Free Republic

When Syria’s civil war erupted, Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) recruited, trained, and deployed thousands of Shi’ite fighters to prop up the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Among them was the Fatemiyoun Brigade, comprised mainly of Afghans from the country's Shi'ite Hazara minority. From 2011, the IRGC recruited thousands of Afghan migrants and refugees within its own borders and covertly drafted hundreds of Shi'a inside Afghanistan. The majority of Muslims in Afghanistan are Sunni, but around 15 percent of its population -- mainly Hazara -- are Shi’a with religious links to the Shi'ite majority in Iran. With the...

An Airbus A320 airliner with 172 passengers on board has made an emergency landing in the Russian-controlled Khmeimim air base after Syrian air defenses nearly hit it, Russian news agencies have quoted a Defense Ministry spokesman as saying. The Syrian air defenses were trying to repulse an Israeli attack near Damascus, Igor Konashenkov was quoted as saying on February 7. According to Konashenkov, after 2 a.m., four Israeli F-16 fighter jets fired at targets in the suburbs of Damascus without entering Syrian airspace. During the attack, a passenger plane with 172 passengers on board en route from Tehran to Damascus...

Here's hoping 2020 is the best year yet!! Now that he has been forever acquitted, President Trump should put the failed partisan impeachment attempt behind him, then concentrate on winning the 2020 election with wide coattails. Then bide his time as the cases against the various coup plotters wind their way through the justice system. Highest priority political items: Win the election, hold the senate, take back the house!! And then continue the work of making America great again: Build the wall, enforce the law, deport them all!! End DACA!! End sanctuary cities!! End anchor babies!! Continue cutting regulations, cutting...

U.S. President Donald Trump's administration is currently withholding approval for at least six commercial orders for arms and ammunition from U.S. companies to Ukraine, BuzzFeed has reported. "The Trump administration is currently withholding approval for at least six commercial orders for arms and ammunition from US companies to Ukraine, together worth roughly $30 million, according to three current Ukrainian officials and a former senior U.S. official who have direct knowledge of the sales, straining an already fragile relationship between the two countries," says the article posted on the BuzzFeed's website on Thursday. All four officials said that five of the...

The Democrats will continue a steady stream of investigations into President Trump, said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Friday, advising the president to focus on his accomplishments while the far-left continues to "trap" Nancy Pelosi into pursuing unpopular policies. "They want to shoot at Trump as often as they can until they finally get him and they'd like him to be nice while they're doing it," Gingrich argued on "America's Newsroom." Well, they've got the wrong guy because Trump is gonna counter-punch every time and as president, he's got a bigger punch than they do." Gingrich said in the...

The White House plans to transfer Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman, whose testimony in the House impeachment hearings infuriated President Trump and his allies, out of the National Security Council staff as early as Friday, two senior administration officials said. It was not immediately clear where he would next be sent within the Defense Department, one administration official said, but Colonel Vindman is on active duty in the military. The action comes just days after Mr. Trump was acquitted in a Senate impeachment trial that turned in part on the testimony of Colonel Vindman and other administration officials who described...

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore on Friday raised its coronavirus alert level and reported more cases not linked to previous infections or travel to China, a move that sparked panic-buying of essentials in some shops across the island. As Singapore’s infected tally hit 33, the alert level was raised to orange - a level reached during the 2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome outbreak and the 2009 H1N1 influenza which indicates the virus is severe and passes easily between persons. With the disease reviving memories of SARS which killed more than 30 people in Singapore and hundreds worldwide, shoppers started clearing shelves...

What does Mitt Romney stand for? Not what is he against — we know that — but does he stand for.It’s a serious question: What motivates Mitt? Why did the junior Republican from Utah come to Washington? Was it for the military? Families? Business? Abortion? Guns? The old Reagan-Republican way? It’s truly hard to say.He’s generally toed the line on the military, failing to distinguish himself as either a hawk or a dove. He sure likes his family, but he voted to shut down Catholic adoption in Massachusetts a full 13 years before President Barack Obama followed suit. He’s...

NASHUA, N.H. —Outside the castle-themed Radisson Hotel where Joe Biden has been staying, his campaign bus was parked and ready for events. But on Thursday, just five days before the crucial primary here, the candidate was nowhere to be found. Biden spent Thursday gathered with his top advisers at his home in Wilmington, Del., seeking a reset and perhaps a last-ditch effort to save his candidacy, beginning with a debate Friday night. He held no public events.

