Free Republic

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I think those of us on the left need to take a long look in the mirror and have an honest conversation about what’s going on. If you had told me three years ago that I would ever attend a Donald Trump rally, I would have laughed and assured you that was never going to happen. Heck, if you had told me I would do it three months ago, I probably would have done the same thing. So, how did I find myself among 11,000-plus Trump supporters in Manchester, New Hampshire? Believe it or not, it all started with knitting....

For 25 years in Georgia, I watched my mom make the same batch of six light, fluffy biscuits for breakfast almost every Sunday. Then I moved to New York, never to see a light, fluffy biscuit again. I arrived in the city in 2011, just in time for southern food to get trendy outside its region, and for three years, I bit into a series of artisanal hockey pucks, all advertised on menus as authentic southern buttermilk biscuits. With every dense, dry, flat, scone-adjacent clump of carbohydrates, I became more distressed. I didn’t even realize biscuits could be bad, given...

A recently completed survey correlating political orientation with mental illness confirmed the findings of previous studies: Those on the political left are significantly more likely to have been diagnosed with mental illness than those on the right.

Federal workforce too reliant on degrees, says White House President Trump's administration wants to reform federal hiring. It complains of burdensome hiring rules and of losing candidates because filling jobs takes too long. The system "frustrates hiring managers," it said in its 2021 budget proposal. The Trump administration's proposed FY 2021 budget, which it sent to Congress Monday, calls for "transforming" federal workforce hiring. It said federal rules are making it difficult to fill high-demand jobs, especially in technology. It called the hiring and dismissal rules "lengthy and byzantine" and said "stellar performance is inadequately recognized and poor performance insufficiently...

A college student at the University of Virginia says there are too many white people in their new multicultural building. She wants white people to know there are other places on campus they can go and to be mindful that the MSC, Multicultural Student Center, is for people of color and that people of color might feel uncomfortable around too many white folks. (video on source)

In an exclusive interview, Attorney General Bill Barr told ABC News on Thursday that President Donald Trump "has never asked me to do anything in a criminal case” but should stop tweeting about the Justice Department because his tweets “make it impossible for me to do my job.” Barr’s comments are a rare break with a president who the attorney general has aligned himself with and fiercely defended. But it also puts Barr in line with many of Trump’s supporters on Capitol Hill who say they support the president but wish he’d cut back on his tweets. “I think it’s...

San Francisco's district attorney is proposing creating an auto-burglary-assistance fund that would reimburse residents for the cost required to repair shattered windows from break-ins. The DA, Chesa Boudin, is proposing using $1.5 million from the mayor's office to fill the fund. If it passes, it could be the country's first fund of this kind. "Auto burglaries are the No. 1 way people in San Francisco are directly impacted by crime," Boudin said in the San Francisco Chronicle. "While we know there's more work to do, this is something we can do today to step up and support victims." The city...

The prosecutor was assigned by the attorney general to scrutinize the agents and analysts who sought to understand Russia’s covert operation to help Donald J. Trump win the 2016 election. WASHINGTON — Trump administration officials investigating the government’s response to Russia’s election interference in 2016 appear to be hunting for a basis to accuse Obama-era intelligence officials of hiding evidence or manipulating analysis about Moscow’s covert operation, according to people familiar with aspects of the inquiry. Since his election, President Trump has attacked the intelligence agencies that concluded that Russia secretly tried to help him win, fostering a narrative that...

It’s a scene that’s all too familiar to San Francisco drivers and pedestrians alike. A car is parked on the side of the curb with one of its windows smashed out, fragments of glass pooled in the passenger seat and shattered to bits on the pavement below.

SANTA FE – The push to add New Mexico to the ranks of states that have legalized recreational cannabis for adult use will have to wait another year. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 6-4 late Wednesday to table a high-profile marijuana legalization bill, as two Democrats joined with Republicans to block it from advancing. Backers acknowledged the measure is all but dead for this year’s 30-day session, which ends next week, but said they plan to try again in 2021. “We’d have no chance of getting it through now,” the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino, D-Albuquerque, said in...

