Free Republic

No, I’m not going to talk about fiddling, tiddlywinks, or playing some other triviality while Rome burns. Rather, it’s time to have a very serious talk about what the Republican Party is. Or is not. And for that, I turn to Simon Sinek’s brilliant discussion of game theory and war. As the BLM riots and January 6 legal travesty have shown us, we are in a civil war. And there has been some shooting. Think about the murder of David Dorn in St. Louis and the Kyle Rittenhouse case in Kenosha. It may not take much for the smell of...

The Biden administration on Wednesday announced it stopped housing evacuated Afghans at one of the military sites that has accommodated them since the summer, citing the increased pace of their resettlement within the U.S. The last group of Afghan families housed at Fort Lee, Virginia, left the U.S. Army post on Wednesday to be resettled in communities across the country, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said. More than 25,000 Afghans relocated to the U.S. following the Taliban's conquest of their homeland have departed domestic military installations to start new lives in America... ...As of Wednesday, 45,000 evacuees from Afghanistan...

Barely a year into his term, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. is suffering a precipitous drop in all polling categories. The recent mid-midterm elections signaled strong rejection of his policies and his allies. Rather than a historical pendulum-swing, the nation is awakening to a severe and legitimate case of buyer's remorse. Voters' forbearance of plagiarism evolved to excuses about his lying; their indulgence of "gaffes" gave way to "Good Old Joe"; concern for his public confusion has become alarm over numerous signs of senility. With no obvious "czar" pulling Biden's strings, the nation rapidly is seized by the realization of a...

Ten years ago this coming February, George Zimmermann shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin on a rainy night in Sanford, Florida. Without intending, Zimmerman triggered a dark new phase in the history of progressive America. Beginning with the Sacco and Vanzetti case in the 1920s, the left lied to conceal the guilt of the guilty. Yes, Virginia, those two bad boys were guilty. Upton Sinclair, who “proved” their innocence in his epic novel Boston, knew they were guilty. "My wife is absolutely certain that if I tell what I believe,” Sinclair confided to a friend, “I will be called a...

Red eyes, ringing ears, sensitivity to light, trouble hearing: although a loss of taste and smell have become well-known sensory symptoms of COVID, accumulating research suggests that vision and hearing are also frequent targets of SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes the disease... ...A person who has COVID can shed the virus through their tears, sometimes long after they have recovered from the illness.. ..Hearing and balance changes can also be signs of SARS-CoV-2 infection, says Zahra Jafari, an audiologist and cognitive neuroscience at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta. ... ... two types of inner ear cells have the genes...

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Chinese coast guard ships used water cannons to shoot a powerful stream of water at two Philippine boats carrying supplies to a highly disputed shoal in the South China Sea, prompting Philippine officials to warn the Chinese about their mutual defense treaty with the United States. Second Thomas Shoal, near the Philippine province of Palawan, is a strategic waterway that many countries have tried to claim. The Associated Press reported that China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan all have overlapping claims. Philippine Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. told AP no one was hurt in the incident Tuesday... ......

Iranian hackers are accused of posing as extremist Proud Boys group members, targeting Trump campaign, GOP members of Congress and Democrat voters. 0:52 / 0:55 By John Solomon Updated: November 18, 2021 - 5:59pm Article Dig In Federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment Thursday in New York accusing two Iranian hackers of successfully hacking into a state computer election system, stealing voter registration data and using it to carry out a cyber-intimidation campaign that targeted GOP members of Congress, Trump campaign officials and Democrat voters in the November 2020 election. The indictment charged Seyyed Mohammad Hosein Musa Kazemi, 24, and Sajjad...

Belarus has said the hastily constructed migrant camps on its border with Poland have been cleared of people in a sign that Minsk is keen to defuse the deadly crisis that its leader, Alexander Lukashenko, helped to create. On Thursday, that crisis claimed its 13th victim after an NGO reported that a one-year-old child had died after his family attempted the perilous journey through Belarus into the EU. According to the Polish Centre for International Aid, the child’s family was from Syria and had been trapped outside in the forest for six weeks. The cause of death was not given,...

