Tom Steyer. The purpose of their Saturday article by David De La Fuente was to shame the Democrats into including "candidates of color' at their next presidential debate but a big take away from the story was that it basically described Steyer as a scam artist. Not only were Democrats in general shamed in "Democrats Must Not Have an All-White Debate—and the White Candidates Should Say So" but what really stood out was the brutal slamming of Tom Steyer. Before we look at why De La...