Free Republic

The trial brings to life Iran's use of diplomats for terrorist purposes. In 2018, an Iranian diplomat left his post in Austria, returned to Iran, and flew a bomb back to Europe. After turning it over to two Iranian operatives in Luxembourg via Germany, he returned to Austria. As part of a coordinated intelligence operation between French, German, and Belgian services, the authorities ended up thwarting the plot by stopping these two Iranian operatives before reaching their destination, an Iranian opposition rally held in a Paris suburb. Their main target was the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Thursday there were "no concerns" about his health, after bandages and what appeared to be bruises on his hands drew widespread attention this week. McConnell, 78, batted down questions from reporters in the Capitol about if he had health concerns, which would come as he is running for a seventh term. When a reporter noted that there had been talk about the GOP leader's hands and asked if there was anything people should know, McConnell replied: "Of course not." Approached by a second reporter who asked if he was OK, McConnell said there...

The Washington Post posted an article to Twitter on Wednesday claiming that a “Volunteer in Oxford coronavirus vaccine trial dies.” While the Twitter caption for the article is jarring and reads as a major cause for concern, once clicked on, the full headline reveals that this abbreviated spin is misleading. “Volunteer in Oxford coronavirus vaccine trial dies, reportedly did not receive experimental vaccine,” the headline on the WaPo website reads. The article goes on to note that the volunteer referred to in the tweet was reportedly in a control group in the trial that did not receive the vaccine. The...

Could worker reclassification laws affect the 2020 election? With Americans turning to independent contract work (or “gig work”) in wake of COVID-19, this issue could motivate people to vote. Freelancers across the nation worry the Biden-Harris ticket—should they prevail and get backing from a Democrat-led Senate—would displace 59 million Americans from the workforce.Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) openly support the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO Act). The former vice president tweeted and doubled down support for it on his campaign website, while his running mate signed onto the Senate version as a co-sponsor. But wait, it gets better! Bernie Sanders has expressed interest in being Biden’s...

The left is coming for the churches. What do Santiago, Chile and Portland, Oregon have in common? They didn't for have anything in common a long time until the radical left and the anarchists started burning everything that they could away with.

In 2016, Adnan al-Afiyuni, left, led prayers as President Bashar al-Assad made a rare public appearance to celebrate the Eid al-Adha holiday in Daraya outside Damascus [File: SANA] A prominent Syrian Muslim leader in charge of the Damascus region was killed on Thursday when a bomb planted in his car exploded outside the capital, state news agency SANA said. Adnan al-Afiyuni, the Sunni Muslim mufti for Damascus province, was considered to be close to President Bashar al-Assad who hails from the Alawite offshoot of Shia Islam. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) war monitor said the 66-year-old Muslim scholar...

Five Bahai women in Mashhad, northeastern Iran, were sentenced to a total of five years of prison by the Revolutionary Court. On October 19 the 3rd Branch of the Mashhad Revolutionary Court sentenced Nika Pakzadan, Faraneh Daneshgari, Sanaz Eshaghi, Nekisa Hajipour, and Naghmeh Zabihian to one year of prison each for “spreading propaganda against the state by being Bahai”. According to the Human Rights News Agency, the Bahai women were first detained in Mashhad on November 15, 2015 by security forces. On the same day, 11 other Bahai citizens were detained in Tehran and Isfahan, central Iran. An informed source...

Oh là là. A French bakery on the South Shore has lost its appeal of a case where it fired a woman, in part, for making a sexual innuendo about a co-worker. Lindsay Hiltz worked for Boulangerie La Vendéene, a quaint roadside bakery in Blockhouse, from November 2018 until she was terminated July 25, 2019. She filed a complaint with the province’s division of labour standards “seeking pay in lieu of notice as well as pay for unpaid work.” This past May, the division’s director ordered the bakery to pay Hiltz $405.60 -- a week’s pay plus some vacation pay....

Pretty amazing how much China's name turns up whenever there is some kind of Big Tech censorship. China's desire for global dominance is no secret. Since its entrance into the World Trade Organization in 1991 at the urging of Bill Clinton and Joe Biden, Americans have been aware of China's economic and military rise to power. The election of President Trump and his Make America Great Again campaign slowed the inroads they were making and highlighted our Congress' inability or unwillingness to protect American interests for the last few decades. As reported by a former Facebook insider to the New...

Step one, help yourself to tasty assets from the public trough. Step two, figure out how to keep them. The best investment in Ukrainian history may be about to become even better—Burisma’s recruiting of Hunter Biden to its board. After a government minister allegedly awards himself lucrative gas rights, the Ukrainian people overthrow a regime famous for its corruption. In the normal course of events, a successor regime would seek to establish its bona fides by clawing back the disputed gas rights, except for one thing: The new government, under military threat from Russia, is desperately dependent on a U.S....

