Free Republic

“He has views and he is entitled to his views,” Kaine said when I confronted him about his son’s Antifa-related arrest, after Kaine tried to pin the Charlottesville rally violence on his Republican opponent Corey Stewart in their first debate in the 2018 U.S. Senate race in Hot Springs, Virginia. Kaine maintained that his son is peaceful, and Kaine’s staffer Ian Sams, a former Hillary Clinton factotum, stepped in to shut down the line of questioning. Kaine did not answer as to whether his son is still part of any Antifa groups.

When Barack Obama ran in 2008, I was virulently opposed to his candidacy. I wasn’t a huge McCain fan, but at least I knew he had America’s best interests at heart, something I never felt about Obama. Four years later I had issues with Romney, but for similar reasons, I voted for him. Once Obama was in office, I disagreed with almost everything he did for eight years, whether Obamacare, DACA, GM, DADT, or virtually everything race-related. I disagreed with his trading for Bowie Bergdahl, his pardon of Chelsea Manning, and his commutation of the sentence of FLAN terrorist Oscar...

Poet W.B. Yeats came to recognize something precious and profound at center of his this-worldly identity during family vacations in County Sligo: his Irishness. In 1923, at the age of 58, Yeats accepted the Nobel Prize the only way he could — as an Irishman on behalf of Ireland. What motivated the committee was "[Yeats's] always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation." Symbols That Shame And SaveBut what about that black preacher poet across the Atlantic, that slave-descendent Baptist of that land where so many Irish found refuge in...

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. If you have specific question about a plant/problem you are having, please remember to state the Growing Zone where you are located. This thread is a non-political respite. No matter what, you won’t be flamed, and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack...

Some numbers are constants, . . . They never change. For example, π (pi, 3.1416), the Ten Commandments, the Three Musketeers, 12 inches in a foot, and 11 million illegal aliens. Soon there will be millions of new voters in line with us at the polls or trying to jam handfuls of harvested ballots into the unguarded mailbox. A positive note – there won’t be a need for massive vote fraud anymore. But maybe we can try to limit the damage. If Biden and the Democrats insist that there are only those immutable 11 million illegals, then let’s limit amnesty...

February 13 2021 St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church – New York City, NY Saturday of week 5 in Ordinary TimeFirst readingGenesis 3:9-24 ©The expulsion from the Garden of EdenThe Lord God called to the man. ‘Where are you?’ he asked. ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden;’ he replied ‘I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.’ ‘Who told you that you were naked?’ he asked ‘Have you been eating of the tree I forbade you to eat?’ The man replied, ‘It was the woman you put with me; she gave me the fruit, and I...

I am a black American intellectual living in an age of persistent racial inequality in my country. As a black man I feel compelled to represent the interests of “my people.” (But that reference is not unambiguous!) As an intellectual, I feel that I must seek out the truth and speak such truths as I am given to know. As an American, at this critical moment of “racial reckoning,” I feel that imperative all the more urgently. But, I ask, what are my responsibilities? Do they conflict with one another? I will explore this question tonight.

What’s the theme that ties together Andrew Cuomo, the Lincoln Project, and California’s governing class? Since 2015 or so, a whole bunch of people who hated Donald Trump — and I am among those who believe the former president earned his animosity and scorn — chose to believe that anyone who stood in opposition to Trump had to be one of the good guys. A huge swath of the media world, elites across American society, and donors large and small, conflated political agreement in opposition to Trump with all other positive virtues. Outspoken opposition to Trump turned into an all-purpose...

Let’s get one thing straight. Even though Sleepy Joe Biden is the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, there are a host of serious questions about how the elections – note the plural – were conducted. Pennsylvania changed the election laws without constitutional authority, over the objections of the legislature. Ditto for Georgia. Required voter validation on absentee ballots was not performed. Chains of custody were violated, potentially letting phony ballots get counted, and on, and on. We just can’t have this happen again. But what’s a mother to do? First, we have to define the word. Fuzzy Leftist equivocation won’t...

