Free Republic

The half-billion-dollar National Guard price tag to man the U.S. Capitol for more than five months has emptied the Guard's coffers and will affect readiness if Congress does not act, National Guard Bureau Chief Gen. Daniel Hokanson said Wednesday. The Guard’s largest and most expensive mission was to protect the .U.S capital, including providing security for the presidential inauguration and the much-criticized militarization of the U.S. Capitol grounds with razor wire and 7-foot nonscalable fences....The peak deployment in the nation’s capital required 26,000 service members from all 50 states, U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia. Without the reimbursement, Hokanson...

When 39-year-old Cabletron co-founder Robert Levine retired in 1997, newspapers called him “eccentric” — he did, after all, wear ostrich-skin boots and chase off a pizza delivery boy in his armored tank, as he told it — but he was just getting started. The mansion has an indoor and an outdoor shooting range. “You never really even have to leave the estate to have fun. I don’t know of another place like it,” The 25,000-square-foot recreation center called “the Lodge” includes a five-story rock climbing wall, an elevator, an indoor shooting range, a teppanyaki (similar to Hibachi) dining area, a...

A human resources official defends use of eliminationist rhetoric in email to Jewish employee Google’s human resources department earlier this week sanctioned an employee’s use of the phrase "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," the eliminationist call-to-arms frequently employed by anti-Israel activists. The company's determination came after a Jewish employee raised concerns about the anti-Semitic slogan by a top Google union official on an internal company profile. The company maintains an internal database containing contact information and personal profiles that appear in emails and other internal Google communications. "The Googler who shared this phrase on his...

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) confirmed this week that he is negotiating an amnesty deal for likely millions of illegal aliens with Senate Democrats. In statements to PunchBowl News, Cornyn confirmed that he is hammering out the details of an expansive amnesty deal with Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) that could give green cards, and eventually American citizenship, to illegal aliens enrolled and eligible for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, those given Temporary Protected Status (TPS), and illegal aliens who work on farms. Right now, there’s a proposal to deal with DACA, a bipartisan border solutions bill,...

Inadvertently, President Joe Biden just made one of the most convincing arguments for gun rights. In fact, he was quite possibly more convincing than any other president in U.S. history.... ...The president began by saying “most responsible gun owners” agree that “no possible justification for having 100 rounds in a magazine.” ... ...“If you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons.”... ...Biden’s claim that these weapons aren’t powerful enough to take on the U.S. government isn’t quite making the case he hopes. In fact, that sort of argument...

A quirk of a 19th-century Congressional resolution could allow Texas to split up into five states Before John Nance Garner became Franklin Roosevelt’s vice president, and before he declared the job “isn’t worth a pitcher of warm spit,” the cow-punching, whiskey-drinking, poker-dealing Texas congressman pushed a plan to grab even more clout for his already enormous state.... “Cactus Jack” argued that Texas could, and should, split itself into five states. “An area twice as large and rapidly becoming as populous as New England should have at least ten Senators,” Garner told The New York Times in April 1921, “and the...

The World Health Organization overhauled a webpage on the COVID-19 vaccines that had recommended against children getting vaccinated following online confusion about the difference between its guidance and that of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On a previous version of its website, the WHO stated that “children should not be vaccinated at the moment. There is not yet enough evidence on the use of vaccines against COVID-19 in children to make recommendations for children to be vaccinated against COVID-19.” The recommendation, which had been online for months, drew notice earlier this week from U.S. vaccine skeptics. Rep. Marjorie...

Republicans are clamoring to take action after Facebook founder Zuckerberg donated hundreds of millions of dollars last year to a group that distributed money to election precincts nationwide in a seemingly partisan fashion. Rep. Claudia Tenney, NY Republican, chairwoman of the House Election Integrity Caucus, told the Washington Examiner a group of GOP lawmakers is putting together legislation that would strip an organization's not-for-profit status if it uses money “to interfere in our election process.” Zuckerberg gave $350 million to the group last year, with the donations billed as part of a commitment to ensuring "safe and reliable" voting during...

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/06/23/cornyn-amnesty-deal-democrats/

European Commission Presiden von der Leyen called the bill ‘a shame,’ claiming it ‘goes against all the values, the fundamental values of the European Union.’' BRUSSELS, June 23, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has announced that the European Union will take initial steps against a Hungarian anti-pedophilia bill that bans promotion of LGBT ideology to children. Von der Leyen said in a press conference on Wednesday that she will use “all the powers of the Commission” against the legislation, which was passed by the Hungarian parliament last week. “I’ve instructed my responsible commissioners to write...

