Free Republic

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called out Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on the Senate floor Thursday morning for his controversial warning a day earlier that Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh would "pay the price" for decisions in abortion cases. “There is nothing to call this except a threat,” McConnell said. Schumer made the statement during an abortions rights rally hosted by the Center for Reproductive Rights as the court was hearing arguments in a case over an abortion-related Louisiana law.

 In the classic children’s book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, a boy gives a mouse a cookie, and then the mouse asks for a glass of milk to wash it down. Then a straw for the milk. Then a napkin… and so on and so on. Washington, D.C. has its own version called: If You Give a Company a Handout.Exhibit A is the federal government’s coddling of the biofuels industry. The government has propped up the biofuels market, primarily corn ethanol, through targeted tax credits, government-backed loan guarantees and an outright mandate that forces ethanol into our gas...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is suspending her presidential campaign, a source familiar with the decision tells NBC News, a bitter blow for a senator who was long seen by prominent Democrats as headed for the White House. The decision ends a frantic year of campaigning for a candidate who branded herself as a progressive fighter from humble beginnings who was ready to take on a broken and corrupt system.

Fighting broke out in Turkey's parliament after an MP criticised President Erdogan over the country's military intervention in Syria. Engin Ozkoc, an opposition lawmaker, accused the president of disrespecting soldiers. He also said it was irresponsible to send troops into war without air support. President Erdogan has been equally scathing of the opposition, accusing them of "treachery". Turkey is providing military support to rebels in Syria. But more than 50 Turkish troops have been killed in the last month, fueling political tensions.

Two American professors, Barrett Taylor and Brendan Cantwell, co-authored a piece with University of North Texas undergraduate students Kimberly Watts and Olivia Wood, arguing that “white resentment” is behind the decrease in public trust in higher education and overall funding drawbacks.

The Trump administration has rolled back a Food And Drug Administration rule instituted by President Barack Obama that has stalled coronavirus testing at the state level. The rule in question previously required state-run laboratories to only run medical tests pre-approved by the F.D.A.

Starbucks announced Wednesday that it will impose a temporary moratorium on the use of reusable personal mugs in its stores amid fears over the coronavirus outbreak. The change is part of “a series of precautionary steps in response to this emerging public health impact,” Rossann Williams, executive vice president and president, U.S. company-operated business and Canada, said in an open letter Wednesday. "Our focus remains on two key priorities: Caring for the health and well-being of our partners and customers and playing a constructive role in supporting local health officials and government leaders as they work to contain the virus,"...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrat Steve Bullock, the Montana governor who has insisted he won’t run for the Senate, is poised to do just that, according to two people familiar with his plans. Bullock has long been a Democratic favorite and has been heavily wooed to take on Republican Sen. Steve Daines. Democrats are straining to win back the Senate and they see a Bullock matchup with Daines as key to that strategy. Daines is increasingly allied with President Donald Trump and got a shoutout from the president Wednesday. Bullock, who made an unsuccessful run in the crowded Democratic presidential primary,...

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump on Thursday said he would withhold money from so-called sanctuary jurisdictions after a U.S. court ruled that his administration could block federal law enforcement funds to states and cities that do not cooperate with federal immigration authorities. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan granted the move on Feb. 26, but three other federal appeals courts have agreed to uphold an injunction against the withholding of such funds, setting up a possible appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. “As per recent Federal Court ruling, the Federal Government will be withholding funds from Sanctuary...

Earlier this week, the Washington Post reported that the coronavirus may have spread undetected for weeks in Washington State, where the first two virus-related deaths in the U.S. occurred. According to the Post, genetic-sequencing studies of samples from two Seattle-area patients—one from a person who had traveled to China in mid-January, the other from a high school student in the same county, with no known exposure to the virus—suggested a close relationship between the infections. These data led investigators to hypothesize that the coronavirus had been circulating in the state for six weeks. In King County, a long-term care facility...

Hundreds of years before Christopher Columbus and his three ships arrived in the New World, a Native American civilization conquered neighboring tribes and expanded its political and cultural influence across what is now the central and southern United States.Historians believe its great metropolis and ceremonial complex at Cahokia in present-day Illinois was, in the 12th century, comparable in size to contemporaneous London. The Mississippians, as they are called, were not the only indigenous American people to conquer others’ land — the Aztecs, Incans, Mayans, and Mohawks did much the same, all before Europeans arrived.Washington Post-contributing David Moscrop, however, thinks...

