Free Republic

Iowa's Democratic Party plans to use a new Internet-connected smartphone app to help calculate and transmit results during the state's caucuses next month, Iowa Public Radio and NPR have confirmed. Party leaders say they decided to opt for that strategy fully aware of three years' worth of warnings about Russia's attack on the 2016 presidential election, in which cyberattacks played a central role. Iowa's complicated caucus process is set to take place Feb. 3 in gymnasiums, churches, recreation centers and other meeting places across the state. As opposed to a primary in which voters cast ballots in the same way...

Soldiers and Civilians with the U.S. Army Garrison (USAG) Ansbach Provost Marshal Office (PMO) practiced and qualified with the Army’s new weapons system during a range at the Oberdachstetten Training Area Jan. 9-10. Prior to being issued the M17 and M18 Modular Handgun System (MHS), the PMO used the M9 Beretta, a 1980s-era pistol. During the range, the reaction to handling and firing the new weapon was positive.

A Kansas man has asked an Iowa judge to let him engage in a sword fight with his ex-wife and her attorney so that he can “rend their souls” from their bodies. David Ostrom, 40, of Paola, Kansas, said in a Jan. 3 court filing that his former wife, Bridgette Ostrom, 38, of Harlan, Iowa, and her attorney, Matthew Hudson, had “destroyed (him) legally.” The Ostroms have been embroiled in disputes over custody and visitation issues and property tax payments. The judge had the power to let the parties “resolve our disputes on the field of battle, legally," David Ostrom...

In addition to embracing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, Elizabeth Warren recently stated that, as president, she would demand that all new buildings be “carbon-neutral,” starting in 2028. This latest brainstorm comes on top of the Massachusetts senator’s previous environmental vows: to ban all oil and gas drilling on her first day in office, mandate that all cars and trucks be carbon-neutral by 2030 and force the closure of all existing, carbon-free nuclear power plants. Really? This is the same Warren who introduced legislation in October 2018 to end homelessness and “housing poverty” in America. Those are real problems....

If you go by the Labor Department’s statistics, the job market was very hot in November. Then it became cold in December. Average the two out and — in true Goldilocks fashion — the economy (like the porridge) may now be just right. I’ve always told you that the government’s employment stats are flaky. Various adjustments are supposed to take care of things like Christmas hiring and new companies just coming into being. But they don’t. They only confuse things. And only after many months or even years of revisions do we learn what the job market was really like....

Liberalism died in 2016, in his fourth century. He was ill for quite some time, and after a series of tumultuous brushes with death over the last hundred years, he passed not quietly but spectacularly by climbing a tree and sawing off the very branch he was sitting on. Many have refused to accept his death, and his body is currently propped up on bumper stickers and mainstream news networks with sunglasses in some weird Weekend-At-Bernie’s-esque charade, preventing his proper entombment. He will be remembered for the way in which his valorization of moral neutrality made it seem like everything...

A container with 23.94 tons of American chicken feet cleared Chinese customs Tuesday, potentially heralding the start of a new trading era between the two countries just days before they sign a long-awaited trade deal. The chicken feet, or phoenix claws as they’re known in Chinese recipes, were inspected and approved for unloading by customs in Shanghai, the official Securities Times reported. The event marks the return of U.S. poultry meat to China five years after it was banned, it said. China prohibited the import of all U.S. poultry products in 2015 in response to cases of avian flu in...

At some point after viewers watched Ricky Gervais needle begowned Golden Globe revelers over their affiliations with China, those watching at home would have seen the trailer for “Mulan” play during a commercial break. (Disney was one of three companies Gervais named in his monologue.) It was fitting, in Hollywood’s first big party of the 2020s, to see shadows of a conflict that roiled the waning days of its last decade.The very next morning, director Judd Apatow was quoted in an exhaustive New Yorker article probing “The Future of America’s Contest with China.” It’s a drama in which Hollywood...

A review of lawsuits on livestock grazing  Hammond grazing permits On December 20 of 2019, federal judge Michael H. Simon revoked the grazing permit for Hammond Ranches Inc., finding that former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s order renewing it earlier this year was an “abuse of discretion.'' Background: The Hammonds had 4 different grazing permits on BLM lands. In June of 2012 Steve and Dwight Hammond were convicted of intentionally setting fires on BLM land. On Oct. 30, 2012 federal judge Michael. H. Hogan sentenced Steve Hammond to 12 months and one day of imprisonment and 3 years of supervised...

