Free Republic

NASA Langley Research Center Hampton, Virginia 12:43 P.M. EST THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you all for that very warm welcome. To Administrator Jim Bridenstine, Secretary Betsy DeVos, to Congresswoman Elaine Luria, and most especially to Director Clayton Turner and all of the incredible men and women who have been making great ideas take flight for 100 years: It is an honor to be here at Langley Research Center. (Applause.) And Director Turner and I have been walking through wind tunnels and talking about flights to the Moon and to Mars, and seeing the new technology coming together. And I...

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. -- President Donald Trump is using Day 2 of his swing out West to check off the quintessential to-do list for a president seeking reelection: raising tons of campaign cash, delivering on policy for supporters, revving up his base - and, above all, trolling the enemy. The president’s four-day, four-state trip features big-dollar fundraisers, back-to-back-to-back campaign rallies and a sprinkling of official presidential events. It’s an unusually long domestic trip for Trump, who prefers to sleep in his own bed. Next best: He’s sleeping each night at his own hotel just off the Las Vegas Strip and...

Extreme blasts of freezing weather hitting Europe and the USA in recent years aren’t caused by a warming Arctic changing the jet stream, as previously thought. Research by the University of Exeter disputes earlier studies suggesting a warming Arctic was creating a “wavier” jet stream and linked to climate change. They found it’s more likely the other way around with random fluctuations in the jet stream warming up the Arctic over decades. […] It was assumed there was a long term trend towards a wavier stream that was causing extreme weather conditions to strike mainland Europe and the USA. Dr....

By watching for a special kind of flare, astronomers have identified the fingerprints of an Earth-size planet orbiting a distant star.The planet orbits its host star, a dim “M dwarf,” just at the edge of the habitable zone — the region where liquid water could exist. Jupiter’s moon Io — the solar system’s most volcanic world — has inspired a new way to find distant exoplanets. As the moon orbits Jupiter, it tugs on the planet’s magnetic field, generating bright auroras in Jupiter’s atmosphere. Even if we couldn’t see Io itself, the enormous auroras, pulsing to the beat of...

President Donald Trump is kicking off a West Coast campaign swing Wednesday with a rally in Phoenix, the capital of a state he lost in 2016 but hopes to flip in 2020. Trump's event at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum marks the first of three rallies in three states in three days -- his biggest reelection-related time investment this cycle. Following his stop in Arizona, Trump will take his road show to Colorado on Thursday and then Nevada on on Friday, the day before the crucial Democratic Nevada caucus. The Arizona rally is another attempt by the president to counter...

Attorney General William Barr is right that presidential tweets on Department of Justice (DOJ) cases make his job difficult in today's super-charged political environment. But President Trump is also right that the case of his associate, Roger Stone, is nothing but a political prosecution that, until the president tweeted about it, got little attention or examination. For all the hullabaloo about Trump's tweets, which are nothing more than an expression of opinion, remember that in five of the last six special or independent counsel investigations, such interventions were not at all unusual. Both Democratic and Republican presidents pardoned numerous figures...

In the face of a projected $6 billion deficit, Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants to shift millions of dollars in salaries from the government payroll to the capital budget — thus giving the appearance he’s lowering operating costs, critics charge. A prime example is Cuomo’s bid to transfer employee salaries from the Department of Environmental Conservation to the $300 million Environmental Protection Fund in the capital budget. Assembly Environmental Committee Chairman Steve Englebright (D-Suffolk) said that Cuomo shouldn’t pile the salaries there. “The Environmental Protection Fund has never been used for general operations of the agency. This is not a program...

Editor's note: This column was co-authored by Victoria Cobb, President of The Family Foundation. Phyllis Schlafly was right when she warned against The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the Constitution. One woman predicted the ERA’s dire consequences – and nearly single-handedly led the revolution to stop it. The ERA contains seemingly innocuous language about equal rights for women, however, it would result in dangerous consequences, including enshrining a Constitutional right to an abortion, up until the moment of birth, and funded by taxpayers.When the ERA currently being considered by Congress was first introduced in 1972, few people were thinking about...

Former Illinois Governor Blagojevich says he was a 'political prisoner'; Matt Finn reports from Chicago. #FoxNews

Last week I came out as a 2016 supporter of Hillary Clinton - and a 2020 supporter of Bernie Sanders. Four years ago, I was excited about electing a woman president. I admired Secretary Clinton’s experience, and I thought she was the unbeatable candidate in the race. While I loved what Bernie was saying, I found it hard to believe at the time that he could get elected. He seemed almost too good to be true. But hindsight is 2020. Donald Trump won for a number of reasons we all can name - from the Russians to James Comey to...

