Free Republic

There’s still no winner in New York’s 22nd Congressional district, where Republican Claudia Tenney and Democratic Incumbent Anthony Brindisi are vying for the last undecided House seat. This week, county Boards of Elections are recounting some of the race’s ballots. The partial canvasses were ordered by an Oswego County Supreme Court justice after the Boards’ clerical errors made judicial review of hundreds of ballots challenged by the candidates impossible. It’s unclear just how many hundreds of challenge ballots there are, but with only 12 votes separating the candidates, the court’s rulings on them might determine the race’s outcome.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WPDE) — A South Carolina representative wants all employees at the Office of the State Treasurer to answer the phone with the statement "Black Lives Matter." Rep. Chris Hart, D-S.C., pre-filed the bill on Dec. 16. "In the bill he wrote, "This joint resolution takes effect upon approval of the Governor and expires when the Treasurer acknowledges the inappropriateness of the comments he made on Facebook in June 2020 during the Black Lives Matter protest regarding being a second-class citizen." ABC15 sister station WACH in Columbia, South Carolina reported in June that Treasurer Curtis Loftis posted comments on...

Abraham Lincoln didn’t do enough for black lives, according to militant proponents of the woke revolution. In October, the San Francisco Unified School District School Names Advisory Committee suggested a list of school names to be replaced in the city. On that list was a school named after Lincoln, the Great Emancipator. In just a few years, the discussion about history and monuments has gone from whether we should keep Confederate monuments to erasing the president who orchestrated the Confederacy’s destruction. Regarding Lincoln, it seems the woke and John Wilkes Booth are now in alignment.

Rep. Ilhan Omar has accused President Donald Trump of being the reason why her father died of Covid-19 due to his "criminal neglect. "Omar told MSNBC:"My father and over 300,000 people have lost their lives because of dangerous criminal neglect by Trump and his administration."

Happy 85th Birthday to the master of all chefs, Jacques Pepin. Here he makes boning and trussing a chicken look easier than opening a box of mac & cheese

The Cook County Board voted Thursday to recognize Juneteenth as an official paid holiday for county government employees starting next year, following a year marked by racial justice protests over high-profile killings of Black people. In 2021, Juneteenth will be designated as one of 14 government holidays granted to all Cook County workers, making it the country’s largest populated county to grant a paid day off to celebrate both Black Americans’ freedom from slavery and their contributions to the nation. Commissioners voted unanimously in favor of the measure, which outlines the centuries of mistreatment America has dealt on Black people....

AGA leaders call for the troops to keep Trump in office A growing call to invoke the Insurrection Act shows how hard-edged MAGA ideology has become in the wake of Trump’s election loss. By TINA NGUYEN 12/18/2020 04:30 AM EST An 1807 law invoked only in the most violent circumstances is now a rallying cry for the MAGA-ites most committed to the fantasy that Donald Trump will never leave office. The law, the Insurrection Act, allows the president to deploy troops to suppress domestic uprisings — not to overturn elections. But that hasn’t stopped the act from becoming a buzzword...

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn says President Donald Trump has options to make sure the integrity of the 2020 election remains intact, including seizing voting machines around the country and using military capabilities to rerun elections in swing states. ''I don’t know if he’s going to take any of these options. The president has to plan for every eventuality because we cannot allow this election and the integrity of our election to go the way it is,'' Flynn said Thursday on Newsmax TV’s ''Greg Kelly Reports.'' ''This is just totally unsatisfactory. There’s no way in the world we’re going...

When Disney announced 52 upcoming films and series, Hollywood press, movie fans, and even Wall Street ate up the hype. Here’s an overview of the big takeaways. In recent days, trading on Disney’s stock hit record highs, a short-term indicator the company succeeded with their much-hyped presentation of upcoming films and shows. But the long-term outcome is a more complex story. After all, over the past year, Disney laid off more than 30,000 employees (mostly related to still-closed theme parks) and streaming video platforms have not yet proven the profit potential of theatrical releases. Over a four-hour unveiling that resembled...

ABC’s left-wing late-night host Jimmy Kimmel trashed Vice President Mike Pence over his decision to receive the Pfizer vaccine for the coronavirus, arguing that Pence’s past skepticism over a second wave makes him unworthy of receiving the vaccine. “Speaking of cold, white stuff, Mike Pence is expected to get his first of two Pfizer shots tomorrow,” Jimmy Kimmel said his opening monologue on Thursday, tasing aim at Pence and his wife Karen’s decision to take the vaccine to prove it is safe. “I guess the thinking is, if it’s good enough for America’s First Karen, it should be good enough...

