Free Republic

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s ailing presidential campaign is facing fresh scandal about her false claims of Native American heritage as the Cambridge Democrat tries to mount a 2020 comeback in delegate-rich Super Tuesday states like California. A group of 200 Native Americans issued an open letter Tuesday night scolding Warren for identifying as part Cherokee, citing new reporting from the Los Angeles Times that showed $800 million in federal grants meant for Native Americans went instead to “white members of fake ‘tribes.’”

I am thinking of getting a "Joe Biden for Senate 2020" bumper sticker.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, which Americans are meant to trust with matters of life and death, is unable—or unwilling—to confirm claims that Representative Ilhan Omar perpetrated fraud by marrying her brother, Ahmed Elmi, to enable him to obtain the coveted Green Card, thus granting him permanent-resident status in the U.S., and a path to citizenship. But the agency is said to be “investigating.”  Conversely, the Daily Mail, a British tabloid, had little difficulty gathering a critical mass of facts, enough to conclude that, in 2009, Omar did indeed secretly wed said sibling. The newspaper, and anyone else suggesting...

Bernie Sanders’s plan to wipe out Americans’ $1.6 trillion in student debt could face thorny political and practical problems if he is elected president in November. The Vermont senator, an Independent who has surged to the top of the national polls in the Democratic presidential primary, has drawn little congressional support for his plan. A bill he introduced with Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) last summer has just a dozen co-sponsors, all in the Democratic-controlled House, where it has languished. A majority of Americans, 57%, oppose canceling all student debt, according to a September 2019 Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll....

Syrian rebels backed by the Turkish military said on Thursday they had recaptured the strategic town of Saraqeb in what would be the first major reverse for the Syrian army in a Russian-backed offensive that had made swift gains. Three weeks ago, the armed opposition lost the northwestern town at the junction of two main highways, following advances by the Syrian army in its push to retake the last large, rebel-held region in Syria after nine years of war. Turkey has sent thousands of troops and heavy military hardware into Syria‘s Idlib region in an unprecedented incursion to back the...

Despite recent stock market jitters related to the coronavirus, the U.S. economy is doing well. Wages are growing, especially for lower-income workers, and unemployment is low. Yet calls are intensifying for the federal government to implement paid leave, which may unwittingly hurt those whom the program claims to help. Supporters often resort to the same misleading notions to make their case -- misperceptions that must be continuously debunked, lest they lead to unnecessary harm to working families. Among the most common claims used to make the case for government provision of paid leave is that not every working woman gets...

SEOUL (Reuters) - From inside his car, a driver is checked for any fever or breathing difficulties by medical staff in protective clothing and goggles who lean in through the window at a new drive-thru coronavirus clinic in South Korea. He drove off after the brief test showed he was clear. Others queuing in their vehicles in the city of Goyang were instructed to stop briefly to submit a sample of secretions for closer examination, with the entire procedure taking less than 10 minutes. (Please see link for full article)

So far, 16,000 people have died and 280,000 people have been hospitalized during the 2019-2020 flu season, according to preliminary estimates from the CDC. "The flu season began early this year and took off aggressively," added Schaffner. "It began prominently in the southeastern states but quickly spread. So far, there is no sign that the momentum of the annual epidemic is slowing." In total, the CDC estimates that 29 million people have gotten the flu so far this season.

Donald Trump, the most anti-immigrant president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, is running against a Democratic presidential field that almost unanimously favors providing government-run health insurance to illegal immigrants. Surely there is some middle ground between Stephen Miller-style family separation and a massive expansion of the welfare state to millions living outside the law? The Libertarian Party, still the country's number-three political grouping (however distantly), has a platform very copacetic toward immigrants, if not quite via state largesse. "Libertarians believe that people should be able to travel freely as long as they are peaceful," the party's immigration plank reads. "A truly...

After Richard Nixon's landslide 1972 victory over Democratic opponent George McGovern, New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael gave a speech in which she said: "I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them." 2020 Democrats, at least the sensible ones, find themselves in a full-blown panic over the prospect of a nominee who is outside their ken. How scared are they? About the prospect of Sen. Bernie Sanders leading the Democratic ticket,...

