Free Republic

Nyuk, nyuk. Gotta absolutely love this guy. :)

**SNIP** “The drive to impeach President Trump did not begin with the allegations before us,” he said. “Here was reporting in April of 2016: ‘Donald Trump isn’t even the Republican nominee yet… [but] impeachment is already on the lips of pundits, newspaper editorials, constitutional scholars, and even a few members of Congress.” “Here was the Washington Post headline minutes after President Trump’s inauguration: ‘The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun.'” “The articles of impeachment before us were not even the first ones House Democrats introduced,” McConnell added. “This was go-around number seven. Those previously-alleged ‘High Crimes and Misdemeanors’ included...

Years from now, will you remember where you were and what you were doing when President Donald Trump was impeached? Have you forgotten already? The country has been on a constitutional bullet train that took off with a whistleblower’s highly detailed account of wrongdoing, roared ahead through a cascade of tweets and lurched to a halt after more than four months of inquiry, angst and debate with Trump’s acquittal Wednesday. So can you point to Ukraine on a map? American children learn almost by rote that impeachment is a gravely serious proposition, the constitutional means for removing a president from...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says it is imperative for Democrats to back the eventual 2020 nominee - even if “subversive policies” by party leaders torpedo a campaign. The New York Democrat - a staunch supporter of Sen. Bernard Sanders‘ campaign - told Time magazine that underhanded tactics should not deter Democrats in the general election of their candidate were targeted during primary elections. **SNIP** Ms. Ocasio-Cortez went on to warn key decision makers not to attempt to politically kneecap Mr. Sanders‘ campaign. “Ocasio-Cortez also discouraged Democrats from using party rules or other mechanisms to block Sanders if he advances,” the magazine...

Rep. Matt Gaetz said he will be working to get an investigation going into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi because she tore up a copy of President Trump’s State of the Union address. “I will be filing charges against Nancy Pelosi in the House Ethics Committee,” the Florida Republican told Laura Ingraham on Fox News. “She disgraced the House of Representatives, she embarrassed our country, and she destroyed official records." “The law does not allow the speaker of the House to destroy the records of the House, and the rules of the House do not permit some little temper tantrum just...

Concord, New Hampshire (CNN) Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders are in a tight race for first place as Iowa continued reporting the last of its Democratic presidential caucus results early Thursday morning. With 97% of Iowa's precincts reporting, the former mayor remained the leader of the race, with 26.2% of state delegates. He's closely trailed by Sanders , with 26.1%. They're followed by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren at 18.2%, former Vice President Joe Biden at 15.8% and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar at 12.2%. Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Troy Price told state party officials...

Retaliatory duties on some U.S. goods will be cut from 10% to 5%, and from 5% to 2.5% on others, according to a statement from China’s Ministry of Finance. The adjustments will take effect from 1:01 p.m on Feb. 14, it said, without specifying which time zone it was referring to. The statement said the move was made in order to “advance the healthy and stable development of China-U.S. trade.” China said that the next adjustment will depend on how Sino-U.S. trade ties evolve, adding it hopes to work with Washington to completely eliminate all tariff increases.

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.

Has anyone checked to see if Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez is still breathing? Let’s face it: Post-Iowa, his party is in free fall. It’s not clear any of their presidential candidates have mapped out a realistic way to the nomination, let alone to beating President Trump in the general election. On top of that, a 5’7” multibillionaire businessman named Michael Bloomberg is sucking up a shocking level of support despite having entered the race in the 11th hour.

Now that the impeachment farce is finished, and the president is acquitted, the Democratic Party has nothing left but futile gestures to mask its fatal political miscalculation. All that’s left is a broken Nancy Pelosi shredding her remaining dignity by ripping up the president’s State of the Union speech. All that’s left is poor Joe Biden limping from a catastrophic fourth-place finish in Iowa to another looming rout in New Hampshire, as the ascendant socialist wing of the party goes rogue.

The German city Bochum branch of the student ecology movement Fridays for Future formed by the Swedish teenage environmental activist Greta Thungberg and an organization devoted to fighting Nazism kicked the pro-BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) Marxist-Leninist Party in Germany out of their alliances due to the party's misconduct, including allegedly tearing down a placard against antisemitism. The ouster of the party that defends the terrorist organization the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine took place in late January and early February. The student ecology organization Fridays for Future, which was started by Thungberg in 2018, claimed that the Marxist-Leninists...

