Free Republic

Hunter Biden, the budding artist, is never going to be Jackson Pollock or Edward Hopper. He probably isn’t Dennis Hopper, for that matter. That doesn’t make him an influence-peddler hiding behind an easel, however. And ethical conflicts, like modern art, are best viewed with some perspective. In case you missed the brouhaha here, the president’s 51-year-old son, whose shady business dealings have long been the subject of scrutiny, is now being represented by a SoHo gallery owner who expects to sell some of Hunter Biden’s abstract paintings for hundreds of thousands of dollars. The White House has said the identity...

The signs are clear that the United States Navy is in crisis. The signs are clear that the United States Navy is in crisis. A series of ship disasters, including the scrapping of ¾ billion dollar carrier, The Bonhomme Richard, after a fire, and the fatal seaborne collision of the guided missile destroyer Fitzgerald that killed 7 sailors have revealed problems with training and readiness. China, which now has more ships in its navy than we do, is boasting of having “chased” as US warship out of disputed waters. The AP reports: China’s military said it chased a U.S. warship...

As a New York criminal investigation continues after bringing tax fraud charges against Donald Trump’s business and a top executive, other prosecutors in Georgia, Washington DC and New York have inquiries under way that could also yield serious charges against Trump and his company, according to former prosecutors and public records. For example, a Georgia district attorney is leading a wide ranging criminal probe into Trump’s infamous call on 2 January to Georgia’s secretary of state beseeching him to “find 11,780 votes” to block Joe Biden’s presidential election win there. Meanwhile, separate prosecutors in New York and Washington DC are...

COVID-19 cases in the US leapt 47.5% last week from the previous week. Shots in arms, not shutdowns, are the answer. Among the big risks to Americans right now are unvaccinated healthcare workers and unvaccinated, undocumented migrants fanning out across the U.S. But President Joe Biden is putting politics ahead of tackling these two politically toxic problems. Team Biden is banning foreign travelers from many countries, including the UK, even if they're fully vaccinated. But he's okay with letting hundreds of thousands of unvaccinated foreigners wade across the Rio Grande to enter the U.S. via the southern border. According to...

Nashville Fire Department investigators arrested a Taco Bell shift leader after employees allegedly set a fire that caused tens of thousands of dollars in damage while they were playing with fireworks inside the restaurant. (Snip) Investigators said the surveillance footage showed employees locking the restaurant to keep customers from entering the business. They then allegedly ran around the store with fireworks in their hands. At one point the employees went into the men’s restroom and returned to the lobby a few minutes later and placed an item in a trashcan near the door.Employees allegedly went outside the restaurant and began...

Save for a staunch dedication to former President Donald Trump, there’s not much Horry County Republicans agree on these days. But Monday night, following a lengthy and often raucous meeting of the Horry County GOP on the campus of the Horry Georgetown Technical College, the local party voted to censure South Carolina GOP leader Drew McKissick, a significant rebuke of a key party leader as the Republican Party navigates a post-Trump political landscape. The vote to censure McKissick — which follows comments the state party chairman made about the Greenville County Republican Party last week — is also significant for...

With Cuba and China on the UN Human Rights Council involved in this scheme to expose the U.S. for its "systemic racism," what could go wrong? Joe Biden's secretary of state, Tony Blinken, has invited the United Nations's racism investigators to come inspect the U.S. According to Reuters: The U.S. State Department has invited U.N. experts who investigate racism and minority issues to conduct an official visit to the United States, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday. "Responsible nations must not shrink from scrutiny of their human rights record; rather, they should acknowledge it with the intent to...

State GOP Chairman Drew McKissick, who defeated the MYSCGOP-supported candidate, pro-Trump Attorney Lin Wood, said, “These are people who want to turn the local party organization into their own personal hobbyhorse, and that is not our mission.” He also said, referring to the takeover of Greenville GOP by MYSCGOP, “It will fall into a state of disrepair, become a complete dumpster fire and essentially be a leper colony for the next year and a half.” It has also been said that McKissick implied that the state GOP was ready to support rival GOP organizations in Greenville county created by “sane...

Texas Democrats split the state this week to prevent a quorum from being reached and thus block (or “filibuster” if you will) passage of a bill by the duly elected majority in the Texas legislature. Upon arriving in D.C., the vacationers broke out in a spontaneous performance of “We Shall Overcome.” Then they spontaneously did it again the next day, coincidentally following little media coverage of the first show. Performance one began during an on-the-tarmac presser late Monday night. The Democrats, arriving as they were from many hours on the beer bus and the maskless private and/or chartered flight (in...

