Free Republic

Readers ask for my view of the impeachment trial. I had a very good view of the last impeachment trial - from a largely empty Senate press gallery, the US media collectively agreeing from about Day Three or Four that the whole thing was a crashing bore, notwithstanding the oral sex and cigars and "distinguishing characteristics". Not like a phone call to Kiev, is it? Nevertheless, this time I'm the one disinclined to follow along. The left, being not terribly imaginative, always accuse you of what they're doing themselves. So, in this case, President Trump is charged with interfering with...

The abuse consists of his efforts to extract a personal political "favor" from the president of Ukraine as a precondition to the delivery of $391 million in military aid. The favor he wanted was an announcement of a Ukrainian investigation of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden and his son Hunter. The Government Accountability Office -- a nonpartisan entity in the federal government that monitors how the feds spend tax revenue -- has concluded that Trump's request for a favor was a violation of law because only Congress can impose conditions on government expenditures. So, when the president did that,...

A large-scale blast rocked an apartment in the no-go Stockholm suburb of Husby early Tuesday morning along with another explosion taking place just 500 metres away. One person was taken to the hospital after suffering injuries from one of the blasts, but the injuries were only determined to be minor. A total of 50 residents were evacuated from their homes following the blasts as police and bomb technicians examined the area, SVT reports. Anna Wästberg of the Stockholm Police commented on the two explosions saying that police were investigating a potential connection to the large blast that occurred last week...

Ol’ Bugeyes just let the cat out of the bag. – One of the main long term goals held by the Democrat Party for the past century now has been to destroy the validity of elections in the United States, as they strive to enact their longed-for Soviet-style utopia. We have seen them ramp that effort up to epic proportions in the 21st century, as they have consistently refused to accept the validity of any Republican victory, variously blaming negative outcomes on fantasy-based “voter suppression” or interference by the Russians. The party’s leaders and their toadies in the corrupt, fake...

Nadler starts out with a slide which has the third bullet point a lie, claiming that Legal Experts Unanimously Agree Trump’s Abuse of Power is impeachable. That was false. It is not a fact. Nor is it unanimous. We can comment on today’s session in this thread.

At Xiehe Hospital in the central Chinese city of Wuhan on Wednesday afternoon, hundreds of patients waited eagerly at the fever ward wanting to see a doctor. Many of them had symptoms of pneumonia but few got what they wanted – admission and free treatment in a quarantined environment. Xiehe is one of the dozen hospitals in the city designated to treat patients who may have contracted the coronavirus that has already killed 17 people and sickened hundreds of others. While officials said they had stepped up quarantine of patients, including those suspected of being infected, the overcrowded fever ward...

PBS announces Jim Lehrer died this morning at age 85.

It was quite the day yesterday. Adam Schiff bored the living hell out of the Senate and the country. He went on spewing lie and lie after lie, noted on CNN Schiff's mendacity is noted even by Chris Wallace Jerry Nadler essentially accused GOP Senators of treason, alienating the jury. It was so bad that Justice John Roberts told them to dial it back. The democrat circus is to go on for two more days. Schiff began repeating himself endlessly after a while. It was so bad he had to reach back for his Russian collusion fantasy. He offered nothing...

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.

Our adventure begins from the airport in Ontario, CA. A stop in Phoenix and then on to Miami for an automotive event. My friend Peter Paul, the only man to join FR from the Corridor of Death in a Brazilian prison (because of the Clintons) shows me the sights, the highlight of which will be checking out Mar a Lago. While wearing my Trump 2020 hat, we go around the curve on a two lane residential street of very nice homes. In front of the club and in the center turn lane is a police Suburban with lights on. Of...

1. SIX PERCENT OF BORROWERS OWE A THIRD OF ALL THE OUTSTANDING DEBT. A very small fraction of all student loan borrowers have very large loans. Six percent of borrowers owe more than $100,000 in debt, with 2 percent owing more than $200,000. This 6 percent owes one-third of the outstanding $1.5 trillion of debt. At the other extreme, 18 percent of borrowers owe less than $5,000 in student loan debt. They collectively owe 1 percent of the debt outstanding. 2. ...ABOUT HALF THE DEBT OUTSTANDING, BORROWED FOR GRADUATE SCHOOL.4. MOST BACHELOR’S DEGREE RECIPIENTS GRADUATE WITH LITTLE TO NO DEBT....