The coronavirus pandemic hammered Pennsylvania’s economy in 2020. But the key to economic recovery -- once a more predictable regimen of vaccinations is firmly in place and Covid-19 begins to abate -- must be a careful study in what government should and should not do, stress researchers at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy. “With recently released state employer payroll data for December, the extent of the damage can clearly be seen,” say Frank Gamrat, executive director of the Pittsburgh think tank, and Jake Haulk, its president-emeritus. “Pennsylvanians lost jobs in nearly every sector, pushing employment to decade-ago levels,” the...

A white, male University of New Hampshire chemistry professor has resigned after being accused of posing as a female immigrant of color on Twitter to make racist and sexist comments.The university, which has not named the professor and described the person only as a faculty member, confirmed the resignation Friday after a four-month investigation.Toby SantaMaria, a graduate student studying plant biology at Michigan State who identifies with the gender-neutral term Latinx and was attacked online by followers of the Twitter account, welcomed the professor’s resignation.“Pretending to be a woman on the internet explicitly to bully, shame, harass, and create toxic...

Is it merely a coincidence that the Annual Trump Impeachment nearly coincided with Groundhog Day? This really is becoming as regular and tedious as Tom Brady in the Super Bowl. What’s that? Oh. Well, at least he’s a Trump supporter, which makes sense doesn’t it? Doesn’t everyone who has a supermodel trophy wife support Trump? I think I read that in Trophy Wife Aficionado magazine. (Or is that “MAGA-zine”?)

WASHINGTON — The lead lawyer for former President Donald Trump’s defense during the impeachment trial mistakenly referred to the Georgia Secretary of State as Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. When referencing Trump’s phone call to Brad Raffensperger, former Montgomery County district attorney Bruce Castor instead said Roethlisberger’s name in front of the U.S. Senate Friday afternoon, according to our partners at TribLive.com.

A new study finds that cultivation and enrichment of microbes on the face can infiltrate the lungs through unconscious aspirations and cause inflammatory responses and advanced stage lung cancer. The nose and the mouth were designed to take in oxygen without strain, uninhibited. The oxygen travels down the trachea and splits off into two tubes called the bronchi. From there, the oxygen travels down a series of bronchioles until it reaches the alveoli, which are tiny air sacs covered with blood vessels. These air sacs take the oxygen directly to the heart, where it is dispersed throughout the body. When...

MADRID - Victòria Martínez continues to sign official documents with the name that she, her partner and their two daughters ditched four years ago. Barring any surprises, she expects the Spanish government to recognize her as Victòria by May, closing a patience-wearing chapter familiar to transgender people around the world. Changing her legal identity at a civil registry office in Barcelona will allow Martínez to update her passport and driver’s license and to carry a health card that correctly states she is a woman. But the process, which the pandemic prolonged, has been, in her words, “humiliating” — requiring a...

.. E Z E K I E L' S V I S I O N O F . D R Y B O N E S . EZEKIEL 37 New International Version, emphases added Abrdgd: the complete text is in your Bible . C L I C K : To read EZEKIEL 37 in full To hear MAX McLEAN reading it To hear a DRAMATIZATION of it HIGHLY recommended by Maudeen! To see an ANIMATION of Ezekiel 5 8 5 B. C. . CHAPTER 37 1 The hand of the LORD was on me, and he brought me out by...

Professor Huang Heqing of Zhejiang University, one of the most eminent schools in China, is teaching his students that all of Western history is a hoax and that everything, from the pyramids to Shakespeare to the Mona Lisa, are modern fakes meant to belittle China.

Pray For the Peace of JerusalemLambs, Sheep, and Shepherds.Zechariah 13Cleansing From Sin 13 “On that day a fountain will be opened to the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity. 2 “On that day, I will banish the names of the idols from the land, and they will be remembered no more,” declares the Lord Almighty. “I will remove both the prophets and the spirit of impurity from the land. 3 And if anyone still prophesies, their father and mother, to whom they were born, will say to them, ‘You must die,...

State lawmakers across the country are exploring a range of new taxes targeting Amazon, Facebook, Google and other Internet giants, seeking to capture some of Silicon Valley's eye-popping profits and soaring share prices in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Even as the U.S. economy struggles to regain its footing, some of the tech industry's most valuable companies have thrived as Americans spend more time - and money - shopping and communicating on the Web. The disparity has caught the eye of policymakers across the United States who increasingly say it is time for the Internet's cash-flush companies to start...

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...