Free Republic

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif expresses his ‘strong dismay’ at the decision, saying Tehran could not pay its arrears due to the US sanctions. Iran on Thursday slammed the United Nations’ decision to suspend its voting rights at the General Assembly for failing to pay its dues as “fundamentally flawed, entirely unacceptable and completely unjustified”. Tehran argues that the $16.2m it owes to the UN is the result of Washington’s crippling sanctions, imposed after former US President Donald Trump in 2018 unilaterally withdrew the US from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. Iran’s voting rights at the UN General Assembly...

Speaking in Tulsa on the 100th anniversary of the racial atrocity there, Joe Biden belatedly turned to the issue of voting rights, to explain why he is having such difficulty winning passage of the party's priority legislation. "I hear all the folks on TV saying, 'Why doesn't Biden get this done?'" "Well, because Biden only has a majority of, effectively, four votes in the House and a tie in the Senate, with two members of the Senate who vote more with my Republican friends." Biden was referring to Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. "But we're...

Following the Civil Rights movement, physicians took seriously their obligation to treat all patients. This principle separated them from the federal government’s grotesque 40-year-long Tuskegee Experiment SNIP Katie Herzog’s “What Happens When Doctors Can’t Tell the Truth?” examines a world in which doctors are silenced for fear that they will be destroyed professionally should they run afoul of the Critical Race Theory infecting medical care across America and in which young doctors, imbued with “anti-racist” zeal have the whip hand. Herzog begins her article by describing a super-secret Zoom group of a dozen physicians across America, who serve as a...

Back in December, SocGen's resident market skeptic Albert Edwards shared with the world why he is starting to panic about soaring food prices. And since that was before food prices really took amid broken supply chains, trillions in fiscal stimulus and exploding commodity costs, off we can only imagine the sheer terror he must feel today. A United Nations index of world food costs climbed for a 12th straight month in May, its longest stretch in a decade, rising to the highest in almost a decade, heightening concerns over bulging grocery bills. All five components of the index rose during...

Covid-19 began trickling out of Wuhan, China, at least a year and a half ago. The world still knows far too little about the origins of the outbreak. Theories include a zoonotic host, a bat cave, a frozen food shipment from Southeast Asia, and—the likeliest explanation—an accidental leak from a virology lab with ties to China’s biological-warfare program. Whatever you believe, getting to the bottom of the case demands American leaders apply new pressure on the Chinese Communist Party. It’s crucial that the world learn how the pandemic started and the extent to which Beijing’s lies fueled this global crisis....

As even many casual observers of America's fractious politics are aware, the overwhelming majority of lawmaking at the federal level no longer takes place in Congress as the Constitution's framers intended. Instead, the vast majority of the "rulemaking" governing Americans' day-to-day lives now takes place behind closed doors, deep in the bowels of the administrative state's sprawling bureaucracy. The brainchild of progressive President Woodrow Wilson, arguments on behalf of the modern administrative state are ultimately rooted in, among other factors, a disdain for the messy give-and-take of republican politics and an epistemological preference for rule by enlightened clerisy. Put more...

Russell Moore’s departure from the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) and his role at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) has many conservatives in the denomination celebrating the end of a seven-year tumultuous period of declivity in both practical doctrine and orthopraxy. On the other hand, this author believes that despite Moore’s exodus, the damage he left behind by turning much of the denomination into a progressive political action group will likely be far too much for the denomination to clean up. ... Over the last seven years, Moore brought those Democrat politics into the Church, using his platform to...

Long before the pandemic, the local news business had been in a tailspin. Newspapers across the country lost classified advertising revenue thanks to internet sites like Craigslist. Terrestrial radio stations lost their audience to iTunes -- and then Spotify. Most commercial radio stations don't offer news anymore. Most Americans under 35 think of newspapers and radio news as odd products their parents consume, like Spam and Velveeta. As a college kid in Viroqua, Wisconsin, I covered local news in the summers for our local radio station and called in freelance articles on the city council or school board decisions to...

When I saw the title of an opinion piece by the New York Times' Nicholas Kristof, "Were My Criticisms of Israel Fair?" I did not hold my breath in expectation that his answer would be, "they were not, and I apologize." He doubled down, yet again smearing Israel with the accusations of war crimes for forcefully responding to an attack from Gaza, in the best traditions of the New York Times. Which is of course his right -- as we well know, everyone is entitled to his opinion. The problem of course is that, as the second part of that...

PORTLAND, Ore. - An Indiana man, charged with 26 felonies, is now facing federal charges for allegedly throwing an explosive toward police and smashing windows during protests in Portland, Oregon. Malik Muhammad, 24, of Indianapolis, first made headlines last year when he de-escalated a tense standoff by hugging a police lieutenant in Indianapolis. On Tuesday, Muhammad appeared in U.S. District Court in Portland, where he was charged with civil disorder and obstructing law enforcement, possession of an unregistered firearm and using explosives to commit a federal felony. The three federal charges Muhammad now faces are in addition to the 26...