A group of hackers has managed to trick Tesla’s first-generation Autopilot into accelerating from 35 to 85 mph with a modified speed limit sign that humans would be able to read correctly. Hackers at McAfee Advanced Threat Research conducted the experiment. Ultimately, they were able to make a Tesla vehicle on Autopilot accelerate by 50 mph over the limit: The ultimate finding here is that we were able to achieve the original goal. By making a tiny sticker-based modification to our speed limit sign, we were able to cause a targeted misclassification of the MobilEye camera on a Tesla and...

The article published on 3 February criticised the country's response to the deadly coronavirus outbreak. The Chinese foreign ministry said it had asked the newspaper to apologise several times but it had declined. The newspaper said the journalists - who had not written the opinion piece - were given five days to leave China. China's decision came a day after the US State Department tightened rules on Chinese state media organisations operating in the US, classifying them as foreign missions. It told five outlets including state-run Xinhua news agency and the China Global Television Network that they had to submit...

An attorney for Julian Assange alleged in court Wednesday that President Trump offered a pardon to Julian Assange if he would deny any Russian involvement in the Democratic National Committee (DNC) hack in 2016. Edward Fitzgerald, Assange's lawyer, said in a London court that Trump's message had been passed on to Assange by former Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.). Fitzgerald said a statement made by Jennifer Robinson, another lawyer for Assange, shows "Mr. Rohrabacher going to see Mr Assange and saying, on instructions from the president, he was offering a pardon or some other way out, if Mr Assange... said Russia...

Key fundraisers are jumping ship from Joe Biden’s struggling presidential campaign to instead support Mike Bloomberg’s ascending candidacy. The development comes amid growing concerns within Biden’s affluent donor network that the former vice president is struggling to convince voters that he can defeat Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, for the Democratic nomination. The financiers are also impressed with Bloomberg’s self-funded operation. Jon Henes, a partner at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis, has signaled to friends that he is shifting his allegiance from Biden’s campaign to Bloomberg’s bid to take on President Donald Trump, according to people with...

Lt. General Charles "Chuck" Pitman passed away this past Thursday at age 84. His career spanned over 40 years, including three combat tours in Vietnam. He also was involved in Operation Eagle Claw, the attempted rescue of the American hostages in Tehran in 1980. He commanded an Air Wing and was the Deputy Chief of Staff for Marine Corps Aviation. He earned the Silver Star, four Distinguished Flying Crosses, a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. But for all his achievements in uniform, Pitman is better known for ignoring military protocol and breaking a bunch of regulations so he could...

Federal officials have arrested a Mexican citizen for allegedly acting on behalf of a Russian agent who recruited him to collect information about the U.S. government and met repeatedly with him in Moscow. Hector Alejandro Cabrera Fuentes and his wife were about to board a plane back to their native Mexico from Miami on Sunday, when a customs official asked to inspect their phones. The official looked in a file of recently deleted images on the phone of Fuentes’s wife and found a close-up photograph of a license plate. The plate belonged to the vehicle of a U.S. government source,...

Officials want to know but predictions vary wildly, from now to after hundreds of millions of people are infected.Coronavirus infections in China continue to swell by thousands a day, prompting epidemiologists to estimate when the outbreak will peak. Some suggest the climax, when the number of new infections in a single day reaches its highest point, will happen any time now. Others say that it is months away and that the virus will infect millions — or in one estimate hundreds of millions — of people first. Public health officials want to know roughly when the peak will be —...

Joe Biden unloaded on Democratic presidential rival Mike Bloomberg on Wednesday after the former New York City mayor released campaign ads seeking to tie himself to former President Obama. Biden, who has repeatedly underscored his time serving as Obama’s vice president, hinted he would bring up Bloomberg’s past criticism of Obama when the two Democratic candidates meet in Las Vegas for Wednesday's primary debate. “Welcome to the debates, Mike. We have a lot to catch up on about Barack Obama’s record,” Biden tweeted. SNIP Joe Biden Bloomberg Tweet

A man who calls himself “Philly Jesus” was kicked out of the installation mass for new Philadelphia Archbishop Nelson Perez at the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul on Tuesday. Michael Dennis Grant says he was promptly escorted off the property in handcuffs after he made his way through the sea of people and up to the speakers. Officers told him he had to leave, which he refused, saying he is a citizen expressing his freedom of religion. Grant says he attends mass at the cathedral all the time and believes he was targeted because of how he was...

Britain announced an immigration policy Wednesday that would prevent unskilled migrants from entering the country, requiring migrants to be English-speaking and have a job. Home Secretary Priti Patel said the new policy will make it easier for “the brightest and the best from around the world” to enter the country, calling it a “historic moment for the whole country.” The plan, which is intended to go into effect Jan. 1, 2021, aims to reduce the country’s reliance on “low-skilled” migrants and push companies to develop technology and automation. It is encouraging firms to recruit foreigners “with greatest talents,” such as...