Free Republic

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern chose to shut down a press conference on Monday rather than answer serious questions from an independent reporter outside of what she called the “accredited media.” Video...

The New Jersey Globe is retracting its call of the 3rd legislative district in favor of Democrats; in a major surprise, all three incumbent Democrats stand a significant chance of losing to their unheralded Republican foes. Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-West Deptford) trails Republican Ed Durr, while Assemblyman John Burzichelli (D-Paulsboro) and Assemblyman Adam Taliaferro (D-Woolwich) are currently losing to Bethanne McCarthy-Patrick and Beth Sawyer. If Sweeney in particular does indeed lose, it would constitute a political earthquake in the New Jersey legislature. Holding the Senate Presidency since 2010, Sweeney is the longest-serving legislative leader in state history, and seemed...

I thought I’d dig around a bit in “H.R. 3684—Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act,” the not very bipartisan infrastructure bill. Everyone’s talking about how the other bill for building back better will be funded, at the perhaps current price tag of $1.75 trillion. I haven’t seen much, though, about how this $1 trillion bill will affect the deficit. At 2,740 pages, it’s a big bill, designed to “authorize funds for Federal-aid highways, highway safety programs, and transit programs, and for other purposes.” As far as I’ve been able to tell, only a little more than $381 billion will address highways...

The Democrat New Jersey State Senate President is in serious danger of losing to Republican truck driver and grandfather Ed Durr — who spent less than $200 on his campaign. Senate President Steve Sweeney broke records in 2017 for the nation’s most expensive campaign ever in a single legislative district while also wiping out several state records, according to a report from Insider New Jersey. The New Jersey Globe had originally called the race for Senate President Sweeney, but had to issue a retraction shortly after 1 a.m., explaining “this race call was retracted at 1:11 a.m., after it became...

hina's senior climate negotiator said Tuesday his nation has good reason for being the world's biggest fossil-fuel emitter of pollution, according to the Associated Press. Speaking to reporters at the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, Xie Zhenhua explained why China is so reliant on fossil fuels and also criticized former President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord... ... Xie discussed China's efforts to address climate change. "Regarding the fact that China is the current largest emitter, it's because China is at a special development stage," he said...

When COVID-braving Dennis Prager said he contracted it purposely in order “to be taken care of by therapeutics,” the public outcry was more life-threatening than the virus. He must be made to pay for any treatment he gets. He should be denied a hospital bed. Another conservative talk show host spreads his disease. Every story speaks of a mini plague and every ending is a blameworthy death. Is fear driving the paranoia? What’s to hate in one who makes a choice and takes the consequences, and is content to let others do so? And why is it doctors who seem...

COP26 in Glasgow got off to a good start with world leaders telling billions of ordinary people to, in effect, “Do as we say or we'll let you all die.” The melodramatic hyperbole knows no bounds: apparently we should all be organized as if for war. For the hyper-rich and powerful, the climate-change scam is just another opportunity to seize more power and make more money by pretending they're saving us from the ‘emergency’ of the ‘climate crisis,’ but only if we do exactly as they say, making them ever richer and more powerful even as us ordinary people are...

@C_RMartinez The 74th Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia… @GlennYoungkin!!! #WonWithGlenn Clip..

ere's What You Need to Remember: On day three, the Thai pilots “shot down” 19 J-11s for a loss of three Gripens. Over the final three days of the war game, the Thais killed 22 Chinese jets and lost three of their own. A 2015 war game in Thailand underscored the enduring flaws in Chinese aerial-warfare tactics. Despite flying a modern fighter type, Chinese fighter pilots in Thailand were vulnerable to long-range attacks and slow to react to aggressive tactics. Exercise Falcon Strike 2015, which ran at Korat Royal Thai Air Force Base for two weeks in mid-November 2015, was...

A red tide swept over Long Island, with the Republican candidates for district attorney in both Nassau and Suffolk counties winning their races in stunning landslides Tuesday - turning the campaigns into a referendum on New York’s controversial bail reform law. In Nassau, career local prosecutor Anne Donnelly upset Democratic state Sen. Todd Kaminsky, a former federal prosecutor, who voted for the 2019 law that eliminated cash bail to defendants accused of many misdemeanor and “non-violent” felony crimes. Donnelly, who was deputy chief of the Nassau DA’s organized crime and rackets bureau, won 145,766 or 60 percent of the vote...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A California judge has ruled for top drug manufacturers as local governments seek billions of dollars to cover their costs from the nation’s opioid epidemic. Orange County Superior Court Judge Peter Wilson issued a tentative ruling on Monday that said the governments hadn’t proven the pharmaceutical companies used deceptive marketing to increase unnecessary opioid prescriptions and create a public nuisance. “There is simply no evidence to show that the rise in prescriptions was not the result of the medically appropriate provision of pain medications to patients in need,” Wilson wrote in a ruling of more than...

