Free Republic

An 18-year-old college student was stabbed to death on Wednesday afternoon in a New York City park, allegedly by a group of unidentified young men who mugged her then left her for dead. Tessa Majors, a freshman at Barnard College who was from Charlottesville, Virginia, was walking down a flight of steps into Morningside Park on West 116th Street on Wednesday when the young men approached her. According to police sources, they demanded money from her and stabbed her multiple times in the stomach before fleeing. She crawled to a nearby security guard booth but the guard was doing his...

A lack of fuel, in large part due to the US blockade, is forcing Cubans to return to horse and ox power for farming, transport and everyday travel. In Los Palacios, 100 kilometers (60 miles) of the west of the capital Havana, Heriberto Piloto bellows at his oxen "Montezuelo" and "Pasajero" as they plough a tobacco field at the "La Juanita" farm. Once the fields were ploughed by tractors, plus some animal help, but now beasts of burden are the only option, meaning the job of ploughman has made a comeback too in Cuba's fields. "Under normal conditions, we always...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem (Music in The Bible) Psalm 54 Psalm 54[a] For the director of music. With stringed instruments. A maskil[b] of David. When the Ziphites had gone to Saul and said, “Is not David hiding among us?” 1 Save me, O God, by your name;     vindicate me by your might. 2 Hear my prayer, O God;     listen to the words of my mouth. 3 Arrogant foes are attacking me;     ruthless people are trying to kill me—     people without regard for God.[c] 4 Surely God is my help;     the Lord is the one who sustains me. 5 Let evil recoil on...

Last Thursday, BuzzFeed News reported that online platforms, including Pinterest and the Knot Worldwide, would restrict content that features or romanticizes weddings held on former slave plantations. These changes were the result of a campaign by the social justice organization Color of Change. In a letter, Color of Change wrote that “plantations are physical reminders of one of the most horrific human rights abuses the world has ever seen. The wedding industry routinely denies the violent conditions Black people faced under chattel slavery by promoting plantations as romantic places to marry.” Color of Change posted the news on Facebook, where...

Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) said Wednesday that the FBI “effectively meddled” in the 2016 presidential election and did so with the backing of the Democratic National Committee. “Which is worse? Is it worse to have a foreign government trying to meddle in our elections, or is it worse to have our own government meddling in the election?” the Missouri Republican asked Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on the inspector general’s report examining the origins of the FBI’s Russia investigation. Horowitz’s report shows that “the FBI effectively meddled in an ongoing presidential campaign,”...

Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire recently published a piece citing the need to involve government intervention in the fight against hardcore pornography. The counterargument to his assertion is that it’s a problem for parents to handle, not government, and that pornography is protected under the First Amendment as a matter of freedom of expression. These counterpoints ignore the truth that parents alone cannot handle a public health crisis and that pornography is obscenity, which is not protected by the Constitution. However, federal obscenity laws have not been enforced for the past 10 years, resulting in the National Center on...

At last night’s disgraceful clown show impeachment “hearing,” Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan said everything that needs saying on the Democrat/media/Deep State Coup Cabal’s fiasco. I’m dedicating this morning’s Campaign Update to Mr. Jordan’s five minutes of oratory greatness because frankly, he summarizes the whole sordid tale of the last four years better than anyone has done before. Please, spread the video clip below and the transcript that follows far and wide, to all your friends – both real and on social media – and anywhere else you can distribute it, because it is something every American needs to see, listen...

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) told CNN he is “torn” on whether to back conviction of President Donald Trump in a U.S. Senate trial should the House of Representatives pass Articles of Impeachment. Manchin said he is “very much torn” on the issue of impeaching Trump, a huge blow to Democrats as they seek to hold their party together heading into a contentious House floor vote next week.

The House on Wednesday passed a contentious agricultural bill that would likely put more than a million illegal immigrants on a pathway to legal status as part of what supporters say is a vital modernization of the industry’s workforce -- but that immigration hawks blasted as a “large-scale amnesty.” The Farm Workforce Modernization Act passed 260-165, with support from both Democrats and Republicans. The bill provides a process for undocumented farmworkers to seek a temporary five-and-a-half-year “Certified Agricultural Worker” status if they have worked for approximately six months in the industry in the last two years. That status can either...

