Free Republic

Before Shanee Markovitz and Tani Kay get married this May, the couple gathered their close friends together recently to celebrate … their prenup. “I want my friends to see this as a huge part of our wedding. It’s as important as every other piece, if not more,” says Markovitz, 20. “We’re going to announce it at our wedding and put it in our programs, too.” While many prenuptial agreements are kept hush-hush and often seen as unromantic, for this couple — who have been together since they were high-school sophomores — it’s a sign of liberation. And not everyone is...

WASHINGTON — As Democrats begin to coalesce around Joe Biden as the moderate alternative to Bernie Sanders, there appears to be a quiet hand behind the rapid movement: former President Barack Obama. Obama spoke with his former vice president after he handily won the South Carolina primary on Saturday, and with Pete Buttigieg on Sunday when he dropped out of the Democratic race, according to people familiar with the calls. Buttigieg will travel from South Bend, Indiana to Dallas Monday and endorse Biden, multiple people familiar with the plan tell NBC News People close to Obama said the former president...

    ~The FReeper Canteen Presents~ Road Trip: Travis Air Force Base, CaliforniaTravis Air Force Base is a United States Air Force air base under the operational control of the Air Mobility Command (AMC), located three miles east of the central business district of Fairfield, in Solano County, California, United States. Situated at the southwestern edge of the Sacramento Valley and known as the "Gateway to the Pacific," Travis Air Force Base handles more cargo and passenger traffic through its airport than any other military air terminal in the United States. The base has a long and proud history...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu succeeded in winning 60 seats for his bloc of right-wing and religious parties in Monday’s election, one less than he needed for a majority in the Knesset, according to exit polls on the three television networks. The first polls indicated that Netanyahu’s Likud won 36-37 seats. Its allies in Shas, UTJ and Yamina won 9, 7-8 and 6-7 respectively. The polls showed Blue and White with 33 seats, its ally Labor-Gesher-Meretz 6-7, the Joint List 14-15 and Yisrael Beytenu 6-8. When Channel 13 updated its numbers at around 1 a.m. Israel time, Gantz gained one seat...

...Why should private donors stop giving to higher education? University benefactors should be made more aware of the one-sided ideological profile of faculty and administrators and the relentless growth of the university bureaucracy and infrastructure that is driving up costs. They need to realize that the present volume of private money helps make universities impervious to pressure to reform some of their troubling practices, including their political tilt, their intolerance of dissent, and their burgeoning administrative apparatus. Yet even for alumni and donors who are untroubled by these trends, there are still compelling reasons to redirect their generosity. What should...

Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-Texas), who dropped out of the presidential race in November, plans to endorse former Vice President Joe Biden's 2020 bid on Monday, The New York Times reported, citing two Democratic officials familiar with his plans. The move comes as a host of Democrats work to position Biden as the moderate alternative to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the self-identified democratic socialist who has emerged as the front-runner to win the Democratic nomination. Following Biden's decisive victory in South Carolina over the weekend, both former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) bowed out...

Fox News Channel announced Friday that it will host a town hall with former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, marking his first appearance on the network as a presidential candidate. "Special Report" anchor Bret Baier and "The Story" anchor Martha MacCallum will co-moderate the town hall on Monday, March 2 in Manassas, Va., from 6:30-7:30PM/ET.

President Donald Trump nominated the first African American Air Force chief of staff, the highest ranking uniformed position. Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. is a veteran combat pilot and longtime officer currently the head of U.S. Pacific Air Forces. Defense Secretary Mark Esper announced his nomination on Monday, according to the Wall Street Journal. Brown is an F-16 pilot who has served in Asia and the Middle East and has been an Air Force officer since 1984. He has flown nearly 3,000 hours, including combat missions, the Wall Street Journal reports. Prior to leading the Pacific Air Forces, he was...

The ex-director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday that the deadly coronavirus may be “impossible” to contain — and that kids may be secret carriers of the disease. “We think it will be very difficult if not impossible to contain it … but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try,” Dr. Tom Frieden told reporters. Frieden, who ran the agency under President Obama and was the New York City health commissioner under Mayor Mike Bloomberg, said the spread of the virus to more than 89,000 people across the world has been an “unprecedented situation.” “Never before...

North Korea has ordered major provincial organizations, military-run factories and other facilities to prepare a months’ worth of food, signalling that the state is unable to provide rations anymore, Daily NK has learned. “The order was handed down by provincial party committees to local people’s committees, Ministry of State Security offices, police stations, military-run factories run by the Second Economic Committee [of the Workers’ Party of Korea], and even orphanages,” a North Hamgyong Province-based source told Daily NK on Feb. 26.

