Free Republic

White House press secretary Jen Psaki spoke to reporters Thursday about the ongoing energy crisis exacerbated by the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. Asked about U.S. sanctions on Russian oil, and the possible financial support importing resources from the nation could give Russian President Vladimir Putin, Psaki stressed the administration is looking to divest. However, the process could take some time, Psaki said. "There's a policy process that is undergone for any decision that is made," the press secretary told reporters. "Sometimes those move rapidly and often there are a range of factors that are discussed as those decisions are...

Russia’s unprovoked brutalization of Ukraine includes the likelihood of additional war crimes involving attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, as Jim further detailed in today’s Jolt. (Jim notes, among other horribles, the deployment in urban areas of thermobaric multiple-rockets launchers, which Ukraine claims have been not merely deployed but used.)How hair-raising, then, that we must turn our attention to the fact that, even as Russia was marshaling its invasion forces, the Biden administration was relying on Russia as its principal intermediary in the negotiations with Iran. It’s doubly humiliating: The president and his envoy, appeasement aficionado Rob Malley, have turned...

Where is Dr. Fauci? After two years of leadoff hitting on Meet the Press, the guy has seemingly disappeared. There had been a growing list of theories on Fauci’s whereabouts, including the Wuhan lab where COVID probably originated. Naturally, everyone wants to know where he has been. And luckily, SubStack writer Jordan Schachtel found the answer. It turns out that Fauci vanished soon after a polling article warned Democrats that Americans are fed up with COVID hysteria and it might cost them the 2022 midterms. Here’s the memo. Here’s an internal memo from a Democrat polling firm that’s circulating through...

Melinda French Gates said she was upset with Bill Gates’s past meetings with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, addressed the Microsoft Corp. co-founder’s earlier affair and said she and her former husband have a working relationship focused on philanthropy. Ms. French Gates, speaking in her first televised interview since the billionaires’ divorce last year, cited many matters that led to their split. But she made it clear to Mr. Gates that she didn’t like that he had held meetings with Epstein, she said in the CBS program that aired Thursday. She said she herself had met once with Epstein, who...

The Great Reset: A Bug's Life. https://youtu.be/UrEUzKTt7j0

Gov. Doug Ducey closed the door on a bid for Arizona's highly competitive Senate seat, a blow to the Republican Party establishment while satiating the Trump wing. The term-limited governor told donors in a letter he was an executive "by nature and by training" and that he would instead focus on rallying support for Republicans in competitive races across the state, capitulating to the express wishes of former President Donald Trump that he sit out.

Whoopi Goldberg told her co-hosts Wednesday on ABC’s “The View” that Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) was acting like a “little girl” for interrupting President Joe Biden at his State of the Union address a night earlier. After playing a clip of Boebert, Goldberg said, “She doubled down on Twitter saying she couldn’t stay silent about this. I have to say, you’re probably about 35 years old, and maybe you don’t understand that a whole lot of folks over the last seven or eight years have been sent to their death for no good reason. Soldiers know what’s coming. They don’t...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Thursday provided a positive update on his wife’s battle with breast cancer, announcing that Casey DeSantis is now considered to be cancer-free. “I have a positive update about my wife Casey DeSantis,” the governor said in an announcement posted to social media.

Thousands of Iraqi refugees, Syrians, Kurds, or Africans, almost exclusively men, are described trying to enter Poland, according to French...

The spectacle of Ukraine standing up to Russia reminds of Churchill’s line about Hitler boasting that he’d wring Britain like a chicken in 1940: “Some chicken. Some neck.” But in the Wrinkled-Up Chicken Neck department, Biden. . . oh never mind.

The world is facing its biggest political/military crisis since the end of the Cold War, and for better or worse, the leadership of its largest countries has serious problems. Probably for worse. Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, seems angry and out of touch. Putin clearly expected the invasion of Ukraine to be a walkover. A translation of the public statement intended for Feb. 26, declaring victory in Ukraine, reveals his thinking to be both grandiose and unrealistic. Putin used to be a secret policeman, a trade in which accurate information is important. But in his many years at the top, he’s...