DEVELOPING STORY: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) delayed quick passage of the Democrat’s Build Back Broke spending plan late Thursday night by holding the floor for more than three hours in a filibuster-style speech. Democrats repeatedly interrupted McCarthy’s speech with jeers and yells to “vote!” Every page of the Democrats' Socialist Spending Scam will be paid for by or borrowed from you: America’s hardworking taxpayers. Watch the speech live below This is the single most reckless and irresponsible spending bill in our nation’s history. https://t.co/OCJJ0XaXzU — Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) November 19, 2021

A hearing for the Senate Banking Committee went off the rails when Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) sparred with Chairman Sherrod Brown (D-OH) over the insinuation that Saule Omarova is a communist... ...As the hearing got underway, Republicans accused Omarova of backing “radical” and “socialist” economic ideas, while Brown derided this line of thinking as “Trumpism meets McCarthyism.” When Kennedy got his turn to ask questions, he immediately focused on Omarova’s involvement in a communist youth group... ..From there, Kennedy ran through a number of written works and economic opinions Omarova expressed over the years. ... [video at link]

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Democratic New York Rep. Yvette Clarke were reportedly seen Tuesday night at a Washington D.C. bar violating the district’s mask mandate, a video obtained by the Daily Caller shows. In the video, both Pelosi and Clarke can be seen speaking to a small group inside the “crazy golf club” at Swingers in Dupont Circle. Others in the crowd can be seen not wearing a mask either. Pelosi appears to have her arm around Clarke, who is smiling without a mask. Democratic D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced Monday that the indoor mask mandate will...

"The urgent wave that we're in right now will not be stopped by vaccinations," since it takes weeks for people to build up full protection, Meyer-Hermann said. "We need to keep other measures front and center and put them immediately into place."

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) several-hours-long landmark speech bashing President Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda on Thursday night appears to have pushed the Democrats into delaying the vote until Friday morning. According to several congressional reporters, the Democrats called it quits for the night as McCarthy continued hammering the bill as a socialist wish list that will cripple the American people with unfair taxes and generations of debt. “Leader McCarthy is welcome to continue his raving as late into the night as he wants. The House will return and vote first thing Friday morning,” one senior Democrat aide told...

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed (D-R.I.) tried several times on Thursday night to reach a deal to set up votes on a package of 18 amendments on a defense bill. But one after one, seven GOP senators stood up to block the deal unless their colleagues agreed to add their amendment into the package. Those GOP amendments included proposals related to the border wall, the Nord Stream pipeline and the repeal of vaccine requirements for Defense Department contractors.... ...senators, as they were leaving the Senate floor after the stalemate, said that they didn't expect the Senate to hold...

My latest song. No angry spiders are involved.

U.S. Army Secretary Christine Wormuth this week warned members of the National Guard that they may be barred from "continued service" if they refuse to get vaccinated against COVID-19. “I have determined that all soldiers who refuse the mandatory vaccination order will be flagged,” Wormuth wrote in a memo, according to The New York Times. This action would prevent soldiers from receiving promotions, awards and bonuses. If members persist in declining vaccination without an approved exemption, she added, they will not be allowed to "continue service."...

The move would restrict development on roughly 9.3 million acres in North America’s largest temperate rainforest, according to those briefed on the plan, reversing Trump Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will propose reinstating a Bill Clinton-era rule to ban logging and road building in more than half of North America’s largest temperate rainforest, the department confirmed. The restrictions had managed to stay in place for years because of a series of court battles, but the Trump administration wiped them out last fall. “Restoring the Tongass’ roadless protections supports the advancement of economic, ecologic and cultural sustainability in Southeast Alaska in a...

Australia on Friday called for governments around the world to agree on "rules of the road" to fight the spread of misinformation and state-backed disinformation online. Foreign Minister Marise Payne said blocs like the Quad group - the United States, India, Japan and Australia - and global bodies like the United Nations were already working to strike a balance between harmful content and free expression online. But time was running out to agree on rules of what was permissable. "We should be starting yesterday," Payne told a panel at the Sydney Dialogue virtual event alongside Facebook Inc's global affairs boss.

A former U.S. soldier in Pakistan said the U.S. Embassy repeatedly hung up on him as he pleaded for help and wouldn’t let him enter the building to speak with a government official. The former staff sergeant, an Afghan native, said he traveled from the U.S. to Pakistan to try to help his family escape the Taliban and flee Afghanistan.... ...The veteran said the Taliban, ISIS-K and al Qaeda were all at the Pakistan border, making it harder and more dangerous for anyone trying to escape Afghanistan. ... ..."If there's anyone out there that can help me, help my family,...