Free Republic

... Mr. Rubio, seeing how Mr. Trump has activated new segments of the electorate for Republicans, is trying to devise some policy platform to retain those voters once Mr. Trump is no longer on the ballot. The solution is to copy much of the language and some of the policy views of the left so as to avoid alienating those new voters. The most telling manifestation of this, from both Mr. Johnson and Mr. Rubio, is their approach to productivity and investment. One of their insights is entirely traditional-conservative: Only by boosting productivity can an economy deliver employment and wage...

FBI Director Christopher Wray: As I have written, FBI Director Christopher Wray falsely testified to Congress that there have been no 702 surveillance abuses. Surprisingly, nobody questioned him about this incorrect claim, even though many documented abuses are in the public record. If the head of this important agency either doesn’t know about surveillance abuses, or knows of them and is being misleading, it doesn’t bode well for the notion that he can (or will) clean things up. The media: With few exceptions, the news media largely delivered a collective yawn after the initial furor over various abuses in recent...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem (Music in The Bible) Psalm 63 Psalm 63[a] A psalm of David. When he was in the Desert of Judah. 1 You, God, are my God,     earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you,     my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land     where there is no water. 2 I have seen you in the sanctuary     and beheld your power and your glory. 3 Because your love is better than life,     my lips will glorify you. 4 I will praise you as long as I live,     and in your name I will lift up...

Did anybody hear of this publication before today? Gotta be good for business.

Many New Zealand gun owners have refused to participate in a mandatory buyback program of military-style semi-automatic weapons implemented after the Christchurch massacre in March. Despite a penalty of up to five years in prison, up to two-thirds of firearms banned by the legislation were not turned in before the Friday deadline by New Zealand gun owners, the Washington Post reported. While 47,000 semi-automatic rifles have been collected, according to police statistics, a government commissioned study determined that the small nation likely contains between 56,000 and 170,000 now banned weapons, according to 1 News. New Zealand’s largest gun rights advocacy...

The left hates Donald Trump. Of course, they also hated Bush ‘41 and Bush ‘43 – to say nothing of Ronald Reagan.But dislike of Trump has reached a whole new level of intensity. It’s off the charts.It’s not easy to explain why.Unlike most Republican leaders, Donald Trump is not a social conservative. He approves of gay marriage. He’s not particularly religious. He rarely goes to church. His personal life doesn’t seem to reflect Christian values. He fought racial and ethnic bias in Palm Beach (a historic bastion of prejudice) by opening his Mar-a-Lago facility to blacks and Jews who were...

Movita Johnson-Harrell seemed to take pride in her position as the first Muslim woman elected to the Pennsylvania State Legislature.

“A gift in secret pacifieth anger: and a reward in the bosom strong wrath. It is joy to the just to do judgment: but destruction shall be to the workers of iniquity” (Proverbs 21:14-15).

The genuine magnitude of the FBI spying on the Trump campaign (or Adam Schiff’s getting ahold of the phone records of journalists and fellow representatives) was far greater than most people realize, reading or hearing about a FISA warrant to spy on Carter Page. Many people naturally presume that an operation to trample on the rights of one man – even an Annapolis graduate who served as a source for the CIA – was bad, but not a major spying operation. After all, Page was not a top-level campaign advisor but an unpaid volunteer. So, what’s the big deal? ......

President Trump’s United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) is finally up for a vote this week — just in time for Christmas. After nearly a year of delay, this gift for the American people represents an opportunity for freer trade and a chance to grow our economy, reduce prices on many goods, and increase our exports to the world, creating more and higher-paying jobs in the process. As we all know, just like with other Christmas gifts, you can also get the occasional ugly sweater that you really didn’t want. The same is true here. Some compromises were made to get the...

16-year-old who admitted to targeting two women in shocking homophobic attack in London bus gets no jail time One of the teens involved in a shocking homophobic attack in a London bus earlier this year will not receive jail time, a judge has decided. The 16-year-old, whose name hasn’t been disclosed because of his age, received an eight-month youth referral order — which was increased from six months because of the “homophobic” nature of the attack.

