Free Republic

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) may use the Senate’s Unanimous Consent rule this week to pass his redrafted S.386 “country caps” bill, which rewards Indian graduates who take jobs from U.S. graduates, say a variety of lobbyists and advocates. Lee’s campaign is being quietly pushed by technology companies, from behind the cover of a noisy group of Indian workers who were imported into the United States by U.S. and Indian managers at many mainstream U.S. companies. The group, dubbed Immigration Voice, is loudly blaming Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) for blocking Lee’s bill, partly to obscure GOP senators’ concerns and the growing...

BUCHAREST – The Press office of the Romanian Patriarchate published a communiqué, in the context of extensive media coverage of the coronavirus (Covid – 19) and following requests from some state institutions that the Church should take measures to prevent the spread of the virus and to reduce the population’s fear of this phenomenon. “Believers who are afraid of virus transmission may temporarily refrain from kissing the holy icons in the churches. They can exceptionally ask the priest to use their own spoon for the Holy Communion,” says the announcement by the Church while adding that “these are exceptional measures...

McCoy Tyner, one of the most distinctive and influential jazz pianists of the past 60 years who became best known for his work with John Coltrane’s legendary 1960s quartet, died at age 81.

A Chilean island resident was arrested on March 1 after his truck... crashed into one of the stone figures and badly damaged both it and the ahu, or platform, it was perched on. Local authorities believe that the accident was caused by brake failure that caused his truck to slide downhill. On the island, which is known as Hanga Roa by its native Rapa Nui people, the enormous stone heads called moai have long been a source of intrigue and wonder. In 2019, Jo Anne Van Tilburg, Director of the Easter Island Statue Project, told CNN Travel that bad tourist...

LAKE COUNTY, Fla. — A Florida woman was arrested after filing nearly 120 false voter registration forms, investigators said. The Lake County Sheriff’s Office arrested Cheryl Hall for voter registration fraud Thursday. Officials announced Wednesday that 119 false voter registration applications had been filed. Most of the application issues were related to party affiliation changes. Officials said they aren’t sure if the fraud was the result of just one person or if more people are involved. “Voters begin calling here last week, telling us that they had begun receiving new voter information cards from our office indicating that (they had...

At long last, on Thursday, Elizabeth Warren withdrew from the Democrat primary. Her withdrawal creates clarity because Bernie the Red and Bad Touch Biden are the last candidates standing. (And no, nobody takes Tulsi seriously as a potential candidate.) Thanks to Biden’s momentum on Super Tuesday, political watchers assume that the Democrat establishment successfully squashed Bernie’s candidacy and that it will be smooth sailing for Biden. Things may not be that simple, though.

The question that had come so close to fading into irrelevance is back: Will I ever see a woman elected president? As Senator Elizabeth Warren became the fifth woman to exit the 2020 presidential race, women are coming to terms with the fact that, for the 244th straight year, the person America chooses to lead it in November will be a man. For Democrats, the future is fraught as the race builds towards a showdown between former vice president Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders, which will then give way to a messy battle between the eventual nominee and President...

Continuation of Thread No 10 here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3821921/posts

eBay is escalating its fight against online price gouging during the coronavirus outbreak with a new outright ban on all sales of face masks, hand sanitizer, and disinfectant wipes. The new policy, outlined in a notice to sellers posted Friday, applies both to new listings and existing ones. eBay says it is in the process of removing current listings for these items as well as listings that mention the coronavirus, COVID-19 (the illness it causes), and other popular variations of the phrases like 2019nCoV.Since the coronavirus outbreak began spreading worldwide in late January, prices for health items that could help...

Biblical teaching on sexuality “is not a matter of salvation” according to a former Assemblies of God (AoG) pastor who led his congregation out of the 1.8 million member Pentecostal denomination in February after a change of policy in his local church on same-sex practices. Lead Pastor Dan Matlock of Eikon Church in Kyle, Texas is not the first AoG pastor to depart from orthodox teaching on human sexuality and marriage. A small contingent of primarily young left-leaning ministers has been steadily removed from the ministerial roster, most notably the former Paul Alexander, now April, who led the Society for...

