Free Republic

Despite numerous arguments against the effort, the push to make Washington, D.C. a state just won't die./em>D.C. statehood is not a novel idea. As the Department of Justice concluded in 1987 in a highly detailed report totaling more than 80 pages: “Efforts to admit the District of Columbia to the Union as a state should be vigorously opposed.” Still, the idea lingers, although never nearing 60 votes in the Senate (or a constitutional amendment for that matter).The passage of time has not brought D.C. statehood closer to 60 votes. But statehood has suddenly become plausible to propose. Indeed, the forceful...

You’d be hard-pressed to get Joe Biden to offer an update, opinion, or even a single fact about the border.That’s a huge mess. It’s his job for that not to be a huge mess. The border is a national security issue. He handed it off to Kamala Harris more than a week ago. She laughed when the media asked if she was going to the border, then laughed at parents who want their kids back in school. Laughing at problems has been Harris’s chief public contribution to the administration so far.Biden’s chief contribution has been to make terrible decisions and...

President Biden has announced the American Jobs Plan, which is summed up in the headlines as a $2 trillion investment program in infrastructure and green energy plan is expected to boost job creation, strengthen the manufacturing sector, and drive innovation. However, most of it goes to subsidies and current expenditure and comes with the largest tax increase in United States’ history. It has been hailed as a new “New Deal”, and much like its predecessor, it is basically a massive increase in subsidies to non-productive areas of the economy against a series of protectionist and misguided tax hikes to the...

Google has made millions of its users the targets of a test for a new ad program without informing them, warns a privacy activist group. The Electronic Frontier Foundation said Google's test trial of its Federated Learning of Cohorts without consent "is a concrete breach of user trust in service of a technology that should not exist." Under the program, Google Chrome browsers "will begin sorting their users into groups based on behavior, then sharing group labels with third-party trackers and advertisers around the web." "Although Google announced this was coming, the company has been sparse with details about the...

Evangelical leader Franklin Graham believes Americans should get the COVID-19 vaccine. The missionary told CBS News that he thinks Jesus would want people to get their shots, and he's turning to Scripture and the parable of the Good Samaritan to make his case. It's a case that will need to be made clearly if evangelicals — perhaps the most under-discussed group with high levels of vaccine hesitancy — can be persuaded. "Jesus does tell the story of a man that was beaten and robbed and left for dead on the side of a road, and religious leaders walked past him...

A Rasmussen poll has revealed that almost half of Americans support the introduction of vaccine passports in order to get “back to normal.”The findings were released over the Easter period, and noted that 44% of Americans said that a government run system requiring proof of vaccination is a “good idea.”62% of those who say they’ve gotten the COVID-19 vaccine believe it’s a good idea to require proof of vaccination . . .https://t.co/0cjktcBduj pic.twitter.com/rta3BPRNxA— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) April 1, 2021Fewer, 41%, said they think vaccine passports are a bad idea."Is requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccination to return to pre-pandemic activities a...

A 15-year-old boy was shot while taking out the trash Monday morning on Chicago’s West Side. WGN9 reported the boy was taking out the trash “in the 1300 block of West Washburne Avenue at approximately 5:30 a.m.” when a shot rang out. The boy felt pain and ran back into the house.

There have been cyber volumes written about cancel culture, especially in the last couple of years. I’ve opined on the subject a few times myself. As someone whose past is a veritable minefield of cancel-worthy (in the minds of leftists) offenses, I feel an obligation rage against this dangerous, dystopian plague that is upon America. An integral part of cancel culture is forcing its victims to abase themselves publicly and apologize. I’m not suggesting that all apologies are abasements, just the ones done for the cancel mob. The forced march in the cancel culture mea culpa parade rarely results in...

There has been no shortage of hysteria surrounding the recent law signed by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp concerning ballot integrity and voting revisions in his state. This follows a contentious election and even more confounding runoff contests. President Biden has been at the forefront of the misinformation, offering wildly inaccurate details while claiming this new law is "Jim Crow on Steroids." This has inspired a number of corporations to come out in opposition, most displaying their ignorance of a law they have not read.Adding to the intentional misleading information is The New York Times, as they offered what is supposedly...

Job Creators Network President and CEO Alfredo Ortiz on Monday reacted to Major League Baseball’s decision to pull its 2021 All-Star Game and Draft out of Atlanta over Georgia’s new election laws. According to Ortiz, the decision to remove the two events will “cost upwards of $100 million of economic damages” to Georgia. The jobs expert pointed out that a lot of the businesses being hurt the most by a “misrepresentation” of the new law are “minority-owned businesses” that “desperately” needed the revenue.