North Korea has warned its citizens to stay indoors over fears that "yellow dust" which blows in from China could bring coronavirus with it. The streets of the capital Pyongyang were reported to be virtually empty on Thursday following the warning. The secretive state claims to be coronavirus-free but has been on high alert since January with strict border closures and restrictions on movement. There is no known link between the seasonal dust clouds and Covid-19. However, they are not the only country to suggest a link. The BBC's Disinformation Team notes Turkmenistan also alleged virus-laden dust was the reason...

President Trump will hold a rally in Pensacola, Florida on Friday. Trump’s campaign announced the president will deliver remarks at a “Make America Great Again Victory Rally,” at ST Aerospace 1 Merlion Way in Pensacola on Oct. 23 at 7 p.m. CT. The event will feature remarks from the president and other Republican candidates. The complete lineup has not been announced. The event is general admission and you can register for tickets here. Doors will open at 4 p.m.

Winning is not enough for the left. Leftists demand penalization for the opposition. Trump voters beware: your ballot could get you jailed after January 20, 2021. If Joe Biden wins the presidency, and takes the oath of office with one hand on Abraham Lincoln's Bible (hopefully not Das Kapital or Kendi's How to Be an Antiracist), open season may be declared on any American morally obtuse enough to believe that 45 deserved four more years. "Trump must be defeated ... and his enablers, and his supporters ... must be prosecuted and convicted and removed from our society," ranted the always...

Have we ever witnessed a stranger anomaly in modern presidential politics than the craven contempt the Biden campaign, the media and social media have shown for the American electorate in their disgraceful conspiracy to hide Joe Biden? What bona fide presidential candidate would arrogantly hide in his basement during the heat of a campaign, especially in the last few weeks of an ever-tightening one? If the liberal media weren't providing Biden cover, he couldn't get away with this. If they were even raising questions about his intentional invisibility, this campaign would look far different, and far less surreal. As President...

The petrochemical industry produces more than 88 million tons of polyethylene, making it the most common plastic in the world. Scientists have found a new way to upcycle it, according to a study published in Science on Thursday. It could help deal with the growing plastic pollution crisis. Polyethylene comes in several different forms and is used in everything from plastic bags and food packaging to electrical insulation and industrial piping. Since it’s so common and our recycling system is so broken, we end up throwing away a shitload of the stuff. It can end up in landfills or the...

President Trump challenged Joe Biden in the first debate to name one police endorsement he’d received. Mr. Biden couldn’t—virtually all police organizations have endorsed Mr. Trump. Police groups are endorsing Republicans at every level, many for the first time and by overwhelming votes. The nation’s largest police organization, with 355,000 members, is the Fraternal Order of Police. Patrick Yoes, the national group’s president, tells me every officer in the FOP has a vote. The process starts with officers voting at 2,100 local lodges, each of which votes at the state level. Then, at the national level, the states each cast...

Career federal employees whose work involves making policy would no longer be hired under competitive procedures and would lose their civil service protections from being fired as well as eligibility to be represented by a union, under an executive order that President Donald Trump issued Wednesday. The order would shift those employees from what is called the "competitive service"-covering the bulk of the 2.1 million executive branch employees-into the "excepted service," which in general applies to political appointees below the level requiring Senate confirmation. "This is the most profound undermining of the civil service in our lifetimes," American Federation of...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasted Republican lawmakers for calling female legislators by nicknames after President Trump twice referred to her as “AOC” in Thursday night’s debate.

President Donald Trump knows the playbook, in part, because he basically wrote it: A flurry of stories, a stunt designed to rattle his opponent and an attempt to define his opponent based on family connections and dark allegations. Trump stepped into the relatively calm conversation at Thursday night's presidential debate with a series of attacks on Joe Biden and his family, in what may be seen as a last-ditch attempt to turn around a campaign that's shaping up as a referendum on Trump's presidency. "I don't make money from China, you do. I don't make money from Ukraine, you do,"...

Rand's tweets from last night: @RandPaulI don’t know why @JoeBiden thinks he can continue to lie about this. He wants to ban fracking and end all fossil fuels like coal too. Kentucky is watching, and so are many other states. #Debate2020 @RandPaulHello 911 I’d like to report a murder: @realDonaldTrump is absolutely killing @JoeBiden on lockdowns, schools and the petty tyrants trying to ruin our economy and harm our children. @RandPaulRight now @realDonaldTrump going STRONG on lockdowns and the damage being done. This is what he needs to keep saying. VP Biden is auditioning for petty tyrant in Chief. NO!!...