Free Republic

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has had enough of the impeachment trial by the time it got to the first dinner break in President Trump’s impeachment trial Tuesday night. “God help us if we have to listen to [House Intelligence Committee Chairman] Adam Schiff, D-Calif., prattle on for 24 hours, non-stop,” lamented Cruz in the Senate subway terminal. This is the balancing act for the Democrats. Schiff is the face of the Democrats’ impeachment effort. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., handpicked Schiff to be the lead impeachment manager to present the House’s case to the Senate, leapfrogging House Judiciary Committee Chairman...

"The View" co-host Meghan McCain slammed the "performance art" of House Intelligence Committee chairman and leading House manager Adam Schiff, D-Calif., during the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump, suggesting Schiff's dramatics are meant to indicate future political ambitions. After Schiff received praise by her daytime co-hosts, McCain began by expressing she feels like she "lives on a different planet" by not being enthralled by his opening arguments. "When I saw Adam Schiff, I thought he seemed pretty performative ... and that he's clearly trying to take over for Dianne Feinstein at some point," McCain said, referring to the California...

What a difference a president makes. Yesterday, President Donald Trump thrilled pro-life Americans with his announcement that he will become the first president in history to attend the March for Life. Trump will address the March for Life on Friday in live remarks to hundreds of thousands of pro-life people attending the event from across the country. He will be the first president ever to attend the March for Life in person, having addressed the March via video previously. That will be a marked contrast from our last president, Barack Obama. In 2013, he attended a Planned Parenthood rally. Obama...

If Rep. Adam Schiff was around in 1864, he would have orchestrated the impeachment of President Abraham Lincoln. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Schiff, D-Calif., and his confederate impeachment managers demand that President Trump be removed from office because the president did something that might advantage him politically in the upcoming election. This, they claim was an impeachable “abuse of power.” On the floor of the Senate, Schiff exclaimed that Trump wanted “to cheat” in the November presidential election by asking Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son over potential corruption. Democrats are the only ones who...

Tucker Carlson continued his mockery of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and his performance during the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump Thursday, saying Schiff had revived his "wartime general" character from the previous day's proceedings while adding a "theological dimension." "Say what you will, but as a piece of theater. It had literally everything. There was dastardly old Vladimir Putin rubbing his hands together in diabolical glee," Carlson said on "Tucker Carlson Tonight," mocking Schiff's remarks. "Somewhere deep beneath the Kremlin: 'Those foolish Americans. Little do they know my troops will be in Phoenix by nightfall.'" Carlson...

My latest song. Due to distributor error, this song will be delayed in appearing on Spotify and digital stores (Bandcamp excepted).

BEIJING (AP) — China is swiftly building a hospital dedicated to treating patients infected with a new virus that has killed 26 people, sickened hundreds and prompted unprecedented lockdowns of cities home to millions of people during the country's most important holiday. On the eve of the Lunar New Year, transportation was shut down Friday in at least eight cities with a total of about 25 million people. The cities are Wuhan, where the illness has been concentrated, and seven of its neighbors in central China's Hubei province: Ezhou, Huanggang, Chibi, Qianjiang, Zhijiang, Jingmen and Xiantao. The Wuhan government said...

Invasive iguanas burrowing into the soft dirt around an aging dam cost a Florida city $1.8 million in emergency repairs. Employees noticed last year that water was seeping round the edges of a decades-old weir that controls water delivery in West Palm Beach, the Palm Beach Post reported. “The sheet piling was getting pretty old and needed to be replaced, but the digging by the burrowing animals like iguanas made it more vulnerable,” said Poonam Kalkat, director of public utilities for West Palm Beach. “I can’t say how much the iguanas were the cause because it’s an older structure, but...

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is prepared to go to court with two "sanctuary cities," New York City, New York, and Denver, Colorado, if they fail to provide personal information on illegal immigrants with criminal records released in each city instead of being transferred to ICE. “We expect them to comply" with subpoenas for the information, said acting ICE Director Matt Albence at a press conference in Washington on Thursday. "If they don’t comply, we’ll be working with DOJ to go to district court to force them to comply with the requirements,” Albence said, noting the rule in the U.S....

A DNA match has led to a Florida man prosecutors suspect is the “pillowcase rapist” responsible for numerous sexual assaults of women in the Miami area during the 1980s. Robert Koehler, 60, was arrested over the weekend in Brevard County and was being held without bond Thursday after his transfer to a Miami jail. He faces charges in one assault though authorities say as many as 25 victims could be involved. Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said it will take time to locate victims and determine if there is enough evidence to prosecute all of these cases. The rapes...

