Free Republic

As the fouled days of 2020 wane into history, the air is filled with relief and anticipation for a better 2021. In some ways, the new year is guaranteed to be better by default, in that it should feature a pathway out of the current COVID nightmare. But from the virus to the election to the culture, 2020 has been a harsh teacher, showing us things that have long needed fixing. We can make 2021 and the ensuing years decidedly better if we grasp some hard-learned lessons and demand better of our leaders, our media and ourselves. We learned in...

My Beloved fellow FReepers, please lift up in prayer my dear parents, who are suffering so much with various disorders and illnesses. My Dad is in terrible pain with his neck vertebrae and has Parkinson Disease, and my precious Mom has lung problems and also suffers from Pseudomonas Aureas in her sinuses. She has lost an astounding amount of weight and is very weak, but she fights as a warrior each and every day and her faith in the Lord is one to be envied by all. My dear Dad is strong in his mind, such a blessing--always learning new...

MOJIANG, China - Deep in the lush mountain valleys of southern China lies the entrance to a mine shaft that once harbored bats with the closest known relative of the COVID-19 virus. The area is of intense scientific interest because it may hold clues to the origins of the coronavirus that has killed more than 1.7 million people worldwide. Yet for scientists and journalists, it has become a black hole of no information because of political sensitivity and secrecy. A bat research team visiting recently managed to take samples but had them confiscated, two people familiar with the matter said....

A recent NATO report broke new ground by fingering China as a military threat to Europe for the first time. At first glance, this would seem to indicate that Europe has been listening to Washington’s repeated warnings and has finally come around to the American point of view on the salience of “great power competition” that recognizes both Moscow and Beijing as dangers, with the latter perhaps constituting a more ominous threat. Next year, both the French and British navies are planning major naval exercises, together with the U.S. and Japan, in the Western Pacific, namely in maritime domains proximate...

In celebration of a 2020 that desperately needs to come to an end, here is a list of the Top 10 Worst Mayors in the nation. These mayors most definitely use Orwell’s 1984 as their policies and procedures manual, if not their Bible. It comes as no surprise that all 10 of the mayors on the list are Democrat (something about that political party), and that five of the 10 are mayors of West Coast cities (something about the Pacific Ocean).

Click on link

Some pompous liberal is giving me grief for saying that the government originally said s short lockdown was necessary to get things under control and get life back to normal. Does anyone have links to articles where the experts made this promise? I can find more recent articles with a search but I am looking for articles that have been making the same promises since the pandemic began.

Thousands of voters were set to be removed from rolls A federal judge has ordered two counties in Georgia to reverse course on removing thousands of individuals from voter rolls ahead of the state's Jan. 5 Senate runoffs. POLL: Will you be spending Christmas with your family or social distancing? The judge, Leslie Abrams Gardner — who is the sister of former Democratic candidate for governor Stacey Abrams, a prominent ally of Democratic President-elect Joe Biden — issued the ruling Monday, concluding the counties relied on unverified change-of-address data to proceed with the action. "Defendants are enjoined from removing any...

In 1999 Colonel Qiao Liang and Colonel Wang Xiangsui wrote a book called Unrestricted Warfare. In this book, these officers, who were both active-duty officers in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) discussed the lessons learned from the Gulf War action in 1990. The book was published by the PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House in Beijing, which suggests official approval by the PLA Command. *snip* The authors listed 15 types of new warfare to be used in order to avoid the standard military conflict. One of these new types of warfare is called New Terror Warfare (Xiangsui, 1999), where...

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - Dozens of Cubans protested at the U.S. border in the northern Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez on Tuesday night, demanding they be allowed to cross and claim asylum in the United States.U.S. authorities, including police in anti-riot gear, closed off the bridge that leads into El Paso, Texas, with a concrete barrier topped with barbed wire.A recording blared from a loudspeaker warning that any person who crossed could be arrested.Late into the evening, some 200 migrants who had walked right up to the barrier stayed put.Jonathan Castro, 25, said he has spent one year and eight...

The rejections of courts to hear President Donald Trump's campaign election challenges is denying him the right to due process, according to Trump campaign legal adviser Jenna Ellis on Newsmax TV. "They need to recognize that President Trump absolutely gets the same opportunities to argue his case that President George W. Bush did in 2000," Ellis told Tuesday's "Stinchfield," pointing to the landmark Supreme Court case Bush v. Gore. "And to treat him differently than every other sitting president in every other election is manifestly unfair according to due process and our Constitution." As the Trump campaign brings some final...

