Free Republic

Back in 1988, General Augusto Pinochet had run Chile for 15 years. He overthrew President Salvador Allende in 1973 and took over a country in total chaos. His free market policies turned Chile around and created an economy that was the envy of the developing world. Unfortunately, he never had the legitimacy of an election. So he did something strange. He asked the people if he should continue and they had a "plebiscite." Pinochet lost and left power. This is the story: Gen. Augusto Pinochet's bid for eight more years in power ended in defeat today, as a united opposition...

Big Tech is out of control — and the time to save our liberties and freedoms is quickly running out. This month, White House press secretary Jen Psaki made a stunning admission: the Federal Government is directly colluding with Facebook to flag "problematic" social media content on its platform. "In terms of actions that we have taken or we’re working to take, I should say, from the federal government, we’ve increased disinformation research and tracking,” she revealed during a press conference. “Within the Surgeon General’s Office, we’re flagging posts for Facebook that spread disinformation." Psaki went on to insist that...

The simple truth is, Biden is a serial, compulsive, chronic liar. Many of his lies contain multiple lies. Some of President Biden’s many past lies caught up to him this week. Biden himself got it all rolling with his false claim on July 28 that at one time he drove a tractor-trailer. The following day Fox News and Tucker Carlson in particular developed that story and found several clips of Biden in February 2020 falsely claiming he’d gone to South Africa to meet Nelson Mandela and get himself arrested on Mandela’s behalf, who was in jail at the time –...

As House Democratic leaders struggle to find enough party support to extend an eviction moratorium, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is advocating a temporary fix, urging the Biden administration to act unilaterally to help the nation's most vulnerable renters. The Speaker said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which has instituted a ban on evictions through the end of Saturday, should extend the deadline further, giving House Democrats more time to codify the extension in legislation. "I think this is something that we'll work out. It isn't about any more money - the money is there, resting in localities...

So again, we must ask why the administration is so completely manic about mandating masks, lockdowns, and even vaccines. We’re finally getting some clarity about what’s going on with COVID and it’s information that makes even more perplexing the Biden administration’s fanaticism about reintroducing all the COVID restrictions that not only didn’t work last year but were lifted completely for the Black Lives Matter protests and riots. The short version is that the vaccine doesn’t seem to protect against the Delta variant, we’re all still contagious, but (thankfully) we’re not dying like flies. That news, while not uplifting, doesn’t seem...

Certain principles are just not that hard to grasp or accept — unless you're a leftist. Even though I studied fundamental economics at the college level, I have found that anyone, yes, anyone, can learn enough about economics, on his own, without college, to tell the difference between common sense and the idiocy that pervades leftist and Marxist ideology. Let's begin with these commonsense items: you don't get something from nothing. Apart from what nature provides, nothing is truly free. Wealth does not magically appear because someone wished for it, or because someone else promised it. Goods have to be...

Senate Democrats – including both Senators from my home state of Georgia - are trying to pull a fast one on the American people, most of whom won’t realize what has happened until after the fact. Democrats hope to use the massive $3.5 trillion “infrastructure” bill as a vehicle to pass mass amnesty for a significant portion of the nation’s illegal alien population - without having to debate this controversial amnesty measure on its own merits. Some lawmakers hope to accomplish this via a maneuver known as budget reconciliation, whereby budget items can be inserted into a broader spending bill...

Walmart is requiring workers in high risk areas to mask up — and will force all managers to get vaccinated by early October. The mask mandate was announced Friday and immediately implemented. It applies to all store workers, regardless of vaccination status, in high risk COVID-19 counties, as determined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The new policy came three days after the CDC reversed its May mask guidance, calling on all people to wear face coverings indoors in the approximately two-thirds of the country where the deadly virus and its Delta variant are spreading rapidly. Walmart, the...

As I grew up in a California suburb that was largely colonized in the latter half of the 20th century with the hope of many upwardly mobile young families, I am often reminded by fellow Californians of my good fortune in spending those years between cradle and teenage wasteland nourished and sheltered by privilege. Up until high school, I even had the rare benefit of experiencing pre–Proposition 13 California public schools, a Golden Age of Education rivaling Athens, the Renaissance, or Haight-Ashbury's Summer of Self-Love. When I confess how I have trouble remembering what or if I learned much of...

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) was reportedly booed Thursday by Democrat Senators for raising concerns about the expense of the $3.5 trillion “infrastructure” price tag. “One source described the West Virginian as being ‘jokingly booed’ by the other senators, but another source in the room did not see it that way,” Politico Playbook reported. “Tensions are torquing up among Democrats over the reconciliation bill — or, more precisely, over its proposed $3.5 trillion price tag.” “Manchin views the growing national debt as a heavy burden that will drag down the economy, threaten national security and impose a heavy burden on future...

