Free Republic

ATLANTA—Lauren LeNoir had always felt safe on her quiet street in Buckhead, the city’s wealthiest neighborhood, known for its upscale malls and mansions. But that all changed when she was coming home from work one night in January. The 43-year-old restaurant general manager pulled into her driveway. In an instant, she said, two men were at her car door. One man threw her to the ground, pressed a gun to her head and threatened to blow her head off. In the end, they took off with her purse and cellphone. “He had no regard for my life,” she said. “They’ve...

SOUNDING THE ALARM ON CHINA: As Adm. Philip Davidson wraps up his time as head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific command, he has a singular focus on what he sees as “the greatest danger the United States and our allies face in the region,” namely the erosion of U.S. military power in the Pacific, and the threat of an undeterred China bent on remaking the region in its favor.“I think our concerns are manifest here during this decade,” Davidson told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday. “I'm worried that they're accelerating their ambitions to supplant the United States and...

T-Bone” lives in the progressive Imaginarium. Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) conjured him up as his fake pal from the ’hood. The “Bone” would now and then materialize to prep the yuppie Booker on his street cred. “T” was the umbilical cord of authenticity with the underprivileged black community for Booker—the vegetarian, Rhodes scholar, Stanford- and Yale-educated, privileged child of two IBM executives. “Corn-pop” also resides in the Imaginarium. Good ol’ Joe Biden from Scranton occasionally would summon the “Pop.” Supposedly he was one tough, African American, razor-wielding gangster that the youthful Mighty Joe Biden won over. But first, as a...

Taxpayers will foot the bill for experimental and extremely controversial transgender “treatments” including cross-sex hormones and surgeries that arguably harm healthy bodies in the pursuit of transgender identity. These surgeries, which involve the removal of healthy sexual organs, can cost as much as $200,000. On January 25, President Joe Biden issued an order explicitly championing transgender identity in the military. He reversed former President Donald Trump’s policy, which did not ban transgender Americans from the military but did insist that all service members serve according to their biological sex, not their gender identity. Biden’s order directed the secretary of defense...

Evanston, Ill., is a suburb of 75,000 residents directly north of the city of Chicago. Aside from being the home of Northwestern University and the birthplace of dozens of famous actors, including Bill Murray, the city is known as just an extension of Chicago. Now, Evanston will be known as the first city in the country to offer reparations to black people. The Evanston City Council will vote on March 22 to finalize a plan that was approved by voters in 2019 offering reparations to black people for “historical racism and discrimination.” What’s curious about this plan is that nowhere...

Beth Moore, a popular evangelical Christian and Bible teacher, says she is no longer a Southern Baptist and is parting ways with the denomination's publishing arm. Moore disclosed her departure during a recent interview with Religion News Service. "I am still a Baptist, but I can no longer identify with Southern Baptists," she told the news agency. "I love so many Southern Baptist people, so many Southern Baptist churches, but I don't identify with some of the things in our heritage that haven't remained in the past."

I loved the Rush Limbaugh show. I have been listening to it for years and have always been comforted by his ever-increasing audience. It showed that conservative ideas work. The show serves a purpose — a purpose that we need fulfilled more now than ever. Unfortunately, it is not serving that purpose fully now. Rather than building on his legacy, we are wallowing in the sadness of his loss. The guest hosts are very good — especially Mark Steyn — but the show is deteriorating into a daily homage to Rush. Any tangential relationship with current subject matter is immediately...

Besides the Sexual Harassment charges against Cuomo and the disastrous decision to put Covid patients back into nursing homes, Cuomo also mandated that Group Homes for mentally and physically disabled people of all ages accept Covid positive people.... His incompetence is off the charts.... The real story here is not just Cuomo's actions but the actions of other Blue State Governors who instituted the same nursing home policies with similar results....

It's a story of hard streets, difficult decisions, heightened tempers, and hard drugs. It's a story about human beings, our duties, our failings, and our weaknesses.Jury selection for the trial of Officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd began this week. Despite how it’s been portrayed by activists and most reporters, it’s been a difficult process precisely because Floyd and Chauvin’s story isn’t a tale of good or evil. It’s a story of hard streets, difficult decisions, heightened tempers, and hard drugs. It’s a story about human beings, our duties, our failings, and our weaknesses. If you think...

As we leave CPAC behind and move into the "what now?" phase of current affairs, a reality struck me about President Trump — a stark contrast to Biden. As I watched President Trump take the stage like everyone else at CPAC, the powerful realization uncovering his mass appeal hit me square between the eyes. What President Trump represents to voters is the very thing our nation has thirsted for throughout history: a concrete identity — and, in this case, one that is recognizable and fills us with immense pride. His confidence in who this nation is falls upon our ears...