From the first time I watched Shondaland's Bridgerton, there was no question in my mind that it was destined to be a hit. The period drama's sweeping sets, lush costumes, an irresistible gossip columnist, fabulous Queen Charlotte, and casting of Regé-Jean Page as Simon saw to that. But as overwhelmingly delightful as this book series turned-Netflix show is, I can't talk about the good without mentioning the bad. And that bad comes in episode 6's "Swish." Some may associate this particular episode with Daphne (played by Phoebe Dynevor) and Simon's shameless romps on every surface of Hastings House. But it's...

At first blush you might ask yourself why Mitch McConnell would block the new COVID bill and put the Georgia special election senate races in question. He just handed Georgia democrats an atomic sledgehammer. However, what most people do not understand is how McConnell works; being in the minority position is not adverse to his interests. McConnell operates with a Machiavellian strategy, so we will explain.

Nashville RV bomber Anthony Quinn Warner was a weed-loving flower child with a “‘Magnum, P.I.’ mustache” - who hated cops, a former co-worker has claimed. “He was kind of a hippie. Had long hair,” Tom Lundborg told the Daily Beast of his years-long daily dealings with the Christmas Day suicide bomber starting in the 1970s. Lundborg - who was a teenager when he first met the then-20-something Warner - said he “kind of looked up to him” as they worked in Antioch, a suburb of Nashville where Warner stayed until his death. “He was a smart, cocky kind of guy....

I remember seeing commercials for this adaptation of the Thomas Hardy classic, if me memory was right, on CBS. I thought it quite weird at the time that one of the the major broadcasters would even put a Brit period drama on a primetime slot when that was the exclusive purview of PBS. The novel does have a special place in my soul. When I first read it 30 years ago, I was awestruck by Hardy's introduction of the raven haired bewitching beauty Eustacia Vye. I have never read anything since that is as romantic and dramatic of an introduction...

EDDYVILLE — The War on Carp continues in Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley, as U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has secured some $25 million for that purpose. The funding was renewed, matching the same amount in the federal government’s budget of the previous year, all according to Lyon County Judge-executive Wade White’s recent post on the War on Carp Facebook page. These funds supplement an additional $45 million through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which will aim at barriers and other ways to stop the movement of carp, White noted in...

A D.C. hotel that is located blocks from the White House and, in recent months, has been frequented by the far-right group the Proud Boys announced Monday that it will be closed during the planned pro-President Trump demonstrations next week. The Hotel Harrington released a statement on Monday saying the hotel will shut down between Monday, Jan. 4, and Wednesday, Jan. 6, as Trump’s supporters plan to protest that Wednesday when Congress is scheduled to certify the election results. The hotel said it will not host guests except for long-term residents and it will provide refunds to all prepaid reservations...

The Palestinian Christian Bishara Bahbah paints a grim picture of the lot of Christians in Hamas-ruled Gaza, but at the same time he misleadingly describes a pollyannish version of how Palestinian Christians live in the PA-ruled parts of the West Bank. In this version, Christians get along swimmingly with their Muslim “friends and neighbors.” The truth is very different.As part of his attempt to whitewash the treatment of Christians in the PA, Bahbah refers to the Pact of Umar as having “guaranteed rights and spelled out obligations” of Christians in a Muslim-dominated land. He maintains that “the pact primarily represents...

"I am frightened. You can feel the threat. At any time, someone will hit the door of my house and shoot five bullets," Ali says. "One bullet for me, one bullet for my wife and three bullets for my three daughters." Ali (not his real name) is terrified that Iraqi militiamen will target him and his family because he worked for the British army as an interpreter. He knew it would be dangerous work, but he says he was happy to do it out of a sense of patriotism. But when the US assassinated top Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani,...

An Argentinian pro-abortion activist has created a modification for the famous 1990s video game, Doom, in which the player completes the game by shooting an unborn baby with a shotgun. Once the player has killed the unborn baby the game displays the message “You defeated fetito [English translation – little foetus]! Give this misoprostol [the drug used for medical abortion] to those in need so they might defeat it too!” As part of the ongoing effort by pro-abortion activists to introduce abortion to Argentina, one activist Florencia Rumpel, has created a version of the controversial game, Doom, entitled: “Doom Fetito”,...