Free Republic

In an interview with CNBC’s host Joe Kernen, Trump said he had a “great talk” with the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “I said, look, if we don’t get something, I’m going to have to take action, and the action will be very high tariffs on their cars and other things that come into our country,” Trump said. “Now, saying that, I don’t want your audience to get nervous. They’re going to make a deal, because they have to. They have to. They have no choice.” At Davos this year,...

In October, something that has been very under reported happened. It is something that Tennesseans should know about and be very worried about. One of Governor Bill Lee’s pet objectives is criminal justice reform. In October, while speaking to the GOP Senate Republican Caucus, Lee said, “We can empty our jails in the same way that some other states have done. I know we can do that.” Let that sink in for a moment. As a part of criminal justice reform, Bill Lee wants to “empty our jails.” Jails and prisons are there for a reason and there is a...

In the name of the Very holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. To-day, the 25th day of December, 1792, I, Louis XVI King of France, being for more than four months imprisoned with my family in the tower of the Temple at Paris, by those who were my subjects, and deprived of all communication whatsoever, even with my family, since the eleventh instant; moreover, involved in a trial the end of which it is impossible to foresee, on account of the passions of men, and for which one can find neither pretext nor means in any existing law, and...

Today the U.S. Supreme Court hears a case that could determine whether parents and taxpayers have any choices about the kind of religion American children are taught with taxpayer funds. Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue concerns whether private donations may support schools that make their religious beliefs explicit. It could also undo a century of U.S. court and legislative decisions that used animus between Protestants and Catholics to attack the faith of both kinds of Christians’ children over the last century.Five years ago, Montana’s legislature enacted a tiny school choice program that allows residents to deduct up to...

Former Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Tom Homan said Wednesday that Joe Biden has "lost his mind," calling out the former vice president for saying that the United States should not deport illegal immigrants over a drunk-driving arrest. Biden also threatened ICE with punishment if the agency were to deport illegal immigrants arrested for drunk driving, saying his administration would fire agents who arrest and deport illegal immigrants for such a crime. “They go off to school wondering whether their mom comes and picks them up, is she not going to be there because an ICE agent was...

Perhaps for the first time in many years, politicians are directly competing for black votes. This goes hand-in-hand with signs that black America is no longer monolithically supporting Democrats. For example, President Donald TrumpÂ’s approval rating among black Americans is in the mid-30s.Enter Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg, who just launched his new plan for black America, the Greenwood Initiative, named after a site of both incredible black achievement and pain.Bloomberg, speaking to a mostly white audience of only several hundred in Tulsa, Oklahoma, unveiled his planÂ’s three points. The plan is a perfect example of the failure of...

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is hypocritical in decrying the impeachment trial as unfair, Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., said Wednesday, arguing that Schiff did not allow Republicans to call witnesses during the House's proceedings. Appearing on "Fox & Friends" with host Steve Doocy, Stefanik said that Schiff's comments on Capitol Hill Tuesday show that the Democrats' case is flimsy so they are "scrambling at this point." Schiff, the House Intelligence Committee chairman, is serving as the impeachment trial manager of the House Democrats' case. Speaking on the Senate floor during a marathon 12-hour first day, Schiff said that if the House...

Mr. Fiddle by the Cochran Brothers (1955) is our tune today.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign group dedicated to boosting GOP numbers in the Senate, released a slickly produced video Tuesday to mark the start of President Trump's impeachment trial. The video, which the NRSC promoted on Twitter with the hashtag "#HoldTheLine," skewers Democrats for what it claims was their desire to impeach Trump since before he even took office, as well as their lack of seriousness about the process. "This is not some neutral judgment that Democrats came to reluctantly," the video says. "It's not some somber moment or serious exercise for the left. It is the predetermined...

President Trump slammed the House impeachment managers prosecuting the case against him as “sleazebags” during an impromptu press conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Wednesday -- while saying he'd "love" to attend his ongoing Senate trial back home. In the hastily called press event before Trump was to return to Washington, the president delivered an unsparing assessment of impeachment proceedings, which moved into full swing a day earlier and will resume later Wednesday with opening arguments. While making clear he's reluctant to approve any new witnesses to testify, he floated -- perhaps playfully -- the idea...

