Free Republic

DES MOINES, Iowa — Of course Donald Trump packed the Knapp Center arena on the campus of Drake University, filling all 7,152 seats in the stands, with more on the floor. Of course another 1,000 people or so, kept out by the fire marshal, hung around in sub-freezing temperatures outside to watch the president's speech on a big screen. Of course the Trump event dwarfed those of any of his Democratic rivals days before the Iowa caucuses. Here in the first-voting state, President Trump is just bigger than his opponents. And if that message isn't made clear by just looking...

Donald Trump's most famous and flamboyant lawyer vanished from his trial Thursday - turning up in Miami to fight back against a tidal wave of criticism for his extraordinary defense that anything a president does to get re-elected is unimpeachable. The Harvard professor surfaced in Florida as other academics and attorneys reacted with astonishment to his position, which he then said he had never actually said. On CNN he told Wolf Blitzer that he had a commitment in the state Thursday and it was difficult to change his flight because the Super Bowl is on this weekend in Miami. He...

Joe Biden is done. A year from now, you can see him at Costco selling his newest book, “I Would Have Gotten Away with it if it Weren’t for those Meddling Kids.” Of course, it won’t be as successful as Hunter Biden’s book, “How to Make Millions from the Comfort of Your Home” but it will be the first honest work for Joe in almost five decades. The only person who doesn’t know he is finished yet is Joe himself, much like Hillary. Predictions about Democrats are difficult, especially in primaries. They seem to be breaking every barrier lately when...

Singapore will close its borders to all new visitors from mainland China, including foreigners who have been there within the past 14 days, becoming the first Southeast Asian country to do so in a bid to stem the spread of the deadly coronavirus. The island nation has China as one of its biggest trading partners and is a popular destination for Chinese tourists. Figures from the Singapore Tourism Board showed that 248,000 travellers from the mainland entered Singapore last November, while 3.42 million mainland Chinese tourists visited in 2018. The visa suspension will come into effect immediately so travellers can...

Remainers are scrawling 'I love EU' on 50p coins with permanent marker and releasing them back into circulation, in a last-ditch attempt to anger Brexit voters. Karen Hoyles, from Devon, posted pictures of her defaced coins online, calling for others to follow suit. In an appeal to her Twitter followers, she hoped for people to 'get their creative juices flowing' and release '10million' 50ps with the phrase.

Today’s CG is from me Z AZNN LIIR SVF ZC RBI NZKBR, ZC RBI LVXCZCK VCI, ABIC XGZCYXVMH JGNN VC SVFX LZNY HPZC GCY SVFX QNFI ISIH HMGXPNI QIRRIX RBGC RBI HPS. ----TNGFYZG MGOIN You can find this little fun word game, to combat early dementia and senility in us baby boomers, in several daily publications. The way it works is a letter stands for another letter. For example: AXYDLBAAXR is LONGFELLOW (does not apply to today's cryptogram). Beware, the game is very addictive. If this is your first time, don't be intimidated. PLEASE DO NOT post the answer in...

China has admitted it was too slow to react to the coronavirus outbreak which has sparked a global panic and left at least 213 people dead - amid claims that Beijing could be covering up a higher death toll. The secretary of the ruling Communist party in Wuhan said the virus's impact on the world 'would have been less' if measures had been taken sooner. The killer virus has spread around the world with the first cases in Britain confirmed today and governments scrambling to close their borders and retrieve their worried citizens from Wuhan. China has since imposed a...

Welcome to The Hill’s Morning Report. TGIF! Our newsletter gets you up to speed on the most important developments in politics and policy, plus trends to watch. Alexis Simendinger and Al Weaver are the daily co-creators, so find us @asimendinger and @alweaver22 on Twitter and recommend the Morning Report to your friends. CLICK HERE to subscribe! Senators today are expected to move toward acquitting President Trump on two charges without questioning witnesses as the third impeachment trial in American history lumbers toward a rancorous conclusion. Republicans feel confident they have the votes to acquit Trump by this weekend after Sen....

Willy Wonka could reportedly return to screens as a woman in a new prequel film. Bosses at Warner Bros. are allegedly considering taking on a female actress to play the role of the iconic chocolatier, after two previous adaptations starred Johnny Depp and Gene Wilder. It's also been reported that after Warner Bros. acquired the rights to the character from the Dahl estate in 2016, they are in the process of putting together a production team for the film.

This is as close to a positive article on anything-or-anyone-Trump you’ll read in this lifetime: Melania Trump is said to be focusing on her tasks amid President Donald Trump's impeachment trial What else, pray tell, would they have her do? Go out to lunch/dinner with friends (like a certain former-FLOTUS) so they can bitch about the traffic jams and otherwise mischaracterize that? The FLOTUS is, reportedly, happy with her life in the White House despite reports saying she's 'miserable' Nooooo! How dare she?! She has no business being happy after all the effort they’ve put into ruining not just her...

