Free Republic

CNN canceled its upcoming town halls featuring Democrat presidential candidates slated for next week due to the ongoing Senate impeachment trial, the outlet reported on Thursday. CNN was slated to hold a two-day town hall event for the Democrat presidential candidates at Drake University on Tuesday, January 28, and Wednesday, January 29, just days before the February 3 Iowa caucuses. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Andrew Yang (D), Tom Steyer (D), Pete Buttigieg (D), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Joe Biden (D) were expected to attend. However, the ongoing impeachment trial in the Senate will make it...

Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign in South Carolina contacted law enforcement officials on Thursday after undercover journalists with James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas pressed the campaign to answer questions about violent remarks made by a paid Sanders campaign staffer. The move by the Sanders campaign to call the police on reporters for asking them tough questions comes after Project Veritas released video earlier this week that allegedly showed Sanders field organizer Martin Weissgerber saying he wanted to kill wealthy people and throw Republicans into camps. The police officer who responded told Project Veritas, “They said they are going to have no comment....

A Chinese woman who knew she was infected with the deadly coronavirus has disguised her symptoms by deliberately taking antipyretics and successfully boarded a plane to France. She then bragged about her actions online in photographs with friends she met on arrival, according to Chinese media sources. Users of Chinese social media site Weibo were shocked and angry at the reckless and potentially deadly actions of the woman. One said: “This kind of person is the most shameless”. Another posted: “She is now a time bomb.” As the deathtoll hits 17 the "infected" woman posted about her "escape" from Wuhan...

"Republicans have boasted of increased fundraising in the wake of the impeachment inquiry announcement. Officials said the Trump campaign, along with the RNC, brought in $5 million in the 24 hours after Pelosi’s announcement. National Republican Congressional Committee officials also said its online fundraising soared by 608 percent on the day Pelosi announced the inquiry."

The FISA court officially acknowledged Thursday that the FBI submitted false information when obtaining warrants to surveil Trump campaign aide Carter Page. Therefore, the FISA warrants that were issued are invalid. "Thanks in large part to the work of the Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Justice, the Court has received notice of material misstatements and omissions in the applications filed by the government in the above-captioned dockets. See Docket No. Misc. 19-02, Order (Dec. 17, 2019; DOJ PIG, Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane Investigation (Dec. 2019)," the court released...

As a cord cutter of many years, I have little first-hand knowledge of how the TV networks are covering the impeachment trial. I've been accessing C-Span online and catching little parts, or as much as I can stomach.

THE White House has livestreamed a church service which saw the US vice-president speak and a bishop claim “the devil” causes homosexuality. After Mike Pence addressed the congregation in Tennessee, the preacher took to the pulpit to talk about same-sex relations in a sermon still available on the administration’s YouTube channel. “It is a demonic spirit that causes a woman to want to live with another woman,” he said. “It is a demonic spirit that causes a man to be attracted to another man.” The preacher, who has been named as Bishop Jerry Wayne Taylor, claimed the “devil” was trying...

Prof. Jonathan Turley on CBS News said that Rep. Nadler made a “major blunder” by insulting the Senators. He prefaced the mention of a blunder by saying he teaches his law students not to do what Nadler had just done during the impeachment trial…Nadler had “insulted” the Republican Senators listening to the impeachment of President Trump. Nadler said the Senate could be engaged in a cover-up. One key Senator spoke out to say she was offended. Senator Lisa Murkowski, a moderate Republican, said she was offended by House manager Nadler’s claim that because Republican members voted against allowing new testimony...

This week, the juxtaposition between the Senate impeachment trial against President Donald Trump and his address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, is surreal. The first is an attempt to remove Trump from the presidency; the second was an incredibly powerful speech that focused on the success of our nation and his presidency. It might lead one to ask, "How could both be true?" Yet here we are. The impeachment proceedings get almost nonstop coverage, so let's focus on the other, more worldly, more positive, less covered event. According to the WEF website, the organization "engages the foremost...

