Free Republic

Both the White House and former Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) have denied offering WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange a pardon in exchange for his denying Russian involvement in stealing emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 2016. One of Assange’s lawyers, Edward Fitzgerald, said in British court on Feb. 19 that Rohrabacher made the offer on behalf of President Donald Trump when visiting Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2017. White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham called it “complete fabrication and a total lie.” “The president barely knows Dana Rohrabacher other than he’s an ex-congressman,” she said. “He’s...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has repeatedly called on rivals to disavow super PACs supporting them, on Thursday declined to disavow a new super PAC that’s supporting her. Asked on the campaign trail in Nevada whether she’d disavow the support, Warren told reporters that she’s come to the point that she can’t unless other candidates do too. “I couldn’t get a single Democrat to go along with me. Finally, we reached the point a few weeks ago where all of the men who were still in this race and on the debate stage all had either super PACs or they...

Girls under the age of 18 will have to get a parent’s permission before having an abortion under a bill passed by the Florida Legislature on Thursday that Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to sign. The House voted 75-43 largely along party lines for the legislation that expands a current law that requires a girl’s parents are notified before she can have an abortion. DeSantis asked lawmakers to send him the bill during his State of the State speech that kicked off the legislative session last month. “What we are talking about is a child, and here were are talking...

Attorney General William Barr recently raised questions about whether major technology companies should remain largely immune from litigation regarding its user-generated content, adding that the technological landscape has changed much in recent decades. Barr stated his concerns during a Feb. 19 Justice Department workshop on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The act, which was passed in 1996, states that “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” Online companies such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter are protected by Section 230...

The case is a woman in her 30s who resides in the Fraser Health region, Henry said. The woman recently returned from travel to Iran and has a milder form of the disease, Henry said. The new case brings the total number recorded in British Columbia to six. On Wednesday, the province announced that the first person in B.C. to contract the virus had recovered. This is a developing story and will be updated.

The Justice Department (DOJ) has sued a Nebraska village alleging that it had violated a federal law protecting religious institutions when it denied a local church from expanding their facilities in the locale. The department on Thursday filed the lawsuit against the Village of Walthill, which has a population of about 750 people, saying that it violated the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act when it denied the Light of the World Gospel Ministries from building a worship facility for “church services, bible studies, youth and children ministries, and cafeteria ministries.” According to the complaint (pdf), Light of the...

A former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) employee has pleaded guilty to charges related to the leaking of classified information to two journalists, the Justice Department (DOJ) said. Henry Kyle Frese, 31, pleaded guilty on Thursday to the willful transmission of top-secret national defense information to journalists. He faces up to 10 years in prison. Frese was arrested when he arrived to work at a DIA facility in Virginia in October last year where he worked as a counterterrorism analyst. The 31-year-old—who held top-secret government security clearance—was accused of helping the journalists research information on a classified United States government computer...

His Eminence Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, the head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, supports the recent statements from President Vladimir Putin in favor of the traditional understanding of the family as the union of a man and a woman. “As for ‘parent # 1’ and ‘parent # 2, I have already said publicly once before, and I will repeat again: as long as I am President, we will not have parents one and two—we will have a father and mother,” the President said on February 13 at a meeting with the working group on preparing amendments...

A top Department of Justice prosecutor who authored the letter informing former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s legal team that it would not file criminal charges against McCabe for lying to federal investigators, was the latest prosecutor added to DOJ’s prosecution against Roger Stone.  J.P. Cooney, the head of Fraud & Public Corruption, became part of the new prosecution team against Stone after the former prosecutors resigned in protest.Cooney, head of the DOJ’s Fraud and Public Corruption, and John Crabb, who also handles public corruption cases for the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., replaced the previous prosecution team last week after they...

FR CANTEEN MISSION STATEMENT Showing support and boosting the morale of our military and our allied military and the family members of the above.Honoring those who have served before. FReeper Canteen Come on in, we're open Need a place just to hang out? This is it. We serve coffee, tea, conversation and music. Our AWESOME military, our AWESOME allies, and their families are welcomed and honored here. No worries in the FReeper Canteen Just Hangin' Cafe. Grab a cup or a glass, and start a conversation.You never know who you might meet in the Cafe. Glad you could join...

[Catholic Caucus] Pope’s ghostwriter, advisor claims Francis blazed path to married priests in Amazon exhortation Archbishop Fernández said that married priests and more could come by way of an 'Amazonian rite' February 20, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – An Argentinian archbishop close to Pope Francis, who is widely regarded as the principal ghostwriter of the Pope’s controversial 2016 exhortation Amoris Laetitia, is claiming that the Pope blazed a path to married priests in his new Amazon exhortation. The Pope did this by means of suggesting the development of a new “Amazonian rite” that would, in the words of the exhortation, “inculturate the...

