Free Republic

PARIS - It is the classic romantic combination: St Valentine’s Day in Paris, the city of love, and a gift of red roses. But some Parisian florists are trying to wean customers off the flowers because of their ecological cost. Most roses sold in France in the run-up to St Valentine’s Day, a peak sales period for the global flower industry, have to be imported by air freight from countries such as Kenya, resulting in carbon emissions that contribute to climate change. Florists worried at the environmental damage from this trade say there are viable alternatives that can be grown...

This is how you act when you believe you’re bullet proof. – Biden Deputy Press Secretary T.J. Ducklo became the subject of a bullying scandal on Friday when it was revealed he he had threatened a Politico reporter, Tara Palmeri, when she questioned him about an affair he had been conducting with a reporter for Axios. It seems that the White House press corps is just a swirling soap opera of sexual shenanigans. You didn’t have to worry about these things during the Trump administration, since everyone hated one another. But in a Democrat administration, they’re all trying to get...

Source: Photo courtesy of Mike LindellOn Friday, February 5th, Mike Lindell—Mr. My Pillow—released to America a video entitled Absolute Proof. Therein, he purports to provide irrefutable evidence that both domestic and foreign conspirators fraudulently derailed the 2020 election to unlawfully defeat President Trump and illegally deliver a victory to Joe Biden. What is telling is that, to date, the evidence of that fraud presented by Mr. Lindell has only been denied, but not demonstrably refuted. In the minds of thoughtful persons, the foregoing should eventually lead them to ask: where is the F.B.I in all of this? Particularly when the...

Alec Baldwin thinks Bruce Springsteen’s drunk driving arrest may have been motivated by the New Jersey rocker’s liberal politics. ‘I wonder if Springsteen’s arrest [sic] had anything to do with his politics,’ the 30 Rock actor speculated on his Twitter feed on Thursday. Baldwin tweeted days after it was revealed that the rock icon was arrested last fall by a federal park ranger on suspicion of drunken driving in New Jersey. Over the years, Springsteen, like Baldwin, has not been shy about expressing his left-leaning political views. Springsteen had performed on January 20 as part of President Joe Biden´s inauguration,...

Fleeing like rats from a sinking ship. – The scandal-plagued DC Swamp grift called the Lincoln Project bled more members on Friday, as one of its founders, the piggish George Conway, accused the group of engaging in criminal activity by illegally accessing and publishing the Twitter private massages of Jennifer Horn, another ex-member who left the group earlier this week. One of the group’s other co-founders, Steve Schmidt, announced he was quitting the scam after it was revealed on Thursday that he and everyone else involved had known about fellow founder and former McCain campaign manager John Weaver’s proclivity for...

A Black Lives Matter march through Midtown Manhattan turned violent Friday night, with 11 protesters arrested. The NYPD reported that two officers suffered minor injuries during the protest, which was attended by about 100 marchers; officials could not immediately say how the cops were hurt. At least some of those arrested were accused of attacking Daily News photographer Sam Costanza at the intersection of Sixth Avenue and 54th Street in the mistaken belief that he was a cop, sources said. The photog was surrounded and struck after one of the marchers recognized him from a BLM protest outside the NYPD’s...

Paris (AFP) - Developing new Covid-19 vaccines will fail to end the pandemic unless all countries receive doses in a fast and fair manner, disease experts warned Saturday. As several nations consider implementing vaccine passports when international travel resumes, the authors of an open letter published in the Lancet medical journal said vaccine stockpiling in wealthier countries would only prolong the global health emergency. They warned that "vaccine nationalism" could leave the Covax initiative aimed at getting vaccines to low- and middle-income countries facing a huge dosage shortfall for several years to come. Based on available sales figures, the authors...

Democrats really do want “unity -- so long as it’s achieved through the total elimination of their political and ideological opposition. They are tolerant, in the sense that they allow women to have penises, and men to have vaginas. Hell, they’ll let you pick any one of a vast panoply of genders. They’ll tout gay marriage as equally beneficial, covenantal, and holy as heterosexual unions… if not more so. You can be any gender you like (but don’t you dare call yourself a victimized person of color if you are melanin deficient), burn down buildings (as long as they are...

As the Democrats move forward with their Potemkin impeachment, Trump is surely planning his next move. Pundits have suggested that Trump build a conservative media empire or simply help Republicans win back the House and Senate in 2022 or prepare for a second presidential run in 2024. However, the speaker list for the next CPAC shows no signs of Trump. Whatever route Trump chooses, election integrity should be at the top of his agenda, as it should be for the rest of the GOP lest Republicans never win another election.Prior to the 2020 election, hundreds of lawsuits were filed by...

California Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis spoke out Thursday against efforts to oust Gov. Gavin Newsom over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, warning that members of the Democratic Party should stay off the ballot if a recall vote occurs. Newsom’s opponents have gathered more than 1.4 million petition signatures ahead of the mid-March deadline, just short of the roughly 1.5 million signatures required to force a recall election. As California’s second-highest executive officer, Kounalakis would be required to set a date for the election if the petition surpasses the threshold. While a rocky vaccine rollout, strict pandemic-related lockdown orders, and...

