Free Republic

NEW YORK (AP) -- CBS was the first major network to break away from President Donald Trump's impeachment trial in the Senate on Tuesday, allowing its viewers to watch their regular afternoon fare instead of a debate over a proposed amendment to subpoena White House documents. The decision illustrated the on-the-fly judgments television executives will face every day of the trial, juggling concerns over millions of dollars in advertising revenue, news purists cognizant of the weight of history and angry soap opera fans. Uncertainty over the Senate's schedule from hour to hour, much less day to day, complicates things even...

DAVOS, Switzerland—President Donald Trump said China’s human rights record and the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong are part of phase two trade discussions with China, in response to a question from The Epoch Times on Jan. 22. At a press conference in the Swiss Alpine town of Davos on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, Trump said “we would like to see we can do something” about the issues in China and Hong Kong. “We are discussing that already,” he told reporters. “We’re doing a trade deal, and it’s a very big deal. Phase one is done, phase two...

Some Senate Democrats are considering accepting a proposal first voiced by GOP Sen. Ted Cruz to trade witnesses in President Trump's impeachment trial. Cruz proposed what he called "witness reciprocity" to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who was receptive to the idea, last week as a potential means to secure testimony from Hunter Biden. Several Senate Democrats are now considering embracing the proposal in order to get former national security adviser John Bolton to testify in the trial, according to the Washington Post. Bolton has said he is willing to testify in the Senate trial if subpoenaed. The Democrats weighing...

As usual, fake news media ignored a Democrat irresponsibly throwing a racial-hate-generating grenade into a crowd of blacks. On MLK day 2020, Joe Biden referred to Trump as “this president and his Ku Klux Klan...” This is extremely evil when you understand that Biden knows his accusation is absurd and easily proven false. Biden thought he was simply throwing the dumb black congregation a vote-winning racist dog biscuit. As a black and grateful proud American, it turns my stomach the way Democrats repeatedly pander to us, pretending race relations in America have not progressed beyond the 1950s. Irresponsibly, Hollywood, public...

House impeachment manager Adam Schiff misconstrued text messages between two key players in a pressure campaign against Ukraine waged by President Trump's administration, according to a new report. In a letter to fellow impeachment manager Rep. Jerry Nadler, Schiff said indicted businessman Lev Parnas “continued to try to arrange a meeting with President Zelensky” and provided text messages between Parnas and Rudy Giuliani, the driving force behind the campaign, as evidence of this effort. Documents obtained by Politico Tuesday night show Schiff cited one text message in which Parnas told Giuliani he was “trying to get us mr Z.” A...

Today's Quotefall Puzzle features a quote by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.. Click puzzle (or click here) for full size rendition, then use your browser's print command to print puzzle. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. was an American historian, social critic, and public intellectual. Though he worked primarily in framing the legacies of many prominent pre-#Woke Democrat figures, he was well-received in circles occupied by Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley, Jr. 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 comments to prevent...

Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and their jackal pack are already howling that a Senate trial dismissal vote or a trial without witnesses amounts to a "cover-up." We don't care what they think. But we must care very seriously about what Americans think, and Americans have not heard the president's defense against the bogus charges because the House Democrats forbade this basic fairness. The Senate trial is his perfect chance to destroy the Democrats' sham impeachment. If most Americans knew about the vicious covert war waged by anti-Trump officials at the highest levels of our revered security agencies to usurp the...

Liberal billionaire 2020 Democratic candidate and Bloomberg News owner Michael Bloomberg said he’d have to “swallow two or three times” before he would “vote to convict” President Donald Trump. But that may have just been political theater. Bloomberg intends to “shift his television ad message this week to directly call for President Trump’s removal from office, with a new spot that will run in states with Republican senators who face competitive reelection fights this year” [emphasis added], The Washington Post reported Jan. 21.

Democrats conspired with foreign agents, lied, cheated, and denied due process to Donald Trump. If they were willing to do that to a duly elected president in order to obtain power, what should Americans expect them to do to them should they refuse attempts to be disarmed? Democrats understand that an armed America can say, “No!” And they can’t have that. If they want to radically change the America extant for more than two centuries, they need to first disarm Americans. And they realize asking nicely is not going to accomplish this. Therefore, the ever-equable Democrats have suffered a recrudescence...