A Portland school employee charged with two felony sex crimes appeared in federal court for the first time Tuesday, but he has not yet entered a plea to the charges against him. Benjamin Conroy, 32, will remain in custody for now. He participated in his hearing by Zoom from the Cumberland County Jail. Conroy is facing charges in both state and federal courts. He is accused of sexually exploiting a child in the classroom where he worked as an education technician for students on the autism spectrum at Ocean Avenue Elementary School.

The primary reason the United States finds itself in its current predicament is the vast number of credulous and mis-educated Americans who, over the past two decades, have blindly pledged their undying allegiance to the current iteration of Democrat party. They do so because they have been willingly duped into believing that the political opposition, conservatives and Republicans, are the personification of evil who are hellbent on transforming the nation into a dystopian nightmare. The philosophical underpinnings of the Democrat party or the falsehoods its elected members regurgitate are immaterial to their voters, as long as this dire threat, as...

Army scientists working on a vaccine to target all coronaviruses, including mutations of the one causing COVID-19 and others that may emerge in the future, are finding data from early human trials promising and expect to publish the results by year-end. Researchers at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research have been working since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic on a pan-coronavirus vaccine and are currently analyzing data from the Phase I clinical trial, which began in April with dozens of volunteers. They are following up with participants to monitor the safety and effectiveness of the new vaccine one...

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Mainers voiced their disapproval Tuesday for a 145-mile (233-kilometer) conduit for Canadian hydropower that was billed as either a bold step in battling climate change or unnecessary destruction of woodlands. Utilities have poured more than $90 million into the battle over the $1 billion project ahead of the referendum on Tuesday, making it the most expensive referendum in Maine history.... ...Three-quarters of trees already have been removed for the project, which calls for a transmission line that mostly follows existing utility corridors. But a new section needed to be cut through 53 miles (85 kilometers) of...

Glenn Youngkin ought to stand up and thank the liberal legacy media for his victory. The Republican may never have beaten Democratic former governor Terry McAuliffe had it not been for major outlets dumbly insisting that school parents weren’t actually upset about everything the educational establishment was doing to their kids. McAuliffe, by all appearances, believed the media giants and behaved as if the uprisings against failing, dishonest, and ideology-overrun school boards were some sort of fake, astroturf Fox News mirage. And thanks to that out-of-touch arrogant belief, McAuliffe persisted in running against school parents. That may have been his...

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., is sounding off on the Biden administration's handling of Afghanistan, arguing that claiming success was the "most extraordinary statement" he's heard from a president in his lifetime. Fox News had asked what the thought was the "biggest political turkey" or "most ridiculous" thing he's seen in politics this year. "I have to say – it's not funny, it's tragic – but I have to say that having Joe Biden go out and say that the evacuation of Afghanistan was an extraordinary success – after 13 service members lost their lives, including one from my home state,...

In the late hours of election day, I received an "alarming" email from "Glenn Youngkin," although I seriously doubt he wrote it himself. Here's what Youngkin's email said: Dear ________, "CODE RED - If I don’t raise at least $8,285 in the next hour, it is GAME OVER for Republicans in states like Virginia & beyond. We need you to step up, and we need you to do it quickly. We can’t wait any longer." Here is My Response: (Nov. 3, 2:30 a.m. EDT)"Congratulations, Mr. Youngkin! You won! (And you did it without my money.) I did, however, work feverishly...

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — Jean Rounds, the wife of Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, died Tuesday following a battle with cancer. She was 65... Mike Rounds, who previously served as South Dakota’s governor, won a second Senate term last year while his wife was undergoing treatment. He said in a statement that she died Tuesday morning. As South Dakota’s first lady from 2003 to 2011, Jean Rounds advocated for childhood literacy through the “Reach out and Read” program and promoted awareness of women’s heart health. She also led the design of the governor’s mansion that was completed...

A small-town Alabama police chief who died of COVID-19 loved the community he served and regretted his decision against getting vaccinated, his widow said. Buddy Crabtree, a 10-year veteran of the Ider Police Department in northeastern Alabama, died Saturday of the illness caused by the new coronavirus, news outlets reported. He was often seen inside schools in the town of about 650 people. “He loved his job and Ider,” widow Kristie Crabtree told WAAY-TV. “He loved the community of Ider, his officers, the school kids.”