When California lawyers Matthew Smith and Katherine Codekas checked into a hotel in Tokyo last weekend, they decided not to hide where they had been. The couple, along with about 900 other passengers, were released from Feb 19 to 21 after a two-week quarantine on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, where a coronavirus outbreak has left more than 700 people infected and killed four Japanese nationals. Foreign governments evacuated hundreds of their citizens, including about 300 United States nationals, and imposed 14 more days quarantine. But Smith and his wife were not among them. Smith led a mutiny of about...

The coronavirus death toll now tops 3,000 worldwide, with nearly 90,000 cases. But even those numbers are nothing compared to what could happen in the months ahead. CBS News spoke to one of the country's top experts on viruses, Marc Lipsitch from Harvard University, who cautions that 40-70% of the world's population will become infected — and from that number, 1% of people who get symptoms from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, could die. The virus can spread rapidly and people can transmit it before they know they are infected. Lipsitch breaks down his findings in this extended...

Although the media are focused on the coronavirus and the two fatalities that have taken place in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), influenza and related pneumonia are widespread across the country. “CDC estimates that so far this season there have been at least 32 million flu illnesses, 310,000 hospitalizations and 18,000 deaths from flu,” the CDC’s weekly Influenza Surveillance Report said as of February 22, 2020. “The percentage of death attributed to pneumonia and influenza is 6.9 percent, below the epidemic threshold of 7.3 percent,” the CDC reported. Among the deaths are more than...

Kim Jong Un guided “strike drill” of two rocket launch systems on Monday: KCNA State media says weapons tests helped improve readiness and accuracy of soldiers North Korean leader Kim Jong Un personally led a “firepower strike drill” of “long-range artillery sub-units of the Korean People's Army” (KPA) on Monday, state media reported Tuesday morning. Published on the front page of the Party daily Rodong Sinmun and in the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) showed at least two types of multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS) firing at island targets.... (Continued)

Today, Justice Neil Gorsuch threw a little shade at the Trump administration for unilaterally rewriting federal gun laws. "The agency used to tell everyone that bump stocks don't qualify as 'machineguns.' Now it says the opposite. The law hasn't changed, only an agency's interpretation of it," Gorsuch wrote. "How, in all of this, can ordinary citizens be expected to keep up—required not only to conform their conduct to the fairest reading of the law they might expect from a neutral judge, but forced to guess whether the statute will be declared ambiguous….And why should courts, charged with the independent and...

Oscar winner Timothy Hutton, currently the star of the freshman Fox drama “Almost Family,” has been accused of raping a 14-year-old girl in 1983. According to a report published online by BuzzFeed News, Sera Johnston, who last year filed a criminal complaint against Hutton with the Vancouver Police Department, said she was assaulted by the actor while he was in town to shoot the film “Iceman.” Johnston told the site that she was just 14 when she and two friends were invited to Hutton’s hotel room, where she said she was raped and assaulted by both Hutton (who was then...

Abp. Hebda Discourages Priests From Voting in Presidential Primary Theologian: Should tell priests to oppose 'Party of Death' MINNEAPOLIS (ChurchMilitant.com) - The head of the St. Paul and Minneapolis archdiocese is requesting that his clerics refrain from voting in the presidential primary on Tuesday. Archbishop Bernard Hebda is urging priests and deacons of the archdiocese not to vote in Minnesota's "closed" primary on Super Tuesday, stating privacy concerns. "Minnesota's presidential primary is a 'closed' party nominating primary, meaning it is open only to people who align with the party," said Hebda in a e-mail to his clerics. "One has to attest that one agrees with...

I explore Bernie Sanders' adulatory remarks about Cuban health care and education, and pierce through the media mythology surrounding the Castro brothers and what they did to the nation of Cuba.

The Gem State’s population is expected to continue to grow due to a multitude of reasons “Look outside your window today,” said Derrell Hartwick, president and CEO of the Coeur d’Alene Chamber of Commerce. “You can see what the great draws are.” And if you looked outside Friday, you saw beautiful blue skies, sunshine and plenty of green. You saw people biking, walking dogs and sitting down with coffee. And if you went one step further and stepped outside, you felt a warm 60 degrees — and it was still February. Hartwick, who recently moved to Coeur d’Alene, spoke of...

BREAKING: Chris Matthews, longtime MSNBC host, is leaving the network