Free Republic

Every single Republican lawmaker and figurehead should be required to watch the Rand Paul clip as a clinic for how to take on the left-wing media.Rand Paul’s patience ran out this week when he made an appearance on ABC with George Stephanopoulos and the latter exchanged journalistic inquiry for partisan hackery. The ensuing fight, however, was a case study in what the media has become and how all conservatives who hit the airwaves ought to take them on. Rather than pose legitimate questions to the Kentucky senator, Stephanopoulos, who made his money as a Clinton-era Democratic operative before jumping over...

Here's the full list (and don't worry, there's no vaguely inappropriate "34+35" heart): "IGOTU BABE" "CRAZY NLUV" "PER FECT" "SUMMR LOVIN" "LOVE SHAK" "STILL THE 1" "ADORE YOU" "LUVME TENDR" "SUGAR SUGAR" "AT LAST" "1000 YEARS" "ALLMY LIFE" "MY GIRL" "BABY LOVE" "ONLY YOU" "HAPPY 2GTHR" "I'LLBE THERE" "I'M YOURS" "ALL OF ME" "LEAN ONME" "10000 HOURS" The brand suggests that the range of songs serve as a tribute to the many generations of fans who have had Sweethearts since they were created in 1902—but, if you ask me, they also make for a great trivia game: Can you name...

(Chandra X-Ray Observatory) ================================================================== When black holes swallow down massive amounts of matter from the space around them, they're not exactly subtle about it. They belch out tremendous flares of X-rays, generated by the material heating to intense temperatures as it's sucked towards the black hole, so bright we can detect them from Earth. This is normal black hole behaviour. What isn't normal is for those X-ray flares to spew forth with clockwork regularity, a puzzling behaviour reported in 2019 from a supermassive black hole at the centre of a galaxy 250 million light-years away. Every nine hours, boom -...

The Chicago Teachers Union continues to stage a standoff with City Hall after the union voted to reject in-person learning on Monday. The Board of Education had required K-8 teachers to return to schools so they could be prepared for a return to in-person learning on Feb. 1. But because the CTU didn't comply, the city has announced a delay to the teachers' start date to Wednesday in order "to resolve our discussions without risking disruption to student learning.” Chicago Public Schools explained how remote learning is putting strains on students, both in terms of their education and finances. The...

The last time a juvenile was charged as an adult with carjacking in Cook County? February 2019. January 27, 2021 CWBChicago Citywide An alleged juvenile carjacker made a crucial mistake Saturday when he told arresting officers that he’d be out of jail in a day and would then track them down and shoot them: He wasn’t in Cook County anymore. Now, prosecutors in suburban DuPage County are asking a judge to transfer the teen’s case to adult court. Saturday night, the teen and two accomplices threatened to kill a 20-year-old woman as they robbed and carjacked her at gunpoint in...

Joe Scarborough on Wednesday minced no words about the Senate Republicans who say the country now needs to “forget” the deadly U.S. Capitol riot incited by former President Donald Trump.

Prayers up for a great and prosperous new year!! FR is funded solely by contributions made by the liberty loving patriots who love and use it. We are beholden to no political party. No advertisers, no outsiders, no sugar daddies, no corporate string pullers. Definitely no government subsidies or tax breaks. No 501c or other IRS non-profit status. This means no commercial ads. No annoying pop-ups. No ad tracking. No mail campaigns. No spam. No third-parties -- not even the IRS -- trying to control what we do or say. We are self-funded, fiercely independent and enjoy our freedom to...

Biden effectively bans terms like ‘China virus’ in new crackdown on COVID ‘racism’WASHINGTON, D.C., January 27, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — President Joe Biden has issued a memorandum effectively banning the use of terms like “China virus” to denote COVID-19 by government and administration officials.The memorandum to combat “Racism, Xenophobia, and Intolerance Against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States” was published yesterday on the White House website.Without mentioning his predecessor President Donald Trump by name, Biden accused the government of being complicit in promoting racism: “The Federal Government must recognize that it has played a role in furthering these...

On the menu today: Joe Biden’s pledges on the pandemic shift from, “I’m going to shut down the virus,” to “there’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months”; Biden continues his pattern of making a bold and sweeping promise that his staff has to explain he didn’t really mean; and Patrick Leahy takes a quick trip to the hospital.

