Free Republic

Recently at the NCAA college football championship game between Louisiana State and Clemson, a picture was taken of actor Vince Vaughn shaking hands with President Donald Trump as the two watched the game from a private box at the Superdome in New Orleans. Someone posted it on the internet and the left-wing social media went nuts against Vaughn. How dare he “humanize” Trump! That was the mantra. When the left does this, their desire is to “cancel” a person; that means to attack and ruin the ability of the targeted individual to live life free of harassment and/or to make...

Last week I took a poke at the beloved leftist slogan, "Words can kill." Yet it occurred to me later that many conservatives espouse a similar belief: That, as Richard M. Weaver declared in his eponymous 1948 book, "ideas have consequences." I'll leave it those smarter than I to crack this apparent paradox. I'm just the movie chick around here, so let's look at a film that explores such notions. Released the same year as Weaver's masterwork, Alfred Hitchcock's Rope was long regarded as one of his lesser efforts, a mere gimmicky curio. It's a film shot in what we're...

ITHACA, N.Y.(WENY) - The City of Ithaca is now looking for a Director of Sustainability to help launch the city into a organizational transformation initiative. This position was created to help meet the goals of the city's Green New Deal. WENY News Spoke with Ithaca City Mayor, Svante Myrick, to find out what he is looking for. "So we're looking for somebody with a particular set of skills, somebody who understands both environmental justice, as well as racial and social justice. Somebody who is capable of leading a broad community conversation around those issues, and somebody who's willing to work...

My last column was about “Democrat Weapons of Mass Distraction.” Now add a sister problem to the list: “Weapons of Mass Distortion.” Impeachment serves both purposes- distraction and distortion. This impeachment thing is the wackiest, strangest, funniest story in the history of politics. Democrats want to impeach a sitting president for investigating and exposing a crime…while they elect as president the guy who actually committed the crime. Huh? Does anyone in the media ever point out how absurd this is? Of course not. This is the definition of distortion. But what if the shoe was on the other foot? What...

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Bernie Sanders launched a campaign video highlighting his Jewish identity and casting President Donald Trump as part of the white nationalist threat. The four-minute video posted Thursday night on Sanders’ Twitter feed, interpolates excerpts from Sanders’ speech last year to J Street, the liberal Jewish Middle East policy group, with commentary by Joel Rubin, the campaign’s Jewish outreach director. It starts with Sanders’ declaration of pride in being Jewish. “I’m very proud to be Jewish and look forward to becoming the first Jewish president in the history of this country,” Sanders says. During his 2016 run for...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem (Music in The Bible) Psalm 98 Psalm 98 A psalm. 1 Sing to the Lord a new song,     for he has done marvelous things; his right hand and his holy arm     have worked salvation for him. 2 The Lord has made his salvation known     and revealed his righteousness to the nations. 3 He has remembered his love     and his faithfulness to Israel; all the ends of the earth have seen     the salvation of our God. 4 Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth,     burst into jubilant song with music; 5 make music to the Lord with...

Evidence shows school choice—or, as it should be called, “education freedom”—has obvious benefits for society. The expansion of National School Choice Week (NSCW)—the celebration created to spotlight the successes of school choice—is a testament to the movement’s positive effect on our nation. The concept of school choice is really simple: Every child, regardless of where he or she lives, how much money the child’s parent makes, etc., should have access to the educational opportunities parents deem best. Proponents of education freedom rightfully acknowledge every child is unique, and rather than force children into a one-size-fits-all classroom, they should instead be...

LUTON, England -- At Bruderer UK, a small firm selling metal-stamping machines from an industrial estate just north of London, business kicked into high gear right after Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s big election win last month. Clients, including the Royal Mint which uses Bruderer equipment to make coins, at last knew for sure that Britain would quit the European Union on Jan. 31. Many have revived plans that had long been on hold. “For three years we were stuck in a rut of indecisiveness,” Bruderer UK managing director Adrian Haller said. “Once the election happened, there was a massive sigh...

At Diet Doctor, we are very clear about defining low-carb. We define ketogenic low carb diets as less than 20 grams of net carbs per day, moderate low carb as 20-50 grams per day, and liberal low carb as 50-100 grams per day. Assuming a 2,000 kcal diet, that equates to <4%, <10% and <20% of total calories. -snip- The latest nutritional epidemiology study out of Harvard, published this week in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, is another misrepresentation of low-carb diets. -snip- The lowest of the low-carb eaters still sourced 46% of their calories from carbohydrates. That was the...

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah’s unemployment rate dropped to its lowest level ever recorded last month — registering at 2.3 percent for the month of December. “The economy continues adding to multiple years of robust job creation. This dynamic has carried Utah to its lowest recorded unemployment rate,” said Mark Knold, chief economist with the state Department of Workforce Services. “The job market is humming along at a feverish pace and is absorbing as much labor as possible.”

“I hope this will haunt them,” Hillary Clinton said Saturday night at the Sundance Film Festival of the Republicans’ likely acquittal of President Donald Trump in his ongoing Senate Impeachment trial. “I find it absolutely beyond my understanding why they are so cowed to do what they know they should do,” the 2016 Democratic candidate told an almost overfilled Ray Theatre about the GOP senators, who seem hellbent on allowing the former Celebrity Apprentice host to escape being removed from office. “They’ll probably default to deriding the case, they started that today, and move it as quickly as possible without...

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), said Sunday the American public shouldn't worry about the coronavirus outbreak in China. "It's a very, very low risk to the United States," Fauci said during an interview with radio show host John Catsimatidis. "But it's something that we as public health officials need to take very seriously... It isn't something the American public needs to worry about or be frightened about. Because we have ways of preparing and screening of people coming in [from China]. And we have ways of responding - like we did with...

The dramatic expansion of the unchecked power of the executive branch is one of the major legacies of the Obama administration. Unfortunately, a new rule from the Department of Commerce threatens to continue this consolidation of power in the executive branch and would undermine the economic strength that America has enjoyed during President Trump’s tenure. By giving the Department nearly unbounded authority to stamp out trade with “foreign adversaries,” this vague new rule risks imposing serious economic harm. Under this rule, transactions between American companies and “foreign adversaries” that involve information technology or services that are deemed to be vital...

I do not trust emotional reactions to events. In my experience, visceral reactions are a poor guide to action, and when I recognize that I’m responding emotionally to events, I step back and consider what facts are better brought to bear on the issue than are my immediate feelings. In fact, I’m not alone in thinking emotional reasoning is a kind of cognitive disorder. Watching the impeachment theater (or rather reading about it to save time and avoid being influenced by the hypnotic effect of television) I’ve concluded that the congressional Democrats and their base live in a postfactual “inner...

NHS staff have been warned that victims of the coronavirus could continue to pose a minor risk even after death. Doctors and nurses have been given detailed advice on how to handle suspected cases by Public Health England. The document warns: * New coronavirus patients should be left in closed rooms and not examined * Staff who meet suspected victims should wear full-face visors * Bodies should not be placed on beds because such movement could expel infected air from the lungs * Body bags and full personal protective equipment should be used by NHS staff * Controlling the disease...

(excerpt middle...) Where the first caravans were allowed to pass through Mexican territory and even given humanitarian aid or transportation by many communities and some officials, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration changed that beginning last year in response to steep trade tariffs threatened by Washington. The result was on display Thursday on a rural highway in the far-southern Mexican city of Frontera Hidalgo, just across the river border between Mexico and Guatemala that the hundreds of migrants, mostly Hondurans, crossed before dawn. The migrants walked for hours before stopping at the crossroads where Vázquez’s stand lies, taking advantage of...

BEIJING -- China has fortified a nationwide defense against novel coronavirus, as the battle was fought when the Chinese people should have been immersed in the festivity of family union and happy gathering. Numbers on cases of infection and death tolls are updated daily. Wuhan, a megacity at the epicenter of the epidemic in central China's Hubei province, has suffered the most. As the virus continues to spread throughout the country at an alarming rate, the whole nation is racing against time to counter the effects of the virus on people's lives. Life is of paramount importance. This has been...

In the shadow of a nearly 200-foot cross, Central Florida Christian Academy enrolls students who live by the Bible’s commands and abstain from “sexual immorality” — meaning gay children aren’t welcome on the state-supported campus in west Orange County.... ....Florida’s scholarship programs, often referred to as school vouchers, sent more than $129 million to these religious institutions. That means at least 14 percent of Florida’s nearly 147,000 scholarship students last year attended private schools where homosexuality was condemned... The debate touches on civil rights, religious freedom, past discrimination cases and the future of Florida’s school choice programs. It comes as...

IOWA CITY, Iowa - Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke of an unhealthy country nearly teetering on the brink of collapse in a speech on behalf of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders at an Iowa campaign rally, saying radical change is necessary to reverse the bipartisan policies that have deeply hurt the economic circumstances of the average person in the United States. AOC cited the falling life expectancy of white people and stagnated wages as evidence that the U.S. is a "nation in decline" and said "it’s up to us to turn it around. The trends that got us here will not...

Order of Procedure Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. Chief Justice, colleagues, we should expect 2 to 3 hours of session today. We will take a quick break if needed. The CHIEF JUSTICE. Pursuant to the provisions of S. Res. 483, the counsel for the President have 24 hours to make the presentation of their case. The Senate will now hear you. The Presiding Officer recognizes Mr. Cipollone to begin the presentation of the case for the President. Opening Statement Mr. Counsel CIPOLLONE. Mr. Chief Justice, Senators, Leader McConnell, Democratic Leader Schumer, thank you for your time and thank you for your...