Free Republic

The backlash Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) received from fellow Republican senators last week is a wake-up call to the GOP leader that he doesn’t have any more political capital to spend on helping Democrats raise the debt limit again, say GOP aides and strategists. McConnell is still secure in his position as Senate Republican leader, despite regular attacks from former President Trump, who has called for him to be replaced. Yet at the same time, Senate Republican aides and strategists say McConnell’s reputation took a hit last week when he agreed to a two-month increase of the debt...

During the first four years that Nancy Pelosi served as speaker of the House (2007 through 2010), approximately 4,676,300 unborn babies were aborted in the United States, according to estimates published by the Guttmacher Institute. To put that in more precise language, adopting the accurate wording to describe abortion that Pope Francis recently used, 4,676,300 unborn American babies were murdered in those four years. "It's more than a problem, it's homicide," Pope Francis said about abortion on Sept. 15 as he flew from Slovakia to Rome. "Whoever has an abortion, kills. No mincing words," said the pope. "It is a...

Parents whose kids excel in school need to be on guard. Leftist school administrators across the country -- not just in New York City -- are banning gifted programs in elementary and middle school and Advanced Placement courses in high school. Typically, without any notice to parents, an eight grader's accelerated science class or a fifth grader's fast-track math class is merged into the regular classroom. Top students lose out. They need accelerated programs every bit as much as children with learning challenges need special education. It's discrimination. The left is seizing on a newly published study of Ohio students...

@LBC Enraged drivers are dragging eco-protesters away after they blocked roads at an industrial park near the Dartford Crossing, United Kingdom. Clip..

Cancel culture has reared its ugly head once again, and this time in a new and unprecedented way. A lecture by a physicist was canceled at one of America's premier institutions of science, MIT, for reasons having nothing to do with the subject of the lecture. The lecture was canceled not because of its scientific content but because of the politically incorrect views on diversity of the scientist scheduled to give the lecture. Dorian Abbot is a professor in the department of the geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago. He has an undergraduate degree in physics from Harvard and...

Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney’s primary challenger landed former President Donald Trump’s endorsement before she even officially launched her campaign. Now, she’s cashing big checks from Trump’s biggest donors — including tech billionaire Peter Thiel. Thiel has contributed the maximum-allowed, $5,800 check to Harriet Hageman, the Trump-endorsed attorney running against Cheney in next year’s Republican primary. The former president has made Cheney, an outspoken critic who voted for his impeachment in January, his top target in the 2022 election, and now big-money benefactors like Thiel are piling into the race.

Democrats are feeling gloomy as their "infrastructure" bills are stuck in a fight between leftists and "centrists." Many predict that if these huge spending bills could be passed, then the midterm prospects for President Joe Biden and his party would look much brighter. Will Saletan at Slate tweeted for the optimists: "Soon the infrastructure and reconciliation bills will pass. A year from now, COVID will be largely under control, supply chains will be restored, and the Afghan collapse will be forgotten." Many Democrats cling tightly to the popularity of massive spending as Biden's approval rating keeps sinking. Fiscal conservatives should...

The CEO of Kraft Heinz, Miguel Patricio, warned that around the world and in the United States, people will have to get used to higher food prices due to “across the board” inflation. “We are raising prices, where necessary, around the world,” he told the BBC, adding that his firm has increased prices on more than half its products in the United States, Kraft Heinze’s home market, in recent days. The firm—famous for making tomato ketchup, baked beans, and macaroni and cheese—is dealing with a rapid increase in agricultural costs, including oils and cereals. The surge has pushed the global...

It has become common in some circles to call the Jan. 6 Capitol riot an "armed insurrection." That leads to a few questions: How many rioters were armed? And what weapons did they have? What were the arms in the "armed insurrection"? The Justice Department maintains a website listing the defendants and the federal charges against them in the sprawling Capitol riot investigation. At this moment, about 670 people have been charged, many of them with misdemeanors like "Parading, Demonstrating or Picketing in a Capitol Building." Of the 670, I counted 82 who face weapons-related charges. That's about 12% of...

Rolling Stones retire classic rock song ‘Brown Sugar’ The Rolling Stones retired one of their most popular rock songs due to lyrics that depict the horrors of slavery. The Stones have not played the 1971 hit “Brown Sugar” on their current tour and said the blues classic has been removed from their setlist.

