Free Republic

It hardly seems noteworthy anymore that Congress is proposing trillions of dollars in spending. After a parade of trillion-dollar spending bills over roughly the last year, congressional leaders are rolling out a budget that will pave the way for another $3.5 trillion in spending. The budget accounts for everything from infrastructure, to social welfare, Medicare expansion, and immigration. A package this broad would be irresponsible under any circumstance, but given the recent report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), it is especially problematic. On July 9, the CBO released its monthly budget review for June. The numbers did not paint...

On civil liberties grounds, the case for requiring vaccination is ironclad. Even libertarian philosophers like Robert Nozick admit that the government can coerce people to prevent injury to others. The argument for strict measures to halt the spread of a super-contagious and extremely dangerous virus is essentially the same as for laws against murder.

On 13 July, 2021, in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, a three-judge panel issued an opinion that held 18-20-Year-Old people have Second Amendment rights. To people who have studied the Second Amendment and the supporting documents at the Founding, this is an unsurprising conclusion. From the decision, p. 24:As with any matter of constitutional interpretation, “our inquiry begins with the text of the Constitution.” Altman v. City of High Point,330 F.3d 194, 200 (4th Cir. 2003). Both the text and structure of the Second Amendment, along with its place within the Constitution as a whole,...

The partisan political propaganda is stunning to behold. The partisan political propaganda is stunning to behold, even for The New York Times. This observation refers to the July 22 New York Times story on the Pelosi ban on two Republican congressmen from her Jan. 6 select committee, which now will consist of eight Pelosi puppets. The Times story opened with this paragraph: Speaker Nancy Pelosi moved on Wednesday to bar two of former President Donald J. Trump's most vociferous Republican defenders in Congress from joining a select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, saying their conduct...

CNSNews.com) - The Senate Armed Services Committee this week voted 23-3 to send the $777.9-billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2022 to the Senate floor. Among the provisions, the bill "Amends the Military Selective Service Act to require the registration of women for Selective Service," just as all men in the United States must register when they turn 18. (House Republicans in 2016 rejected a measure requiring women to register.) The Senate requirement for women to register follows a March 2020 report from the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service, established by Congress to study...

Speech suppression is a habit that the Biden administration and its liberal supporters can't seem to break. Many staffers may have picked up the habit in their student years: Colleges and universities have been routinely censoring "politically incorrect" speech for the last 30 years. As Thomas Sowell noted, "There are no institutions in America where free speech is more severely restricted than in our politically correct colleges and universities, dominated by liberals." Now, the Biden administration seems to be giving the colleges and universities some serious competition. Like many Democrats during the Trump presidency, they have come to see suppression...

Biden doesn't tell the truth very much, and this complicates his ability to explain this China hack This Monday, the U.S. administration, the European Union and the British government simultaneously issued statements accusing China of carrying out a major cyber-attack earlier this year. The attack targeted Microsoft Exchange servers, affecting at least 30,000 organizations globally. Western security services believe it signals a shift from a targeted espionage campaign to a smash-and-grab raid, leading to concerns Chinese cyber-behavior is escalating. The United States and Britain have previously accused the Chinese and Russian authorities of performing cyberattacks, but now the European Union...

This is not my America, or at least not the one I grew up in. What? Can that headline be correct? Regrettably, yes, it's true! The Federal Bureau of Investigation is morphing into America's version of Nazi Germany's Gestapo. In a tweet on July 11, the FBI asked Americans to spy on "family members and peers" for signs of "mobilization to violence" and report "suspicious behaviors." The reason for denouncing Uncle Harry or Aunt Harriet, let alone Mom and Dad and one's brother or sister, is to prevent "extremist activities," the FBI tweet explained. So now the United States really...

Seven months after the Cuban missile crisis, President John F. Kennedy, at American University, laid out his view on how the East-West struggle should be conducted to avoid a catastrophic war that could destroy us both. Kennedy's message to Moscow and his fellow Americans: "If (the United States and the Soviet Union) cannot end now our differences, at least we can make the world safe for diversity." As George Beebe writes in his essay, "It's a Big World: The Importance of Diversity in American Foreign Policy," in the July National Interest, Kennedy later elaborated: "We must recognize that we cannot...

"The Vietnam War marked a time of social unrest that divided our nation like never before. Service members returning home with physical and emotional scars were greeted with an unprecedented level of disrespect and dishonor. The courage and sacrifice of our veterans cannot be overstated. When you encounter them, thank them for their service. You never know how powerful those words may be. Find your moment at www.Moments.org." Thank You For Your Service (A Moment of Truth) - YouTuberansomnote: It's not too late, not as long as they breathe. We can still thank them, and let them know their service...

