Free Republic

Will executive privilege confound House prerogative? As the impeachment presentment rolls into its third day on the Senate floor, the one message that gets beaten into the ground by each House manager is the need to call witnesses who didn’t testify before the House. Adam Schiff and Jerrold Nadler declined to pursue witnesses like John Bolton and Mick Mulvaney because they didn’t want to get slowed down by a court fight over executive privilege.Senate Republicans are asking themselves why they shouldn’t make the same choice the House did: A growing number of Republicans are pointing to President Donald Trump’s...

Eric Toner, a scientist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, wasn't shocked when news of a mysterious coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China, surfaced in early January.Less than three months earlier, Toner had staged a simulation of a global pandemic involving a coronavirus. Coronaviruses typically affect the respiratory tract and can lead to illnesses like pneumonia or the common cold. A coronavirus was also responsible for the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome in China, which affected about 8,000 people and killed 774 in the early 2000s. "I have thought for a long time that the most likely virus...

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration warned California on Friday that it must stop requiring health insurance plans in the state to provide abortion coverage or risk losing federal money. The move — the latest clash between the White House and the nation’s largest state — opens a new front in a long-running national debate over whether abortion services must be covered by health insurance. It threatens to further restrict Californians’ access to abortion services, which must be offered in health plans that cover individuals and employees of small business in the state. The state’s rules do not apply to larger...

Three years ago, the British people passed a referendum stating that they wanted their government to withdraw from the European Union. The British people were tired of having European bureaucracy micromanage their lives, control their immigration policies, and generally erase their sovereignty. The British political class, however, was less enthused. Being part of the EU gave them a cachet of sophistication, while simultaneously allowing them to govern without being actually responsible. For three long years, Theresa May dithered and danced, never coming to grips with the fact that the People wanted a divorce while the EU wanted a long, painful,...

More left-wing journalists are waking up to the fact that unaccountable Silicon Valley corporations are ranking Americans with a system that bears a growing resemblance to China’s totalitarian “social credit” system — almost a year after Breitbart Tech pointed out the same thing. China’s “social credit” system assigns citizens with a “score” based on good or bad behavior, which is in part determined by one’s compliance with Beijing’s totalitarian communist value system. Those who fall below a certain score are excluded from basic services. There’s no escape, either; to track everyone’s behavior, China subjects its citizens to mass surveillance, powered...

COOKEVILLE, Tenn. — A Tennessee Tech University student was placed in isolation after presenting mild symptoms of the Coronavirus. In a social media post released Thursday evening, the university said the student had recently traveled overseas and met the criteria for testing. The student was placed in isolation as a precautionary measure. The school said they have not confirmed that the student has the Coronavirus. Tennessee Tech and the doctors at the school have been in constant contact with both the Tennessee Department of Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Tennessee Tech is located in Cookeville, which is...

https://www.c-span.org/video/?468482-1/president-trump-addresses-march-life-rally Live Video starting at 12:00 PM EST.

Communist regimes are famous for concealing inconvenient information and that appears to be the case in China with the spread of the coronavirus, a SARS-linked pneumonia-like flu that reportedly has killed 26, infected nearly a thousand, and spread to to more than a half a dozen countries beyond China, including the U.S. The Chinese have got 20 million people on lockdown in Wuhan and several cities near it, just as the Chinese New Year begins, which is the entire region's biggest holiday. It's pretty obvious the epidemic is spreading anyway. Officials, culpably or not, closed the barn door after the horse...

When President Trump ordered the military to strike Qassem Soleimani, a legitimate military target responsible for the deaths of hundreds of troops, Democrats were up in arms. How dare Trump bait the Iranians by striking someone so close to Ayatollah Khamenei? They were certain that Trump had just ignited World War III. Republicans were more confident that the strike would, at the very least, remove a dangerous character from the Iranians' forty-year-long war against America and, at the best, topple the regime. This last belief was based upon the fact that the Iranian regime is fragile now that Trump...

Much of the day Thursday at the impeachment show was spent on how innocent the Bidens are of any wrongdoing re: Ukraine.  Rep. Sylvia Garcia had fancy charts and graphs to demonstrate her point:  There was absolutely nothing wrong with Hunter Biden trading on his name to make $50 - 80k a month on the board of a verified corrupt gas company in Ukraine, nor was there anything wrong with Joe's quid pro quo, that the prosecutor investigating that company be fired or a billion dollars in aid would not be forthcoming.   Perhaps Rep. Garcia should have read Peter Schweizer's new book Profiles...