I am not an atheist, nor even an agnostic. Keep that in mind, because I am not saying the Bible promotes atheism. Quite the opposite, of course — but there is a passage in the Bible that helps us Jews and Christians to understand why some people are atheist/agnostic and why we cannot persuade them otherwise. The reason may humble us. From 1 Corinthians 2:14 (King James Version): [T]he natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. This passage rebukes atheism,...

More than 150 former Houston Methodist employees who parted ways with the hospital in June over a vaccine mandate policy will demand to be rehired after Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order on Monday banning any entity in the state from implementing such mandates, according to a lawyer representing the former employees. Attorney Jared Woodfill, who currently represents almost 200 healthcare workers in multiple lawsuits against Methodist, said executive order GA-40 makes the hospital’s policy illegal. “Governor Abbott says very clearly, ‘whereas countless Texans fear losing their livelihoods because they object to receiving a COVID-19 vaccination for reasons of...

Dean Cain, who played Superman in the 1990s series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman — and played him very well, I might add — appeared on Fox & Friends to express his disdain for DC Comics' announcement that Clark Kent's and Lois Lane's son, who is the "new" Superman, is bisexual and will have an affair with a "hacktivist" while fighting climate change and defending illegal aliens. Cain made the excellent point that this storyline isn't fresh and bold; it's hackneyed, boring, and singularly lacking in bravery. First, Cain pointed out something that I had missed since...

So while the border, which Heels Up Harris is supposed to be overseeing, is in chaos, she instead was wasting her time and ours by putting out an awful "Get Curious" video designed to promote teenage interest in space exploration — but, more importantly, to push Heels Up's own fading brand into the public eye to prop up her diminishing credibility. The video was put together by not an American company, but instead a Canadian company despite the fact that Biden's own Build Back Better schemes supposedly emphasize full employment via domestic production. And to make matters even more embarrassing,...

Jon Gruden is a dinosaur. The heretofore Raiders coach is very old school, unrepentant, and of the toxic masculinity persuasion, no less. As was swiftly evidenced, the world today has no place for such creatures. He is another speed bump on the road to a sorry gray future of banal mediocrity called erroneously “equity,” since mere equality falls so, far, far short of what we can stoop to achieve with just a little more force. Gruden was fired when the NFL leaked private emails it discovered in another and totally separate vital investigation into potential political incorrectness -- this one...

Are red and blue America headed for a split? Lately, Dan Bongino has discussed the possibility on his daily podcast and radio show. Glenn Beck has mentioned it, too. It’s a focused topic of David Reaboi, whom Bongino cites. Reaboi suggests that a “national divorce” should be discussed. He sees a split more as a matter of when, not if. The hope is for a civil, if not amicable, separation. What may surprise readers is the convergence that’s happening about the need for a national divorce. As the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia discovered in its recent...

YAVNE, Israel (AP) — Israeli archaeologists on Monday said they have unearthed a massive ancient winemaking complex dating back some 1,500 years. The complex, discovered in the central town of Yavne, includes five wine presses, warehouses, kilns for producing clay storage vessels and tens of thousands of fragments and jars, they said. Israel’s Antiquities Authority said the discovery shows that Yavne was a wine-making powerhouse during the Byzantine period. Researchers estimate the facility could produce some 2 million liters (over 520,000 gallons) of wine a year. Jon Seligman, one of the directors of the excavation, said the wine made in...

Are red and blue America headed for a split? Lately, Dan Bongino has discussed the possibility on his daily podcast and radio show. Glenn Beck has mentioned it, too. It’s a focused topic of David Reaboi, whom Bongino cites. Reaboi suggests that a “national divorce” should be discussed. He sees a split more as a matter of when, not if. The hope is for a civil, if not amicable, separation. What may surprise readers is the convergence that’s happening about the need for a national divorce. As the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia discovered in its recent...

The perpetually irascible Samuel Goldwyn, a founder of the American motion picture industry, once said “I am willing to admit I may not always be right, but I am never wrong.” While Goldwyn said this tongue-in-cheek, the quote is an accurate portrayal of one of the primary and most obvious character traits of those with authoritarian mindsets. Those that have a predilection towards authoritarianism invariably have a deep-seated conviction of infallibility combined with attendant hubris and pathological lying. Traits that are ever present in those that can justify any devious or unethical means to achieve their goal. There are two...

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