“For much too long, the history of what took place here was told in silence, cloaked in darkness. But just because history is silent, it doesn't mean that it did not take place... And while darkness can hide much, it can never erase what happened. That’s why we’re here: to shine a light, to make sure America knows the story in full.”The Tulsa riots noted by President Biden are a painful episode among many acts of racist violence in the United States. One of the largely hidden parts of the history of this event is the Afro-idealist response of an...

ASHEVILLE, N.C. (WSPA) – Asheville Police will no longer be sending officers to respond to certain calls because of a shortage of officers, the department said in a release Wednesday. The department reports it’s lost 84 officers since the start of last year. “We have an agency that has provided services at a high level for a long time, but the circumstances have come to pass that we don’t have the staffing to maintain that level of service,” said Deputy Chief of Police Mike Yelton. The department said it’s no longer responding to crimes including thefts under $1,000 where there...

Contagious disease outbreaks are named after their place of origin. There are myriad examples – Lyme Disease, Ebola, Zika, or Marburg virus, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, and so on. Tradition changed with “COVID-19”, an acronym indicating that this was a coronavirus disease beginning in 2019. Naming this virus after it’s source location, such as the Chinese Coronavirus or Wuhan Flu is now considered racist, xenophobic, white supremacist, or any other novel woke-ism adjective. Perhaps a new name for COVID virus is in order. The past weeks have rubbed some of the glitter off Fabulous Fauci, the god of all things...

True disrupter candidates are rare, but Pennsylvania has at least two. Brothers Joe and Sean Gale are running a true grassroots campaign that has taken aim not just at the Democrats, but the GOP establishment as well. Joe Gale — a Montgomery County Commissioner — has routinely taken the establishment GOP to task on high profile issues. Over the last year and a half, he has been a vocal critic of the state GOP for their role in passing ACT 77, which allowed for mass mail-in voting. Every Republican member of the Pennsylvania Senate voted for ACT 77, which was...

This may shock and amaze you if your blinders are on, but President Joe Biden is not only not a uniter; he is actively trying to divide Americans on race -- and other issues -- purely for raw political power. There is no other plausible explanation. During former President Donald Trump's entire presidency and ever since, we've been bombarded daily with the narrative that Trump is divisive and a racist. His political opponents and the media distorted his words, such as those he said in the aftermath of the Charlottesville attacks, to paint him as sympathetic to white supremacists. That...

Former Vice President Mike Pence during a speech Thursday in New Hampshire blasted the policies of President Joe Biden, observing the president had gone from campaigning “as a moderate” to becoming “the most liberal president since FDR.” Pence delivered his remarks during the Hillsborough County GOP’s annual Lincoln Reagan Dinner, and as he railed against Biden and spoke optimistically about the Republican Party’s future, the former vice president only further added to speculation that he himself could be considering a run for president in 2024. Although Pence did not give any indications of his plans during his comments, he conveyed...

Rutgers illustrates the lack of understanding that anti-Semitism is a metaphor for racial hatred. Whatever the situation in the Middle East, there is no excuse for the importing of prejudice against Jews to the streets in Britain and the U.S. In both countries, there is anxiety about the increase in antisemitic incidents and expressions in recent months. Inevitably this increase is related to the misinformed commentary on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which has led to anti-Semitic incidents and the expression of anti-Semitic views. This has caused a reaction. A full-page paid advertisement issued on June 1, 2021 by a variety of...

Today's Democratic Party, aligned with certain associated power elites, is actively fighting a second American Revolution. Today's Democratic Party, aligned with certain associated power elites, is actively fighting a second American Revolution dedicated to overturning our original one, with the objective of imposing a Marxism-style political order upon our country. Actively employing a totalitarian political model and methods similar to those utilized by the Chinese Communist Party, a cadre of elites in this country, including many in the business, media, academic, and celebrity worlds as well as many politicians across party lines, are working together in a highly orchestrated movement...

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) said Thursday that he is still “undecided” on whether he'll run for reelection next year. "I'm undecided," Johnson, who said he was only going to be a two-term senator, said at the Milwaukee Press Club, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. "When I made that pledge, I meant that pledge," he added. "I ran in 2010 because I was panicked for this nation. I'm more panicked today." Former President Trump has encouraged Johnson to run for a third term. “He is brave, he is bold, he loves our Country, our Military, and our Vets. He will protect...

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has arrested four more members of the Oath Keepers in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, adding them to a growing group of far-right militia members facing felony charges over the riot. In a newly unsealed court filing, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia added the four to conspiracy charges facing members of the group, bringing the total to 16 defendants in the case. Federal prosecutors say the four attempted “to corruptly obstruct, influence, and impede an official proceeding, that is, the Certification of the Electoral College vote” —...