Free Republic

A Pakistani man sentenced to life in prison in 2019 for strangling his sister, a model on social media, has been acquitted of murder after his parents pardoned him under Islamic law. Waseem Azeem was arrested in 2016 after he confessed to killing Qandeel Baloch, 26, for posting what he called “shameful” pictures on Facebook. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison but his parents had sought his release, said Sardar Mahboob, a lawyer who represents Azeem and his family. Islamic law in Pakistan allows a murder victim’s family to pardon a convicted killer. Baloch rose...

“I had a lot of people this week asking about Ukraine. ‘Why does it matter? What should we do about it? Why do we care?’ First of all, why it matters is that Beijing and Moscow are making an argument that they want a New World Order,” Rubio said. The “New World Order” phrasing is deliberate. The verbiage was made famous by former President George H.W. Bush, who hailed military action in Iraq in 1991 as an example of the New World Order. The Senator added more context to the phrase, condemning Russia and China for pushing for a “world...

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said on Friday that plans are underway to remove “almost all restrictions for businesses,” including the controversial “vaccine passport system” that inspired the Freedom Convoy protests. On Sunday, the vital Ambassador Bridge linking Ontario with Michigan was reopened after police cleared the protesters who had blocked it for six days. “Today we are on track to very soon remove almost all restrictions for businesses as part of our reopening plan. And we heard from Dr. Moore last week, and again yesterday, that he is now working on a plan that will allow us to remove the...

Ontario ramped up plans to drop a raft of COVID-19 restrictions, including the province's vaccine certificate system, while Alberta schools opened Monday without mask mandates for children. Saskatchewan residents also started the day with relaxed measures as the province lifted its proof of vaccine or a negative test requirement to enter most businesses. Meanwhile, Quebec said it would discuss ending its vaccine mandate. As provinces tailored policies to their own COVID-19 trends, the Public Health Agency of Canada said there will be "variability" in when and how jurisdictions lift measures. "With the decline of the Omicron wave, and as we...

COUTTS, Alta.— Mounties in Alberta say they swept in to make arrests and seize weapons and ammunition as an already tense blockade near the Coutts border crossing was about to escalate dangerously. The RCMP said they had arrested more than a dozen people by Monday evening in and around Coutts who were associated with the protest, had access to a large collection of guns and were willing “to use force against the police if any attempts were made to disrupt the blockade.” “We knew what was about to happen or inevitably to happen, and we acted as soon as we...

CNN is facing pressure to reveal how much is was paid to run sponsored content from a Chinese state-run newspaper on its website promoting the Winter Games in Beijing. The content supplied by Xinhua News Agency - a newspaper founded and run by government agency State Council of the People's Republic of China - promotes the Beijing Olympics as a 'winter sporting event like no other.' In an upbeat article, it focuses on the dazzling effects of the Games - which runs from February 4 to 20 - from 'green construction' to the extensive 'safety protocols.' Remarkably absent is any...

Sey, 52, started working for Levi's after competing for Team USA as a gymnast in 1986 at the Goodwill Games in RussiaShe worked her way up to become Brand President and was on track to become the next CEO On Monday, she revealed in Bari Weiss' Common Sense Substack channel that she has been firedWhen the pandemic hit, she was quick to speak out against school closures and lockdowns on kidsShe moved her four kids from San Francisco to Denver so her youngest could go to kindergarten Sey appeared on FOX to talk about the harm lockdown had on kids...

Update (1935ET): The Canadian Civil Liberties Association has condemned PM Justin Trudeau for invoking the Emergencies Act, claiming in a Monday tweet that the Canadian federal government "has not met the threshold necessary" to do so. "The Emergencies Act can only be invoked when a situation "seriously threatens the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada" & when the situation "cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada," the twitter thread continues.The Emergencies Act can only be invoked when a situation "seriously threatens the ability of the Government...

The percentage of wealth owned by the top 1% keeps rising over time. Who's to credit or blame?Data Source: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Fed), Chart by MishThis data series compiled by the Fed started in the third quarter of 1989. The most recent data is from the third quarter of 2021.If you have not seen charts of this series before, the numbers may seem shocking. 1989 Q3 vs 2021 Q3 PercentagesTop 1% Then 23.6%, Now 32.1%90th to 99th Percentile Then 37.3%, Now 37.5%50th to 90th Percentile Then 35.6%, Now 27.9%Bottom 50% Then 3.7%, Now 2.5%Gains or...

The one-sidedness of official Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rhetoric and propaganda should not be taken to indicate a lack of diversity of viewpoint on the part of the Chinese population or general public agreement with CCP positions, according to a new report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think tank.The report, titled “Public Opinion in China: A Silent Liberal Majority?”, presents extensive quantitative research and polling data amassed by Stanford University professors Jennifer Pan and Yiqing Xu that directly contravene the notion of a monolithic populace that shares or assents to official propaganda.A wide diversity...