TAMPA, Florida—U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will open a new asylum office in Tampa on Aug. 2, in response to an increasing asylum workload in Florida. The new office becomes the 11th asylum office in the country and the second in Florida, joining the existing Miami Asylum Office. The Tampa and Miami asylum offices will divide the state’s asylum workload. Florida currently leads the country in asylum applications filed with USCIS, and more than a quarter of the national pending caseload is from Florida residents. The addition of the Tampa Asylum Office will help USCIS resolve urgent cases quickly...

Much has been said about racism and the Second Amendment since Carol Anderson published her new book, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America. Unfortunately, much of what has been said is false. Commentators including CNN, NPR, Democracy Now!, and the ACLU, just to name a few, have all interviewed Ms. Anderson and hyped her theory that the Second Amendment has its roots in racism, "anti-Blackness", and oppression. Few journalists seem to be approaching the "racist Second Amendment" narrative with a healthy dose of philosophic doubt, nor do they seem interested in questioning the accuracy and validity...

Last year you were a hero if you said, as did Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, and Andrew Cuomo, that you didn’t necessarily trust what the government said about vaccines. Say that today and you are a troglodyte pariah. Now, we all know that red state, red meat, red-blooded, red-faced, retrograde Republicans are the only reason we haven’t reached herd immunity. It seems, though, that no one mentioned that (false) narrative to Alabama Governor Kay Ivey, the Republican leader of a state so red it’s literally Crimson, who chided her unvaccinated fellow citizens “for letting us all down.” The questions surrounding...

Presidential Press Secretary Jen Psaki boasted that "due to an evolution in 'outside-the-box' thinking that has energized the Biden Administration, the problem of unpatriotic dissemination of false narratives has been solved." "A key breakthrough was achieved when Attorney General Merrick Garland pointed out that the prohibition against government censorship in the Constitution applies only to Congress," she said. "Specifically, it says Congress shall pass no law abridging freedom of speech. There is no prohibition against the President doing this by executive order. Neither does it bar private corporations from censoring anyone it wants to censor." "Luckily, the major social media...

China has warned Britain is 'a bi*ch... asking for a beating' if British warships challenge Beijing's claim to the South China Sea. The HMS Queen Elizabeth and her carrier group arrived in the disputed waters on Thursday and are set to sail through Beijing's backyard alongside eight other vessels in a show of strength to Chinese President Xi Jingping. But Chinese state media has warned any move seen as a challenge to islands which Beijing lays claim to would mean Britain 'is being a bi*ch' and 'asking for a beating'.... ....'To say it precisely, if the UK wants to play...

Up to 50,000 students, including some in the country illegally, could have their debt forgiven under the 'CUNY Comeback Program' City University of New York announced this week that it is using federal coronavirus relief funds to wipe out up to $125 million in debt and unpaid fees for more than 50,000 students who were enrolled during the pandemic. ...Students who paid off all their tuition and fees during the pandemic are eligible for a $200 grant.

‎https://media.townhall.com/townhall/reu/ha/2017/139/57e3053b-fb2b-4334-8159-c5bf7e62a090.jpg‎ August 3 is the day of the inauguration of Ebrahim Raisi as the new president of Iran. On the behest of ‎Khamenei, Raisi was appointed as president of Iran on June 18 in a sham election that was widely ‎boycotted by most Iranians. But more controversial than this appointment is his role in the 1988 ‎massacre of political prisoners. ‎ At the time, he, who was Tehran's deputy prosecutor, was commissioned by Ruhollah Khomeini, along ‎with several others, to manage the situation of political prisoners and eliminate anyone who disagreed ‎with Khomeini. ‎ According to eyewitnesses of that massacre,...

New data from the United States Department of Agriculture [USDA] suggests that white-tailed deer across certain U.S. states have been exposed to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The news comes as scientists attempt to learn more about how the virus affects different species of mammals, in addition to humans. The agency added in its report that while "antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 were detected in 33 percent of the 481 samples collected from January 2020 through 2021," none of the deer showed any signs of illness associated with the virus or COVID-19. Additionally, they noted the study was only intended to...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is receiving support from one of the state's communist leaders, who said on Friday that residents should reject the ongoing recall effort in order to prevent one of former President Trump's "clones" governing the state.

While fielding questions as part of a radio program, North Dakota GOP Senator Kevin Cramer called 14-year Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt a “criminal,” and said he’s “grateful” for the Capitol Police Officer who killed the unarmed January 6th protestor for “not complying” with his orders from the other side of a barricaded door.