Former CIA Director John Brennan Thursday on MSNBC accused President Donald Trump of playing to a “very debased” group of people. Discussing Trump’s comments on Roger Stone today at a prison graduation ceremony in Las Vegas, Brennan said, “He’s clearly giving every indication he wants to act like a mob boss. And he’s going to try to take care of him and his soldiers.” He continued, “It’s outrageous he would try to make any moral equivalency between someone like Roger Stone who the judge said has trampled the law and public servants like James Comey and others who really tried...

* Wang Yi met his counterpart Archbishop Paul Gallagher in Munich on Friday in a rare meeting between the two sides * Holy See seeking to renew or formalise agreement on appointing bishops, source saysA historic meeting between the foreign ministers of China and the Vatican in Munich last week was initiated and approved by Pope Francis, according to two sources familiar with the arrangements. The Pope was “eager” to use the talks to explore “renewal or formalisation” of a provisional deal reached in 2018 to allow the Vatican to appoint bishops pre-approved by Beijing, one of the sources...

Clerics must choose between prison or excommunicationMELBOURNE, Victoria, Australia (ChurchMilitant.com) - Priests in the Australian state of Victoria must now choose between being jailed for keeping the seal of confession or being excommunicated for breaking it. A state law took effect on Monday that forces priests in the state to report knowledge of child sexual abuse gained from the sacrament of confession or face up to three years in prison. Victoria's Attorney-General Jill Hennessy asserts that priests can no longer use the confessional seal as a reason for not reporting child abuse. "From [Monday], our promise to put the safety...

The NFL is reportedly getting ready to make some big changes. Under a new collective bargaining agreement that NFL owners are pushing for, each team would reportedly add another game to its annual schedule to make a 17-game regular season. And at the end of the season, seven teams would make the playoffs from each conference, up from the usual six that make it right now, ESPN's Adam Schefter reports. NFL owners and players have been meeting this week to discuss changes that, if agreed upon, would take effect in the next couple years. To start, a seventh team from...

In lashing out at the prosecution of Roger Stone and “dirty cops,” the president confronted the attorney general with a choice about how to respond. President Trump once again berated the “dirty cops” of the law enforcement establishment on Thursday, accusing the Justice Department of going after his friends but not his enemies in an outburst that flouted Attorney General William P. Barr’s pleas to stop publicly intervening in prosecutions where he had a personal interest. Speaking out hours after his friend Roger J. Stone Jr. was sentenced to more than three years in prison for lying to protect the...

Long before former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched his campaign to defeat President Trump in 2020, he offered praise for the fellow billionaire as a "great guy" and someone he considers himself to be a "big fan" of. In a resurfaced clip ahead of the 2012 election, Bloomberg was asked on "Good Morning America" about Trump's potential presidential bid, something the then-reality show star didn't pursue until the 2016 election. ... He continued, "I know Donald Trump. He's a great guy. He doesn't do everything he says, but he sure tries. And I'm a big fan of Donald...

Obama’s corrupt “wingman” AG Eric Holder lashed out at investigative reporter Paul Sperry this week and told him to ‘shut the hell up.’Recall, Paul Sperry revealed the identity of the anti-Trump CIA ‘whistleblower’ Eric Ciaramella in an explosive Real Clear Investigations report.Sperry also exposed the left-wing federal prosecutor who let McCabe off the hook.McCabe was let off the hook by the feds even though he admitted lying to investigators.“We write to inform you that, after careful consideration, the Government has decided not to pursue criminal charges against your client, Andrew G. McCabe,” prosecutors J.P. Cooney and Molly Gaston wrote to...

LONDON (AP) — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange plans to claim during an extradition hearing that the Trump administration offered him a pardon if he agreed to say Russia was not involved in leaking Democratic National Committee emails during the 2016 U.S. election campaign, a lawyer for Assange said Wednesday. Assange is being held at a British prison while fighting extradition to the United States on spying charges. His full court hearing is due to begin next week. At a preliminary hearing held in London, lawyer Edward Fitzgerald said now-former Republican congressman, Dana Rohrabacher, visited Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in...

Despite similar rates of enrollment into medical care, youth with HIV have much lower rates of viral suppression — reducing HIV to undetectable levels — compared to adults, according to an analysis funded by the National Institutes of Health. Among more than 1,000 youth, most of whom were newly enrolled in care at treatment centers throughout the United States, 12% had attained viral suppression, far lower than the 32% to 63% observed in studies of adults over age 24. The findings suggest that after they enroll in an HIV treatment program, a low proportion of youth adhere to care regimens....