RUSH: You know, some of the funniest stuff is happening out there right now. We have the media — Elizabeth Warren has quit. She’s not endorsed anybody. She’s bumped out. It’s fascinating, too, because if you go back five months ago, six months ago, who was leading in the polls? Elizabeth Warren. It’s more evidence that you need to pay no attention to any of these polls that are a year out or even six months out, but certainly not a year out. She was leading everybody, and she was considered the head honcho, the head papoose, the head wigwam,...

EXCLUSIVE: President Trump’s re-election campaign filed a libel lawsuit against CNN on Friday for publishing “false and defamatory” statements about seeking Russia’s help in the 2020 election. "The complaint alleges CNN was aware of the falsity at the time it published them but did so for the intentional purpose of hurting the campaign while misleading its own readers in the process... the campaign filed this lawsuit against CNN and the preceding suits against The New York Times and The Washington Post to hold the publishers accountable for their reckless false reporting and also to establish the truth,” Senior Legal Adviser...

The Justice Department petitioned the Supreme Court on Friday to preserve the key program that solved last year’s border surge, after a lower court ruled it was illegal. Known formally as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), and more commonly called “Remain in Mexico,” the policy allows the U.S. to push migrants who entered from Mexico back across the border to wait for their immigration court dates. About 60,000 migrants had been subjected to MPP. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling last week that MPP was illegal, but stayed the order. On Wednesday, the court gave the...

This week changed everything in politics. Somehow, for a great number of Americans, it also changed nothing. Democrats have a clean ending in sight to a messy primary season, now that they've gotten a two-person race. But Sen. Elizabeth Warren dropping out and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard's failure to gain more than two delegates so far means this is functionally a two-man race – two older white men who have spent decades serving in Congress. "One of the hardest parts of this is all those pinky promises, and all those little girls who are going to have to wait four more...

President Donald Trump wants to see reforms to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) surveillance process before he endorses extending spying powers that are slated to expire in less than two weeks, according to one of the senators who met with Trump on the topic. Trump “made it exceedingly clear” that he won’t accept a straight reauthorization, said Sen. Rand Paul, (R-Ky.), who has led efforts to curtail the federal government’s ability to spy on Americans. “The president said he’s not signing without something happening,” Paul told reporters after the nearly 90-minute meeting with top lawmakers. “He pushed back very...

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) said on Capitol Hill Thursday that people should accept that American power comes from racism and that “our history is built on the oppression of black bodies.” “From slavery to Jim Crow to redlining to mass incarceration to voter suppression, racism is part of the foundation of American power,” Omar said at an panel discussion she hosted focused on “racial justice.” Omar began he remarks by quoting activist Angela Davis, who just happened to be among Time magazine’s 100 Women of the Year, published on Thursday. “In a racist society it is not enough to be...

Ruth Bader Ginsburg dismantled a controversial Louisiana abortion bill during an hour of arguments at the US Supreme Court this week, systematically striking down components of the law she previously opposed during a preliminary vote. The 86-year-old Supreme Court justice seemed to aggressively push back against demands from lawyers representing the Trump administration and state of Louisiana to approve the legislation during Wednesday’s arguments. “If the woman has a problem, it will be her local hospital that she will need to go to for the care, not something 30 miles from the clinic, which does not have a necessary relationship...

President Trump on Friday visited a Tennessee town devastated by a tornado to console victims, and pledged “whatever they need” in federal aid. In Cookeville, Mr. Trump stood amid the rubble of homes and sheared-off trees on a street where eight people were killed. A total of 18 people were killed in the Putnam County community when an EF-4 tornado packing winds of nearly 200 mph struck, leaving a path of destruction 50 miles long. “I love them very much, that’s why I’m here,” Mr. Trump said. “I was going to [visit] yesterday, but they asked me for one more...

A former British intelligence officer, who is now a director of a London private security-and-investigations firm, has been identified as the author of the dossier of unverified allegations about President-elect Donald Trump’s activities and connections in Russia, according to the Wall Street Journal. A Christopher Steele, a director of London-based private intelligence company, Orbis, purportedly prepared the dossier under contract to both Republican and Democratic adversaries of then-candidate Trump. The poor grammar and shaky spelling plus the author’s use of KGB-style intelligence reporting, however, do not fit the image of a high-end London security company run by highly connected former...

Going to have a 'last' conversation about Pres Trump and the 'Russian' conspiracy theories that a lefty friend still believes...