Free Republic

Poland aims to modernise and expand its armed forces into one of the strongest in NATO, under a new homeland defence proposal backed by the government on Tuesday. Outlining the plan to reporters, Deputy Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński said the proposed homeland defence bill was designed to "create the legal basis and financial instruments for a radical expansion of Poland's armed forces in terms of both manpower and firepower."Referring to escalating tensions with Russia over Ukraine, he added that "Poland must have at its disposal armed forces adequate to the kind of situation we have today--forces that will be able...

Sheriff Michael Chapman of Loudoun County, Va. got an unpleasant surprise recently from Old Joe Biden’s handlers. On Thursday, the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office (LCSO) published a press release that reveals the truly astonishing extent of the administration’s high-handedness, dishonesty, carelessness, and recklessness in its resettlement of Afghan refugees in cities and towns all over the United States. Without any prior warning, Loudoun County officials were told that 2,000 Afghan refugees would be arriving in the county in just over two weeks and that 2,000 more would be arriving every month after that through September. In what will come as...

Some 2,000 Hasidic Jews from across Europe, the United States and elsewhere are expected to arrive in Leżajsk, southeastern Poland, this week to pray at the grave of Rabbi Elimelech Weisblum, one of the founders of a religious movement whose aim was to revive Judaism in the 18th century. Pilgrims pray in Leżajsk on Tuesday.Photo: PAP/Darek DelmanowiczA group of more than 1,000 Jews who took part in the prayers on Tuesday have left the site to make room for new groups, the last of which is scheduled to leave Leżajsk by Friday noon, before the start of the Sabbath.Hasidic Jews...

Colombia has decriminalised abortion during the first 24 weeks of pregnancy, following rulings in Mexico and Argentina that improve access to abortion The South American country’s constitutional court ruled five against four to decriminalise the procedure on Monday evening. The decision follows a series of rulings in Mexico and Argentina that lowered barriers to abortion.Previously, abortion in Colombia was allowed only where there was a risk to the life or health of the pregnant mother; the existence of life-threatening foetal malformations; or when the pregnancy was the result of rape, incest or non-consensual artificial insemination. ...“We celebrate this ruling as...

Source: NanoStockk/iStockThe American Medical Association now tells doctors: Use woke language! It's issued a 54-page guide telling doctors things like, don't say "equality"; say "equity." Don't say "minority"; say "historically marginalized." Much of the AMA's advisory sounds like Marxism: "Expose ... property rights ... Individualism is problematic ... Corporations ... limit prospects for good health ... people underpaid and forced into poverty as a result of banking policies." This is too much even for some on the left, like writer Matthew Yglesias, whose article about the AMA caught my attention. "Can you imagine anyone actually doing this?" asks Yglesias in...

These are Illegal ALIENS -- not migrants invading our Southern Border.

The Washington Times’ White House correspondent Dave Boyer exposed the leftist dark money efforts behind President Joe Biden’s pledge to nominate the first African American woman to the United States Supreme Court.

Will inflation turn into stagflation? With inflation hitting 40-year highs, it’s the question of the hour.Currently, Wall Street and the Fed are saying no, forecasting a respectable 3.7% real for 2022, 2.7% for 2023, and 2.3% for 2024. These aren’t epic prints, but they’re also nowhere near recession. Of course, that same dream team of Wall Street and Fed missed inflation to an epic degree last year: in mid-October of 2021 the Wall Street Journal’s survey of economists were predicting 5.25% inflation by December—just two months later. Actual CPI in December was an annualized 9.5%, and it was 7.1% on...

In a recent Detroit News opinion piece, Governor Gretchen Whitmer opined that she released her Fiscal Year 2023 budget - a budget bolstered by nearly $5 billion in federal funds left over from prior COVID relief. Despite her political talking points, Governor Whitmer’s budget isn’t a reflection of savvy negotiations or sound business principles - she’s merely playing Santa Claus with federal giveaway dollars in an attempt to salvage Michigan’s economy after her policies devastated our small businesses and workers. As she touts her spending spree, it is important to remember what Governor Whitmer has done before and during the...

Several prominent anti-Trump Republicans, including Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), will be hosting a separate “counterprogramming” event that intends to serve as a rival to the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). As Breitbart reports, the “Principles First Summit” will take place from February 26th to February 27th, the last two days of the larger and more popular CPAC event, which is being held in Orlando, Florida. The anti-Trump event will be held in Washington, D.C. at the National Press Club. “Principles First is excited to announce a two-day grassroots summit at the National Press Club...