President Trump on Thursday said his administration will begin withholding funding from self-described sanctuary cities after a federal court ruled last week that it could do so. "As per recent Federal Court ruling, the Federal Government will be withholding funds from Sanctuary Cities," Trump tweeted. "They should change their status and go non-Sanctuary. Do not protect criminals!" The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled on Feb. 26 that the Department of Justice (DOJ) could withhold funding from cities and states that refuse to cooperate with the Trump administration's crackdown on undocumented immigrants. The three-judge panel found Congress had...

True to form, President Donald Trump signaled confidence in his remarks addressing the threat of the coronavirus. He was correct when he mentioned that the average American is not at risk of imminent harm from the virus. And he correctly pointed out that far more people die annually from the common flu than have been killed thus far by the coronavirus. In urging calm, Trump also signaled that he views the virus as a potential catalyst for a strategic restructuring of America's trade relationship with China, and returning manufacturing jobs to the U.S. It has been a foregone conclusion among...

On March 8, 1971, a group of eight Vietnam War protestors broke into a Federal Bureau of Investigation field office in Media, Pennsylvania and stole hundreds of government documents. The burglars were never caught but several are now stepping forward and claiming responsibility for the break in. The stolen memos, reports and internal correspondence they found provided the first tangible evidence that J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI was systematically targeting and harassing hundreds of American citizens ---SNIP--- In response to the exposure of COINTELPRO and other revelations, the Senate formed the so-called Church Committee, and Congress later issued reforms to limit...

DETROIT – Former United Auto Workers President Gary Jones was charged with embezzlement and defrauding the U.S. government as part of a multiyear corruption probe into one of America’s most prominent unions, according to the documents unsealed Thursday. The documents suggests more charges of union officials could follow as federal prosecutors identified four other unnamed co-conspirators in the scheme that allegedly included embezzling more than $1 million of union funds. Jones resigned from leading the union effective Nov. 20 — the same day the UAW International Executive Board started the process under the union’s constitution to remove him from office....

Beloved "Jeopardy!" host Alex Trebek shared an emotional health update Wednesday, just one year after he began treatment for pancreatic cancer. Trebek released a video on Twitter to celebrate the news he received from his oncologist."Hi everyone. If you've got a minute I'd like to bring you up to date on my health situation. The one-year survival rate for stage 4 pancreatic cancer patients is 18 percent. I'm very happy to report I have just reached that marker," Trebek told his supporters while on the set of the "Jeopardy!" studio.The game show host who has been with "Jeopardy!" for 35...

When Pete Buttigieg dropped out the Democratic primary on Sunday, he didn't immediately make any endorsement.While being interviewed on KHOU 11 News in Houston, Texas, on Monday, Biden revealed he'd discussed giving Buttigieg a position in his administration. "I did speak to Pete Buttigieg a couple of days ago to encouraged him to stay engaged because he has enormous talent and I indicated to him that if I became the nominee I'd be coming to ask him to be a part of an administration to be engaged in moving things forward," Biden said. Just finished 1 on 1 interview...

Eleven days and an eternity in political time ago, I offered some advice for Democrats seeking to stop Bernie Sanders, drawn from the failed experience of #NeverTrump. Losing candidates need to drop out, I suggested, unconventional alliances need to be considered and hanging around hoping for a brokered convention is a fool’s game if you’re ceding a plurality of delegates to the insurgent candidate you want to stop. The tone of my column, like the evidence of the polls, suggested that the stop-Sanders effort would meet the same fate as the stop-Trump movement and that the Vermont socialist would complete...

Now that the primary circus has left town you’d think that the candidates would be done with California, wouldn’t you? For the most part, they are, but Joe Biden was out in Los Angeles yesterday on some very important business. Hollywood’s glitterati were eager to open up their wallets and shower money on the new frontrunner and Uncle Joe couldn’t disappoint them. Former Paramount Pictures honcho Sherry Lansing had arranged a fundraiser for Joe at her mansion prior to Tuesday’s voting, but she’d been having trouble filling the seats. But once the polls had closed and Biden had been...

A simple “I regret my poor decision to threaten two Supreme Court justices” would have worked fine here, but eh. NEW stmt from Schumer spox: “For Justice Roberts to follow the right wing’s deliberate misinterpretation of what Sen Schumer said, while remaining silent when Pres Trump attacked Justices Sotomayor & Ginsberg last week, shows Justice Roberts does not just call balls and strikes.” pic.twitter.com/9908ZAeNkz— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) March 4, 2020 Let’s go in order. Schumer’s comments earlier weren’t a reference to “the political price Senate Republicans will pay” for confirming Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. It’s insulting to our collective...