Free Republic

It is ironic when Democrats complain about sensational use of language. Thanks to progressives, practically every white person in America has been labelled a racist. But now Democrats are screaming because Republican Sen. John Kennedy suggested that Saule Omarova, whom President Joe Biden has nominated to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency -- the nation's top banking regulator -- might be a communist. Kennedy opened his questioning of Omarova at her Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs confirmation hearing asking if he should call her "professor or comrade." Distinct from the labels and charges we...

Like many people, I followed the Kyle Rittenhouse trial out of Kenosha, Wisconsin fairly closely over the past several weeks. As discussed in Jane’s post on Sunday, that trial proved to be a riveting instance of a totally false and racialized progressive narrative (“white supremacist vigilante crossed state lines with illegal firearm to go on shooting spree against innocent mostly peaceful BLM protesters”) getting completely contradicted by incontestable facts (mostly videos) introduced in evidence at the trial. But following the Rittenhouse trial has inherently meant little time left to follow another high-profile trial unfolding simultaneously in Brunswick, Georgia — the...

Motovun (Croatia) (AFP) – The sound of paws scurrying along the forest floor echoes through Croatia's northwestern woods, where the hunt for truffles is being threatened by climate change and deforestation -- stirring fears that the country's gastronomic goldmine may be at risk. The delicate microclimate in the picturesque Istria peninsula's forests has long been famed for producing some of the finest white truffles, which this year fetched up to 2,500 euros ($2,860) per kilo. But the increase in temperatures and lower precipitation levels linked to climate change along with a shrinking water table and habitat loss could throw off...

After Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted for self-defense in the death of two men who attacked him during a riot in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the one thing that was guaranteed to outrage the liberal media mob was Rittenhouse doing a "victory lap" on Tucker Carlson's top-rated Fox show. CNN's pretentiously superior Oliver Darcy was revolted by Carlson's praise: "Kyle Rittenhouse struck us as bright, decent, sincere, dutiful, and hardworking." The Fox host added he's "exactly the kind of person you would want many more of in your country. He's not especially political. He never wanted to be the symbol of anything." But...

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How does playing partisan politics interfere with enforcing the law? Let’s examine the massacre at Parkland High in 2018. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, once comprised of the best and brightest in law enforcement, has for some time now been more concerned with pushing the Democrat agenda than stopping criminals and terrorists. The list of recent FBI failures is well-known and extensive. Our feeble Feebs failed to stop the first bombing of the World Trade Center, the 9/11 attacks, the Fort Hood slaughter, the Orlando nightclub shooting, the San Bernardino massacre, and the sexual abuse of underage female Olympic gymnasts....

In the days after the Democratic Party’s collapse in the Virginia governor’s race, party strategists descended on the commonwealth to figure out what went wrong and understand just how bad the national outlook might be next year. What they discovered, largely through focus groups and polling, was even worse than expected. The problems cut far deeper than the failings of their gubernatorial nominee, Terry McAuliffe, or President Joe Biden’s flagging approval ratings. Rather, the Democratic Party’s entire brand was a wreck. “Voters couldn’t name anything that Democrats had done, except a few who said we passed the infrastructure bill,” the...

Remember when Joe Biden ran for president in what commentators called the "centrist" lane of the Democratic primaries? The idea was that a "moderate" like Biden, unlike rival Bernie Sanders, would not push radical plans to completely change American society. That would reassure non-progressive Democrats, and independents, too, that Biden would be a safe choice for president. They didn't want to remake the world. They just wanted things to get better. You could see the difference in the Democratic debates. To take one example, at a debate in November 2019, Sanders urged people to join him "if you want to...

What the energy secretary doesn't know about energy would fill a Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Reassuring worried Americans that there will be enough oil for the Thanksgiving holidays, yesterday President Joseph Biden (D) informed a concerned citizenry of plans to release 50,000,000 barrels of oil from the emergency Strategic Petroleum Reserve in an effort to bring down high gas prices. Wow! Fifty million barrels of oil! That's a lot of oil isn't it, Department of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm? That should take care of America's energy needs for quite a while right? "How many barrels of oil does the U.S. consume...

The only thing for which leftists are thankful is that they have absolutely no reason to be thankful at all. This week, millions of Americans from all walks of life will sit down with friends and family to enjoy the bliss of food and fellowship. And somewhere amid the warmth and frivolity of this great American tradition, most will stop to count their blessings and give thanks to God. SNIP For a leftist Thanksgiving must be the pits. To be thankful...is there anything more antithetical to the left's worldview? Imaginary injustice lurks behind every corner. Unconscious prejudice taints every good...