Our freedom went to the cities, where it’s been on a bender ever since. In the 2000s, when I was in high school, civil disobedience was lauded as something almost inherently noble. Our teachers encouraged us to think like Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King, Jr., and grow up to be the kind of people who would disobey unjust laws. The moral groundwork for this philosophy, though our teachers were almost certainly ignorant of the fact, was the very American idea that Benjamin Franklin proposed as the motto for the United States: “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.” Our...

It is impossible to know what ordinary Russians think about Putin’s onslaught against Ukraine. Under conditions of increasing domestic repression, opinion polls are unreliable. On topics that are sensitive for the Kremlin, they are a guide to the level of popular fear, not to popular attitudes. Nevertheless, there is little doubt that the Putin regime has invested vast resources in shaping the attitudes of its own people. Over the past two decades, it has created a sprawling apparatus of propaganda institutions that were built up, step by step, as Putin’s rule became more dictatorial. The origins of this system can...

Except in the months preceding a crucial midterm election, today’s Democrats would argue that high gas prices are a good thing. They see gas prices as a Pigouvian tax on fossil fuels that accelerate the shift to renewable “green” energy. Regulatory and legislative actions such as killing the Keystone Pipeline early last year, and closing off federal lands for oil drilling, were made by the Biden Administration and its congressional cohorts knowing full well such decisions would raise gas prices for consumers. Democrats were okay with that, until their polling numbers began dipping into the frigid zone. It appears now...

President Joe Biden hit Fox reporter Peter Doocy with a dose of sarcasm after he asked the president if he underestimated Putin. "The thing I love about the press is they're always on message," Biden said at a Tuesday afternoon minerals event. He then joked to those participating virtually, "Did YOU underestimate Putin?" Biden was in a more jovial mood at the afternoon gathering in the South Court Auditorium after having already announced the new Russian sanctions. "Hi everybody. How are you? Gavin, how are you, man?" he said upon entering. Newsom told Biden, "I'm impressed. I am impressed. Thank...

There does remain one major difference between Canada and Cuba. Few Cubans support their Marxist leaders, but most Canadians support theirs. They don't know what they're in for. Canada is leaving the Western world. In terms of all-encompassing government, suppression of dissent and the denial of fundamental human rights to many of its citizens, Canada is now more similar to Cuba than to any free country. Canada may eventually return to Western civilization, but right now, the majority of Canadians appear to have no interest in it doing so. According to Maru Public Opinion, “two-thirds (66 percent) of Canadians support...

BERLIN (AP) — Climate activists on Wednesday blocked roads leading to Germany’s three biggest airports, gluing themselves to the ground before police arrived. Members of the group Uprising of the Last Generation said they wanted to disrupt cargo and passenger traffic at the airports in Frankfurt, Munich and Berlin. The group has demanded that the government take measures to end food waste. It argues that throwing away vast amounts of usable food contributes to hunger and climate change.

In the international discourse around Ukraine, the country has traditionally been portrayed as a divided nation with irreconcilable differences between east and west. This was always an unhelpful over-simplification of Ukraine’s complex political geography; since the onset of Russian aggression in 2014, fast-changing realities on the ground have rendered such stereotypes completely redundant. With around 200,000 Russian troops currently concentrated on the Ukrainian border, Putin’s eight-year war against Ukraine is getting more global media attention than ever before. While this coverage is welcome, it has also underlined that current understandings of Ukrainian political and cultural identity are still often based...

If you want to reduce gun violence, New York City Mayor Eric Adams thinks, you need to go after guns. His plan relies heavily on disrupting gun trafficking, seizing guns and arresting people for illegal gun possession. This strategy is unlikely to work. Worse, the focus on gun possession arrests, if it fails to distinguish between people who pose a real threat to public safety and people who carry guns for self-protection, will compound the injustice of systematically denying city dwellers their Second Amendment rights. "It is estimated that as many as 2 million illegal guns were in circulation in...

The upcoming polar plunge will cause temperatures across the northern United States to drop by as much as 50 degrees, during a time when war may break out in Europe. This is a reminder of how important affordable American energy sources are. Europe is weak because it is in the grip of an energy crisis with some prices soaring tenfold in the last two years. Europe depends for nearly 30% of its oil and gas supplies on Russia, while German manufacturing is particularly dependent for energy on Russia after environmentalists forced Germany to dismantle all 17 of its nuclear power...

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Europe braced for further confrontation Wednesday and Ukraine urged its citizens to leave Russia after tensions escalated dramatically when Russia’s leader got the OK to use military force outside his country and the West responded with a raft of sanctions. Hopes for a diplomatic way out of a new, potentially devastating war appeared all but sunk as the U.S. and key European allies accused Moscow on Tuesday of crossing a red line in rolling over Ukraine’s border into separatist regions — with several calling it an invasion. The top U.S. diplomat canceled a meeting with his...