Free Republic

... Many people saw their overall taxes go down after the 2017 law was passed. But the law had two main changes making it tougher to live in high-cost, high-tax states, especially compared with lower-taxed options. It essentially curbed how much homeowners can subtract from their federal taxes for paying local property and income taxes, by capping the state and local tax deduction at $10,000. It also lowered the size of mortgages for which new buyers can deduct the interest, to $750,000 from $1 million. These changes have the biggest impact on a sliver of the population who have high...

A word about the events of this week… Just finished the White House defense present their case to the Senate, thinking about a President who speaks at a Pro-Life rally for the first time; a day after being a virtual shot-caller in Davos. All this while some folks are still scratching their heads over the success of the Second Amendment Lobby Day in Richmond VA. It got me to thinking… When was the last time such a heavily armed presence of 20,000+ scene in Richmond (or any other American city for that matter)? 1860’s perhaps? Is it possible that another...

The United States is organizing a charter flight to evacuate diplomats and citizens from the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the virus outbreak originated. Also Saturday, A Chinese doctor treating patients with coronavirus died after he contracted the virus while caring for patients. The virus has reached the U.S., with cases in both Washington state and Illinois. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced on Friday that four people have been isolated and are being tested for the strain of coronavirus, which can spread through human-to-human contact.

Video at link. After Trump's legal team quickly and efficiently destroyed the Democrat's so-called impeachment case on Saturday, CNN Chief Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin was reduced to complaining about the whiteness of the president's legal defenders. Toobin began his in-depth legal analysis by stating, "White House and white people." "This is a lesson in the diversity of the two parties," Toobin declared. "You look at the House managers. It was almost evenly divided between men and women. You had two African Americans. You had a Hispanic. It was all white men today." The chief legal analyst admitted that there are...

<p>Schumer can save a little face by allowing overzealous prosecutors (mainly Schiff whom no one likes anyway) to take the fall. Schumer himself won't be blamed at this point if he lets the case be dismissed and the impeachment tossed out on the grounds of not only no crime, but Schiff's many procedural errors. Pelosi should never had let him proceed without an authorizing vote by the full house first.</p>

Mytilini is normally just a small, sleepy town, but today it’s thronged with people. The town center is a sea of white and blue — the colors of the Greek national flag. More than 9,000 people have followed a summons by the local governor, Konstantinos Moutzouris, and have come from all over Lesbos to Mytilini to protest against the Greek government’s migration policy. It’s the biggest protest in the island’s history. The road around the little harbor is packed with people of all ages. They’re joining forces to make their voices heard and do something about the situation on their...

Covington Catholic High School students are back in the news after a charter bus carrying a group of students and chaperones was involved in a fatal accident on its way back from the March for Life rally in Washington, D.C. One person was reportedly killed and several more injured in the collision that took place Saturday morning. (Via WLWT-TV Cincinnati) According to witnesses on the scene, a southbound car somehow entered the northbound lanes of the highway, striking the charter bus head-on."I saw a car come across the median and head toward me," said Ricky Lynn, a witness who was...

Donald Trump's lawyers defended the president against articles of impeachment Saturday morning arguing it’s the Democrats trying to interfere in elections by seeking to remove Trump from the 2020 ballot for doing “absolutely nothing wrong.” White House Counsel Pat Cipollone said Democrats have no case and are doing damage to democracy by trying to undermine the will of American voters. “For all their talk about election interference, they're here to perpetrate the most massive interference in an election in American history,” Cipollone said in his opening remarks to the Senate. “And we can't allow that to happen." Cipollone continued: “It...

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) has drawn fire from across the anti-Donald Trump political spectrum the past few days as she has publicly challenged the fake establishment built around key impeachment figure and Democrat witness Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman. Vindman infamously testified in his full military uniform–despite the fact he does not wear it to work at the National Security Council (NSC)–before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) during the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry stage last year helping build their case to pass articles of Impeachment before Christmas. The “impeachment managers,” the top Democrats that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi...

President Trump became the first US president to participate in the annual March for Life where he declared January 22nd as "National Sanctity of Human Life Day" and vowed that "as president I will always defend the first right in our Declaration of Independence, the right to life. Every person — the born and unborn, the poor, the downcast, the disabled, the infirm, and the elderly — has inherent value. Our Nation proudly and strongly reaffirms our commitment to protect the precious gift of life at every stage, from conception to natural death." In addition to Trump's support for life,...

