Free Republic

The Department of Justice has reportedly assigned an FBI special agent to work with Immigration and Customs and Enforcement and the Department of Education Inspector General Charge to investigate Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) for alleged criminal violations relating to perjury, immigration fraud, marriage fraud, state and federal tax fraud, federal student loan fraud, and bigamy.As an immigration lawyer, the very first question that came to mind when I read these reports was what immigration consequences, if any, could attach in the event that any of the above allegations are proven beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law....

Our selection today is Down Texas Way by Hank Locklin (1952). THE WESTERNER https://thewesterner.blogspot.com/

Happy New Year, everyone!! Here's hoping 2020 is the best year yet!! President Trump should take the win in the Senate trial without dragging it out, then concentrate on winning the 2020 election with wide coattails, then bide his time as the cases against the various coup plotters wind their way through the justice system. Win the election, hold the senate, take back the house!! And then continue the work of making America great again: Build the wall, enforce the law, deport them all!! End DACA!! End sanctuary cities!! End anchor babies!! Continue cutting regulations, cutting government, cutting spending and...

I got a nice dose of reality with Free Republic off the air this morning. By 8 am I searched, "Is Free Republic Down" and it took me to a site that confirmed, that it was down for everyone. By 9 am, insidiously, I noticed a frontal headache and a little anxiety. By 10 I was having trouble concentrating and getting a bit restless and short with co-workers, By 11 there was some paranoia with thoughts like "What if Free Republic never comes back up?" and "I think I'm hooked on this site", and "What if I can't recover from...

A struggling Minnesota church is asking its older parishioners to leave in hopes of making it more attractive to young families. Grove United Methodist Church in the St. Paul suburb of Cottage Grove is closing in June, with plans to relaunch in November. The present members, most of them over 60 years old, will be invited to worship elsewhere, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported. The church is asking that they stay away for two years, then consult the pastor about reapplying. “I pray for this church, getting through this age-discrimination thing,” William Gackstetter said at church on a recent...

No excerpt from Bloomberg allowed, story here.

KEY POINTS Senate Democrats won two key last minute changes to the rules of Trump’s impeachment trial. Each side will now have three days to make its opening statements, instead of two. The Senate will also automatically admit evidence from the House investigation into Trump last fall. WASHINGTON – Senate Democrats won two key changes to the rules of President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial as proceedings kicked off Tuesday afternoon. The changes will permit each side to stretch out the 24 total hours they’ve been allotted for making arguments over three days, instead of two, as McConnell had initially proposed....

Preparations are underway for President Donald Trump’s visit to Wildwood, Jan. 28. According to U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-2nd), the Wildwood rally has the highest ticket request (about 100,000, per media reports) of any of Trump’s close to 50 similar events across the nation, so far ---SNIP--- Every single hotel and motel in the Wildwoods is booked,” reported Van Drew. “They’re all filled. This is going to be an amazing thing for Wildwood, and not only for Wildwood, but for all of South Jersey to have this opportunity.”

When his Senate career is over, Democrat Minority Leader Chuck Schumer should consider applying for a job as a manager at Long John Silver's. Because the Democrat minority leader has displayed an affinity for a fishing metaphor that might rival that of Izaak Walton in "The Compleat Angler." In appearances on both MSNBC's Morning Joe and CNN's New Day this morning, Schumer repeatedly accused Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of going along with an alleged "coverup" by President Trump of the impeachment trial, "hook, line, and sinker." Schumer has cast the same line elsewhere across the media in recent days. Get...

<p>The events dominating the news today—presidential impeachment, deep state subversion of secret surveillance courts, confused and prolonged wars, out-of-control debt and government spending, and a radicalized educational and media culture—suggest something quite profound is threatening American governance. But it is not so clear precisely what.</p>

Central Georgia Presbytery approved an overture at its January 11, 2020 Stated Meeting, placing before the 48th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America a “BCO 34-1 request for General Assembly to Assume Original Jurisdiction in Missouri Presbytery Issue.” An overture is a means by which a Presbytery can bring a matter to the General Assembly for consideration. This overture will be considered by the 48th PCA General Assembly at its meeting in Birmingham, Ala., June 15-19, 2020. Overture 2 alleges that “TE Greg Johnson has and continues to teach that Christians can be identified as homosexuals, and that...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, one of the top tier contenders for the Democratic nomination for president, says she would launch a federal task force to investigate corruption in President Trump's administration if she's elected as his successor.The populist lawmaker from Massachusetts on Tuesday released a plan that she touts will "restore integrity and competence" to the federal government in a post-Trump era.

Flanked by an independent counsel whose name is already etched into impeachment history and a marquee constitutional scholar who has stood beside some of the most notorious defendants in a generation, most lawyers would run the risk of being overshadowed. But Jay Sekulow, one of President Donald Trump's personal attorneys since his first few months in office, is just as accustomed to the spotlight. Having weathered the former special counsel's probe into Russian election interference, Sekulow has also proven himself adept at waging battles on behalf of the President -- even when working off less-than-ideal facts. Sekulow will serve as...

Hospitals across the United States are said to have granted Microsoft, Amazon and IBM access to sensitive identifiable medical records. The tech giants are each working with medical centers in Washington, Massachusetts and Minnesota. Google will now have access to patients' test results, diagnoses and hospitalizations to give them a full digital health history. Neither doctors nor the patients in the 21 states where it will be used had been told about it. About 150 Google employees and 100 Ascension staff collaborated on Project Nightingale, transferring the personal data of more than 50 million Americans to Google.

I explore Surah 72, and explain how Islam is not a monotheistic religion so much as a patchwork of beliefs derived from pre-existing Arab pagan beliefs.

While it didn’t draw too many headlines internationally, Norway’s ruling coalition government lost its majority yesterday when the populist Progress Party pulled out of the coalition. And it all happened because of one woman and her two children.The woman has not been named, but she was one of the “ISIS brides.” She fled Norway in 2013, moving to Syria where she married a Norwegian man who had similarly joined the terrorist group. They had two children, but he was later killed in the fighting. She’s been living in a refugee camp in Syria since the collapse of the caliphate...

ORLANDO, Fla. – A construction worker with anti-government beliefs is accused of fatally stabbing his boss, who was a “proud and outspoken American and pro-Donald Trump,” according to an Orange County sheriff’s arrest affidavit. Mason Trever Toney, 28, was arrested Monday on murder charges in the death of his boss, William Knight, 28. The fatal stabbing was reported at 10:45 a.m. at a construction site at Exit 254 of Florida’s Turnpike near State Road 528. Deputies said they found Knight dead next to an excavator with a brand new American flag over the side of his body. Witnesses said Toney...

Tread carefully...

“It is better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious and an angry woman” (Proverbs 21:19).

A man in Washington state has been diagnosed with the mysterious virus, the first case confirmed in the United States of an illness that began in China last month and has killed at least six people and sickened hundreds more, according to people familiar with the investigation. The man is in stable condition. He arrived in the United States last week, before federal health officials began screening travelers from the central Chinese city of Wuhan at Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York’s John F. Kennedy international airports. The CDC is expected to announce details about the U.S. case in...