Free Republic

Put your name and # on the list of all candidates. You'll hear from a volunteer. I got a call from Bernies people and said I'm not voting-don't like any of them. A persuasion attempt ensued. I advised her not to fall in love with a politician as they will all disappoint you. That let me set up set up how 'my' candidate Bernie got screwed and accepted it. Plant the seed in the young girls mind. Life lesson in a teachable moment.

Watching Nancy Pelosi and her gang of insolent quislings, it was hard not to think of the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale "Rumpelstiltskin." Power, greed, deal-making, sacrifice of children, and petulant rage are a few of the themes of this fairy tale that aptly describe the current Democrat party. The fairy tale relates that a young woman must spin straw into gold thread because her father, a miller, foolishly boasted to the greedy king that she can. Clearly, this is an impossible task until a "strange little man" saves the day — but at what cost? Constantly trying to keep up...

It was 1979. Hip-hop was happening, in dance halls, at high school gyms and on street corners in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx. Rappers such as Melle Mel and Fab Five Freddy were spitting rhymes over scratching turntables; breakdancers performed with them, throwing down acrobatic moves, stylishly posing.

LOÍZA, P.R. — A dozen dancers wearing bright, colorful ankle-length skirts gathered around five wooden drums. Their shoulders and hips pulsed with the percussion, an upbeat, African-inspired rhythm. Loíza, a township founded by formerly enslaved Africans, is one of the many places in Puerto Rico where African-inspired traditions like the bomba dance workshop at the Corporación Piñones se Integra community center thrive. But that doesn’t mean all of the people who live there would necessarily call themselves black. More than three-quarters of Puerto Ricans identified as white on the last census, even though much of the population on the island...

President Trump went on a Twitter tear Saturday — retweeting an embarrassing picture of himself and ridiculing the Democratic Party for its troubles in the Iowa caucus and his impeachment acquittal. “This was photoshopped, obviously,” Trump wrote over a photo that revealed the obvious limits of his fake facial tan. Several versions of the snap had been making the rounds on social media. “The wind was strong and the hair looks good?” he continued. “Anything to demean!” Earlier, the president needled the Democrats with a quote from Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), who told Fox News on Friday that “This has...

SOUTH JORDAN, Utah — Republican Sen. Mitt Romney's vote to convict President Donald Trump on one count of abuse of power didn't bother Kelsey Malin. "I have kind of come to terms that even though he hasn't voted in a way that people say represents his party, the fact that he voted true to his conscience and over his party is a great thing," Malin, 28, said as she entertained her two children at a local library two days after the impeachment trial concluded last week. Malin was not alone. NBC News spoke with dozens of voters in Utah in...

At TEL Library we’ve taken a major step toward reducing the cost of college with the launch of our Courses-on-Demand program. Through this program, students anywhere in the U.S. can take college courses that are entirely self-paced and allow students to start anytime they desire. The all-inclusive cost of these courses is $44 per credit hour, which includes all fees and course materials. For those waxing nostalgic about the good old days when college was affordable, this is better than the good old days. Inflation-adjusted to 1970 dollars, our pricing translated to $6.68 a credit hour, and that’s without a...

President Trump’s acquittal on impeachment charges is welcome, but hardly the best news of the week. For, unnoticed until recently, another court proceeding advances, and win or lose, this matter can shake the globalist, deep state swamp off its here-to-now protected foundation. The case in question is Lawrence W. Doyle and John F. Moynihan (Petitioners) v Internal Revenue Service (Respondents), a case where allegedly corrupt actions of the Internal Revenue Service itself may fall under the microscope. It likely involves as yet unprosecuted crimes by “charities” that are still corruptly directed by household names. For history of this case, and...

Our gospel tune today is John, John, John by Anita Carter (1964). THE WESTERNER https://thewesterner.blogspot.com/

The “Palestinian people” is a propaganda fiction. It’s time to stop playing along. President Trump’s “Deal of the Century” was a brilliant illustration of his mastery of the art of the deal. This extravagantly generous proposal, and the Palestinians’ contemptuous rejection of it, severely damages the international Left’s claim that the Israelis are the obstacles to peace, and exposes the Palestinian leadership for the genocidal warmongers they are. Now it is time to take one more crucial step: end the recognition of the “Palestinian people” altogether!! There is no such nation, race, ethnicity, nationality, or culture, and never was! Returning...

Iain Murray grew up reading and writing by candlelight, not because he lived in premodern times but because he lived under democratic socialism. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and other contemporary American advocates of democratic socialism lean heavily on the democratic part, which is at least in part a matter of marketing. To take their talk of democratic principle seriously requires forgetfulness and credulousness: During the last great uprising of democratic socialism in the English-speaking world — in the United Kingdom in the 1970s, where young Iain Murray, now a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, was doing his homework...

Presidential historians will note that the re-election of President Donald Trump was not secured in November of 2020, but nine months earlier in February. In a span of two days, Democrats displayed to the country why their party should not be given political power. In Iowa, Democrats could not conduct a simple presidential caucus with relatively few voters participating. The totals were not announced on Monday night due to “irregularities.” The embarrassment even caused liberal media outlets to denounce the Democratic Party’s ineptitude. By the next day, only 71% of the vote had been released. Clearly, the bungling leads many...

After suffering a drubbing in Iowa and bizarrely conceding he will likely lose New Hampshire's Democratic primary next Tuesday, Joe Biden is under immense pressure to turn his floundering US presidential campaign around. The popular former US vice president has been the national frontrunner for more than a year, but his enviable position is increasingly under threat, and rivals -- including a socialist-leaning senator and a small-city mayor -- smell blood in the water. The 77-year-old moderate is being eclipsed on the campaign trail by mostly younger candidates with sharper stump speeches, more hustle, and telegenic debate performances. An average...

Eleven years ago, the writer Michael Walsh wrote (under his penname David Kahane) “Think of the Democratic Party as it really is: a criminal organization masquerading as a political party.” After the Democrats’ Russia, Kavanaugh, Mueller, and Ukraine fiascos, the Iowa caucus debacle, and Friday’s bizarre Democratic debate, I think we need to update it: It’s a Criminal, Insane Posse masquerading as a political party. The following day, the Senate voted down the House’s absurd impeachment effort, after which the President gave a heartfelt address to all those in the House and Senate who had helped him in exposing the...

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who has played a leading role in investigating the Trump-Ukraine scandal, is facing questions about his own connection to a Soviet-born businessman who has raised money for his campaign and whose company has received lucrative defense contracts from Ukraine's government. That man is Igor Pasternak, the founder and CEO of Worldwide Aeros Corp., which makes blimps for military and commercial customers. His business has also been involved in weapons manufacturing, working with the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense to produce a modified version of the M4 and M16 rifles, according to reports. PELOSI DEFENDS SCHIFF AFTER BEING...

he Democrats’ takeover of the Virginia statehouse includes advancing legislation that would give driver’s licenses to as many as 300,000 illegal immigrants in the state. The local Fox News affiliate reported that critics say the law would reward this demographic, which has already broken the law by being in the country illegally. Those who support the bill say it would “increase the state’s revenue and decrease the level of fear existing in the immigrant community.” “There’s 17 other states who have done it and the other states have removed the legal presence requirement, the number of collisions have gone down,”...

Looks can be deceiving. As you watched the president deliver what may have been his best speech ever, you thought you saw Democrats acting like a pack of disrespectful juveniles. While President Trump recited a long list of economic successes, Democrats appeared to be wearing pained expressions on their normally cheery faces. They were unable to rise to their feet, let alone applaud in acknowledgment of the litany of great news for our nation. The self-described champions of free speech openly groaned as the man who reinvented talk radio was recognized for his contributions to our ongoing national debate. Some...

PLYMOUTH, N.H. - In a perfect world, Susan Stepp, a 73-year-old retiree, would be voting vote for Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren in New Hampshire’s Democratic presidential primary Tuesday, she says. But that won’t be happening. “I am not sure a woman is the best candidate to go up against Trump,” Stepp said recently as she stood in the back of a conference room listening to tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang as part of her hunt for the best candidate to challenge the Republican incumbent. Stepp’s concern has coursed through the Democratic primary for months, registering in polling, interviews and, now, the...

It didn’t take long to find out what an unleashed Donald Trump looks like — and I’m not referring to his petulant, un-Christian comments at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday morning or even his toxic, stream-of-subconsciousness victory lap in the East Room of the White House early that afternoon, during which the leader of the free world introduced “top scum” and “bullshit” to the public presidential lexicon. Sure, both performances offered disturbing glimpses into Trump’s very scary emotional state, as if his Twitter feed weren’t enough. But even as he debuted the latest iteration of his angry-victim performance art,...

Just a few weeks ago, Orson Bean appeared on The Mark Steyn Christmas Show, and delighted both the audience in the room and the far larger crowd who watched the broadcast. All of us who worked on the show were devastated to learn that last night Orson was killed by a car while crossing the street in Venice, California. As Orson said on stage, he was born during the last year of the Coolidge Administration, which would make him ninety-one years old, which is, as he put it, "not bad". (Silent Cal was a maternal second cousin once removed.) In...