The American Jobs Plan is premised chiefly upon investing $621 billion in America's crumbling transportation infrastructure. The Biden administration claims, "Decades of declining public investment has left our roads, bridges, rail, and transit systems in poor condition, with a trillion-dollar backlog of needed repairs. More than 35,000 people die in traffic crashes on U.S. roads each year, and millions more are seriously and often permanently injured." These statistics related to infrastructure are misleading. While traffic deaths have risen appreciably from 2020 despite fewer people driving, the preponderance were caused by aberrant behavior, not infrastructure. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration statistics...

High-earning Millennials have a major spending problem. What are the details? A new survey conducted by PYMENTS and LendingClub, which analyzed the financial data of roughly 30,000 Americans, found that 60% of Millennials making more than $100,000 a year still said they were living paycheck-to-paycheck, Business Insider reported. That surprising figure was not far off from the 70% of Millennials in total who reported living paycheck-to-paycheck. Millennials are individuals born between 1981 and 1996. In the survey, those living paycheck-to-paycheck were defined as consumers who “manage to pay their monthly bills but have little left over.” According to the report,...

On my desk is a framed political cartoon with the caption: “Burning the American Flag is a form of free speech? Try burning a rainbow flag and see if that too is considered a form of free speech?” You could replace “rainbow flag” with “BLM flag,” or even “Antifa flag.” The cartoon lances the recent rise in free-speech hypocrisy that promptly abandons the First Amendment and drums up hysterical charges of “hate speech” when certain sacred cows du jour are so much as mildly criticized. In the Left’s campaign to “fundamentally transform” America and rid it of soi-disant racism, homophobia,...

On July 17, 1996, TWA Flight 800, a Paris-bound 747 out of JFK, blew up off the coast of Long Island. It seemed somehow fitting that James Kallstrom, the public face of the FBI investigation into the plane's destruction, would die two weeks before the 25th anniversary. As a patriot, a Vietnam vet, and an outspoken critic of all things Clinton, Kallstrom once held promise as the insider most likely to come clean. He never did. As to my own involvement with this story, until the evening of February 23, 2000, I was as naïve as a CNN anchor. Before...

Distract, divide and conquer... that’s been the plan cartels have carried out during the past seven months, according to the DEA. A surge of migrants has allowed them to smuggle more drugs than ever before while federal agents are stretched thin. We traveled to a location where cameras don’t often go, right across from an area called Playa Bagdad that has become more lucrative for the cartels. We are talking about Boca Chica, home of the SpaceX control center. “So why are we here where the Rio Grande meets the Gulf of Mexico? As you can see, you don’t see...

More Republicans than Democrats appear to be "vaccine hesitant" -- that is, reluctant for one reason or another -- to take the COVID-19 vaccine. They've gotten the treatment you might expect in some quarters of the press. "Right-wing anti-vaccine hysteria is increasing. We'll all pay the price," read one headline in The Washington Post. In The New York Times, there was, "Far-Right Extremists Move From 'Stop the Steal' to Stop the Vaccine." The Daily Beast chimed in with "The GOP's Paranoid Streak From John Birchers to Anti-Vaxxers." You get the idea. But it's not hard to imagine a different picture....

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With the delta variant of the coronvirus becoming the dominant strain in the US, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer said it's working on a booster shot for its COVID-19 vaccine. The new third shot would target the highly contagious delta mutation, which has spread to 100 countries and is responsible for a growing number of new infections in the US. In a recent press release, Pfizer said a third shot of its vaccine would enhance the immunity of those who've already received the first two vaccine shots. In addition to creating a booster for its existing vaccine, the drugmaker said it would...

Ballots counted in the Arizona Senate's audit of the 2020 election differs from the tally by Maricopa County officials. That's what Senate President Karen Fann said in an interview on Tuesday, in which she also noted the discrepancy prompted the state Legislature to acquire new machines — "not Dominion’s, separate ones" — to recount the ballots. A canvass report released by the county, which includes Phoenix, said 2,089,563 ballots were cast in November's election. Fann said she did not know the size of the discrepancy. "They haven’t released a number yet," Fann told conservative radio host Mike Broomhead on KTAR....

Newly Released Evidence Reveals GA Audit Fraud And Massive Errors Petitioners in a lawsuit organized by VoterGA to inspect Fulton County ballots have added stunning claims in their amended complaint and provided new evidence from recently released public records that show Fulton County’s hand count audit of the November 2020 election was riddled with massive errors and provable fraud. The claims are based on a VoterGA data team’s analysis of Fulton’s November 2020 mail-in ballot images in comparison with the published results of the hand count audit that was conducted on November 14th and 15th. The Images became public after...

The proposals by the European Commission, which is the EU’s executive branch, will cover everything from tougher caps on car pollution to new national limits on gases from buildings. It will see a revamp of the bloc’s emissions trading scheme under which companies pay for the gases they send into the air. The new legislation will involve around a dozen major proposals — most of them building on laws already in place to meet the EU’s old goal of a 40% cut in gas emissions by 2030, compared to 1990 levels — and must be endorsed by the 27 member...