The spread of COVID laid the groundwork for what has become an industry, and it’s now morphing into a religious ideology with all of the familiar trappings. What started as a virus quickly became epidemic and then a global pandemic. The spread of a contagion laid the groundwork for what has become an industry, and it’s now morphing into a religious ideology with all of the familiar trappings. In just the third quarter of 2021, Pfizer reported its sales rose to $24.1 billion, up 134 percent from a year ago, thanks in large part to its COVID vaccine. The company...

Happy Thanksgiving! But beware the "tragedy of the commons." It almost killed off the pilgrims. Now, via Washington, D.C., it's probably coming for us. Tragedy of the commons is a concept from an essay by ecologist Garrett Hardin. He wrote how cattle ranchers sharing a common parcel of land soon destroy that land. That's because each rancher has an incentive to put cattle on the common. Soon, the extra animals eat all the grass. Shared grazing space is destroyed because no rancher has an incentive to conserve. If the ranchers put up a few fences and divide the land, each...

It’s wonderful that Nancy Pelosi is buying a $25 million home on beautiful Jupiter Island, Florida. Reminds me of the song Jennifer Juniper by Donovan when he sings “Jennifer Juniper lives upon the hill.” Maybe we should change the lyric to say “Nancy Pelosi was once upon Capital hill but is now moving the Jupiter beach?” We can call her “Nancy of Jupiter?” But we wonder why? Is Nancy Pelosi tired of California and its high cost of living? Is Nancy happier being in a state run by Republican Ron DeSantis than her home state of California run by Democrat...

You can't ever go home again. Every sailor wants to go home, but home is a place in time and space, and so the thing he left is gone. It has moved on and won't be the place it was when he left. Every sailor who has tried to go home knows this truth. If the sailor wore a uniform and fought in a war, there is more truth to deal with. The place he left will be radically changed by the war. The sailor will be radically changed as well. If he fought in the Vietnam War, he and...

On November 14, 2021, a man detonated an improvised explosive device near the main entrance of Liverpool Women’s Hospital in England. Only he died, though the taxi driver who had just dropped him off was also injured. Although he botched it, investigators concluded that his was a terrorist attack that was planned months in advance. Emad al-Swealmeen, 32, the would-be terrorist in question, was a born Muslim who arrived in the UK in 2014 and applied for asylum by claiming he was a Syrian refugee. It turned out he was from Iraq or Jordan, and his asylum application was rejected....

The first battles in the Covid War on Children began with the lockdown, forcing kids into isolation, depriving them of education, smothering them with masks, strangling their innate joy and playfulness, and denying them contact with God-given images of human faces. The tyrants won those first battles, vanquishing our kids. Children are committing suicides in numbers never before seen; their health has plummeted with terrifying rates of obesity and diabetes, their intellectual and social development is languishing, and they are suffering intensely. Now with children sicker and weaker than ever before, and with parents desperate for a return to “normal,”...

President Joe Biden is on target, with policies at once vapid and cynical, to allow more than 2 million illegal migrants across the southern border into the United States this year — the worst influx since records began 97 years ago. In October, Customs and Border Protection officials intercepted 164,303 people crossing the Mexican frontier. They come from 150 different countries, increasingly from the Eastern Hemisphere, and most are simply economic migrants. People head here primarily for the understandable reason that they’d prefer to live in comfort in a rich country......They don’t make coherent, let alone plausible, claims to be...

Kyle Rittenhouse claims ex-lawyer ‘set him up’ for Proud Boys pic Kyle Rittenhouse claimed his ex-attorney “set him up” for a photo of him posing with purported members of the Proud Boys and making a hand gesture used by white supremacists. Rittenhouse blasted his former legal team, John Pierce and Lin Wood, saying he didn’t know the “OK” hand signal is now associated with white supremacy and claiming he “didn’t know what a militia was” until after he was arrested. The 18-year-old was seen making the gesture in a now widely circulated picture taken in a Wisconsin bar and used...

Social distancing and locking down millions of people around the world has been a real time case study in what staying at home would do to asthma rates, says a health professor.There were fears at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic that people with asthma would fare much worse than those without it. Intuitively, a disease that attacks the lungs should put asthma sufferers at much greater risk. But this hasn’t been borne out. It’s turned out people with asthma are at slightly lower risk of acquiring COVID-19, being hospitalised with it or indeed dying from it compared to people...

Be careful what you post online, they always say. Tired of being mistreated by her students' parents, a kindergarten teacher in Dalian, China vented her frustrations online, only to end up being fired from her job and detained by the police. According to reports by media in China, the 28-year-old made the offensive post on Wednesday (Nov 17) that said, "I hope the pandemic doesn't stop, even better if [the number of cases] increase, at least till March next year, that's my happiest wish." What enraged netizens the most was the post's ending, where she expressed her wish for her...