Free Republic

"The House Republican Conference vote on Wednesday to restore earmarks was a betrayal of the voters, and undermined one of the remaining legacies of the Tea Party. The vote was close, 102-84, but that is no consolation, especially as it was by secret ballot, preventing voters from holding their representatives accountable."

Miami Beach police are cracking down rowdy spring breakers after days of out-of-control parties in the seaside city that have included violence and drunken debauchery. Mayor Dan Gelber said tens of thousands of visitors have overrun the Miami Beach Entertainment District — and the city will now step up police enforcement to curtail the behavior, according to WTVJ. SNIP “If you have 50 or a 100,000 people coming there and just half of 1 percent are rowdy or drunk or high to the point where they need to be controlled, it becomes a situation which is truly chaotic and unmanageable,”...

A Washington state judge is facing calls to resign after he was caught on tape calling a black man fatally shot by police last year “so dumb.” Clark County District Judge Darvin Zimmerman made the comments to another court official last week — which were captured on video and then broadcast on YouTube in adherence with the state’s open courtroom laws. The footage has since been taken down. He referred to 21-year-old Kevin Peterson Jr., who was killed by three Clark County deputies on Oct. 29, as “the black guy they were trying to make an angel out of” and...

A shift in the corporate world with big American companies embracing so-called “woke” leftist policies along with increased retirements among the old guard of the GOP is fueling a populist surge inside the Republican Party, a new memo from GOP insiders reveals. The memo from CGCN, a government affairs firm staffed by top GOP insiders, is titled: “The Party They’ll Get, Not the Party They Want.” In the memo, which has no named author, CGCN warns the “business community” that their previous allies in the Republican Party are moving on from protecting business interests to instead focusing on populist priorities...

White House press secretary Jen Psaki accused former President Donald Trump of fueling a rise in crimes against Asian-Americans by referring to the coronavirus as the “Wuhan virus.” Psaki blamed Trump for the rise in attacks against Asian-Americans during the White House press briefing. She said: I think that there’s no question that some of the damaging rhetoric that we saw during the prior administration, calling COVID the Wuhan virus or other things, led to perceptions of the Asian-American community that are inaccurate, unfair … has elevated threats against Asian-Americans and we’re seeing that around the country.

The suspect wanted for an ugly, racist rant in a New York City cab has come forward, and her identity is just as shocking as the hate she spewed. Westchester County family facing deportation due to confusion over expiration date on paperwork The question so many have been asking -- where is this woman from? And who is she? Eyewitness News traced her face mask back to a performing arts theater in Woodstock. On their website, there were posts from people claiming to know the suspect, saying they "will never speak to her again." Multiple sources close to the investigation...

“He that is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his neighbour cometh and searcheth him” (Proverbs 18:17).

‘You swipe left and right and there’s another option if you want to have intimacy’ says commissioner The police commissioner of New South Wales in Australia has floated the idea of a smartphone app to record consent to sexual activity. In a paywalled story published by News Corporation and broadcast on local radio, Michael Fuller suggested such an application would not be run by the cops nor the government, and could be either a standalone app or added as a feature in dating apps. “You swipe left and right and there’s another option if you want to have intimacy,” he...

It has stood for over nine centuries as the most celebrated record of the 1066 Norman Conquest of England, its famous images cemented into the mind of every British school child. But for all its enduring power, the 70-metre (230 feet) long Bayeux Tapestry -- held at a museum in the northern French town of the same name -- is a fragile object suffering from wear-and-tear, including thousands of holes. It will now be restored for the first since 1870, two years after an agreement between Paris and London for the tapestry to be loaned to Britain. "The tapestry is...

"No father should speak to their children like this," Kerrion Franklin posted with the recording.Grammy-winning gospel singer Kirk Franklin apologized over the weekend after his son posted a recording of a phone call in which Franklin hurled profanities and an apparent threat at his son. In audio of the partial phone call posted to Kerrion Franklin's Instagram account, the elder Franklin can be heard saying: "You need to get your skinny motherf-----g ass back out the g------ way before I put my foot in your ass." "I will break your neck if you ever disrespect me," he continued before seeming...

