Free Republic

The Target department store in downtown Seattle is being absolutely ravaged by shoplifters, with one staff member telling me theft happens “about every 10 minutes.” He wasn’t kidding. On a recent trip to the store on 2nd Avenue and Pike Street, I saw staff confront two separate shoplifters within 12 minutes of one another. It’s so bad that it’s not just the Biden administration’s supply chain crisis creating the empty shelves. And it’s so dangerous that customers can now only buy some products online as they’ll likely get mugged on the way out of the store. Homeless men and women...

There are two gargantuan foreign policy misconceptions in the mainstream media today. The first is that former President Donald Trump was an isolationist, a throw-back to the pre-President Dwight Eisenhower days of Sen. Robert Taft when Republicans believed they could establish a fortress America and blithely let the world go to hell. The second is that President Joe Biden represents a return to the status quo of American foreign policy, with the commander-in-chief making responsible decisions about global matters that reassure our allies and resonate with our adversaries. Nothing could be further from the truth. Trump was not an isolationist....

Yes, The Federal Reserve could have raised their target rate at their January meeting, but chose not to raise rates. Instead, Chairman Powell said that rate increases are a comin’! I hope Powell wasn’t hoping for a slowdown in inflation, because today’s Q4 GDP report showed a surge in GDP to 6.9% QoQ. But with that GDP surge we also got a surge in prices paid by consumers to 6.9% as well. Thanks to the continuing massive Federal stimulus being poured into markets. Despite the positive news on Q4 GDP, we are still seeing 7% inflation and a diving 10Y-2Y...

COVID-19 Policies Are Hurting Kids More Than Virus ItselfCOVID-19 itself has not been killing kids in droves.According to figures cited by the American Academy of Pediatrics, among the 46 states that reported, “children were 0.00-0.26 percent of all COVID-19 deaths, and four states reported zero child deaths.”But you’d never know that from the policies many states have instituted, including remote schooling, mask mandates, sitting 6 feet apart at lunch, and even quarantining from school.Despite being the lowest-risk demographic, in many ways, kids have carried the biggest burden, suffering learning loss, emotional and behavioral issues, and myriad other traumas that will...

Capitol Police examines backgrounds, social media feeds of some who meet with lawmakers The little-known new practice by the department’s intelligence analysts, instituted since the Jan. 6 attack, is highly controversial given the civil liberties concerns it raises. After the Jan. 6 insurrection, the Capitol Police’s intelligence unit quietly started scrutinizing the backgrounds of people who meet with lawmakers, according to three people familiar with the matter.... ..... Major changes in the Capitol Police intelligence unit started in fall of 2020, when the department brought on former Department of Homeland Security official Julie Farnam to help run its intelligence unit......

When resident Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden spoke with children and NORAD authorities monitoring Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, things went awry. "Let's Go Brandon," a slogan that has become an online phenomenon this year, was stated by a father named Jared Schmeck from Oregon at the end of his family's chat with the Bidens. If anyone believed this joke was going to die soon, Biden breathed new life into it with only two words that followed Schmeck's message: "I agree." Jokes have a short shelf life in the age of the internet. Typically, these jokes, or memes,...

The U.S. Navy announced Wednesday it has discharged 45 service members who refused to accept inoculation with the coronavirus vaccine. The personnel were released after failing to meet the November 28 deadline set by the Pentagon for the injection. Twenty-three active duty sailors were amongst those let go.

Joe Biden’s Department of Justice has said that a man who killed someone during the Black Lives Matter riots in 2020 should get a lesser sentence because he was “caught up in the fury” when he burned down a pawn shop.

Question: I’m 73 years old. I took out student loans in 1999 and consolidated in 2004. I have made only one late payment in the 17 years I’ve repaid. I worked full time at two public universities from graduation in 2001 to retirement 2014. After applying for loan forgiveness, I was notified that payments made before 2007 do not count. The payments I’ve made in retirement do not count. I have a $12,000 balance. This feels very unfair after 17 years of no missed payments and only one late payment. Do you have any advice? Answer: “You can, seemingly, do...

A quick review of communist China's calculated territorial imperialism in the South China Sea helps clarify Beijing's calculated economic, political and criminal imperialism in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2016 the Hague's international tribunal ruled that China had seized islets and "sea features" in the South China Sea belonging to the Philippines. It had also plundered Filipino fishing resources. The ruling invoked the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, a treaty China had signed. Yet Beijing ignored the verdict. Chinese diplomats contend in Southeast Asia, China is recovering "stolen" territory. That defense is rubbish -- propaganda to blur a wicked...