[snip] Vindman currently works in the White House, and his term on the NSC was set to end in July. He had already told senior officers that he planned to leave his posting early, The Washington Post (Trump lambastes his critics.....)

There were initially prepared remarks. But those were eventually scrapped sometime after the Senate acquitted Donald Trump. Instead, it was decided that the president should just say what he wanted when he strode up to the lectern in the East Room of the White House shortly after noon on Thursday.

If you’re not in the U.S. mid-Atlantic region, you can also watch live coverage of the Cygnus launch on NASA TV and the agency’s website. TV coverage begins Sunday at 22:00 UTC (5 p.m. EST). This will be Northrop Grumman’s 13th commercial resupply mission to ISS using its Cygnus cargo spacecraft. The spacecraft will be loaded with approximately 8,000 pounds (3,600 kg) of research, crew supplies, and hardware. The Cygnus spacecraft will arrive at the space station on Tuesday, February 11. ISS astronauts will capture Cygnus with the station’s robotic arm and install the spacecraft. Cygnus is scheduled to stay...

Wednesday, February 6 was supposed to be a moment of pure triumph for Donald Trump. The day after he delivered the State of the Union – and the same week that Democrats struggled to announce the results of their Iowa caucus – a united Republican Party was set to deliver a stern rebuke to the House of Representatives. It would end the “impeachment hoax” and march into 2020 firmly united behind a leader who brooks no dissent. Then, history happened. For the first time ever, a senator of the president’s party voted to convict and remove a president from office...

After a 10-month Twitter ban... Conservative @RealJamesWoods is back

Friday’s job report added to this week’s economic optimism. US employers added 225,000 jobs in January, which blew predictions out of the water. The unemployment rate ticked up slightly, at 3.6 percent. Wages increased 3.1 percent from the previous year; wages have grown at an average pace of 3 percent for the last 18 months. Interestingly, the “labor-force participation rate,” meaning the percentage of Americans seeking employment, also increased. Economists have predicted that this number will decrease due to baby boomer retirement from the workforce, but this number has remained constant. This report is an exciting finish to a week...

After a months-long impeachment process that has exposed many divisions in the nation, the Senate voted to acquit President Trump Wednesday on two articles brought by Democratic members of the House: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The votes were 52-48 and 53-47, with Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, voting to convict the president on the first article. Other than Romney, the Senate votes fell along partisan lines, with every Democrat voting to convict and every Republican voting to acquit. The acquittal came the day after Tuesday's State of the Union address. Speaking Thursday in the East Room of the...

......one of the people involved in the cleanup was John Dennis, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Republican challenger this fall. Dennis has a better chance of seeing Tupac alive and managing a Telegraph Hill Old Navy than he does of winning the election, but at least he’s a lot better known than he was one week ago — and it’s all thanks to an antifa hooligan threatening to kill him. Dennis managed to get a video of the exchange with a charming bearded man he said was with one of the antifa groups.

Washington (CNN)A federal appeals court on Friday dismissed a lawsuit by congressional Democrats alleging President Donald Trump violated the emoluments clause of the Constitution by refusing to allow lawmakers to review and approve his financial interests. The ruling is a major triumph for the President, who's intensely sought to keep his business affairs in private, just days after the Republican-held Senate voted to acquit him on impeachment charges for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The case's dismissal effectively kneecaps one of several attempts Democrats have made to dig up more information about Trump's business holdings. Before Friday's ruling...

Reprise: “Harry Reid, My Brother” FEBRUARY 6, 2020 BY DAN PETERSON I’ve plainly angered and alienated a number of people over the past day or so because of my belief that Mitt Romney’s principled and courageous vote in the Senate regarding the impeachment of President Trump is worthy of respect, regardlesss of one’s stance on the merits of his vote. So — what the heck! — it occurs to me that I might as well resurrect a blog entry that I posted almost exactly three years ago, on 4 February 2017, that also attracted considerable wrath and invective in my...

Total cases: More than 31,000 as of Friday morning. Total deaths: At least 636 worldwide as of Friday morning 10:56 am: VP Pence praises China’s ‘unprecedented level of transparency’ in dealing with the coronavirus outbreak Vice President Mike Pence said Beijing has demonstrated “an unprecedented level of transparency” with world health officials amid the fast-spreading coronavirus outbreak. “It’s heartbreaking but we stand ready with China to provide them any and all support,” he told CNBC’s Wilfred Frost on “Squawk on the Street.” Pence referenced Thursday’s phone call between President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping, after which...