Parents are plenty angry about a New Jersey law that requires LGBT material to be incorporated into public school classroom instruction. The parents say they are concerned the new law will “teach lifestyles and life choices that stand 100% against our family values.” They object to their tax dollars being used for what they call an “assault on religious liberty.” And they say a special interest group helping develop curricula for the new requirements has a “radical agenda” that could jeopardize the health and safety of children.

Jennie Zawada, who mowed her lawn and drove her own car until age 104, may just be the oldest person living in Indiana. Zawada, originally from Milwaukee, turned 108 last week, according to a report from The Indy Channel. She moved to Carmel, Indiana in 2017. Her secret to a long life? “I think everything is good for you if you don’t over do it,” she told the station. Her niece, Nancy Dwyer, added that her aunt always took good care of her body. “She is very healthy with low blood pressure and takes no medicines,” Dwyer told the station....

I was at the first Women’s March back in 2017, when the ladies wore pink p-ssy hats, and it was the beginning of the end for me. Or at least it was past the halfway point to the end for me. Lots of people were mad about the hats, white feminism, and vagina centrism. Women were getting thrown under the buses we chartered in favor of trans ideology. And that turned me from an enthusiastic marcher to a disillusioned former marcher.

A new poll commissioned by The Club for Growth PAC, a conservative advocacy group, shows that nearly half of West Virginia voters would view Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) more negatively if he votes to remove President Trump from office. The survey shows that Manchin, who won election to a third term in 2018, could face strong political blowback if he votes to convict Trump on one or two articles of impeachment passed by the Democratic-controlled House. The survey of 500 likely voters in West Virginia found that 48 percent would have a less favorable view of Manchin if he votes...

I. IntroductionFor the second time in 40 years, a Republican President was forced to clean up the mess left by his Democrat predecessor’s failures in Iran. The first time was when a group of Muslim “college students” overran the U.S. embassy in 1979 and paralyzed the Carter administration for more than a year. The second time was when the Obama administration, in a move reminiscent of British PM Chamberlain’s futile attempt to appease Hitler, sent a plane-load of cash in the middle of the night to Tehran to induce the rogue nation to stand down on its nuclear program. The...

According to the 1975 book Man Eating Sharks! by Felix Dennis, on a beautiful, clear summer day in 1955, one beach along the shores of Lake Michigan was packed with people looking to cool off and enjoy the sunny day, and one of these was George Lawson, a boy from Chicago. Lawson was out with many others splashing about and swimming off a boat near the beach when witnesses allegedly saw him pulled underwater, seemingly by something yanking him under and accompanied by the boy's panicked screams. Shockingly, a dorsal fin was reported by several others on the boat as...

Influential American Catholic Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, who is a member of the Vatican's highest court, says a recent decision by a South Carolina priest to deny communion to Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden over his abortion advocacy was “right and just.” “What the priest did in South Carolina was right and just — would that more priests would act in a similar manner!” Burke said in an interview with The Wanderer. Last October, Biden, who is a lifelong Catholic, was refused communion at the 9 a.m. mass at Saint Anthony Catholic Church where Father Robert...

A preliminary report from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) shows that abortions in Missouri dramatically dropped over 2018 as the state's only abortion facility, Reproductive health Services in Saint Louis, struggled to maintain its abortion license after a series of botched abortions.

It doesn't happen often, but every now and then, CNN invites a progressive who's not afraid to criticize his comrades-in-arms. Whatever you think of the man, you've got to admit that Van Jones is such a leftist. He's willing to take on fellow Democrats, even if doing so makes him unpopular in elitist-leftist circles.Immediately after Tuesday's incredibly boring debate, Jones blasted the Democratic presidential candidates for a) going after each other and b) being, well, weak. With regards to the former point of criticism, he had some especially harsh words for Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. "As a progressive, to...

Marilyn Monroe (Norma Jeane Mortenson). Everyone has heard about her, most people know her story. She was an American actress, singer, model, she did it all. She became a popular sex symbol in the ’50s and ’60s, inspiring many women to chase their dreams and be themselves. Sadly, she passed away at the very young age of 36. However, she still managed to achieve more things than most people do in a full lifetime. Marilyn was photographed by many photographers, including one photoshoot by Sam Shaw which is considered one of the most famous of her shoots

Today's Quotefall Puzzle features a quote by Stephen King. Click puzzle (or click here) for full size rendition, then use your browser's print command to print puzzle. Stephen King is a considerably talented American writer who is also a screaming communist with Trump Derangement Syndrome. Nonetheless, he has come out with a quote that goes against every tenet of Team #Woke, and is now suffering the same #CancelCulture attack that J.K. Rowling experienced. All hints, along with the answer, are provided in the first reply comment below, using filtered font to prevent accidental spoilers. Please refrain from disclosing the full answer in...