Free Republic

He never should’ve agreed to participate in that Las Vegas debate. – One of the best ways to gauge the state of a multi-candidate presidential nominating race is to follow the betting odds. The polling business in the United States has become too corrupt now to really trust, other than to use aggregates of polls over time to assess trends. Another problem with the polls is that so many people – like yours truly – simply lie to pollsters about who they really support. Some do it due to social stigma about supporting specific candidates; others, like me, do it...

As drones hover over Chinese cities monitoring residents and Xi Jinping’s government is attempting to flush coronavirus patients out by halting the sale of fever and cough medicines, the crisis was dubbed “China’s Chernobyl.” Predictions that Beijing’s catastrophic handling of the coronavirus will be the nail in the CCP’s coffin are likely premature. In the words of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, China’s ruling party is the “central threat of our times,” but with global news coverage singularly focused on the virus, stories about other scandals have been buried. Pompeo warned that China is seeking to infiltrate American infrastructure and...

The number of people in Italy infected with the new virus from China more than quadrupled Friday due to an emerging cluster of cases in the country’s north that prompted officials to order schools, restaurants and businesses to close. Many of the 14 new cases represented the first infections in Italy acquired through secondary contagion and brought the country’s total to 17. The cluster was located in a handful of tiny towns southeast of Milan in the Lombardy region, said Lombardy regional health chief Giulio Gallera. “This was foreseeable even if we hoped it wouldn’t have happened,” Gallera said. The...

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have posted an extraordinary statement on their website claiming that the Queen does not own the word royal across the world after they were forced to drop their 'Sussex Royal' brand. Harry and Meghan put a new statement on their own website hours after announcing they would stop using the word 'royal' in their branding after the Spring. The statement said that while neither the government nor the Queen herself own the word 'royal' internationally, they would stop using the title. The statement read: 'While there is not any jurisdiction by The Monarchy or...

Little remains of former President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare legislation, Obamacare. Donald Trump has made sure of that. Through his executive branch’s authority, the president has managed to do what Congress hasn’t and chip away at the legislation, piece by piece. Indeed, the Trump administration’s expansion of “skinny” health insurance plans, as well as its move to end cost-sharing reduction payments, should absolutely be commended. And the president is not done yet. According to an analysis from The Hill, President Trump’s recently-proposed budget calls for additional massive cuts to Obamacare — $844 billion over the next ten years.  Without a...

Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden could not remember what his late son Beau Biden did for work during a CNN town hall event on Thursday night, falsely claiming that his son was “Attorney General of the United States.” “Never direct the Justice Department as to who they should or should not indict and under what circumstances they should or should not,” Biden told the audience at the event. “That is an independent judgement to be made.” “My son, the one who, my deceased son, was the Attorney General of the United States,” Biden falsely claimed, adding, “and before that, he...

As I wrote a few weeks ago, since the dawn of 2020 I have felt suffused in death. The latest is hard to take for any reader of first-rate reporting and analysis. Christie Blatchford, an indispensable colleague of mine from the glory days of The National Post, died last Wednesday at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto after a very short battle with lung cancer. In 1998, to launch the Post, Conrad Black and Ken Whyte put together the best team ever assembled for any Canadian newspaper. It was my last great journalistic adventure, and, although it was only twenty years...

Disney-Pixar’s Onward will feature the first self-identified LGBTQ character in an animated Disney film. While this isn’t the first time Disney has featured its first LGBTQ character in its cinematic universe, it is the first animated film.... The character, Officer Specter, will appear briefly in the film’s story, in a scene where she is discussing her girlfriend with other characters. While it is unclear if Specter represents the lesbian or bisexual communities, it is a clear alignment with the LGBTQ community...

Breaking News Virginia Senate Committee Kills Gun Ban for 2020, Kicks Bill to 2021 A controversial gun ban bill, HB 961, has been defeated in the Virginia Senate Judicial Committee. The defeat comes in the form of a decision to postpone the bill to 2021. The committee also voted to send a letter to the crime commission, asking them to study the bill.  The parliamentary maneuvers amount to killing the bill. From wric.com: RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — The Senate Judiciary Committee continued HB961, also known as the assault weapons ban, to the 2021 session.The bill will be much harder to...

Text-to-911 is the ability to send a text message to reach 911 emergency call takers from your mobile phone or device. However, because voice calls to 911 provide more information to 911 call centers, you should always make a voice call to 911 during an emergency whenever possible. Text-to-911 is only currently available in certain locations. The FCC encourages emergency call centers to begin accepting texts, but it is up to each call center to decide the particular method in which to implement and deploy text-to-911 technology. FCC rules require all wireless carriers and other providers of text messaging applications...

