Free Republic

Will Nancy Pelosi ever send the two House articles of impeachment to the Senate? We’re going on three weeks since the House voted, and Congress is back in session, but the House Speaker said Tuesday she wants to see what kind of trial the Senate will hold before she deigns to appoint House managers to make their case. This is a parody of impeachment. House Democrats said they had to rush to vote before Christmas because President Trump poses a clear and present danger, but now the urgency is gone. The House didn’t subpoena John Bolton, the former national security...

A new, potent form of viral pneumonia has sickened 59 people in China with high fevers, lung lesions, and difficulty breathing. All have been quarantined, and seven are in critical condition. WHO calls the outbreak “pneumonia of unknown etiology”—which is epidemiologist speak for we don’t know what the hell this is. China is not known for open communication about epidemics. SARS was not reported to WHO for months and killed approximately 800 people in 2002 and 2003 while spreading to dozens of countries. This week, China seems to be more readily releasing information, though China continues to be China: The...

UK Catholic bishop cites Pope Francis to defend LGBT ‘ministry’ scandalizing faithful Catholics Bishop Terence Drainey refuses to meet with those concerned about the Middlesbrough diocese's support for the 'Pride' agenda. MIDDLESBROUGH, United Kingdom, January 6, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Faithful Catholic laity in the UK Diocese of Middlesbrough are sounding an alarm about the unchecked activities of the LGBT+ “ministry” in their diocese. Last year, the “ministry” hosted a stall at a local homosexual “Pride” event, and its website and social media pages display a cross filled with the colours of the rainbow flag. LifeSite recently reported on the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump may have narrowly escaped immersing the United States in a broad war with Iran, at least for now, after his order to kill a top Iranian general sparked a crisis and prompted criticism at home and abroad.

I’ve been pondering what to write about Iran’s top military leader Qassem Soleimani ever since he was killed last Friday. Sometimes in this high-speed, social media-driven, fake news-corrupted era, patience is a virtue for journalists, especially opinionated columnists like me, and it makes sense to take a pause before committing to any firm conclusions. My initial feeling on hearing the news was one of relief that such an obviously despicable human being was dead. My second feeling, one that I suspect most people had whatever their view of President Trump’s decision to order Soleimani’s death via a drone strike on...

WASHINGTON, April 15, 1986 (UPI) -- The blistering U.S. airstrike against Libya was a victory in the global battle against terrorism, President Reagan said Tuesday, warning the United States is ready to repeat its message ''in the only language Khadafy seems to understand.'' As Reagan pledged he will not relent in his campaign to ''eradicate the scourge of terror in the modern world,'' reports from the Libyan capital of Tripoli said that Moammar Khadafy's 15-month-old adopted daughter was killed in the bombing and two of the Libyan leaders's sons were seriously hurt. After night fell in Tripoli Tuesday, the thud...

Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee declared in a heated press conference Wednesday afternoon that national security officials had just delivered the "worst military briefing" he had ever seen on Capitol Hill, even claiming that one official had warned during the "lame" and "insane" meeting that Congress shouldn't debate whether additional military action against Iran would be appropriate. Democrats piled on, with Virginia Democratic Rep. Gerald E. Connolly calling the briefing "sophomoric and utterly unconvincing." Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, for her part, asserted that she has been "stricken with PTSD" due to recent developments and condemned President Trump's new sanctions...

James Polite, who was charged with hate crimes and arson after he allegedly set fire to seven Jewish sites and vandalized a synagogue, was released from jail without bail Tuesday, according to court records. Polite allegedly wrote “Die Jew Rats” and “Hitler” at the Union Temple of Brooklyn in November 2018. Security footage allegedly showed him setting setting fires at “seven shuls and yeshivas in Williamsburg.” The incidents led to the cancellation of a Democratic event at the synagogue, with a candidate saying it highlighted the need to vote out “hate.” Polite is a self-identified queer black man who was...

New satellite imagery, which The War Zone exclusively obtained from Planet Labs, shows two B-52s at the U.S. air base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, where they are out of the reach of Iranian missiles. These are the first of six of the bombers that the U.S. military is deploying to the remote base amid heightened tensions with Iran and now in the wake of unprecedented Iranian missile strikes targeting U.S. forces in Iraq. The imagery in question is dated today, Jan. 8, 2019 at 11:09AM. The first reports that the U.S. Air Force was sending six B-52s...

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), the co-chair of the Progressive Caucus, proclaimed on Wednesday that “there was no raw evidence” of an “imminent threat” to warrant the elimination of Iran’s top terror chief, declaring that President Trump “recklessly assassinated” Qasem Soleimani. Jayapal, upon emerging from a congressional classified briefing on the strike eliminating Iran’s top general, proclaimed that there was “no evidence of an imminent threat or attack” to justify the action against the terrorist mastermind, who directed terrorist proxies abroad. She claimed: President Trump recklessly assassinated Qasem Soleimani. He had no evidence of an imminent threat or attack, and we...