He arrived at casinos “with all the subtlety of a royal flush,” the article said, dressing in $6,000 Louis Vuitton hoodies and $2,500 high-top sneakers. He rolled with a “colorful crew” that included a financial manager, an enforcer and a pickup artist, it said. “It’s not just gambling. It’s a lifestyle,” Gorodetsky was quoted as saying “Gorodetsky isn’t an analytics junky, he largely bets on gut instinct,” the blog said. “That’s part of what makes @BigRobStyle such an entertaining follow.” Over a four-month period beginning in February 2014, he fraudulently obtained more than $953,000 from Victim A “for the purported...

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) knocked Republicans on Thursday, accusing them of trying to use "so-called outrages" and "shiny objects" as distractions to avoid discussing potential impeachment witnesses. "I think the case for witnesses and documents is so self-evident that many of my Republican colleagues are desperate to talk about anything else, they are so eager to change [the] conversation," Schumer said. Schumer said that Republicans were trying to bring up things "irrelevant to a fair trial." "They try to turn you, the press and the American people away to look at something else that has nothing to do...

CNN anchor John Berman lectured the U.S. senators who didn't stay in their seats for every minute of Wednesday's opening arguments in the impeachment trial against President Trump. While impeachment managers Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler presented their case against the president and how he supposedly tried to coerce Ukraine to boost his re-election chances, several lawmakers left their chairs. Berman found that unacceptable.  "In fact, many of the senators of both parties were not at their desk at different times despite the rules which will require the apparently herculean task of sitting down for a few hours," Berman said....

The mainstream media in the western world isn’t telling you that Chinese hospitals are being absolutely overwhelmed by the number of sick people showing up for treatment. So the truth is that the official numbers that the Chinese government is putting out are almost meaningless at this point because hordes of sick people are being turned away from the hospitals because there is no room for them. On Wednesday, Chinese officials took the unprecedented step of attempting to quarantine the entire city of Wuhan, but what good is that going to do if most of the sick people are turned...

Hello, I never post vanities, but I would like to request prayers for my mother. She is a sweet, 84 yr old, living independently and has friends, goes to church, etc. She has a large cancerous mass on her parotid gland and we went to Jefferson University Hospital yesterday for counsel. Dr feels she could do well with surgery providing PET scans show the cancer hasn't spread - that scan is now scheduled for next week. Tentative surgery date is set if she is fully cleared for Feb 7th. This is a scary, 10 hour surgery with a risk that...

Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg has jumped into fourth place in the Democratic primary contest with 9 percent support among Democrats nationwide, a poll published Wednesday shows. The top contenders remain unchanged, according to the Monmouth University survey: Former Vice President Joe Biden was the choice of 30 percent of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders had 23 percent and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren came in with 14 percent. Bloomberg is trailed by former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg with 6 percent and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar at 5 percent.

A top official at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) said Wednesday that human trials for a vaccine to counter a new strain of coronavirus behind an outbreak of viral pneumonia in China could begin within three months. In an interview with Bloomberg Law, the director of NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said that his agency is working with Cambridge, Mass.-based biotech company Moderna Inc. to develop a vaccine for the disease. “We’re already working on it," Anthony Fauci told Bloomberg. "And hopefully in a period of about three months, we’ll be able to start a phase...

BEIJING - Major Chinese cities, including the capital of Beijing and virus-hit Wuhan, banned all large gatherings over the coming Lunar New Year festival, the most important holiday on the Chinese calendar, in an expanding effort contain the rapidly spreading outbreak.The announcement Thursday came as authorities expanded travel restrictions imposed on Wuhan to surrounding municipalities, shutting down travel networks and attempting to quarantine some 25 million people - more than the population of Florida. The extreme measures were accompanied by other indications that Communist Party authorities were struggling to control the outbreak, notably the aggressive censorship of any criticism or...

“I don’t know how you can believe in a God who wants to condemn most of the planet to a fiery hell,” Rodgers told Patrick on “Pretty Intense,” as reported by PEOPLE magazine. “What type of loving, sensitive, omnipresent, omnipotent being wants to condemn his beautiful creation to a fiery hell at the end of all this?”