San Francisco will rename 44 schools, including campuses named after former presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln and Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Democrat lawmakers are reportedly seeking to add language into this year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would keep alleged white supremacists from joining the military. The Hill reports, “Lawmakers are taking matters into their own hands to prevent white supremacists and other extremists from joining and remaining in the military.” The obsession linking white supremacy to the Capitol riots and using it to pursue political opposition continues unabated. Rep. Anthony Brown (D-MD) tells the outlet, “The attack on our Capitol was an insurrection fueled in large part by groups that espouse the same extreme white supremacists’ views groups that...

Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys extremist group, has a past as an informer for federal and local law enforcement, repeatedly working undercover for investigators after he was arrested in 2012, according to a former prosecutor and a transcript of a 2014 federal court proceeding obtained by Reuters...The records uncovered by Reuters are startling because they show that a leader of a far-right group now under intense scrutiny by law enforcement was previously an active collaborator with criminal investigators.

In Ryszard Legutko's latest book, 'The Cunning of Freedom: Saving the Self in an Age of False Idols,' the Polish professor and survivor of communism warns that the coercive attempts of modern liberals to redefine freedom are more destructive than liberating.Life under Communism was peculiar and paradoxical, observes Polish professor and politician Ryszard Legutko in his new book The Cunning of Freedom: Saving the Self in an Age of False Idols. It was rigid and confined by an “ideological straitjacket.” Yet the abolishing of the old forms and institutions also fostered a “permanent instability,” in which “no principle was secure...

Are you thinking about that cruise in the Caribbean this spring or summer? According to financial analysts at Truist Financial, this is unlikely to happen. Due to the slower-than-expected US roll-out of Covid vaccines, a surge in cases, and a demanding conditional order from the Centers for Disease and Prevention to restart sailings, any cruises departing from the US could be pushed back to July or even later. The Second Half of 2021 Under The Best of Circumstances That’s what Patrick Scholes, a Wall Street financial analyst at Truist Finacial, thinks is the earliest date we could potentially see cruises...

TIME Magazine attacked Joe Biden’s press briefing sign language interpeter Heather Mewshaw for wearing pro-Trump apparel and running an online group that “provides sign language accompaniments to right-wing videos.” “For some members of the deaf and hard of hearing community, the inclusion of Mewshaw in kicking off the new White House initiative soured what should have been purely a moment of excitement,” TIME lamented. TIME describes Mewshaw’s online group as “soliciting requests from the public” concerning what videos to sign, and, as a result, “the vast majority of videos” from the group are “conservative or pro-Trump”: While the group frequently...

President Joe Biden is the illegal aliens’ best friend. He is asking Congress to provide a pathway to citizenship for the more than 11 million illegal aliens presently living in the United States. And to make the illegal aliens feel better about themselves, Biden is seeking a change in U.S. immigration laws to replace the phrase “illegal alien” with “noncitizen” to describe them. Unless the Democrats eliminate the filibuster in the Senate, Biden is not likely to get his complete legislative package passed by Congress. “A mass amnesty with no safeguards and no strings attached is a nonstarter,” said Republican...

America is entering a terrible period in its history at an accelerating pace, now that the Left has taken control of all the critical reins of power in the government, the mainstream media, social media, and big tech. Unfortunately, history teaches with laser clarity that there are no guardrails restraining the behavior of the Left when it is so empowered. Normative legacy Judeo-Christian values usually provide self correction against outrageous excesses from the Right. Even when conservatives have the power, they restrain themselves from, for example, committing full-on genocide. An example of this is seen in the late 19th Century,...

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who is presiding over former President Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial, returned home on Tuesday night after an unexpected trip to the hospital earlier in the day, a spokesman said.“After getting test results back, and after a thorough examination, Senator Leahy now is home. He looks forward to getting back to work. Patrick and Marcelle deeply appreciate the well wishes they have received tonight,” spokesman David Carle said in a statement.The update on Leahy’s condition comes after an earlier report that the Vermont lawmaker had been admitted to the hospital just hours after presiding over the...

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article first appeared on JNS. Israel recently signed agreements establishing relations with four Muslim nations: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. Both good and bad news surround this development. The bad news is bland and predictable: a permanent peace between Israel and its Muslim neighbors is, according to Islamic law, or sharia, impossible: any land that was once part of Dar al-Islam—that is, any land that was ever conquered by Muslims for any length of time—is always part of Islam and must be recovered by...

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article first appeared on JNS. Israel recently signed agreements establishing relations with four Muslim nations: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. Both good and bad news surround this development. The bad news is bland and predictable: a permanent peace between Israel and its Muslim neighbors is, according to Islamic law, or sharia, impossible: any land that was once part of Dar al-Islam—that is, any land that was ever conquered by Muslims for any length of time—is always part of Islam and must be recovered by...