Free Republic

The year 2020 has been most unusual. It started with an unprecedented global pandemic caused by the CCP virus, and it’s concluding with the U.S. presidential election, which has captivated the world. On election night, on Nov. 3, an assortment of anomalies were observed, followed by a large number of specific allegations of election fraud. As the integrity of the election continued to be questioned and evidence continued to emerge, most mainstream media stuck to a one-sided narrative by calling the 2020 election the most secure in American history, and sought to silence opposing voices. The results of the 2020...

In the year everything went to sh*t, America's media was already positioned for action. Rather than riding athwart the troubled waters of America in 2020, offering a beacon of accurate, intrepidly researched reporting to help guide the country, the biggest names in media time and again chose instead to abuse their positions, advancing narrow political interests in lieu of valuable, fact-checked information. If there’s a theme to this year’s edition, it’s the mainstreaming of gaslighting. Time and again news consumers were told that what they were seeing meant the opposite of what it clearly did (see, for example, #s 15...

You were warned about this first in July. Now, it's happening. On Sunday, the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended that seniors ages 65 to 74 be moved toward the back of the line for the COVID-19 vaccine. The reason, says ACIP, is that "racial and ethnic minority groups (are) under-represented" in this age group. Put another way: Seniors are too white. Vaccines are already being administered to health workers and nursing home residents. The question is this: Who comes next? ACIP wants to push 87 million essential workers -- such as transit workers, supermarket employees and uniformed public...

You can’t trust them. You can't trust the Democrats. We all know this. If you give them an inch, they take a mile. We've all seen this movie. So, as the government was on the verge of a shutdown, they tried to get a little sneaky regarding Joe Biden's secretary of defense pick. They tried to sneak a waiver into the spending bill, whose text has, as of this post being written at 12:07 PM, not been released. It's a $900 billion-dollar spending bill that saw both sides duking it out over minutiae that should infuriate the American people. The...

I will open with Mitt Romney & Chris Christie as they've been shooting their mouths off recently..

(Paywall) China’s do-everything app, WeChat, has become one of the most powerful tools in Beijing’s arsenal for monitoring the public, censoring speech and punishing people who voice discontent with the government. Authorities are increasingly using the app from Tencent Holdings Ltd. to justify arrests or issue threats, say dissidents, consumers and security researchers. Snip Released in 2011, WeChat and its domestic sister app, Weixin, now have—Tencent says—more than 1.2 billion monthly active users in China, where its pervasiveness extends beyond any app used in the U.S. In addition to messaging, Chinese consumers use it to share photos, pay utility bills,...

If America were a company and not a country, we would have long ago dissolved the corporation, split the blanket, and gone our separate ways. What still holds this disputatious and divided people together? Consider. In announcing the $900 billion stimulus bill to deal with the pandemic, Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not mention that the gifts for her distressed countrymen and women at Christmas would have been twice as large had she taken President Trump's offer of $1.8 trillion in October. Why did the speaker slap that offer away? "The President only wants his name on a check to go...

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has plans to retire but not anytime soon. "Eventually I’ll retire, sure I will," he told Slate in a wide-ranging interview. "And it’s hard to know exactly when." Breyer's comment came after he was asked if he supports judicial term limits, especially as confirmation battles for judges became increasingly contentious throughout President Trump's tenure. Breyer, in the past, has supported 18-year term limits, joking in 2016 that such an arrangement would "make my life simpler." But when faced with questions about his thoughts on term limits in 2020, Breyer waved off answering as too "politically...

They are the strongest opponents of defunding the police, but now, conservatives are carving out an exception ⁠— the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Long considered anti-gun, the agency has provoked alarm with Second Amendment advocates due to the agency’s recent targeting of gunmakers, including a raid this month on a producer of so-called "ghost guns" and this week’s targeting of AR-15-style pistols. With President-elect Joe Biden poised to unleash new gun control measures, fears are heightened that ATF will be the tip of the spear. Marjorie Taylor Greene ... 10 years ago today, U.S. Border Patrol...

More old movies could have warnings added about racism and stereotypes, after UK film censors said Ming the Merciless in 1980's Flash Gordon was "dubious if not outright offensive". The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) added a warning about "discriminatory stereotypes" for the film's recent re-release. Ming was of East Asian appearance and was played by Sweden's Max Von Sydow. Next year, the BBFC will examine how to handle stereotypes in other old films. The organisation gave Flash Gordon a 12A rating for its reissue - more strict than the A rating it was given on its original release,...