There are currently 65,213 confirmed cases worldwide, including 1,486 fatalities.

What Muslims do here what they would never dare to do in their own countries. Maybe there is something to that reprisal. Muslim state lawmaker Movita Johnson-Harrell, a Democrat from Philadelphia, was charged with stealing more than $500,000 from her own non-profit to pay for vacations, furs, designer clothes, bills and her run for the state legislature. The crooked Democrat didn’t even serve one whole year in office and she is already resigning in disgrace — she is also facing jail time. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported: State Attorney General Josh Shapiro said Johnson-Harrell engaged in “brazen corruption” and systematically tried...

A former congressional intern for Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is believed to be the man who painted the words “Still Traitors” on Republican Party headquarters in Albuquerque last weekend. Albuquerque police arrested Cameron Chase McCall, 30, Wednesday on a charge of criminal damage to property over $1,000, a fourth-degree felony. Surveillance video footage and an anonymous tip led to his arrest, according to the criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court. Lujan Grisham spokesman Tripp Stelnicki confirmed that McCall was an intern for Lujan Grisham when she was a member of the U.S. House. Stelnicki condemned the vandalism. “The governor...

When Chelsea Mitchell, ranked as the fastest girl in the 55-meter dash in Connecticut high school track, showed up for a competition last year, she knew it would be a challenge. Her competitors included two biological males who said they identify as girls. Mitchell, a senior at Canton High School, had seen the speeds posted by the two. She was aware that other girls had lost to athletes born as boys who identify as girls. But at the time, she says, she “could feel the adrenaline in my blood.” That adrenaline wasn’t enough, though. Mitchell came in third behind the...

James Carville fired back at Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for calling him "a political hack," calling the self-described democratic socialist "a communist." The back and forth follows a week in which Carville has repeatedly sounded the alarm about a potential Sanders matchup against President Trump in November, calling the scenario "the end of days" for the Democratic Party while referring to Sanders supporters as "a cult." Sanders returned fire on Wednesday night during an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper, arguing that "political hack" Carville represents the establishment his campaign is running against. "James, in all due respect, is a political...

Michael Bloomberg is very rich. And not just billionaire rich — he’s one of the richest people in the world, clocking in at more than $50 billion. How he got there: a computer system most people have never heard of, let alone seen. Bloomberg is the founder of Bloomberg LP, a private, multibillion-dollar firm he launched in 1981. Today, the company does a lot of things — it deals in data, in technology, and in media — but it came to prominence because of the Bloomberg Terminal, a computer software system for the financial industry that basically puts all the...

It was a violent Ceasefire weekend in Baltimore. "Life was being celebrated all over the city, while we were also getting notifications that we were losing people,” said Erricka Bridgeford. As Ceasefire events took place throughout the city, calling for people to put the guns down for 72 hours, police say four people were killed and fifteen people were shot. Erricka Bridgeford helped start Baltimore Ceasefire weekends which occur four times a year. She says this past weekend was the most violent Ceasefire weekend they’ve ever had. "We know there are over 600,000 people in Baltimore and a lot of...

They may not agree on much, but the hosts of The View, to a person, have always been on Joe Biden’s side. From the moment he officially announced his presidential bid early last year, the hosts vigorously defended him against allegations of inappropriate touching. Meghan McCain vehemently attacked his accusers of executing a “hatchet job.” Meanwhile, Whoopi Goldberg pushed back the criticism of his record on race and Joy Behar wondered aloud if Democrats could just “skip the primary” and anoint Biden the nominee. So when Biden appeared Thursday morning on The View following disastrous a fourth-place finish in Iowa...

... But if something changes and large numbers of people get infected in the U.S., is the country's health system prepared to cope with a surge of patients from this virus, or any future pathogen? ...