On a corner of my desk, there is a small pile of newspaper clips, notes and documents. They date back to last October and are part of the scandalous information contained on a laptop abandoned by Hunter Biden. Normally I would have thrown the papers away or stored them by now. But I kept them handy because I knew the day would come when they would be needed again. Friday was that day. In a TV interview, Hunter effectively conceded for the first time the laptop was his, opening the door to a new round of scrutiny about his foreign...

New York state has launched the nation’s first COVID-19 virtual passport for individuals to prove they received a vaccine or negative test result through the first “Excelsior Pass,” a move conservatives see as government overreach. The free, voluntary platform developed in partnership with IBM will use technology to confirm a recent negative PCR or antigen test result or proof of vaccination to gain entry into businesses or venues that want to participate. New York announced the Excelsior Pass, a vaccine passport app, in a March 26 press release from the office of Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The app will have a...

In October 1990, the food critic Jonathan Gold reviewed an inexpensive fast-food joint on Pico Boulevard called Oki-Dog for the LA Times. The piece, “Trans-Global Junk Food,” doubled as an obituary for the late-night hangout of his youth: the 24-hour Oki-Dog on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, which had recently closed. In the early days of punk, Gold spent many a night at the nearby nightclub, the Starwood, which gave many future rock heroes their first big gigs, and played cello in two short-lived bands, Overman and Tank Burial. Years later, he was still an evangelist for Oki-Dog and...

Progressive Myths About Mass Shootings and Weapons of War Within a week of blaming “white supremacy” for the murder of six Asian and two white women by a white man in Georgia, progressives are now blaming “assault weapons” for a mass shooting in which a Trump-hating Muslim immigrant with a history of violence, mental illness, and racial animus gunned down 10 white people in a Boulder, Colorado supermarket.Beyond the duplicity of highlighting race only when the killer is white and the victims are not, progressive lawmakers, activists, and journalists are using a litany of falsehoods in an attempt to...

It was only a matter of time before the government would enlist teachers to work in the migrant shelters sprouting up due to the crisis at the border.When people accuse me of being a glorified babysitter because I’m a teacher, I usually laugh and respond, “Who said anything about being glorified?” During the COVID-19 lockdowns, I can now add, “Who said anything about being a babysitter?” These days, teachers in many parts of the country are paid for doing next to nothing since reopening schools would expose them to the virus. For teachers who have returned to the classroom, much...

Gloria Henry, best known for her role as family matriarch Alice Mitchell in the hit '50s and '60s sitcom Dennis the Menace, has died. She was 98. "She's flying now, free of her body," Ellwood wrote alongside a photo of Henry standing in front of a mural featuring outspread angel wings in Los Angeles. "She left on a countdown 4 3 2 1 @ 3:40pm. She was such an incredible woman in so many ways.

The unhinged US “experts” behind the 2014 coup against the elected Ukrainian president are back in power and they are determined to finish the job – even if it means World War III! The explicit US backing of Ukraine’s military ambitions in the region are a blank check to Kiev. But it is a check that Kiev would be wise to avoid cashing. Back in 1956 the US government pumped endless propaganda into Hungary promising military backing for an uprising against its Soviet occupiers. When the Hungarians, believing Washington’s lies, did rise up they found themselves all alone and facing...

A new report from Equis Labs highlighted reasons why Donald Trump’s appeal to Latino voters changed the political landscape in several states and brought the GOP victories in several House races in Texas and Florida.What worries Democrats most is that those victories by Republicans in majority Latino districts came in spite of a massive effort by Democrats to get out the vote among Latino voters. The tactic worked — but not quite the way Democrats hoped.Latino voters with low involvement in politics, many of whom didn’t vote in 2016 at all, shifted toward Trump. Driving the shift was Republican messaging...

Former NBA star Charles Barkley has accused politicians of fueling racial hatred between "whites and blacks," saying leaders are exploiting differences between people to "keep their grasp on money and power." The basketball player-turned-analyst for “Inside the NBA” made the comments during the “Final Four Show” on CBS Saturday.

Leftist billionaire George Soros didn’t take long to unleash his massive wealth to help garner support for President Joe Biden’s multitrillion-dollar spending agenda. Axios revealed that Soros’s “Open Society Foundations [OSF] are pledging $20 million to jumpstart as much as $100 million for a campaign to rally progressives around President Biden's infrastructure and social welfare proposals.” Soros serves as the OSF chairman. Of course, Axios didn’t mention the projected economic effects of Biden’s agenda to drastically hike taxes to pay for his $2.3 trillion infrastructure proposal in its exclusive. The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board noted that under Biden’s plans,...