The Air Force is testing a high-energy microwave weapon system in Africa to combat armed drones operated by terrorists. In April, we first reported the Air Force would test a new prototype drone-killing microwave weapon overseas for a 12-month assessment. At the time, there was no mention by the service of where the testing would be conducted until now. Richard Joseph, the Air Force's chief scientist, was recently quoted by Breaking Defense as saying the Tactical High Power Microwave Operational Responder (THOR) is being tested in a "real-world setting" in Africa. "We have recently deployed a test system to Africa...

CONCORD — Gov. Chris Sununu said it was “outrageous” and “insulting” that members of Congress such as U.S. Rep. Annie Kuster, D-N.H., were “cutting the line” to get the coronavirus vaccine ahead of more needy New Hampshire residents. Sununu, 45, took to social media over the weekend to criticize Congress after several confirmed they had gotten a shot, including Kuster and 2020 presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. “Congress has literally done nothing these last eight months. Now they are cutting the line and getting the vaccine ahead of residents in long-term care, nurses and essential workers who stock...

China is not a rising power but a faltering one. At first glance, this seems an absurd statement. Since it initiated market reforms in 1978, the Asian giant has claimed economic growth averaging 10 percent annually, rising from the world’s seventh-largest economy in 1980 to the second-largest today.During those decades, it converted its newfound wealth into military power and geopolitical influence, asserting itself both regionally and globally. It now seems to be on the verge of realizing President Xi Jinping’s goal of creating a Sino-centric world order – one that reflects Chinese, rather than American, values and interests.To many, the...

Democrats and their liberal economic advisers obsess about income inequality. Will someone please tell them that no act in modern times has widened the gap between the rich and the poor more than the lockdowns going on right now? Diane Yentel, the president and CEO of the leftist National Low Income Housing Coalition, said, "The majority of the up to 17 million households at risk of losing their homes this winter are people of color." Politico reported that minorities and the poor have "been more vulnerable to job and income losses from the ensuing economic crisis, in large part because...

Congress may not have realized it, but they hit a stroke of genius when they included faith-based organizations in the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) this spring. Congress’ critics should reserve their criticism for other aspects of the nation’s Covid-19 response. The Paycheck Protection Program was designed to help companies and nonprofits retain their employees in the early days of the pandemic shutdown. And, brilliantly, Congress decided late in their deliberations to include faith-based organizations. Our executive search firm works with thousands of the nation’s faith-based organizations, so when PPP passed, we immediately set out to help our clients receive the...

It happened again recently. I was listening to a sermon online and the preacher said, “God told me.” Apparently everyone in the congregation enjoyed it from the response I heard, but I immediately turned it off. This type of communication is becoming more prevalent in Christian circles. It’s showing up in conversations because people are hearing it from the pulpit and reading it in books they purchased from the local Christian bookstore. Perhaps it sounds spiritual or is emotionally stirring to the congregation.Although the “God told me” method of communicating makes for interesting, suspenseful, and entertaining stories, what people need...

The Feast of Dedication, better known as Hanukkah, was just celebrated by Jews around the world, commemorating events that took place more than 2,100 years ago. But the lessons of Hanukkah are quite relevant to our times today. According to the Jewish History website, “In the wake of Alexander’s appearance in and departure from Jerusalem [in the 330’s BCE], relations between Jews and Greeks were so good that an exchange of cultures took place. Each influenced the other. For the Jewish minority, however, what began as a small undertow of assimilation — such as giving children Greek names and speaking...

Tier 4 lockdown restrictions could be enforced across the whole of England as a new strain of the Chinese coronavirus spreads across the country, the government’s chief scientific adviser has said. The architect of the first lockdown claimed that Tier 4 could last until April. Prime Minister Boris Johnson forced England into a three-tier system at the beginning of December, after the country had just come out of a second national lockdown in November. The tiered system resulted in around 99 per cent of the population under the two strictest levels, Tier 2 and Tier 3.

(WBNG) -- People who live within New York's 22nd Congressional District will be without a representative in the U.S. House to start off the new year as the term of Democrat Anthony Brindisi is set to end before the results of the district's 2020 election can be certified. A court case which is ruling on more than a thousand challenged ballots in the election is set to continue through the first week of January, New York state Supreme Court Justice DelConte said. The justice had hoped to finish ruling on challenged ballots by the end of the year, but he...

Pray For the Peace of JerusalemLambs, Sheep, and Shepherds.Isaiah 61The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners,[a] 2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, 3 and provide for those who grieve in Zion— to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead...