Free Republic

After President Joe Biden’s changing statements about what kind of infrastructure-labeled spending spree he intends to sign into law, Republicans face a conundrum. GOP senators still think they have a deal with Democrats that will fund infrastructure, not a left-wing laundry list of entitlement spending and Green New Deal power grabs. But Biden and congressional Democrats are still planning on passing a second bill that will contain exactly the kind of spending spree that Republicans say they oppose. Democrats think they can do it by the back-door strategy of a reconciliation bill that jettisons the need for support from any...

On this Independence Day 2021, I reflect on the America I love so much and how it looks very different from the one I knew as a child in the 80s and 90s. How, once upon a time, we celebrated our nationalism and patriotism, and today, there is a very vocal minority that resents the USA. I believe if they knew the realities behind China, they may rethink their position. As an American of Chinese ancestry and a community organizer on the ground, I felt an important need to discuss this topic. Perhaps one of the most bizarre news stories...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4

The NSA denied ‘targeting’ Tucker Carlson, but did not deny reading his emails. The NSA also did not deny that it may have accessed his communications through ‘incidental collection.’I laughed when Fox News host Tucker Carlson said a National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower told him that agency was monitoring his emails to leak them in an attempt to take his show off the air. From my 19 years as a CIA analyst and five years with House Intelligence Committee staff, I found this impossible to believe, for three reasons.First, I believed NSA’s huge and lumbering bureaucracy would never agree to...

A man and his dog were walking along a road The man was enjoying the scenery when it suddenly occurred to him that he was dead. He remembered dying and that the dog walking beside him had been dead for years. He wondered where the road was leading them. After a while, they came to a high, white stone wall along one side of the road. It looked like fine marble. At the top of a long hill, it was broken by a tall arch that glowed in the sunlight. When he was standing before it, he saw a magnificent...

Peter Daszak, the president of the U.S. nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, has been the subject of growing scrutiny over the last several months regarding his role in the funding of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. For several years leading up to the pandemic, EcoHealth Alliance funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal research grants to the WIV for the study of potential pandemic coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab. As government investigators and journalists dig to uncover the full scope of Daszak's links to the WIV, Daszak is continuing to spurn a congressional request for that information. In April, Republicans on...

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has long been known as a member of Congress who helps, protects, and uses information from whistleblowers. Now, he is seeking whistleblowers on a lawsuit the Biden Justice Department has filed against Georgia over the state's new election integrity law that attempts to reduce the opportunities for fraud.Among other issues in Georgia, a fabricated story that there was a water main break sent Republican observers home from a key vote-counting site on election night in 2020. But it turns out there was no water incident, officials continued counting ballots, and the Donald Trump lead morphed into...

A few weeks after retiring as a baseball player, former St. Louis Cardinals pitching legend Dizzy Dean has also brought his short-lived coaching career with the Chicago Cubs to an end. The paper reports that he suited up as a first base coach for today's game against the Pittsburgh Pirates, but will be climbing the stairs to the announcer's booth for his first game on July 10. While it may sound odd that Dean is calling games for St. Louis' Falstaff Brewing Co. (since-defunct, but was then among the top breweries in the United States), in that era, baseball was...

July 7, 2021 Monday of week 14 in Ordinary Time Altar and tomb of St. Anthony Zaccaria Church of St Barnabas in Milan, Italy Readings at MassLiturgical Colour: Green.First readingGenesis 28:10-22 ©Jacob's dream of the ladder at BethelJacob left Beersheba and set out for Haran. When he had reached a certain place he passed the night there, since the sun had set. Taking one of the stones to be found at that place, he made it his pillow and lay down where he was. He had a dream: a ladder was there, standing on the ground with its top reaching...

Actor and Happy Days star Henry Winkler, who once said he was thrilled to “help make Donald Trump a one-term President,” took to Twitter to proclaim that the United States needs a “cataclysmic event” in order for the nation to be brought “back together.” “We are So divided as a country .. only a cataclysmic Event, that makes us depend on one another again, can bring us back together,” the Arrested Development actor tweeted, without offering any further context.

Hackers suspected to be behind a mass extortion attack that affected hundreds of companies worldwide late on Sunday demanded $70 million to restore the data they are holding ransom, according to a posting on a dark web site. The demand was posted on a blog typically used by the REvil cybercrime gang, a Russia-linked group that is counted among the cybercriminal world's most prolific extortionists. The gang has an affiliate structure, occasionally making it difficult to determine who speaks on the hackers' behalf, but Allan Liska of cybersecurity firm Recorded Future said the message "almost certainly" came from REvil's core...

Brexit leader Nigel Farage characterised the growing migrant crisis in the Enlgish Channel as an “invasion” as more migrants landed on British shores on Friday. Sharing footage of migrants rushing ashore on an English beach, Mr Farage said: “This video was taken in Dungeness yesterday. Would it be wrong to use the word invasion? Take a look for yourself.” According to the BBC’s migrant reporter Simon Jones revealed that 201 migrants in nine boats reached the United Kingdom on Friday. Earlier this week, the Brexit leader challenged Home Secretary Priti Patel to come to the country’s border to witness the...

The British brought slavery to the New World and Americans ended it roughly 230 years later. Every black person descended from slaves owes a debt to their ancestors’ struggles. The abomination of slavery is the reason most black people are here, in the greatest country in the world. I’m guessing almost every black American lives a better life than their counterparts in the modern-day Ivory Coast, where many slaves came from, and where today almost 50% of the country lives in poverty (African poverty, not American iPhone poverty) and the life expectancy for men and women is under 60 years....

The Biden administration officially failed to achieve getting 70 percent of adults vaccinated by Independence Day. To compensate for this failure, they’re trying to claim a different victory—one that isn’t theirs. “We’ve reduced the percentage of people who are getting COVID, who are dying of COVID, by 90 percent,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on Saturday. “That’s a huge, significant achievement.” It sure is. But, it’s Trump’s achievement, not Biden’s. The biggest factor in reducing COVID cases and deaths is no doubt that we got three vaccines in less than a year. That’s a Trump accomplishment, not a...

Look, I understand, I really do, why proud Americans here at American Thinker and elsewhere are hurt and angry that Olympic Games wannabe hammer thrower Gwen Berry turned away from the American flag and our national anthem at a sporting event to qualify for the American team representing America at the Tokyo Olympic Games.However, paradoxically, I can sympathize somewhat with Berry's reasoning as I understand it. While America is a wonderful country it has had some deep flaws, slavery and its aftereffects among the most visible and long lasting. And while I am not privy to Berry's most personal life...

A 13-year-old from Michigan has died in his sleep three days after receiving his second coronavirus vaccine, prompting an investigation by the Centers for Disease Control. Jacob Clynick, a healthy boy with no underlying conditions, received his second shot of the Pfizer vaccine at Walgreens in Zilwaukee on June 13, according to his aunt Tammy Burages. She told The Detroit Free Press that the only side effects Jacob had experienced from the vaccine were fatigue and fever, which are considered normal. He complained of a stomach ache on June 15 and went to bed, where he died in his sleep,...

One of the rafts on the Raging River ride at Adventureland Park in Altoona, Iowa flipped, resulting in the fatal accident, CBS News affiliate KCCI reports. On Friday, the ride reopened to the public for the first time since 2020 and underwent a full inspection first, park officials said, according to KCCI. Six people were on the raft when it flipped. Because the ride is at a remote distance from the park entrances, it was difficult for fire officials to get to the location, KCCI reported.

National Geographic caused a stir by suggesting that Fourth of July fireworks are racist because their smoke disproportionately affects communities of color. The publication marked Independence Day on Sunday by tweeting: 'Scientists found that vulnerable people and communities of color are disproportionately exposed to air pollution from firework celebrations.’ The tweet included a link to an article about a study which found that communities of color and vulnerable populations with higher rates of asthma, older residents and children, are exposed to higher levels of smoke from firework displays than other groups. The study by researches at the University of California's...

A group of residents in McKinleyville’s Azalea Heights neighborhood are up in arms over the killing of one of the most polarizing members of their community: a peacock known by most as Mr. P, or Azul, or Peony, depending on who you ask. The multi-monikered animal was found dead of an apparent gunshot wound on Wednesday after one resident, who was irate by the bird’s frequent 5 a.m. wake-up calls, decided to put a hit out for it on Humboldt County’s Craigslist page ...the “Wanted” section on June 13, followed by instructions on where and when to find the bird....

More than 156 million people in the U.S. have been fully vaccinated. But even though the Covid-19 vaccines are very effective against all the known coronavirus variants, including the highly transmissible delta variant that is spreading rapidly, some communities and physicians are urging a return to masking. [cut] Dr. Andy Dunn, a family physician and chief of staff at Wyoming Medical Center in Casper, wants vaccinated people to continue with masking. "These variants are going to find a way" to survive, Dunn said. "Do whatever it takes for Covid to go away," he added. "If I had to jump on...