Nancy Pelosi has some unfinished business with Donald Trump. The volatile former president and Pelosi foe is long gone from the White House but still haunts Capitol Hill. And as much as some in her party might want to move on from Trump, the speaker has made overseeing an investigation of the deadliest attack on the Capitol in two centuries into a core mission this year — putting her squarely in the path of the former president who Democrats say played a central role in the insurrection. Her GOP opponents are warning that Pelosi’s close involvement in the select committee...

For years, Democrats and their cable news echo chamber conjured up and broadly disseminated the most lurid and patently ludicrous rumors about former President Donald Trump being a corrupted and (literally) compromised agent of Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin. Democratic talking heads ultimately tried in vain to distance themselves from this sordid oeuvre's most far-fetched talking points, such as the infamous "pee video kompromat" from the discredited Steele dossier. But for four years, Democrats' unquenchable obsession with the "Russiagate" hoax pervaded, distorted and sullied our politics. The irony is that Trump, on actual substantive merits, toed a very hawkish line...

CNN became apoplectic whenever former President Donald Trump called them "fake news," but on July 21, they offered President Joe Biden a nationally televised boost that can accurately be described as a "fake town hall." A real town hall would sell tickets in a city like Cincinnati and let the locals mix it up with the president and ask him whatever was on their minds. That's not what CNN did. It was an "invitation only" audience, which means nobody boos or laughs at inappropriate times. CNN was talking over the video, but when Biden waved goodbye at the limited crowd,...

Is there anything the left won't blame on their fantastical scapegoat, climate change? Don't bet on it. Their latest dodge is blaming the border crisis, which they created, on the climate crisis, which they invented. A Politico article is headlined, "It's Not a Border Crisis. It's a Climate Crisis." That's a convenient twofer. Never let an opportunity to blame a crisis on climate change go to waste. Well played. But to the left, I guess the border catastrophe isn't a crisis. How could you support open borders and think that the invasion by invitation is a crisis? How could America-resenting...

July 23 , 2021Memorial of St. Bridget of Sweden Church of Our Savior, Malmo, Sweden Readings at MassLiturgical Colour: Green First readingExodus 20:1-17 ©The Law given at SinaiGod spoke all these words. He said, ‘I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. ‘You shall have no gods except me. ‘You shall not make yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything in heaven or on earth beneath or in the waters under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I,...

San Francisco local businesses and employees are calling for change as they describe increasingly brazen shoplifting and car break-ins. Many residents told Fox News they believe changing California law Proposition 47 is the solution. "The police are actually wonderful, their hands are tied, that’s what’s going on out here." Gianni, a local who works in Fisherman’s Wharf, told Fox News. San Francisco Police Department's Public Information Officer, Robert Rueca explained "There’s a threshold of 950 dollars that needs to be met in order for a misdemeanor to turn into a felony when it comes to theft." "We have to enforce...

The dominant metaphors of the modern era have shifted from the heavens to cyberspace. Human beings are no longer the fallen image of God or a microcosm of the Taoist cosmos. Our brains are now likened to computers; our bodies to machines. Hence, the woman who says “This is too much to process,” or the man who moans “The stress is killing me.” Reversing this projection, computerized social networks are the means by which communities become collective electro-brains. Consider the rabid pro-vax Twitter swarms, or the anti-trans cabals on Gab. Each network is a complex psychic web of approved propaganda...

A Nevada woman has been arrested, accused of burglarizing the dental office where she worked as an assistant and extracting 13 teeth from a patient - despite the fact that she is not a licensed dentist. Laurel Eich, 42, from Reno, was being held in the Washoe County jail on Friday on $20,000 bond. Eich has been charged with two counts of burglary and one count each of grand larceny, conspiracy to commit burglary, and perform surgery on another without a license. She also faces three counts of violation of probation or condition of a suspended sentence. According to the...

Former President Trump attacked Arizona state Sen. Paul Boyer (R) in his latest broadside against Republicans in the state who are pushing against a partisan election audit. Trump labeled Boyer, who told The Hill in May he was “embarrassed” by the audit after supporting the process, a “RINO,” or Republican In Name Only, and touted his primary challenger. “Boyer has been nothing but trouble, and nobody knows why. All we demand is Voter Integrity! He is being primaried by a strong and highly respected challenger, former Arizona State Representative Anthony Kern,” Trump said in a statement. Boyer did not immediately...

Briahna Joy Gray, co-host of the “Bad Faith” podcast, said Wednesday that while the Supreme Court announced that a clerkship awarded to one of Attorney General Merrick Garland’s daughters would not take place while her father is in office, similar “workarounds” have not always been given to others in comparable situations. In an interview on Hill.TV’s “Rising,” Gray said that a Black friend of hers was denied a federal court clerkship in a southern state because his uncle was a magistrate judge on that court. “There are nepotism rules in place at a number of institutions that seem to not...