Bill Ackman disclosed a new, billion-dollar bet on Netflix in a letter to clients on Wednesday. Ackman's Pershing Square has snapped up more than 3.1 million Netflix shares since Friday, giving it a roughly $1.1 billion position, the billionaire investor revealed. His hedge fund's 0.7% stake makes it one of the video-streaming giant's 20 largest shareholders, he noted.

The Speeder's fast, long range, easily-deployed and modular architecture has drawn significant interest from the US Department of DefenseJetPack Aviation VIEW 14 IMAGES We've chatted with JetPack Aviation's David Mayman many times over the years. His company's groundbreaking work on jetpacks and flying motorcycles seems to proceed at a dizzying pace, and it's always fascinating and enlightening to learn what's new on the workshop bench, so we caught up with Mayman earlier this month to see where things are at. While the jetpack business continues to progress, with some fun developments in the pipeline, the company's now devoting about 70...

The Bible In Paintings 2 Engravings•Facades•Frescoes•Illuminations•Miniatures•Mosaics•Photographs•Reliefs•Sculptures•Tapestries•WindowsG E N E S I S11:29 – 12:8 The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai. Now Sarai was barren; she had no children. Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there. The LORD had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. “I will...

In at least a dozen states, Republican lawmakers have introduced bills seeking to make instruction in public schools more transparent. Pennsylvania’s bill, for example, would require public schools to post their curricula online. Democrats have largely opposed these bills, viewing them as the latest conservative salvo against critical race theory–inspired pedagogy. In vetoing the Pennsylvania legislation, Democratic governor Tom Wolf warned that the “legislation is a thinly veiled attempt to restrict truthful instruction and censor content reflecting various cultures, identities, and experiences.” Taken literally, Wolf’s statement is false. Requiring schools to be transparent about what they’re teaching does not inherently...

Avoiding misinformation and supporting journalism isn’t just about brand safety or corporate responsibility. New data, from an IPG Mediabrands client launch, shows NewsGuard’s data for responsible inclusion of news leads to major improvements in campaign performance metrics.

It is time to vigorously go on the offensive against those who are selling the deeply deceitful ideology of “privilege” before they tear this country apart. Although the “privilege” peddlers point to many characteristics that they say create entrenched and undeserved advantage for some in society, one identified most frequently is so-called white privilege. “White” is a word with constantly shifting definitions. For a long time in this country, “white” designated people whose ethnic origins could be traced to Europe. But the current American definition of “white” (at least among those driving the national conversation) commingles European ethnicities that were...

Three military doctors say medical billing code data captured by Defense Medical Epidemiology Database shows sharp spikes in miscarriages, myocarditis, cancer diagnoses, Bell's palsy, female infertility. According to the data found by the military doctors, there was also a nearly 300% increase in cancer diagnoses, from a 38,700-per-year average in 2016-2020 to 114,645 in 2021. Military medical whistleblowers have come forward with a trove of data on vaccine safety that they claim is the most accurate available. On Monday, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) hosted "COVID-19: A Second Opinion," a livestreamed discussion panel featuring world-renowned doctors and medical experts who provided...

Does anyone truly believe that our government -- which consistently creates monopoly privileges for companies with its own cronyism -- can be trusted to ensure that private markets remain competitive? Apparently so. Consider the resurgence of antitrust efforts against "Big Tech." If history is our guide, going after disfavored companies will result in less competition, not more, along with fewer choices and higher prices for you and me. Take the American Innovation and Choice Online Act recently approved by a Senate panel. This bill would block a handful of tech companies like Amazon and Apple from favoring their own products...

LIZ TRUSS's free trade pact with Australia faced renewed criticism from farmers today as they attacked the agreement for not being "a particularly good deal". The National Farmers Union (NFU) claimed the deal with Canberra would open the floodgates for imports. Under the terms of the agreement, quotas on imports from Australia such as meat will be phased out over 15 years. It means in the future there will be no limit on agricultural products shipped to Britain from Down Under. However, the NFU's director of trade and business strategy, Nick von Westenholz, said that while there would be an...

It appears as thought someone on the White House staff may have forgotten to slip Biden’s pills into his porridge. Watch below. https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1486408000231387142