In the wake of the Virginia gun rights rally on Monday, Democrats in the Capitol are not slowing down their push for tyranny. They are moving a bill through the legislature that would effectively criminalize dissent against Governor Blackface Northam and other state government officials. House Bill 1627 was introduced by Delegate Jeffrey M. Bourne last week. The legislation “provides that certain crimes relating to threats and harassment may be prosecuted in the City of Richmond if the victim is the Governor, Governor-elect, Lieutenant Governor, Lieutenant Governor-elect, Attorney General, or Attorney General-elect, a member or employee of the General Assembly,...

... Biden’s pattern of gibberish If you expect a president to be able to speak coherently about the matters of the day ... Biden is not your man, at least not consistently. That’s simply a fact. The bigger issue is whether his speech is a reflection of an increasingly disordered brain. He interrupts himself in mid-sentence and goes on extended riffs, introducing new subjects that seem to have nothing to do with what he was just talking about. He is sometimes impossible to follow. And he can get quite irascible. He is in some ways the absolute verbal opposite of...

The first day of the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump was largely taken up with procedural issues. Senators argued over and then adopted an organizing resolution laying out the rules under which the trial will proceed. In his opening statement, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., charged that the resolution proposed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was “partisan,” a “national disgrace,” and a “dark day in Senate history.” All of this heated rhetoric was based on Schumer’s misleading claim that McConnell’s resolution was unfair and significantly different from the resolution governing Bill Clinton’s trial. Yet the resolution adopted...

"There are no words to express the result" was the beaming reaction of Belgium's Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage, after a 15th-century masterpiece -- painted over shortly after completion -- was restored to its former glory. And they were right -- commentators have been left speechless by one particular aspect of the newly revealed painting. The latest panel of the "Ghent Altarpiece," a large work by Hubert and Jan van Eyck, was unveiled in December as part of an ongoing project to restore the painting to its original design. The painting -- also known as "The Adoration of the Mystic...

While it may come as news to Schiff, 'most Americans' probably aren't watching this risible proceeding. But for those of us who are, we know for a fact Democratic actors haven't been 'impartial.' Just when you thought Rep. Adam Schiff had reached maximum sleaze, word breaks he likely mischaracterized evidence related to President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, achieving new heights of corruption for ol’ “schifty Schiff.”Last week, Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, sent a letter to Democratic House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler of New York, summarizing evidence brought forth by Lev Parnas, a former associate of Trump’s...

More than 120 surface-to-air guided missiles have been supplied by Russia to Turkey along with a regiment set of S-400 air defense missile systems, a military diplomatic source told TASS on Monday.

I can't bear listening to ranting, so I removed it from this one tape I kept of Clinton's Impeachment (though, of course, I still have the whole thing). Sorry, history. I left in rational arguing. As for the rest of the trial, I suspect the tapes might have been among the unlabeled ones that ended up in my 30 large garbage bag event. For which I tipped the garbage man handsomely. And when the frustration grows too much, may I suggest a continuous and very loud playing of: Trump Impeachment Memes - Hit Me With Your Best Shot - Pat...

Here’s a musical take on McConnell’s great response last week to Nancy’s lame attempt at stagecraft. Golden Pens on Silver Platters (to the tune of Silver Threads and Golden Needles, sorry, Linda) If you haven’t heard it in a while, CLICK HERE to watch my sweetheart Lovely Lefty Linda knock this one out (first 30 seconds is concert chatter). Link opens in a new tab.

"If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction ... 2,400 lives lost," Lute added, blaming the deaths of U.S. military personnel on bureaucratic breakdowns among Congress, the Pentagon, and the State Department. "Who will say this was in vain?" While I was assigned to the U.S. military headquarters in Afghanistan, the most commonly used phrase in reports coming from all echelons and locations was "progress is being made." At that time, the war was being fought, and probably still is, through PowerPoint presentations. As long as the slides said so, then "progress was being made." It was then...

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...