The University of Michigan has placed its provost on leave after allegations of sexual misconduct were made against him, the school has announced. Martin A. Philbert, who earns $570,340 a year, was placed on administrative leave on Tuesday, according to a letter from the university.

“It saddens me”, he says,” to see the white man beating his breast over and over, too emasculated to put up any resistance to people who’ve come to threaten him on his own doorstep”. He believes that a toxic mix of guilt, “human rightsism”, political naivety and crass ignorance of History have a debilitating effect on Europeans’ capacity to fight the invasion. He accuses the corrupt African leaders of destroying the lives of hundreds of millions of human beings in all impunity, but is equally critical of the ideologues who are paving the way for them. They should stop blaming...

BEIJING - Major Chinese cities, including the capital 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 about 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 skepticism on...

SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) – San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin announced a policy on Wednesday that will end cash bail for those being released from custody. The policy was formalized on Wednesday. The DA’s office says those being held ahead of their trial will now be based on the risk rather than wealth and poverty.

At least two of the FBI’s surveillance applications to secretly monitor former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page lacked probable cause, according to a newly declassified summary of a Justice Department assessment released Thursday by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). The DOJ's determination essentially means that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant authorizations to surveil Page, when stripped of the FBI's misinformation, did not meet the necessary legal threshold and should never have been issued. “Today’s unprecedented court filing represents another step on the road to recovery for America’s deeply damaged judicial system," Page said in a statement to...

Intel shares rose after the chipmaker's earnings easily cleared Wall Street expectations and management guided for a much stronger 2020 than analysts anticipated. The stock rose 6.73% to $67.58 a share in postmarket trading Thursday, after having risen 0.94 % in regular trading hours. Earnings per share for the December quarter grew 19% year-over-year to an adjusted $1.52, beating Wall Street estimates of $1.25. --snip-- Management guided for full year 2020 revenue of $73.5 billion, better than analysts estimates of $72.4 billion.

A laboratory in Wuhan is on the cusp of being cleared to work with the world’s most dangerous pathogens. The move is part of a plan to build between five and seven biosafety level-4 (BSL-4) labs across the Chinese mainland by 2025, and has generated much excitement, as well as some concerns. Some scientists outside China worry about pathogens escaping, and the addition of a biological dimension to geopolitical tensions between China and other nations. But Chinese microbiologists are celebrating their entrance to the elite cadre empowered to wrestle with the world’s greatest biological threats. “It will offer more opportunities...

How to protect yourself (from coronavirus): "There are currently no vaccines available to protect you against human coronavirus infection. You may be able to reduce your risk of infection by doing the following: (#1) .. wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds (#2) ..avoid touching your eyes, nose, or mouth with unwashed hands (#3) .. avoid close contact with people who are sick " Also: (#4)..stay home while you are sick - don't spread the illness (#5) ..avoid close contact with others (#6).. cover your mouth and nose with a tissue when you cough...

Following a unanimous vote by the city council Tuesday night, Oakland has now become the first city in California to ban criminal background checks on potential renters. “Indescribable emotions and feelings,” said John Jones III of Oakland, who got out of prison in 2012 and struggled to find a place to live in Oakland despite his well-paying job as an aviation mechanic. Jones said he’s among the many who left prison only to end up on the streets, contributing to Oakland’s homeless crisis. That’s why he’s been lobbying hard for the Oakland City Council to pass the Fair Chance Housing...

Gotta ask again. If the VP was assigned to be point man for foreign policy re Ukraine and then his son gets an unusually lucrative position in that country based on nothing but family connection, wouldn't that obviously be a corrupt conflict of interest? How about if the same thing happens in other countries, say China, for instance? If said corrupt VP now wants to be president of the U.S. wouldn't it be in our national interest to investigate this?

FedEx is warning its customers about a new text-based scam that has been using the company’s name to obtain personal information from phone users. In the past week, a number of people have taken to Twitter with screenshots of messages sent to their phones disguised as package notifications from FedEx. The messages, which sometimes address users by their names, ask them to set their delivery preferences and include a tracking code. The texts also feature a link to a site that takes the user to a fake Amazon site and asks them to complete a survey, according to photos obtained...