A group of British parliamentarians has asked to speak with Julian Assange ahead of a decision expected soon in the jailed WikiLeaks founder’s extradition case, the leader of the effort announced Thursday. Richard Burgon, a member of the British Labour Party, released a letter addressed to the head of the U.K. Ministry of Justice requesting a video meeting with Mr. Assange before the decision set for Jan 4. Sixteen other parliamentarians signed the letter, including former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott, his former shadow home secretary, as well as more than a dozen colleagues from across parties.

COLUMBIA — Richland County Council Vice Chairwoman Dahli Myers has been indicted on public corruption charges that allege she used her government credit card to cover personal trips to Greece, Georgia, Illinois, Detroit and Nashville, among other inappropriate expenses. The 24-count indictment, issued by the state grand jury late Thursday, charges Myers with using public money for personal spending sprees at Sam’s Club, Barnes and Noble, Verizon and Staples. The Hopkins resident, who was first elected in 2016, had taxpayers foot bills for premium chocolates, repairs to her personal cell phone and gifts for friends, according to the 24-page filing....

Remembering the victims of the most heinous of racial crimes. In the era of Black Lives Matter when, as the indefatigable Colin Flaherty terms it, “the greatest lie of our generation”—the Big Lie that black people “are relentless victims of relentless white racism, everywhere, always, that explains everything”—has reached a fever-pitch, we would be well-served to revisit an event that BLM and its apologists would undoubtedly prefer we not talk about. The event is actually not just a crime, but a series of crimes so grisly, so literally monstrous, that it has come to be called, “the Wichita Massacre,” or...

Scientists with the university's National Seismological Center said the small quakes - including one stronger shake of magnitude 6 - were detected in the Bransfield Strait, a 60-mile wide (96-km) ocean channel between the South Shetland Islands and the Antarctic Peninsula. Several tectonic plates and microplates meet near the strait, leading to frequent rumbling, but the past three months have been unusual, according to the center. "Most of the seismicity is concentrated at the beginning of the sequence, mainly during the month of September, with more than a thousand earthquakes a day," the center said. ... "It's a 20-fold increase...

England’s High Court has struck a rare victory for free speech, overturning the conviction of a Twitter user who called a transgender person a man and ruling that people have a right to offend others online. Mother of two Kate Scottow had been convicted under a section of the Communications Act which makes “persistently making use of a public electronic communications network to cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to another” a crime following an argument with lawyer and trans activist Stephanie Hayden, who is legally a woman according to a gender certificate obtained in 2017. District judge Margaret Dodds...

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro issued a blistering 36-page report Thursday, in which he asserted that voter irregularities and election fraud have been found in “more than sufficient” quantities to swing the election to President Donald Trump. The Navarro report was titled “The Immaculate Deception: Six Key Dimensions of Election Irregularities,” and it “assesses the fairness and integrity of the 2020 Presidential Election by examining six dimensions of alleged election irregularities across six key battleground states.” “The observed patterns of election irregularities are so consistent across the six battleground states that they suggest a coordinated strategy to, if not...

A hand recount on Wednesday confirmed that a Michigan county falsely reported on election night a win for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. The recount in Antrim County found 9,759 votes for President Donald Trump, versus 5,959 for Biden. On Nov. 3, county officials said Biden received over 3,000 more votes than Trump. Two days later, they said Trump won by about 2,500 votes. A third change took place on Nov. 21, with Trump being certified the winner by nearly 4,000 votes.

Herewith, a clarifying thought experiment: In 2019, one hundred 85 year old men with three co-morbid conditions stood on a football field and did the hula hoop. Within the next three months, 12 of them died. In 2020, one hundred 85 year old men with three co-morbid conditions were diagnosed with covid. Within the next three months, 12 of them died. In 2021, one hundred 85 year old men with three co-morbid conditions were given the covid vaccine. Within the next three months, 12 of them died. How many died from Hula Hoops? Covid? The Covid Vaccine?

Community members in California are upset after their local city council called the “thin blue line” flag a racist symbol.

At the risk of sounding like a small child being scolded by its mother for fighting, it was Germany who started it – and I am not talking about WWI. Or even WWII, though I will always hold a deep-seated grudge against the country for both of those events. I am talking about the complete shuttering of Europe for Christmas. One day Merkel was on German TV screens wringing her hands and imploring her people to be more cautious. (I wondered what was going on; Merkel does not do emotion.) The next day she reverted to type and threw Germany...