The former president accused the mainstream media of hypocrisy for their lack of coverage on allegations detailed by Special Counsel John Durham Durham said in a filing that Clinton's election team paid a tech firm to infiltrate Trump Tower and White House servers in an effort to establish Kremlin link Trump suggested on Monday that he would be executed if the same allegations were levied against him rather than a Democratic candidate DailyMail.com found no links or references to the latest revelations by John Durham on the mainstream sites mentioned by Trump Many of them had wall-to-wall coverage of the...

A little earlier today, my colleague Nick Arama posted on a Washington Post editorial about the futility of mask mandates (see WaPo Finally Says It: ‘Mask Mandates Didn’t Make Much of a Difference Anyway’). If this sounds a little strange given the fights raging across the nation, and the so-called Western world, about mask mandates, it should. In fact, it should seem strange even by the standards of the Washington Post editorial section that published the story.pic.twitter.com/WPfjhNRvqL— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs)February 12, 2022How does the Washington Post story fit in here?The hallmark of the so-called public health information associated with COVID,...

Mr. Sussmann will face a trial judge who appears to have background connections to the FBI‘s original Russia investigation. U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper, who is overseeing the case against Mr. Sussmann, is married to attorney Amy Jefress, who represented former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, Just The News first reported Monday. Ms. Page was a top lawyer on special counsel Robert Mueller’s team in the FBI‘s Trump-Russia investigation, and became best known for anti-Trump tweets to her former paramour, now former FBI agent Peter Strzok. “It seems the two-tiered system of justice continues — how can a judge oversee...

On Saturday, February 12, Freedom Initiative Now hosted a GOP Gubernatorial Town Hall, featuring four of the announced Republican candidates for Governor of Illinois, with a couple hundred activists in attendance at the Embassy Suites in Naperville. State Senator Darren Bailey, former State Senator Paul Schimpf, businessman Gary Rabine, and attorney Max Solomon were seated on the dais. Three other candidates believed to be in the running - Chris Roper (who at some point had accepted), Jesse Sullivan and Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin – were not in attendance. Co-hosts Nick Richmond and Kelly Dittmann kept their introduction to a minimum,...

Jim McIngvale, better known as “Mattress Mack,” may be down, but he’s not out. “The Bengals lost, and it broke my heart, McIngvale told ESPN on Monday. “But you know what, we live to play another day. You win some, you lose some and sometimes you get rained out. I got up this morning, put on my big boy britches and went to work.” McIngvale placed more than $9.5 million in bets on the Bengals to upset the favored Rams in Super Bowl 56. McIngvale wagered $4.53 million on Cincinnati to win the game, getting +170 odds, on Feb. 3....

The Central Intelligence Agency has been collecting American’s private data without any oversight or even the minimal legal safeguards that apply to the NSA and FBI, an unconstitutional affront to our civil liberties. According to a declassified report released last week by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), the CIA’s surveillance program is reminiscent of the mass surveillance programs conducted by the NSA, though the details released thus far paint a disturbing picture of potential wide-scale violations of people’s privacy. To start, the CIA program has apparently been conducted outside the statutory reforms and oversight of the intelligence...

A really funny story to go with the song

Young girl physically assaulted by much bigger girls. "GRAPHIC: Video from Feb. 10 at Lady’s Island Middle School in South Carolina shows a young girl being grabbed by the hair, hit to the ground & kicked. Local police will be filing charges of 3rd-degree assault, battery & threats based on family’s insistence." Andy Ngo Twitter (30 sec video)

Congress has directed U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to come up with a plan to scan 100 percent of arriving vehicles at the southern border • Currently, drug traffickers take a gamble when they smuggle illegal narcotics into the U.S. with just 25 out of 500 vehicles per hour being searched •Agency is preparing to roll out new 'nonintrusive' inspection systems to screen significantly more trucks •Powerful high-energy scanners will detect 'anomalies' inside cargo loads •'Multi-energy portals' will zap the cargo areas with high-energy waves, but use safer low-energy screening for the cab, allowing the drivers to remain inside...

Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is the subject of accusations in court documents that her campaign spied on Donald Trump, but supporters in her party are shrugging off the claim ahead of her much-anticipated speech before the New York State Democratic Party Convention on Thursday. Democrats say the bombshell accusations from special counsel John Durham are just more reckless attacks, and they won’t let it spoil daydreams about Mrs. Clinton standing in for President Biden in 2024 if necessary. “I think this is going to be met with an eye roll,” Dora Leland, chairwoman of the Chemung County, New...