There was something jarring in the summary of the story of George Floyd that the New York Times published to refresh our memories on the eve of what promises to be a gripping event — the televised trial of Officer Derek Chauvin who knelt on George Floyd's neck, eventually killing him. It was not even the Times' fault — the article was a bare, straightforward chronological enumeration of events and did not offer any opinion. What was jarring was the reaction of Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey it quoted — the reaction that defined the tragedy for the protesters and sympathizing...

Politics can be fearfully depressing if you mainly focus on the sensationalism of the tabloid-like media and view trivial news and trivial information too seriously and too often. Stop and think a little about the many things going right in the country. There is definitely a trend against the corrupt ruling establishment since about 74 million voted for Trump. I’m sure that some thinking Democrats would also like to make America great again in a slightly different but similar way. The pandemic only killed a small fraction of one percent of the population. The killing potential of most pandemics turned...

Famed conservative radio and television commentator Geraldo Rivera is exploring a run for U.S. Senate in Ohio as a Republican, telling cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer that he thought he could run a campaign outside the normal bounds of politics. Rivera, 77, has been a staple on television and radio since the 1970s as both a correspondent and conservative political pundit. Rivera, who lives in Shaker Heights, tweeted Wednesday afternoon he was mulling running for Republican Sen. Rob Portman’s seat after Portman announced he would not seek re-election. In an interview with cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer, Rivera said he was serious about the...

This week, our extended family added to the discontent, frustration, and irritation of the Left’s long march to destroy Western civilization. How? Our married daughter and stay-at-home mom gave birth to a beautiful little girl and our second grandchild. We all celebrated this joyous occasion and precious gift of life. As parents, we are extremely grateful for their marriage, her devoted husband, a healthy baby, their Christian faith, and that this baby girl was born in America, the land of freedom, opportunity, and equality. But how does the progressive Left, their ideology, and policies view our joyous occasion? In the...

Former presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter teamed up for a video promoting the coronavirus vaccine. “This vaccine means hope, it will protect you and those you love from this dangerous and deadly disease,” Obama says in the ad released Thursday.

The Democrats' $1.9 trillion stimulus bill is a monster of public spending with the prime aim of rewarding political cronies. Free-spending blue cities and states get bailouts, along with unions with mismanaged gold-plated pensions for their members. The losers, of course, are the savers and taxpayers. That's because it won't be long before Argentina-style inflation and Europe-style taxes kick in to pay for these benefits to leftists.The only hope is to grow the economy so that the debt can be paid, which is something Americans often know how to do.But unlike other bills, this one contains a poison pill, to...

It is no secret that the MFM and the DNC are in total lockstep. It's been that way for some time and became especially egregious during the Trump administration. Over the last 6 years the MFM has engaged in a chronic disinformation campaign targeting Donald Trump. It began with Russian collusion, went on with Ukraine accusations and culminated in accusations of inciting a riot. But as I said, it continues. There is someone named Jonathan Lemire who is an MSNBC commentator and AP White House "correspondent" who has a problem with the truth. You need to listen for no more...

CNN and those who run the left-wing network’s social media accounts showed Tuesday how they think the freedom works in a Freudian slip of a Twitter post about new public health recommendations. Those of us who follow, study and marvel at the groundbreaking history and continued relevancy of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution know that our rights are natural, having been bestowed upon us by God and not men -- or women. By a stroke of divine intervention, those who founded this country first found one another without WiFi or even rotary telephones and then put an...

A lab accident in Wuhan is unlikely only in the sense that a pandemic virus’s emergence is always the culmination of a series of unlikely events. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t be here as a species. This trillion-to-one collision of circumstances can be simplified in one obvious way. Say, if a human agent collected the most dangerous viruses to study them in the middle of one of the densest population centers on earth. These experimenters would at least have been alert, if all other precautions failed, to a coworker developing unexplained symptoms. Except that the Sars-Cov-2 virus, once it was...

I’ll bet you haven’t heard this: more congenital anomalies/birth defects and emergency room visits were reported after getting a COVID vaccine in the U.S. than after any of the other 93 vaccine types in the CDC’s VAERS database. And more deaths than 92 other vaccine types.Here is how COVID vaccines rank among 94 vaccine types in terms of reported post-vaccine adverse effects.Congenital anomaly/birth defect: 1.Emergency room: 1.Death: 2.Life threatening: 5.“Serious” adverse effects: 7.Hospitalized: 10.Permanent disability: 12.Total adverse effects: 15.Here, for example, is the screen shot of the CDC’s sorted list for the adverse effect of congenital anomaly/birth defect.See that 144...