The world-famous Bolshoi Theatre in Russia dismissed criticism raised by American ballet dancer Misty Copeland about its use of performers in blackface. Copeland, who made history as the first black female principal dancer in the American Ballet Theatre, sparked a debate on social media after posting an image last week showing two white Bolshoi dancers in black body paint rehearsing for a show. They were rehearsing for the Russian production of La Bayadere, a tragic love story set in India, which Copeland said was racially insensitive. “And this is the reality of the ballet world,” Copeland captioned the image on...

Ms. Regan interviews Miller regarding impeachment, Pelosi's Democrats, and the DNC's lust for power to destroy America. He delivers a warning to viewers that the only man standing in the breach keeping the Socialist/Communists from destroying America is Trump. I would add that it includes the American peoples' steadfast support and fervent prayer.

Tired of all this WINNING yet? How could you be? – It never gets old. On Friday, yet again, every major stock market index achieved record high closes, running the streak of record high closes on the NASDAQ to an astonishing eight straight days. With this week’s congressional passage of the USMCA trade deal with Mexico and Canada and the closing of a very favorable Phase 1 trade deal with China, there is no telling how high the markets might rise in the U.S. and globally. You might not like President Donald John Trump, but your 401(k) loves him. One...

Four men are in the hospital waiting room because their wives are having babies. A nurse approaches the first guy and says, “Congratulations! You're the father of twins.” “That's odd,” answers the man. “I work for the Minnesota Twins!” A nurse then yells the second man, “Congratulations! You're the father of triplets!” “That's weird,” answers the second man. “I work for the 3M company!” A nurse goes up to the third man saying, “Congratulations! You're the father of quadruplets." “That's strange,” he answers. “I work for the Four Seasons hotel!” The last man begins groaning and banging his head against...

Former Arizona GOP Sen. Jeff Flake issued a scathing rebuke of those in his party who stand with President Trump during his impeachment. Flake, 56, who did not run for reelection in 2018, published an op-ed titled, "Jeff Flake: The president is on trial. So are my Senate Republican colleagues," in the Washington Post on Friday. "As we approach the time when you do your constitutional duty and weigh the evidence arrayed against the president, I urge you to remember who we are when we are at our best. And I ask you to remember yourself at your most idealistic,"...

Judge William Griebach, from uscourts.gov, cropped by Dean Weingarten Andy Huebschmann, the former owner of Thureon Defense LLC, has been sentenced to two years in prison for his part in a scheme to smuggle guns and gun parts into Australia. Huebschmann met an Australian, Paul Munro, at an Industry Gun Show in Las Vegas in 2012, according to JS online. Munro delivered a crate with a false bottom to Huebschmann to ship the guns and gunparts to Australia. From justice.gov: According to court filings, Huebschmann manufactured numerous firearms and firearm-parts for an Australian criminal and gun-enthusiast. These included rifle kits,...

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan is smart on crime as he unveiled a real crime reduction plan to help violence-plagued Baltimore City, an area whose political class contains nothing but elected Democrats at all levels. Hogan gets it. There is not much that the government can do to fix the dysfunctional black underclass culture that causes most of the violence in Baltimore. Pouring money into midnight basketball, after school programs, second chance crime reduction programs will do absolutely nothing to fix the urban pathologies of ineffective parenting, absent fathers, and flawed lifestyle choices like dropping out of school, joining gangs, illegal...

This will be a weekly post. Count is now 185 judges confirmed. 133 District Court judges 50 Circuit Court judges 2 Supreme Court justices Been a good year for judicial confirmations. 20% of the District judges are now Trump nominees and over 20% of the Circuit judges. The 2nd, 3rd and 11th Circuits have flipped to Republican-appointed majorities. The 9th Circuit now has a 16-13 Democrat majority instead of the 23-6 Democrat majority when Trump took office. Trump's had 50 Circuit judges confirmed in less than THREE years. By comparison Obama had 55 in EIGHT years. Both W. Bush and...

Invoking Scripture to make his case for the abolition of slavery, Abraham Lincoln famously declared that “a House divided against itself cannot stand.” These words still ring true today as Speaker Nancy Pelosi fans the flames of partisanship with an illegitimate impeachment crusade against President Trump. Not a single Republican voted for the Democrats’ two flimsy articles of impeachment that the Democrats rammed through the House of Representatives after a one-sided “inquiry” — but three members of Pelosi’s caucus could not bring themselves to go along with the farce, and a fourth voted against one of the articles. One Democrat,...