Celebrity Cruises has changed its health requirements onboard the two vessels sailing from Florida in June and July. The cruise line now complies with new Florida State Law that states the cruise line cannot ask for proof of vaccination. Whether guests who have not been vaccinated will be happy with the changes remains to be seen. Not only will guests who have not been vaccinated, or those who do not wish to disclose their status be subject to additional costs, those guests will also need to comply with various additional rules and regulations on board. Cruise Line Aims to Maintain...

Republicans criticized Vice President Kamala Harris’s upcoming trip to the Texas border, arguing she’ll be nowhere near the towns most overwhelmed with an influx of illegal immigrants crossing from Mexico. “She’s going to the wrong part of the border,” former acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said Wednesday in an interview with WMAL in Washington, D.C. Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, brought a large display of the Lone Star State to the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon that read, “Someone needs a map.”.. The chart showed Harris’s destination of El Paso, which is located on the west Texas border with...

The Ballyfermot Assumption Parish Church flew a Pride flag last week to show that “all are welcome”.BALLYFERMOT LOCALS ARE holding a solidarity vigil this week after a church received backlash online for flying an LGBT+ Pride flag on its grounds. The Ballyfermot Assumption Parish flew an Irish flag and a Pride flag outside its entrance last week as an effort to show that “all are welcome” in its church. After sharing photos of the flags on social media, large numbers posted thanks or appreciation, but others sent critical or abusive messages to the church because they believed the Pride flag...

In videos called "The Lost Class," two pro-gun public speakers addressed 3,044 empty chairs representing gun violence victims. A gun violence prevention group has released videos in which they trick famous pro-gun figures into addressing a sea of empty chairs, representing children and teenagers who were shot and killed before they could graduate from high school. Change the Ref, a gun safety organization founded by Patricia and Manuel Oliver, whose son Joaquin was murdered in the Parkland, Florida, school shooting, released the videos Wednesday. As drone videos show sweeps of thousands of empty white seats, overlaid audio from 911 calls...

Miguel Bezos attended the Delaware school after arriving from Cuba as an unaccompanied childMiguel Bezos, the immigrant father of Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, has donated US$12 million to a Catholic school in Delaware that housed and educated him when he arrived as an unaccompanied minor from Cuba in the early 1960s. The senior Bezos attended Salesianum School in Wilmington, Delaware, after fleeing post-Revolution Cuba, along with over 14,000 other minors brought to the U.S. through Operation Pedro Pan, a program organized by the Catholic Church with the help of the U.S. government. Because Catholic social services agencies in Miami receiving...

President Joe Biden has fired the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency after the Supreme Court handed him the power to do so on Wednesday. Director Mark Calabria's firing will be effective at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, the Washington Examiner has learned. Calabria, a staunch free-market advocate, was appointed by President Donald Trump to lead the FHFA in 2019. The FHFA is the federal agency responsible for managing the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, also known as Freddie Mac, and the Federal National Mortgage Association, also known as Fannie Mae — meaning it has far-reaching power over mortgage markets....

At his general audience on Wednesday, Pope Francis warned against preachers who sow division and mistrust online. “There is no shortage of preachers who, especially through the new means of communication, can disturb communities. They present themselves not primarily to announce the Gospel of God who loves man in Jesus, Crucified and Risen, but to insist, as true ‘keepers of the truth,’ ... what is the best way to be Christians,” the pope said June 23. “And they strongly affirm that the true Christianity is the one they adhere to, often identified with certain forms of the past, and that...

A Tennessee nurse who admitted to mailing feces and a blood-stained feminine product to her husband's ex-wife is facing federal charges. Della Marie Gibson Lathum, 37, admitted to police in April that she mailed packages with human feces and a letter containing a bloody sanitary pad. The blood was from a patient at the Parkwest Medical Center in Knoxville where Gibson was a registered nurse, she told police in a voluntary interview. The packages and letter were sent through the mail to Gibson's husband's ex-wife in Loudon County, who Gibson had allegedly been stalking and harassing for months. She told...

President Joe Biden delivered remarks Wednesday on the administration’s strategy to prevent gun crimes across the country when he said there is “a range of programs” he believes are needed to keep Americans from pulling the trigger. A reporter asked Biden what he feels would be the “most effective thing that government can do to change the mindset of those who feel compelled to pull the triggers” of guns. Biden said in response to the question that one could hope to change the mindset of people by “being engaged in a whole range of programs.” He continued to say that...

It's been over a month since the CDC finally got with the science and updated their guidelines to acknowledge that those who have been fully vaccinated do not need to wear masks indoors. And yet many still remain hesitant to accept that, as shown by polls which Matt and I have highlighted. A new poll from the Monmouth University Polling Institute released on Wednesday reflects such paranoia as well. The headline chooses to highlight how "Covid Illness Anxiety Plummets Amid Some Unease Over Low Vax Rate." That anxiety, the poll write-up mentions, "stands at its lowest level since the pandemic...