On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “MTP Daily,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) said he thinks the U.S. should impose an embargo on Russian oil, but whether U.S. oil production should be increased to make up for the loss of Russian oil is up to President Joe Biden. Menendez said, “I support a full embargo, even though it would equate to about — if it’s just the U.S. alone — about 4% of Russian sales globally. But I think it is an important step to make, and I think it is gaining traction. And I think that...

On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) argued that oil companies are not producing as much as oil as they could to keep the price high and these companies need to increase production to help combat Russia’s energy wealth. After both Senators called for an embargo on Russian oil, Shaheen said, “I know there’s hardship on the American people and on everybody who is affected by these high gas prices, but the other thing we need to do is we need to call on our CEOs of the major oil companies...

[Catholic Caucus] Another German bishop all but eliminates the Traditional Latin Mass in his dioceseThe Traditional Latin Mass can no longer be celebrated in parish churches in the Diocese of Regensburg as a result of Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer's decree. Wed Mar 2, 2022 - 6:11 pm EST REGENSBURG, Germany (LifeSiteNews) – Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer has chosen to implement an almost total ban on the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) in the Diocese of Regensburg, making his diocese the third to do so in Germany.Voderholzer has implemented the strict recommendations from the Responsa Ad Dubia released in December in response to questions...

Two police officers were caught off-guard when they were attacked by a pet squirrel as they tried to arrest his owner on Monday. According to the Livingston Parish Sheriff's Office, two deputies were wrapping up a traffic stop east of Baton Rouge, Louisiana Monday night when they went to arrest an unidentified tow-truck driver. But when they searched the vehicle, a 'pet feral squirrel' leaped onto the back of one of the deputies, the Sheriff's Office wrote. As he ran in circles trying to get the squirrel off his back, jumping and grabbing at the rodent, his partner could be...

MOSCOW, March 3 (Reuters) - Russia has decided to stop supplying rocket engines to the United States in retaliation for its sanctions against Russia over Ukraine, Dmitry Rogozin, head of the state space agency Roscosmos, said on Thursday. "In a situation like this we can't supply the United States with our world's best rocket engines. Let them fly on something else, their broomsticks, I don't know what," Rogozin said on state Russian television. According to Rogozin, Russia has delivered a total of 122 RD-180 engines to the U.S. since 1990s, of which 98 have been used to power Atlas launch...

Kazimierz Woycicki, a specialist on Eastern Europe at the University of Warsaw, says that there are six possible scenarios for Russia’s future. From Moscow’s perspective, four are disastrous; and two are more hopeful although apparently in the Polish scholar’s view less likely. The four negative scenarios, he suggests, include “the territorial disintegration of the Russian Federation,” “the gradual but peaceful falling apart of Russia,” “the Balkanization of Russia,” and “the fall of Russia under the influence of China” (k-politika.ru/mrachnye-prognozy-v-polshe-raspisali-shest-scenariev-budushhego-rossii). The two more positive ones at least from the perspective of the Russian leadership at the present time, Woycicki argues, are...

A fire has been seen at a nuclear power plant in Ukraine after tanks opened fire with heavy weapons at the facility, footage in the early hours of Friday morning showed. A live feed from the Zaporizhzhia station showed flames at the site in the east of country, having earlier showed tanks firing at buildings - sparking fears of a radiation disaster in the nation currently being invaded by Russian forces. Dmytro Orlov, the mayor of the nearby town of Energodar, confirmed the blaze in an online post. The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is the largest of its kind in...

Between Moscow and Kyiv the Pope Has Lost His WayIt is difficult to find a war in which the distinction between aggressor and aggressed is as clear-cut as in the present conflict in Ukraine. Yet it is precisely this distinction that is absent in the words and deeds of Pope Francis. His visit to the Russian ambassador to the Holy See on Friday February 25 was a glaring example of this. “During the visit, the pope wished to express his concern over the war in Ukraine,” blazened “L’Osservatore Romano” on the front page. Not one more line, no article to...

Gunfire, shelling outside Europe's largest nuclear power plant in #Zaporizhya, Ukraine https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1499536551323308037