A French publisher has issued an apology after one of its history textbooks suggested that the CIA “orchestrated” the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed. The textbook titled “History of the 20th Century in Flashcards” was published last November through Ellipses publications to present the entire last century in French, European and world history to undergraduate students. The sentence appeared on page 204 of the textbook in a chapter about the creation of the Al Qaeda terrorist group and the attacks on America on September 11, 2001, French daily Le Monde reported....

The Commissioner for Human Rights in Russia, Tatyana Moskalkova, said that the condemned Israeli-American drug smuggler, Naama Issakhar, did not write an independent petition for clemency to the Russian leader. This is reported by Interfax . She said that the girl is convinced that the appeal of her mother and the leadership of Israel is enough. At the same time, the Ombudsman added that she hoped for a successful resolution of the situation and early release of the girl. Moskvalkova also emphasized that Issakhar has no complaints about the conditions of detention: the camp's barrack has a refrigerator, TV, hot...

Amazing video shows one of China's most beautiful and reclusive birds, the Golden Pheasant. The birds were spotted foraging in central China's Ganshan National Forest Park. The brightly colored birds are native to forests in mountainous areas. They are a protected species in China, as their population numbers are decreasing. They were recently named, along with the white swan, as the city birds of Sanmenxia. Take a look at the video above to see the birds in action. Take a look at the video above to see the birds in action.

The eruption of Mount Vesuvius turned an ancient victim’s brain into glass, according to Italian anthropologists. The finding, dubbed as “sensational” and published on Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, marks the first time that scientists have verified such a phenomenon. […] The remains of a man found lying on a wooden bed were discovered in Herculaneum in the 1960s. He is believed to have been the custodian of the College of Augustales, a place of worship that was at the center of the cult of Roman Emperor Augustus. The glassy substance found inside of the victim’s skull...

A time traveller has predicted that humans will be eating polystyrene balls in 2075. The man - known only as Kasper - claims the small, white pellets will be our daily meal in the future. Kasper told Apex TV: "I'm going to show you food, actual food, from the future. Here is actual food from year 2075." He then shows off a small jar filled with the pellets and suggests they will be enough nutrition for a day. He said: "These are individual capsules, and taking just one capsule allowed you to live for an entire day. You take one...

The California Highway Patrol has made a significant breakthrough in its investigation into projectiles on SR-156 and US-101 in the Prunedale area, as well as on SR-156 in San Benito County.The seemingly never-ending series of projectiles shattering car windows and endangering drivers along Highway 101 and State Route 156 in Monterey County may have finally come to an end. On Thursday, the California Highway Patrol announced "a major breakthrough in our investigation." The investigation has covered 69 known cases since February 2019 in which an unnamed projectile cracks a car's windshield or shatters the driver's side window. There would often...

On Sunday (Jan. 19), SpaceX's Crew Dragon launched on a brilliant a high-altitude test of its launch escape system. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk called the in-flight abort test flight "picture perfect," and, in looking at the stunning images of the test, he was absolutely right. Following a weather delay, Crew Dragon lifted off at 10:30 a.m. EST (1430 GMT) atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. With the test, SpaceX successfully (and intentionally) destroyed one of its Falcon 9 rockets to show that, if there were a launch anomaly,...

As the third day of the ongoing impeachment trial of President Trump wrapped up in the Senate chamber, most of the drama was elsewhere -- with one witness for the Democrats accusing a Republican senator of "defamation" and "slander," and Republicans vowing to aggressively highlight alleged corruption by Hunter Biden. The off-field spat began Thursday evening on Twitter, when Tennessee GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn quoted the commanding officer of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman as saying that Vindman was a "political activist in uniform." [cut] Vindman's legal team fired back within hours.

Another Explosive Socci Interview Antonio Socci has written a new book, Il Dio Mercato, La Chiesa, e L’Anticrsiso (The Market God, the Church and the Antichrist). As followers of his work – and I am one – have come to expect, Socci provides an acute and devastating commentary on the state of the Church and the world today, which his interviewer calls (translation mine) “a situation beyond all limits and unsustainable, given the Bergoglian line and the co-presence of two Popes who, beyond ceremonial courtesies, say opposite things.”In Socci’s view, expressed in the opening of his book (quoting a 1934...

Bye bye Blaine? In oral arguments yesterday, the Supreme Court questioned the litigants in a challenge to a Montana constitutional provision that bars any government benefit from flowing to private schools run by churches — even tax breaks for contributions. While it’s sometimes dangerous to assume a direction from the Socratic style of questioning used at Supreme Court hearings, NPR detects a significant drift in yesterday’s debate for Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito compared the exclusion of parochial schools from taxpayers-funded aid programs to unconstitutional discrimination based on race.That view...