Forty-one percent (41%) of likely U.S. voters say the country is headed in the right direction. That’s according to the latest numbers from Rasmussen Reports. During most of 2016, President Obama’s last year in office, fewer than 30% said the country was headed in the right direction. Also, Rasmussen Reports finds voters say they trust President Trump on economic issues more than they trust the average member of Congress or reporter. However, they trust their own judgment most of all. Meantime, President Trump’s job approval rating for December was at 49%, up two points from November, despite the House impeaching...

State officials have reportedly been denying pieces of the recent Maine Examiner exposé showing how Janet Mills’ administration is paying a vendor to track the movements of Mainers when they drive, walk or ride a bike, but the group’s official meeting minutes from the two most recent meetings tell a different story. As previously reported by Maine Examiner, video of the November 16th meeting of the Maine Climate Council’s Transportation Working Group showed Maine DOT officials urging members of the Maine Climate Council to request driver data acquired from a new state vendor. The minutes from the meeting, posted online, show...

(CNN)House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer have been bested by Mitch McConnell yet again. The two Democrats attempted to create impeachment leverage where none existed by withholding the Articles of Impeachment passed last month against President Donald Trump. But like your Aunt Frieda threatening not to bring her awful fruitcake to Christmas Dinner, their plan didn't work. Nobody wanted it in the first place. And now McConnell has exposed them for what they are -- desperate partisans who aren't interested in using impeachment the way the founders intended, but rather as just another tactic to be...

Four people are in police custody after a suspect vehicle attempting to flee from officers crashed into a San Francisco city vehicle, officials said.

One of the Mexican gunmen who killed a U.S. Border Patrol agent, consequently sparking the Obama administration’s “Fast and Furious” scandal, was sentenced to life in prison. U.S. District Judge David C. Bury on Wednesday sentenced Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes to life in federal prison for first-degree murder. The sentencing follows Osorio-Arellanes’s involvement in a 2010 border shootout between Mexican gunmen and U.S. officials, resulting in the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry... Osorio-Arellanes fled the scene and evaded justice for many years. However, Mexican authorities arrested him in 2017 in Chihuahua. He was extradited to the U.S. in 2018 and...

Jeremy Corbyn last night refused four times to say Qassem Soleimani was a terrorist — and described his killing by the US as “illegal”. The Labour leader also criticized the killing in the House of Commons after previously writing a letter to Boris Johnson asking for an urgent Privy Council briefing about the US assassination of top Iranian General Soleimani last Friday. He asked for evidence and clarification that proved Soleimani was a threat — but the Prime Minister rejected his request yesterday. Speaking to Sky News last night, Mr. Corbyn was asked four times whether he believed Soleimani had...

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced Wednesday afternoon that she will still introduce and hold a vote on a resolution to limit President Donald Trump’s power to lead the military in a confrontation with Iran — even though the confrontation is over. Pelosi also reiterated that the president had used “provocative and disproportionate” force in the successful airstrike against Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, leader of the terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force, responsible for killing over 600 American soldiers and wounding thousands more. The phrase “disproportionate” carries grim connotations in international law, implying that President Trump may...

Meghan Markle is one of the least popular members of the royal family, according to the Public First poll for Metro. The only other royal polling as more unpopular than Meghan is Prince Andrew. Though this poll seems to show that the British people feel unfavorably about the Duchess of Sussex, she's actually quite popular with young people in the United Kingdom. According to the poll, the public's opinion on Meghan was actually quite divided. The Duchess was found to be popular among the young, as well as those who identified as leaning politically left, according to Express. Meghan's approval...

Donald Trump blamed Barack Obama on Wednesday for supplying Iran with the money to purchase a torrent of missiles fired at American military positions Tuesday night. “The missiles fired last night at us and our allies were paid for with the funds made available by the last administration,” he said, citing $150 billion in frozen assets that the previous president released and $1.5 billion flown by the U.S. to Tehran. […] “Our missiles are big, powerful, accurate, lethal and fast,” he said, sending a warning in nearly the same breath as an olive branch. “Under construction are many hypersonic missiles,”...

The half-hour documentary, which aired Jan. 3 on German television, is dignified and respectful of the 92-year-old Pope EmeritusBenedict XVI appears mentally alert but noticeably frailer and almost unable to speak in a new German television documentary providing a rare glimpse into his daily life. In the half-hour film aired on Bayerischer Rundfunk (Bavarian state television) on Jan. 3, the 92-year-old Pope Emeritus speaks only three times but in a barely audible voice. “I used to have a great voice, now it doesn’t work anymore,” Benedict says in the program, which was filmed at his Mater Ecclesiae monastery residence in...