A shocking report by the Justice Department’s inspector general lays bare the FBI’s “serious performance failures” in conducting a counterintelligence operation in 2016 against the Trump campaign. Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s ( 434-page report) details numerous mistakes, errors, and omissions by FBI personnel in four applications for special warrants to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Senate Democrats are quietly talking about asking Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to hold articles of impeachment in the House until Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) agrees to a fair rules package for a Senate trial. Democratic senators are concerned by talk among Senate Republicans of holding a speedy trial without witnesses, which would set up a shorter time frame than when the Senate considered President Clinton’s 1999 impeachment. They want to hear from Trump’s advisers and worry that if they don’t use their leverage now, they’ll have little say over how a Senate trial is run.

Washington -- Watch out, Mr. President! You are about to be confronted in the next election by the party of tough guys and, I would assume, tough gals, too. Remember, Hillary, too, is in the Party of the Jackass, and she throws a mean lamp -- particularly if she is aiming it at her husband's head. You are also facing the party of foul-mouthed tough guys and gals. Be sure you keep your Secret Service detail close to you at all times. I would not even enter the men's room without them. They will understand. They know tough guys when...

An 18-year-old Barnard freshman was fatally stabbed just after nightfall on Wednesday during a mugging in a park near the college’s Manhattan campus, the police and college officials said. In a campuswide letter sent around 11 p.m., Sian Leah Beilock, Barnard’s president, identified the victim as Tessa Majors and said she had been killed in an armed robbery in Morningside Park. “Tessa was just beginning her journey at Barnard and in life,” Ms. Beilock wrote. “We mourn this devastating murder of an extraordinary young woman and member of our community.” Ms. Beilock said in the letter that she and Leslie...

The Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) recently announced that more children exited foster care into safe homes than entered the system during 2019. The department also announced that the number of adoptions during the year surpassed 6,000 for the first time. This good news has been a long time coming for the foster care system. It indicates that major reforms enacted by the Legislature in 2017—notably the localization of foster care and adoption services—are working. Continued improvement requires a continued commitment to seeing these changes through. It is important, however, to resist the temptation to interpret the positive...

A Dallas man who prosecutors said tried to recruit fighters for the Islamic State through social media, encouraged others to carry out terrorist attacks and lied to federal agents was sentenced on Wednesday to 30 years in prison. The man, Said Azzam Mohamad Rahim, was arrested at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport in March 2017 while trying to board a flight to Jordan, according to prosecutors. During his trial in May 2019, prosecutors said Mr. Rahim, 42, used a messaging app called Zello to try to recruit the fighters and tell others to kill enemies of the Islamic State, also...

“‘And the one on whom seed was sown among the thorns, this is the man who hears the word, and the worry of the world and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful’” (Matthew 13:22). Few things obstruct the gospel’s reception in someone’s heart more than the general love of the world and wealth. Note these warnings: For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. (1 Tim. 6:10) Do not love the world...

Name your own bowl game. Your Bowl Game = Last restaurant you ate at + Last Christmas present you bought + Bowl.

Food for thought — while the industry does have positive attributes, it also leads to disordered eating, promotes unrealistic body types and is highly exclusive The wellness industry has been a smashing success the past few years with a $4.2 trillion market in 2017. Wellness is defined as “the state of being in good health,” but has been marred by the industry’s commercialization of avocado toast, the elimination of dairy and gluten, intermittent fasting, replacing every grain with cauliflower, using expensive skin care products — the list goes on.

Remember when CNN was pretty much ‘Peachmint’ 24/7? That all ended yesterday when the Republicans finally got up to bat. And yes CNN, people noticed: After airing every last second of Democrats’ opening statements plus Democrat staffers talking to each other throughout six extremely boring impeachment hearings, CNN refused to air Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham’s opening statement in the hearing on the IG report today. Instead of informing viewers of the incredibly damning facts regarding the Obama-Biden FBI’s spying on the Trump Campaign in furtherance of the Russia Collusion Hoax that CNN spread for years CNN turned to...

WASHINGTON— Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax would raise $2.7 trillion over a decade, $1.1 trillion short of her presidential campaign’s estimates, according to a new analysis from the Penn-Wharton Budget Model. The difference stems in part from disagreement over the pervasiveness of tax avoidance. Still, the new study projects that the wealth tax would raise more money than critics such as former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers have argued, and the analysis suggests it could be a significant new revenue source targeted at very few people. “This is not nickels and dimes, even in our estimate,” said Kent Smetters, who runs the...