Cuba has made less educational and health care progress than most Latin American countries over the last 60 years, data show. On CBS’s 60 Minutes, Senator Bernie Sanders recently praised the achievements of communist Cuba. An interviewer asked him about his 1985 comments that Cubans supported communist dictator Fidel Castro because he “educated their kids, gave their kids health care, totally transformed society.” In response, Sanders defended those comments, by stating that when “Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program.” But Castro did not give Cubans literacy. Cuba already had one...

You might not have heard -- because Trump is still president, so MSNBC and CNN were required to give hair-on-fire coverage of some mundane action he’s taken this week -- but on Monday, Harvey Weinstein was convicted of rape and a criminal sexual act. I have some random thoughts on the case and the whole #MeToo movement. Apologies in advance that this has nothing to do with Donald Trump, Dictator. 1) Every time I hear about Weinstein’s predations, I wonder how many waitresses, real estate agents and housewives in Los Angeles might be celebrated actresses today, except that when Weinstein...

Why are wealthy left-wing donors across the country, the abortion industry, and national gun-control groups more interested in your local school board and city council races than most of the people who live in your own town? Because they’re funding efforts to ensure their far-left agenda pervades our entire society – from getting their abortion curricula into our schools to changing our election laws – and they want to make sure that no city, no town is left to stand against them. National left-wing organizations are collecting and funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to flip local city councils, school...

Trump edges Biden, other Dems, except Sanders, in Pennsylvania. Assuming, that is, that Muhlenberg College isn't a tool of Putin.

Saw a trifecta of doctors the past two days and a plethra of nurses and technician all aiming me to start chemo and radiation treatments next week on Wednesday. First, the good news, Monday last PET Scan, says my oncologist, shows the cancer has not spread very far at all and "highly treatable." So my chemo and radiation treatment should only run 4 or 5 weeks he says. He gave me several new meds including 2 for nausea. However, Carrie, the nurse that will be doing the actual chemo told me that they believed they had mostly got the nausea...

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says he will ask all elementary and high schools across the country to temporarily close beginning Monday. The development comes after a man in his 80s who was infected with the new coronavirus died in the northern prefecture of Hokkaido. Fifteen new cases of infection were reported there on Thursday. Hokkaido's governor said the man who died had pre-existing conditions. Naomichi Suzuki said, " The patient was more susceptible to respiratory problems compared to healthy people." Officials say 2 of the 15 new cases are children under 10 years of age. The latest cases bring...

President Trump is right to call out Justice Sotomayor, and other unelected black robed social justice activist hacks who are masquerading as non-partisan upholders of the rule of law. Remember when the United States Supreme Court carefully guarded their time-honored independence from the politics of the Executive and Legislative branches? In those days, rarely were they ever seen or heard from outside of rendering opinions, and they kept those decisions based on the law, not politics. Those days are over thanks to judges who believe it is their role to act as a super legislature. Recently Justice Sotomayor showed her...

Former Vice President Joe Biden is reclaiming his frontrunner status in Florida, according to a survey released on Thursday by St. Pete Polls. The poll shows Biden pulling ahead of the pack in the Sunshine State with 35 percent support. Meanwhile, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg fell into second place with 25 percent support. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has taken the lead in polls nationally after back-to-back wins in the New Hampshire primary and Nevada caucuses, is running in a distant third in Florida. The St. Pete Poll pegged his support in the state at 13 percent,...

The Border Patrol’s taken a lot of heat for efforts to expand the border wall—-and there’s probably no spot hotter than the project in the Organ Pipe National Monument. Wednesday the Patrol invited media to the site to try to show it is doing sensitive, environmentally responsible work as it expands the border wall... Jim O'Laughlin is a contractor who oversees all the border wall projects financed with Defense Department money. He says, “This.is looked at as actually less damaging than some of the other ways and even some of the hydraulic hammers you can use will not break through...

I’m a big fan of accountability – if you break the rules there has to be consequences, or else there are no rules. But I’m also for sanity and proportional punishment, which is why I think it’s time (well past, to be honest) to lift the lifetime ban on Pete Rose and allow him into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Pete Rose bet on baseball, he also lied about it when caught. All of this is well known and not irrelevant, but the price for that has been paid. Rose is baseball’s hit king, slapping out 67 more hits and Ty...