Free Republic

WASHINGTON — After two decades of prioritizing counterterrorism, U.S. intelligence agencies are failing to sufficiently understand and counter the national security threat posed by China, the House Intelligence Committee concludes in a new report issued Wednesday. The report, based on hundreds of hours of interviews with intelligence officers and thousands of analytic assessments, finds that the intelligence community must change how it does business — not only to improve its insights into China, but also to better address "the growing importance of interlocking non-military transnational threats, such as global health, economic security, and climate change." The report recommends that spy...

First of 13 episodes of an ITV miniseries on the life of Britain's King Edward VII who lead the life of a playboy prince during his long wait for the throne only to become a well respected monarch following the death of his mother Queen Victoria. First broadcast in 1975 both Anne Crosby (Queen Victoria) and Timothy West in the title role garnered much critical acclaim.

Washington, D.C. — The Commodity Futures Trading Commission today announced the filing of a civil enforcement action in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York charging five entities and three individuals that own and operate the BitMEX trading platform with operating an unregistered trading platform and violating multiple CFTC regulations, including failing to implement required anti-money laundering procedures. This case is brought in connection with the Division of Enforcement’s Digital Asset and Bank Secrecy Act Task Forces. Among those charged are company owners Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo, and Samuel Reed, who operate BitMEX’s platform through a...

Yamiche Alcindor @Yamiche John Roberts of Fox News on getting push back for asking the WH to denounce white supremacy: "For all of you on Twitter who are hammering me for asking that Q, I don't care because it is a Q that needs to be asked. ... Stop deflecting. Stop blaming the media. I'm tired of it."

Russia's women's powerlifting and bench press world champion Anna Turaeva has told of her humiliation at being asked to prove she is a woman by airline employees while boarding an internal Russian flight recently. Turaeva is a six-time world champion in powerlifting, as well as a ten-time European champion and has held the world, European and Eurasian records in her discipline. She is also a bench press champion and record holder. The stocky, skin-headed Turaeva was flying from St. Petersburg in the very north west of Russia, to the southern town of Krasnodar through Moscow when she experienced an incident...

Who Are the Proud Boys? In the first presidential debate, Donald Trump was asked to denounce some fellow Americans. Joe Biden plucked a talking point from the reaches of his brain, and singled out the Proud Boys as an example of a right-wing hate group he’d demand Trump condemn on TV. Trump shrugged, and the next day admitted he knew little about the group. What if on this, as on so many other issues, Biden wasn’t telling the truth? What if he’s just trying to divert attention from Antifa and Black Lives Matter, whose riots Kamala Harris was supporting till...

If you could retire w/in the US where would it be a why?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has officially announced what everyone suspected would happen. The cruise industry in the United States remains under a No Sail Order through October 31, the CDC said in a somewhat controversial statement. Insiders in The White House reported that Dr. Robert Redfield was told in no uncertain terms that the No Sail Order would not be extended until February. A compromise was reached with the White House for a one-month extension. As the New York Times reported previously, President Trump does not want to upset a swing state like Florida. Florida depends...

Recent Harris Poll research revealed that two-thirds of consumers describe every step of acquiring health care as difficult. Half of respondents even avoid care because of this complicated bureaucracy, likely making their ailments worse and costlier in the long term. Doctors have been sounding the alarm on this problem for years. Thankfully, the White House is listening to physicians who are actually practicing—and we practitioners are saying patients need more price transparency, less reliance on insurance, and less government interference.This would result in lower cost, increased access, and higher quality. You can have only two of these in government-controlled health care....

After months of avoiding direct contact with voters because of the pandemic, Joe Biden’s campaign is about to launch in-person canvassing efforts across several battleground states. The decision comes amid growing concern from Democratic officials on the ground in key states who fear that Biden has been giving a significant advantage to President Donald Trump and his Republican allies, who have been aggressively courting voters at their doorsteps for months. The reversal also reflects a sense of rising urgency as polls tighten in key states just a month before Election Day.