In a Facebook post Wednesday, Placer County said their Agricultural Commissioner’s Office confirmed the ‘mysterious’ sound residents have been reporting in Roseville were ‘bird scare cannons.’ The county said farmers in the area have been using them to prevent geese from destroying their crops. The cannon, also known as a zon gun, is a small device that uses propane to emit a thunderclap-like sound to scare away birds from farms.

I don’t have much to add here today that hasn’t already been said. Whiteness is a public health crisis. It shortens life expectancies, it pollutes air, it constricts equilibrium, it devastates forests, it melts ice caps, it sparks (and funds) wars, it flattens dialects, it infests consciousnesses, and it kills people—white people and people who are not white, my mom included. There will be people who die, in 2050, because of white supremacy-induced decisions from 1850. A line can and should be drawn from the actions of the white supremacist who stalked into three Atlanta-area massage parlors yesterday, and allegedly...

Did Joe Biden mislead the country about his tax plans during his campaign for president? Unless Jen Psaki misspoke this afternoon, it sure looks as if he did. Here’s what she said:Psaki says potential tax increase on those making $400,000 or more means that income threshold applies to "families."— Kathryn Watson (@kathrynw5) March 17, 2021This is directly at odds with the promise on Joe Biden’s website, which reads:Joe Biden will not raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000. Period.One cannot square “anyone” and “families.” And what is that “period” doing there, if not to make the preceding statement emphatic?It...

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Eight people were killed in a series of shootings at massage parlors in the Atlanta area on Tuesday, including six Asian women, raising concerns that the crimes were racially motivated. While police are still investigating a connection and motivation, the attacks shook the Asian American and Pacific Islander community, which has been targeted in a surge of hate crimes. Online, the hashtags “#AsianLivesMatter,” modeled after the Black Lives Matter movement, and variations of “#StopAsianHate” were trending as many members of the community spoke out against racism. Other people of color, including Black activists, joined them in solidarity against white supremacist...

Ready to crawl into bed after a long day of "normal human" cosplay? Hoping to fall asleep fast instead of staring at your ceiling for hours? You probably already have the ingredients you need for a dietitian-approved bedtime snack that'll help you drift off. s a strong case for a banana with peanut butter as the best snack for better sleep. What a dietitian wants you to know about eating before bed: What you eat before bed and how soon before bed that you eat it can affect both sleep and your digestion. If your food isn't digested before you...

“‘Follow Me’: The Cross of Discipleship” (Mark 8:34-35) “Take up your cross and follow me.” Today in our series on discipleship in the Gospel of Mark, we take up the cross. We take it up, not just as a topic for a sermon, but we take it up as a way of life. Because in our text, Jesus tells us what being his disciple will be like: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for...

A new analysis suggests Earth may have been a water world three to four billion years ago with a global ocean large enough to have submerged Mount Everest. Scientists at Harvard University examined our planet's ancient mantle and found that in ages past it was four times hotter due to radioactivity, and would therefore not be able to hold the current amount of water. 'We find that water storage capacity in a hot, early mantle may have been smaller than the amount of water Earth's mantle currently holds, so the additional water in the mantle today would have resided on...

Phil Yu was not surprised that a white gunman killed eight people, six of them Asian women, at Atlanta-area spas advertising their "Asian" or "international" staff. The worst thought he had on Wednesday, the day after the massacre, was just that, he said — he had seen it coming. “Being Asian in this country, no matter how long you’ve been here or how you got here, often feels like a constant negotiation of feeling unwelcome," said Yu, a blogger and commentator in Southern California who posts as Angry Asian Man. Many Asian Americans are bristling with pain and fury, seeing...

Angela Levin, author of 'Harry: Conversations with the Prince', explains why she is doubtful of some of the couple's allegations.