Modern American agriculture has wrought miracles over the past 70 years. Conventional farm production per acre and overall nearly tripled, corn (maize) production increased 500% from 20% less land – and farmers used less water, less fuel, less fertilizer, and fewer pesticides and other chemicals for every bushel of food they harvested. They did all this using hybrid and genetically engineered seeds, tractors guided by GPS, equipment that can space seeds precisely to the inch and apply chemicals in amounts suited to soil characteristics that can change every few feet, and numerous other high-tech advances. By using weed control chemicals,...

The dirty little secret behind cancel culture is that it derives its power from your lack of commitment to your own values and standards. Cancel culture isn’t a singular thing. It’s a collection of strategies and tactics, each designed to use the power of the collective against the individual. Typically, the cancel mob starts with some attacks on Twitter or Facebook. This could escalate into dramatic and accusatory videos on TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube, and then goes on from there. Sooner or later, and this is the goal, the news media gets involved, validating those attacks by taking them as...

Century-old personal ads reveal how single people in the 1900s tried to find love — decades before dating apps like Tinder and Bumble made it possible for men and women to seek a partner in just one swipe. Before the age of digital dating, many people used local newspaper ads, which could be placed anonymously in by singles hoping to find love, companionship, or even marriage. While the first printed personal ads appeared in newspapers as far back as the 1700s and were still common in the 1990s, a new collection of them curated by MyHeritage.com shows just what singletons...

Seattle City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda amplified a Socialist promoting communist propaganda from Cuba. It also includes a picture glorifying Cuban tyrant and mass murderer Fidel Castro. The tweet screenshots an “article” from Granma, the official voice of the Communist Party of Cuba Central Committee. In it, the communist propaganda outlet snaps at the United States for designating their country a state sponsor of terror. They earned that designation for … sponsoring terrorism. They also harbor terrorists and U.S. fugitives. The move, in the waning days of the Trump administration, reversed an Obama-era decision from 2015. Mosqueda’s tweet comes after what...

“Biden says Trump should not receive intelligence briefings due to his 'erratic behavior'.. “You’ve called him an existential threat. You’ve called him dangerous. You’ve called him reckless,” CBS News' Norah O' Donnell said to Biden. "Yeah, I have. And I believe it," Biden responded….In 2018, President Trump stripped the security clearance of former CIA director John Brennan, which ignited a firestorm of criticism that the president was punishing high-profile critics.” (NBC, Feb.5.)Needless to add, NBC (and its mainstream media clones and cohorts in general) imply their support for Biden’s security concerns regarding Trump, but pooh-pooh Trump’s security concerns regarding Brennan.Yet...

Last year’s dreadful miasma of Covid, recession, police violence, and coup attempt obscured some remarkable advances by local and national left-wing movements. Florida voters, while rejecting the Biden/Harris ticket, overwhelmingly approved a $15 minimum wage. Arizona and Oregon approved tax increases on the wealthy to fund public education. Colorado passed paid family leave. Portland, Me., voters approved rent control. All six representatives in historically swing districts who supported Medicare for All won reelection. Ninety-two of the 93 House Democrats—including all four in swing districts—who ran in November as Green New Deal sponsors won reelection. At least 20 candidates endorsed by...

Joe Biden famously told Ukrainian leaders regarding a prosecutor investigating Burisma – where his son served as a board member -- “If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.” The Ukrainians fired the prosecutor after the 2015 ultimatum and maintained the $1 billion U.S. loan. As it turns out, the prosecutor in the United States investigating Hunter Biden more directly didn’t suffer the same fate. President Biden’s purging of the Justice Department dodged what might have been a scandal in his first month in office by allowing Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss to stay in his job....

A 21-year-old Portland woman pleaded guilty this week to charges related to a fire set at the Multnomah County Justice Center during a September protest-turned-riot. Hannah Karin Lilly was ordered to perform community service and pay $46,000 in restitution for “unlawfully, with intent, aiding and abetting 21-year-old Cyan Bass in damaging the Multnomah County Justice Center” in downtown Portland, the county’s District Attorney’s Office said in a statement Thursday. Bass has pleaded not guilty to a series of charges. His trial is pending. Lilly, who moved back to Portland last year to live with relatives during the pandemic and works...

Trump hired his legal team for the impeachment just a few days before the proceedings started, which may have accounted for their singularly lackluster opening argument. However, by Friday, they’d gotten their ducks in a row and David Schoen, especially, had a great closing argument. He opened by pointing out that Democrats improperly sat on footage of events in the Capitol to blindside Trump’s defense team and deny him due process. From there, he moved to the fact that the Democrat House impeachment managers outright lied about their alleged evidence, whether it was faked tweets or manipulated video. As part...

Fourteen New York Democrats are seeking to strip Gov. Andrew Cuomo of emergency powers granted to him throughout the COVID-19 pandemic after a top aide revealed his administration withheld data about nursing home deaths in New York from Justice Department investigators. "Without exception, the New York State Constitution calls for the Legislature to govern as a co-equal branch of government. While COVID-19 has tested the limits of our people and state-- and, early during the pandemic, required the government to restructure decision making to render rapid, necessary public health judgements-- it is clear that the expanded emergency powers granted to...