For many decades of our modern era, it's been an article of faith that our Founders enshrined the profession of journalism into the “freedom of the press” clause of the Bill of Rights. That understanding is wrong. It’s clear from the dictionaries of the day, as well as the writings of the Founders and other authors of the era, that what this First Amendment freedom refers to is the printing press, the device which made the wide dissemination of written speech possible, and which was the target of censorship and confiscation efforts by British authorities, both before and after the...

New York City’s antiquated method of calculating property taxes has long allowed owners of multimillion-dollar brownstones in Brooklyn and high-rise co-ops by Central Park to pay less in taxes than working-class homeowners in the South Bronx, relative to the value of their properties. Now, a high-level city commission empowered by the mayor and City Council speaker is proposing a major overhaul that would fundamentally shift the tax burden to those wealthier neighborhoods and lessen it for low- and moderate-income homeowners. In a preliminary report posted online Thursday, the commission recommended that the city assess most homes, including co-ops and condominiums,...

Former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg has already dropped a fortune in support of his 2020 presidential bid — including, reportedly, $10 million for ad time during Sunday’s Super Bowl. Now, the exact figures are coming to light. And they are staggering. According to the Drudge Report, the Bloomberg campaign, on Friday, will release the numbers in a filing to the FEC. And the filing will state that campaign ad spending has already topped nine figures. And that’s just in advertising attacking President Donald Trump. Drudge, reporting through a Bloomberg campaign source, says the campaign has spent in excess of...

The one aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that no one wants to talk about. President Trump unveiled his long-awaited “Deal of the Century” plan Tuesday afternoon, offering Palestinians a state and fifty billion dollars. Predictably enough, the Palestinians and their supporters are enraged. The way they have expressed that rage is a new indication of why all peace plans up to now have failed, and why all future plans are doomed to fail. An Islamic Republic press organ, the Tehran Times, reported that “Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani on Wed., in a letter sent to the Parliament speakers of the...

What is our world going to look like in a few months if the number of coronavirus cases continues to grow at this rate? On January 17th, there were 41 confirmed cases, and now there are 9,692 in China alone. That means that the number of confirmed cases is 236 times larger than it was just 2 weeks ago. I don’t expect the number of cases to be another 236 times larger two weeks from now, but even if the number of cases simply doubles each week, hundreds of millions of people will eventually get this virus. And that would...

A recognition of the history of the Jewish homeland. In Israel’s early years, every time the U.S. ambassador traveled to Jerusalem to meet with government leaders, he would have his chauffeur stop his car at the entrance to the city, and replace its diplomatic license plates with regular civilian plates. The State Department refused to recognize that Jerusalem was part of Israel. The license plates were for Israel. And so, in a show of contempt and rejection of Israel’s right to its capital city, he removed his diplomatic plates before entering Jerusalem, and put them back on when he left....

“What, my son? and what, the son of my womb? and what, the son of my vows? Give not thy strength unto women, nor thy ways to that which destroyeth kings” (Proverbs 31:2-3).

… Friday, Jan. 31, noon The death toll from China’s coronavirus outbreak has reached 213. By the end of Thursday, China had confirmed 9,720 coronavirus cases, according to the latest data released by the country’s top health body (link in Chinese). That included 1,982 new cases added over the past 24 hours. Coronavirus has now spread to every provincial-level region in China and to 19 countries overseas. Local person-to-person transmission has been recorded in four countries outside China. According to figures from China’s National Health Commission, 171 patients have so far recovered from the virus, and more than 100,000 are...

In a press conference early Friday evening, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam urged residents to stay vigilant and announced further measures by the government to contain the spread of the coronavirus. Here are the highlights: The numbers: There are now 12 confirmed cases of the virus in Hong Kong, five of which are Hong Kong residents and seven are mainland Chinese residents, Lam said.School suspended: Primary and secondary schools were originally set to resume on February 17, but will now stay suspended until March 2. The government will re-evaluate at that point whether to resume classes, depending on the status of...

Failure of Dem leadership to condemn a foul-mouthed, Jew-hating conspiracy theorist is a telling sign By the time Israeli first responders had pulled eight-year-old Qais Abu Ramila out of the rain-filled cistern in the Arab neighborhood of Beit Haninah this past Friday night, he was showing no signs of life. Israeli paramedics frantically tried to resuscitate the boy, but it was too late. Ramila had accidentally fallen into the cistern and drowned. Israeli efforts to locate Ramila and resuscitate him were nothing short of heroic. To the Israeli paramedics and other first responders who waded in the pond’s cold, murky...