On Monday, as senators and House impeachment managers prepared for the opening of President Trump’s impeachment trial Tuesday, Democrats and their courtiers in the mainstream press decided to ratchet up the their rhetoric to the point of delusional hysteria. The House managers—led by Reps. Adam Schiff and Jerrold Nadler—issued a statement that essentially accused Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of a coverup, saying his proposed rules for the trial are “rigged,” nothing more than an “effort to prevent the full truth of the President’s misconduct from coming to light.”That wasn’t all. Schiff and the impeachment managers also called on Trump’s...

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), one of the Democratic impeachment managers, tried to establish her party's case on Tuesday for why they need to hear more witness testimony and read more documentation before the Senate proceeds in the trial against President Trump. Her remarks came after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell presented his resolution on the trial rules. The White House documents that Democrats have asked for are "directly relevant to the case," Lofgren said Tuesday in support of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's amendments to the resolution. Because, she argued, those documents reveal the extent to which the White House...

In the fall of 2018, the trustees of Washington and Lee University voted to paper over parts of the university’s history. On the recommendations of Washington and Lee’s “Commission on Institutional History and Community,” the board voted to close off the Recumbent Statue of Robert E. Lee in the university chapel that bears his name and to remove the name of John Robinson from an important campus building. A group of alumni were concerned by those decisions and started to dig deeper. They discovered that those weren’t the only attempts to de-emphasize their school’s history. Over the preceding year, the...

It was a dark and stormy night. Also icy.  Stop me if you’ve already heard this one. OK, there was a full moon so it wasn’t actually dark. We had an ice storm in Michigan the night before our departure for points west. By morning everything was still icy but road crews had done their thing and the major roads and highways were reportedly clear and wet so we proceeded with our plans. We had packed the car the day before and left it in the driveway overnight as it doesn’t fit in the garage with the car top carrier...

President Donald Trump’s legal defense team is working toward a Monday deadline to submit a defense brief against charges filed by House prosecutors in the Senate trial that is set to begin in earnest next week.https://omny.fm/shows/880-extras/alan-dershowitz-im-not-a-full-fledged-member-of-imAmong the president’s legal team is Harvard law professor and constitutional law expert Alan Dershowitz, who says he’ll be making a constitutional argument against impeachment.  Dershowitz was a part of O.J. Simpson’s legal “dream team” and has defended several controversial clients, including Jeffrey Epstein. Despite voting for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, Dershowitz has been a vocal defender of Trump, going so far...

Immigration patterns prove that everyone wants to live in a capitalist country. Even the people who claim to be against capitalism never actually move to a non-capitalist country.

Barely two weeks after Donald Trump took office, Eric Ciaramella – the CIA analyst whose name was recently linked in a tweet by the president and mentioned by lawmakers as the anonymous “whistleblower" who touched off Trump's impeachment – was overheard in the White House discussing with another staffer how to remove the newly elected president from office, according to former colleagues. Sources told RealClearInvestigations the staffer with whom Ciaramella was speaking was Sean Misko. Both were Obama administration holdovers working in the Trump White House on foreign policy and national security issues. And both expressed anger over Trump’s new...

Washington D.C., Jan 16, 2020 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- Vice President Mike Pence will travel to the Vatican next week to meet with Pope Francis. Pence’s office confirmed with CNA on Thursday that the Vice President is scheduled to be received by the Pope during his overseas trip next week. No details have yet been released about the topics that might be discussed at the meeting. The Vice President’s visit comes immediately after the U.S. religious freedom ambassador traveled to Vatican City for the launch of the Abrahamic Faiths Initiative, held on Tuesday at the official residence of the U.S....

Former vice president Joe Biden’s extraordinary campaign memo this week imploring U.S. news media to reject the allegations surrounding his son Hunter’s work for a Ukrainian natural gas company makes several bold declarations. The memo by Biden campaign aides Kate Bedingfield and Tony Blinken specifically warned reporters covering the impeachment trial they would be acting as “enablers of misinformation” if they repeated allegations that the former vice president forced the firing of Ukraine’s top prosecutor, who was investigating Burisma Holdings, where Hunter Biden worked as a highly compensated board member. Biden’s memo argues there is no evidence that the former...

As I said in a BreakPoint commentary last month, gene-editing technologies such as CRISPR and what’s being called “Prime Editing” are “existential threats.” We have no idea what our attempts to play god with the human genome will unleash on humanity. Yet, we insist on charging ahead despite our imperfect knowledge with an unbounded confidence in our abilities.Coming from a concerned non-scientist like me, these concerns can be easily dismissed as alarmist, but what if the concern comes from the Director of the National Institutes of Health?It turns out that Francis Collins is also concerned. In a recent article in...