Free Republic

The assisted living senators are not dealing well with these long hours. – The U.S. Senate has, more than at any other time in its history, become a home for elderly citizens during the 21st Century. This is in large part due to the fact that it has also more and more become a place to accumulate massive amounts of wealth at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer in recent decades. No one wants to voluntarily leave the gig when there’s always so much more wealth to be grafted. Thus, this ongoing Kabuki dance of an impeachment trial takes place...

A large bloc of Republican Senators reportedly skipped large portions of Wednesday’s impeachment trial, flouting Senate rules requiring them to remain in their seats at all times during the proceedings, according to journalist Michael McAuliff. “Just counted 21 empty seats on the GOP side of the Senate, 2 on the Dem side, a couple hours into [Adam] Schiff’s presentation. Some are just stretching their legs, but most are not in the chamber. Some of them have been out of there for a while,” McAuliff said. That means more than one-third of 53 Republican senators tasked with deciding the president’s fate...

Changes in how the most widely used credit score in the U.S. is calculated will likely make it harder for many Americans to get loans. Fair Isaac Corp., creator of FICO scores, will soon start scoring consumers with rising debt levels and those who fall behind on loan payments more harshly. It will also flag certain consumers who sign up for personal loans, a category of unsecured debt that has surged in recent years. The changes will create a bigger gap between consumers deemed to be good and bad credit risks, the company says. Consumers with already-high FICO scores of...

Last week, the Herald Publication in Mascoutah, Illinois revealed that the City of Fairview Heights entered into an agreement with the IDOT to install automatic license plate readers (ALPR) on highway trusses to allegedly “prevent, deter and solve crimes.” Which is typical government doublespeak to explain away Big Brother tracking innocent motorists. Taken at face value, Fairview Heights reasons for tracking everyone is nothing new, they use the same cookie-cutter excuses that law enforcement across the country have been using. But what really caught my eye was the “other resolution approved by the council.” The other resolution calls for the...

Last month, The Atlantic magazine ran a powerful article by Peggy Orenstein about young men in America. Titled "The Miseducation of the American Boy," the article is poignant and deeply troubling. And yet I was struck by the fact that Orenstein misses some obvious causes and connections. She mentions, for example, that the interviews she conducted over two years revealed young men who are broadly supportive of the dreams, aspirations and general equality of young women. They are tolerant of and form friendships with gay classmates. According to the contemporary narrative, these trends should portend progress and better emotional and...

Marie Bailey and her husband used to live in Seal Beach, Calif., about 28 miles south of Los Angeles. But several years back, after years of talking about it, the couple left California and moved to Texas. Now they live in a bigger house in the Dallas area, pay less money in taxes – and love their life in the Lone Star State. “Everyone in California is nervous about taxes and prices,” Bailey told the Dallas Morning News last year. “We became much more calm when we came here. You are in a constant rat race in California to afford...

Most presidential campaigns feature a familiar refrain: Each candidate promises to create millions of new jobs. The 2020 primaries are unusual in that nearly all the Democratic candidates, including Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Michael Bloomberg, are solemnly pledging to destroy millions of jobs by ending the shale oil and gas revolution. The Democrats’ war on fossil fuels was on full display at the debate in Los Angeles last month, where Joe Biden, the supposed moderate, was asked if he would rein in America’s shale oil and gas production even if it meant “thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands”...

In July 2018, Commentary published an article by Yuval Levin that caused everyone who thinks about the balance of power among the branches in Washington, D.C., to say: "Of course! That's it exactly!" It had long been observed that Congress had, over the course of several decades, relinquished its powers to the executive and the courts. That wasn't news. Others had remarked that geographic sorting and gerrymandering had increased the ideological polarization of the two parties. This spurs members of Congress to side with presidents of their own party more than with their fellow legislators. Levin's insight went further. The...

Joe Biden, the 2020 Democratic presidential frontrunner, said Wednesday he wants "no part" of a witness swap reportedly being discussed by some members of his own party. Under the hypothetical deal, Democrats would reportedly offer up Biden or his son Hunter Biden to testify at President Trump's Senate impeachment trial in return for testimony from a Republican figure, such as ex-national security adviser John Bolton. The Washington Post quoted the former vice president admitting that it was "not an irrational question" but said Trump's trial was a "constitutional issue." He said he does not want to see the trial turn...