Roger Stone warns President Trump the debates are rigged and how to overcome the Dems' attempted coup.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday tried to walk back his refusal to outright condemn a far right fascist group during his debate with Democrat Joe Biden, but the inflammatory moment was far from the first time the president has failed to denounce white supremacists or has advanced racist ideas. Trump’s initial refusal to criticize the Proud Boys — instead saying the group should “stand back and stand by” — drew fierce blowback before he altered his message in a day-later effort to quell the firestorm. “I don’t know who Proud Boys are. But whoever they are they have to stand...

While there are no guarantees that the second debate won't be the dumpster fire that was the first, Scully's famously calm demeanor could make things easier. Here's what to know about him. Scully explained his career history and how he got involved in the world of politics—and it has a lot to do with Biden. "You know, it was pretty traditional," he said. "I came to school in Washington, D.C., went to American University and had a couple of internships. I worked for Joe Biden, Senator from Delaware at the time, as an intern, so I had my first chance...

Political Power Ann Hornaday wants readers to believe in a fabricated dichotomy in which well-meaning liberals focus on culture to change hearts and minds while conniving conservatives focus on politics. “A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier,” said Baltimore satirist H.L. Mencken. As a daily reader and subscriber to the Washington Post, I sometimes fear its residual effect on my intellect. Such was the case reading WaPo film critic Ann Hornaday’s Sept. 21 column, in which she claims the left’s aggressive cultural strategy hasn’t resulted in significant political victories.The left, says Hornaday,...

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., led a group of Democrats to formally call for a delay in the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett until after the presidential inauguration, saying the process is too rushed to properly vet President Trump's pick. Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, wrote Wednesday to Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the chairman of the committee, to challenge the Oct. 12 date he set for Barrett's confirmation hearing. “The timeline for consideration of Judge Barrett’s nomination is incompatible with the Senate’s constitutional role," Feinstein wrote. "We again urge you to delay consideration of this...

No one has yet managed to travel through time – at least to our knowledge – but the question of whether or not such a feat would be theoretically possible continues to fascinate scientists. As movies such as The Terminator, Donnie Darko, Back to the Future and many others show, moving around in time creates a lot of problems for the fundamental rules of the Universe: if you go back in time and stop your parents from meeting, for instance, how can you possibly exist in order to go back in time in the first place? It's a monumental head-scratcher...

State. Rep. Vernon Jones, the black Georgia Democrat who’s become a vocal Trump supporter, has inspired at least one other Democratic state lawmaker to publicly support the president’s re-election. On Tuesday, Bernadine Kennedy Kent, a black state representative from Ohio, said she was following in his footsteps. “From my perspective as a lawmaker who was elected for the first time in 2016, following a lifetime as an educator and child advocate, I have admired President Trump’s dedication to law and order and his respect for our Constitution. His strong leadership and willingness to fight for educational and economic empowerment for...

(CNN)Jimmy Carter, the son of a Georgia peanut farmer who'd go on to be America's 39th president, turns 96 today. He's the oldest living former US president -- and he's outlived every other occupant of the Oval Office. At 96, the Nobel Peace Prize winner remains the longest-living president in US history, surpassing George H. W. Bush, who died in 2018 at 94. Carter's kept busy since his last birthday. He was hospitalized for much of the latter half of 2019 to recover from brain surgery, infections and two falls. His health woes forced him to stop teaching Sunday school...

How “America First” Broke the Establishment Curse Trump’s instincts point the way out of Biden-style decline. Donald Trump summed up his foreign policy at a September 10 press conference: a lot of people thought that my natural instinct is war; no, my natural instinct is actually peace. When we were on the debate stage, people used to say, “Will it be one week or two weeks before President Trump gets into a war?” But that’s not—I did rebuild our military. We have a military that — two and a half trillion dollars—new jets and rockets and tanks and ships and...

It seems that teachers and students are being set up to fail. This fall, many public schools are responding to COVID-19 by offering online learning. In this pandemic era, we’ve been discouraged from taking potentially life-saving medications without “gold standard” studies supporting their use, yet it seems parents are now being told to place their children in a brand-new learning environment with no study of any kind supporting its use.In my northern Virginia school district of Loudoun County, online learning for most students is five days per week. The typical daily schedule includes three hours of whole-class instruction, one hour...