President Trump’s defense team hit lead impeachment manager Adam Schiff over his contacts with the alleged whistleblower Saturday, suggesting Mr. Schiff’s conduct at the start of the impeachment inquiry in the House will be a sticking point in the defense’s strategy. Patrick Philbin, deputy counsel to the president, referenced a transcript being withheld by Mr. Schiff’s committee that could be helpful to the president’s defense team, pointing to the inspector general for the intelligence community, who raised the issue of the whistleblower’s political bias. “We don’t know what exactly the political bias was because the inspector general testified in the...

Is impeachment still going on? I know Groundhog Day is still officially nine days off, but I guess Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi came out of their hole in the ground early and saw their shadow: six more weeks of impeachment! To paraphrase Dr. Venkman, impeachment beats having a real private sector job. Also: Are iguanas the new groundhog? What does it mean when an iguana sees its shadow as it falls to the ground? Iguanas are certainly a more fitting mascot for House Democrats than a fluffy groundhog. Fun times!

President Trump said that “religious liberty is under siege” when asked why he decided to become the first president in history to attend the March for Life in Washington, D.C., on Friday. "Religious liberty is under siege. If you look at everything that the folks here stand for that we’re surrounded by, that’s under siege," Trump told Fox News. He went on to say that it was an “honor” to be at the march. Trump addressed the March for Life crowd on Friday for about 15 minutes in a speech that touted the several ways his administration has supported pro-life...

Whenever an impeachment trial takes place, it's the House's job to gather evidence, obtain documents and hear witnesses before presenting the case to the Senate. The Senate's job is to hear the case and be impartial. They're essentially the jurors and decide whether or not the president is removed from office.  Although the Senate is supposed to be impartial and open, the votes thus far have come down on party lines. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), a Blue Dog Democrat, is actually following the impartiality factor.Before Saturday's opening statements from the president's defense team, Manchin said he took his "oath to the...

BEIJING: President Xi Jinping said China was facing a "grave situation" as the death toll from the coronavirus outbreak jumped to 41, overshadowing celebrations of the Chinese New Year that began on Saturday (Jan 25). China also announced further transport restrictions. With more than 1,400 people infected worldwide, most of them in China, Hong Kong declared a virus emergency, scrapped celebrations and restricted links to mainland China. Australia confirmed its first four cases on Saturday, Malaysia confirmed four and France reported Europe's first cases on Friday, as health authorities around the world scrambled to prevent a pandemic. The United States...

Every once in a while, medical researchers simply have a stroke of good luck. In this case, that "stroke of good luck" could have a profound effect on the medial community. Researchers at Cardiff University that were in the midst of analyzing blood from a bank accidentally stumbled into an "entirely new type of T-cell", according to The Daily Wire. The new cell carries a "never before seen" type of receptor that acts like a grappling hook, latching on to most human cancers. Prior therapies, called CAR-T and TCR-T, which use immune cells to attach to HLA molecules on cancer...

U.S.—The Babylon Bee has been the world's best satire site for thousands of years, spawning dozens of secular knock-offs that just aren't quite as good. The site announced a new acquisition this week, one that immediately made the site the largest satirical site on the planet: a purchase of competing satire site CNN for $12 billion. The move more than quadrupled the site's catalog of hilarious, satirical articles.

White House photo of Trump at March for Life. Like Donald Trump, I attended my first March for Life this year. I didn’t march. Instead, I was there to record the faces and screams of the angry ugly left as I often do at these sorts of events . Stunningly, the angry ugly left didn’t show up. That's understandable because whenever the momentum is against the left, they ignore their opposition. I see this firsthand all the time when it comes to voter fraud and especially when racial discrimination is done by the traditional victims of discrimination . What...

Republican Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst on Saturday reacted to the White House counsel’s defense against impeaching President Donald Trump, saying they “shredded” the House managers’ case in just two hours. “Within two hours I thought that the White House Counsel and their team entirely shredded the case that has been presented by the house managers,” Ernst said to reporters on Capitol Hill after listening to Trump’s lawyers.

Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) says he saw blood drain from Adam Schiff’s face when Trump’s lawyers confronted him about his fake call and transcript. Barrasso was seated in the second row, per the Senate seating chart. Deputy White House Counsel Mike Purpura opened the White House defense of President Donald Trump with video of Adam Schiff’s fake call and transcript he read during the House impeachment proceedings. Mike Purpura played the video immediately after taking the podium on Saturday. And there Schiff was lying his face off for the whole world to see. Schiff completely fabricated transcript of Trump’s phone...