Ocasio-Cortez said billionaires make their money "off the backs" of "undocumented people," "black and brown people being paid under a living wage" and "single mothers." She addressed a hypothetical "widget" billionaire in her remarks. "You didn't make those widgets, did you? Because you employed thousands of people and paid them less than a living wage to make those widgets for you," Ocasio-Cortez said. "You didn't make those widgets. You sat on a couch while thousands of people were paid modern-day slave wages, and in some cases real modern-day slavery."

Today's Quotefall Puzzle features a quote by Thomas Sowell. Click puzzle (or click here) for full size rendition, then use your browser's print command to print puzzle. Thomas Sowell is an American economist and social theorist who understands how liberal policies destroy communities and countries alike. 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 spoilers.To solve the puzzle: Enter the letters in the top half (letter columns) of the puzzle into the white squares on the bottom half...

Join Freepers throughout the world to pray for PRESIDENT TRUMP and VICE-PRESIDENT PENCE and for AMERICA: All Levels of Government, Family, Military, Business, Education, Churches, Health Care Systems and the Media. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. —1 John 5:14 Forum threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind. Please join us in prayer for our nation.

A second U.S. case of the new coronavirus has been confirmed in a patient in Chicago, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The patient, a woman in her 60s and a Chicago resident, had traveled to Wuhan, China, in December. She was admitted to the hospital and is in stable condition, according to Illinois health officials. "We understand that some people are worried about this virus and how it may impact Americans," Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases said at a Friday news briefing. "The immediate risk to the...

U.S. health officials said they diagnosed a second patient with the China coronavirus after a Chicago woman returned from Wuhan with the infection, and they are currently monitoring 63 other potential cases here. The cases currently being monitored in the U.S. stretch across 22 different states, including the first patient in Washington state and the new case in Illinois...

In the "spirit" of the Olympics; many have trained and have anticipated this present week for years. These individuals have worked extremely hard and have made countless sacrifices to maintain their competitive edge. Finally, all of their hard work and effort has paid off and they are ready to compete! These individuals have subjected their bodies under strict disciple with one goal and prize in their vision, the gold medal! Oh beloved, how much more should Almighty God's children (John 1:12) run the race - which is before them - for ETERNAL glory and an ETERNAL prize in the joy...

Today, we live in a ravished society in which there is at least one individual that we might personally know who has had at least one abortion. May it be our sincere desire as ambassadors of Almighty God (2 Cor. 5:17-21) to share with that individual the loving forgiveness and kindness that is found ONLY in Jesus Christ (John 3:16-17; Rev.1:5). Oh my dear friend, if you have been one who has been alone and who has had to make decisions that you have fully regretted, turn your heart and eyes to the Savior of the world who LOVED you...

The Naval Station Great Lakes has gone on lock down on Friday morning as authorities warn of a 'gate runner.' The station, located in a North Chicago suburb, shared a short message on their Facebook telling people to 'hide' or 'fight.'

ducation has long been considered an important part of the U.S. foreign assistance strategy. There is general agreement that education is crucial to bettering livelihoods and improving economic stability in developing countries. According to the World Bank, an increase of one standard deviation in student reading and math scores is associated with an increase of two percentage points in annual gross domestic product (GDP) per capita growth. Access to and quality of education continues to pose a challenge to foreign aid donors. Approximately 263 million children and youth worldwide do not attend school. For those who attend school, the quality...

Left-wing billionaire George Soros has accused Facebook of helping to re-elect Donald Trump leading up to the 2020 election. Soros, 89, made the comments during a speech in Davos, Switzerland, Thursday. He accused the social media giant of working to re-elect Trump during this year’s election campaign in exchange for protection. “Facebook will work to re-elect Trump and Trump will protect Facebook,” the Hungarian-born U.S. investor said, according to Politico. “It makes me very concerned about the outcome of 2020.” A Facebook company spokesman responded to Politico, saying “This is just plain wrong.” On Jan. 9, Facebook announced that it...