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin took a shot at Greta Thunberg -- the famed teen climate activist -- on Thursday over her push at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, for companies to immediately cease all investments in fossil fuels. Mnuchin was at a news conference in the Alpine town when he was asked about Thunberg's earlier appeal to abandon older sources of energy, according to Reuters. "Is she the chief economist? ... After she goes to college and studies economics in college, she can come back and explain that to us," he was quoted saying.

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This is a new one. The New York Times headline read: "Minimum Wage Raises Could Lower Suicide Rates, Study Says." But there was a subheadline: "It was the latest study to suggest that effects of wage increases reach beyond economic welfare, but some experts pushed back on the findings." Let us "push back." The study was published in January in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. The Times article noted that 47,000 Americans committed suicide in 2017 and said: "The new study examined suicide rates from 1990 through 2015 across all 50 states and Washington, and measured how they...

It’s as if the House Managers think that their case suddenly becomes airtight if Adam Schiff and his colleagues take forever to lay it out and add some audio-visual aids. There is not a shred of a new angle to their arguments. It is the same litany of assertions that peppered the House hearings, filled with the same attempts at mind-reading. They somehow magically know that President Trump’s interest in Ukraine was not a justifiable curiosity over that nation’s worthiness for hundreds of millions in foreign aid, despite the curious presence of Hunter Biden on a crooked company’s board; they...

... When considering the Democrats’ high-minded arguments, ask yourself: What if Hillary Clinton won in 2016? After she took office, it would have been revealed that her campaign hired the opposition-research firm Fusion GPS, which assigned Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence official, to reach out to Russian counterparts to solicit dirt on Donald Trump. Recall that the since-discredited dossier Mr. Steele peddled to the media in the fall of 2016 was made up of unsubstantiated rumors from former Russian agents. It’s naive to believe the Kremlin was unaware that Mr. Steele asked Moscow pals for dirt on Mr. Trump....

A story of rampant child abuse—ignored and abetted by the police—is emerging out of the British town of Rotherham. Until now, its scale and scope would have been inconceivable in a civilized country. Its origins, however, lie in something quite ordinary: what one Labour MP called "not wanting to rock the multicultural community boat." Imagine the following case. A fourteen-year old girl is taken into care by the social services unit of the town where she lives, because her parents are drug-addicted, and she has been neglected and is not turning up in school. She is one of many, for...

Five (state) Republican Attorneys General announce action asking the Senate to reject articles of impeachment. See video at link.

Whether by accident or by deliberate osmosis, Israel and the U.S. have adopted similar solutions to their existential problems. Before 2002, during the various Palestinian intifadas, Israel suffered hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries from suicide bombers freely crossing from the West Bank and Gaza into Israel. In response, Israel planned a vast border barrier. The international community was outraged. The Israeli left called the idea nothing short of "apartheid." However, after the completion of the 440-mile border barrier -- part concrete well, part wire fencing -- suicide bombings and terrorist incursions into Israel declined to almost nil....

Today’s CG from The Arkansas Gazette. FP QXN NQZ VFP XSFBP PSG EBRVJY. RU KQDB SPETDYRFYO TFY XQYE REY IREFXREK, NQ SISBKETRPZ CQYYRWXS EQ BSIRIS RE. —NQP OVFBE You can find this little fun word game, to combat early dementia and senility in us baby boomers, in several daily publications. The way it works is a letter stands for another letter. For example: AXYDLBAAXR is LONGFELLOW (does not apply to today's cryptogram). Beware, the game is very addictive. If this is your first time, don't be intimidated. PLEASE DO NOT post the answer in general comments, but DO post your...

A woman who was recently crowned Miss Utah USA after competing in the pageant five times will be the first openly bisexual contestant to compete for the Miss USA title in the competition's nearly 70-year history.

Congratulations, Virginia – you overcame the terrible peril that was patriots rallying in Richmond to peacefully express your disgust with Governor Jolson Klanrobe and his legislative back-up dancers’ attempt to strip you of your rights. You came, you saw, you protested, and then you swept up. But the fight’s not over. It’s just starting. But know this – you will win. Let’s begin with a basic principle: You have no moral obligation to respect or obey unconstitutional actions by a government. None. And when a government acts outside its constitutional limits, you do not merely have the right but the...