A stage play chronicling the anti-Trump text messages between disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page will take the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Feb. 27, Fox News has learned. The entire play, "FBI Lovebirds: UnderCovers," is derived, verbatim, from the text messages between Strzok and Page, as well as the pair’s answers to prolonged questioning in private congressional hearings. It is the first time CPAC will have a play staged in its nearly 50 years as one of the largest annual conservative conferences. Labeled by Politico as “Hamilton for the MAGA...

Democratic hopeful Joe Biden slammed conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh as undeserving of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and criticized President Trump's motives for awarding it at the State of the Union on Tuesday night. Biden, speaking to CNN's Anderson Cooper at a town hall event in New Hampshire on Wednesday, said Trump's decision to award the highest civilian honor in the nation to Limbaugh was "driven more by trying to maintain [his] right-wing political credentials than it is anything else." The award was bestowed on Limbaugh just hours after he announced he is battling stage 4 lung cancer,...

The Senate impeachment trial of President Trump ended not with a bang but a whimper. What different outcome could one expect from a trial without so much as a single witness, a single document, any cross-examination or a defendant respectful enough to show up? Law students are taught early on that a trial is not a grudge match or an ordeal; it is a search for the truth. Trial lawyers know that cross-examination is the most effective truth-testing tool available to them. But the search for the truth requires witnesses, and when the command from Senate Republican leaders came down...

DHS will no longer let New Yorkers enroll in several programs intended to expedite international travel, in response to a recently-enacted state "sanctuary" law which limits DHS' access to state driver's license records. The unprecedented suspension, which will shutter several programs that allow people to breeze through security lines in exchange for having their information pre-vetted, comes a day after President Donald Trump used his State of the Union address in part to blast sanctuary cities, saying "there are many cities in America where radical politicians have chosen to provide sanctuary for these criminal illegal aliens," and suggesting that localities...

The acting secretary of Homeland Security announced on Wednesday that New York state residents can no longer participate in certain Trusted Traveler Programs, including Global Entry, due to provisions in the state's new "Green Light Law" supporting undocumented immigrants. The law, which went into effect in December, allows undocumented immigrants to apply for New York driver's licenses while protecting applicants' information from immigration enforcement agencies. "Today, we sent a letter to New York indicating, because they took these measures, that New York residents are no longer eligible to enroll in these Trusted Traveler Programs," acting Secretary Chad Wolf told Fox...

SACRAMENTO — Following a series of sweeping expansions to expand access to voting in recent years, a California lawmaker is pushing to require voters to cast a ballot in future elections. The proposal, introduced in the state Assembly on Tuesday, would be unprecedented and probably challenged in court should it ultimately become law. It would place the burden for determining the civil penalty and the ultimate punishment on the secretary of state, California’s chief elections officer. “Democracy is not a spectator sport — it requires the active participation of all its citizens,” the bill’s author, Assemblyman Marc Levine (D-San Rafael),...

Longtime Democratic strategist James Carville sounded the alarm bells on Tuesday night over what he described as the Democratic Party turning into an “ideological cult,” specifically singling out would-be presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. In the wake of Monday night’s chaotic Iowa Democratic caucus that featured delayed vote results due to a faulty app, Carville appeared on MSNBC to warn that regardless of the final tallies, the Dems appear to be in big trouble. “The polling averages have not been very good the last 10 days,” he sighed. “And I’ve seen some pretty good polls that show enthusiasm among Democrats is...

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany’s current account surplus remained the world’s largest last year despite trade tensions, the Ifo economic institute said on Monday, in an estimate likely to renew criticism of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s fiscal policies. The Ifo calculations, reported exclusively by Reuters ahead of publication by the economic institute, put Germany’s current account surplus — which measures the flow of goods, services and investments — at some $293 billion in 2019. It is the fourth successive year that Germany’s current account surplus has been the world’s largest, with Japan’s the next biggest at $194 billion, according to Ifo calculations....

Russian-controlled forces in Syria have been roaming deeper into U.S.-held territory, raising the risk of conflict in an apparent effort “to challenge our presence in the northeast,” according to a senior State Department official. “These are not daily occurrences, but they have been increasing in number,” James Jeffrey, the State Department’s lead negotiator for the Syria crisis, told reporter