I never thought I'd feel sorry for a billionaire - a $60 billion billionaire. But watching Mike Bloomberg getting beat up in the Democrat debate in Vegas Wednesday night was almost tragic. It was like watching an old boxer who gets clocked early in Round 1 and then wobbles around the ring in a daze for the rest of the fight while he's pounded unmercifully. Mike never recovered from the opening series of left hooks and below-the belt punches delivered by Bernie, Liz, Pete, Amy and old Joe. For two hours he was slapped around and bullied by his much...

Twitter is reportedly suspending 70 accounts, some of which are backed by Michael Bloomberg’s campaign, that have posted identical messages in support of the Democrat’s presidential bid, calling the content “platform manipulation.” The Los Angeles Times examined the accounts and alerted Twitter, who on Friday determined the posts violated company policy and said they would begin suspending the profiles. A portion of accounts are operated by Bloomberg campaign workers — called “deputy field organizers” — who pump out pro-Bloomberg content across social media networks, including Twitter, for $2,500 a month, the report said. One identical post shared by at least...

Billions of desert locusts have descended again on East Africa. Crawling first, then sprouting wings and flying in hungry hoards of 40-150 million or more, they are devastating crops and threatening tens of millions of people with lost livelihoods and starvation. This year’s plague, says the United Nations, is the worst in 70 years for Kenya, the worst in a quarter-century for Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia.  Locust swarms can blanket scores or hundreds of square miles at a time, travel 80 miles a day, and consume more than 400 million pounds of vegetation daily, Africa Fighting Malaria cofounder Richard...

He killed his grandmother. And he did so brutally, dumping her in the water before she was even dead, if the coroner is correct that her cause of death was drowning. He killed two others -- all evil acts. And then once in prison, he managed to kill a fellow inmate. So, I get why the governor of Tennessee refused to grant Nick Sutton clemency when the time came for his execution and final appeals. But no one was asking for the man to be released. Instead, people -- including prison staff and the sister of the inmate he killed...

Russia could regain its status as “a global rival” for Western powers through some degree of “integration” with Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin said... Putin made the comment while reiterating his belief that Ukrainians and Russians are “the same people,” a claim widely perceived as a means to justify Russian influence over former Soviet nations. His reference to “integration” is even more unusual, and incendiary, according to Western analysts, given that the two countries have been locked in conflict since Russia’s annexation of Crimea and invasion of Ukraine in 2014... Multiple Western analysts noted that Putin has been pressuring Belarus...

This will be a weekly post. Count remains at 190 judges confirmed. 137 District Court judges 51 Circuit Court judges 2 Supreme Court justices

Apparently that sort of thing disgusts Michael Bloomberg. Heck, White Settlement, Texas, even sounds like a town full of farmers! Those dumb brutes! For all Bloomberg knew, Wilson might have been a farmer himself! At any rate, shortly after Fidel Castro’s famous speech, the process of gun confiscation started in Cuba—but gradually. Initially it was aimed at disarming rival revolutionary groups, who had fought Batista but weren’t Communist-backed. But soon the definition of these “rival revolutionaries” grew pretty sweeping. It started to include just about every Cuban with a gun. Significantly, Castro’s famous anti-gun speech was proclaimed a full two years before he...

Get your popcorn ready, because today is the Nevada caucuses, which features only a lot of old rich white people in the Democratic field, which is not supposed to happen in this age of intersectional diversity. I think the DNC ought to disqualify the entire field and start over, on the grounds that the field is now the biggest bunch of bumbling buffoons since the borscht belt belly-flopped. But it’s sure nice to have a fresh face like Mini Mike around, just to liven things up. Democrats should have more billionaires on their stage.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's "squad" could get a lot bigger with the wave of female congressional candidates she endorsed on Friday. The socialist surprised many by defeating Rep. Joe Crowley, a high-ranking incumbent, in a primary race in New York in 2018. Now, she’s looking to find more women to follow in her footsteps to replace centrist incumbents with younger, more liberal candidates. After teasing a "big announcement" late Thursday, the 30-year-old congresswoman revealed the slate of candidates she is supporting with her political action committee Courage to Change as they primary Democratic incumbents throughout the United States. Ocasio-Cortez also revealed...

2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden promised gun manufacturers across the United States that he’s “coming for them.” “A guy has 12 assault weapons with bump stocks, which means you can fire it faster. You can pull the trigger faster,” Biden said to a crowd during a CNN town hall. “Why in God’s name should anyone, anyone, anyone, anyone be able to own that? It’s just wrong, and we’ve got to — and I promise you, as president, I am going to get these guys.”