Free Republic

A whistleblower from the Federal Bureau of Investigation told Project Veritas founder and President James O’Keefe in a recorded interview posted late Wednesday that the FBI’s “direction” in recent months “troubles a vast majority of the agents.” SNIP The whistleblower said the documents were given to him by a sympathetic colleague who also believed there was a “political vendetta” against O’Keefe’s organization. O’Keefe has contended that he and his journalists were targeted because of their investigative journalism. The special agent told O’Keefe that investigations into news organizations are “not common,” and the few that are investigated are almost always tied...

The nine most terrifying words in the English language, as President Ronald Reagan once quipped, are: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” Yet the Biden administration may have found a more concise yet equally terrifying phrase: “We’re not the opinion police.” These words, spoken without jest, came from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in defense of his agency’s newest creation, the “Disinformation Governance Board.” When news of this broke, left and right were both quick to criticize, rightly pointing out free speech concerns. Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson rhetorically asked, “I can see how disinformation...

Russia’s ocean container imports continue to collapse as shipping lines wind down the last remnants of their services to the country’s ports. Russia — now effectively a pariah within Western logistics circles — still has cargo import options. Yet the loss of virtually all of its ocean shipping links makes obtaining consumer goods and components much more difficult. Elvira Nabiullina, Russia’s Central Bank chairwoman, recently warned that the range of consumer goods available in her country is already shrinking and Russian companies needing foreign components are facing “serious problems.” Top carriers wind down serviceThe world’s top container lines paused bookings...

That the North Carolina Republican party establishment would unite behind Congressman Ted Budd is unexpectedly revealing. While never a scourge of the big boys on Hillsborough Street, neither was Ted Budd the obvious choice for electability-minded GOP elites. After all, the only Republican governor of North Carolina in the last 30 years, Pat McCrory, was also running in the primary. If McCrory cannot command the support of people who were elated when his victory brought them a precious four years of one-party control, something very radical has transformed the NCGOP. snip Despite their similarities, Ted Budd has never been a...

Hint: That seemingly innocuous “Advisory” module is anything but. As a lifelong conservative and a retired teacher, I welcome all efforts to wrest control over education from the leftist educrats. I long for a day when we can send our kids to public schools and know they are being educated, not indoctrinated. But indoctrinated they are and one of the main vehicles is the seemingly innocuous “Advisory” module. As parents, we send our children to public schools to learn English, math, science, history, and other subjects deemed desirable by our society. Our schools also teach propaganda aimed at transforming America...

A Georgia sheriff says his deputies conducted a highway search of the Delaware State University women’s lacrosse team’s luggage because “an alert was given” by a drug-detecting K9 at the cargo bay of the charter bus. “A canine sniff of the exterior of a vehicle is not a search under the Fourth Amendment,” Liberty County Sheriff William Bowman stressed during brief remarks outside his office Tuesday. However, the alert does provide probable cause “to search the vehicle,” Bowman said. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that “a dog sniff conducted during a concededly lawful traffic stop that reveals no...

God help us if the Biden administration follows Vindman's advice. Among the most fervent war hawks in America today is Alexander Vindman, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army and a former member of the NSC, who now works at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies Foreign Policy Institute. His previous claim to fame was as a witness who testified about former president Donald Trump's call to Ukrainian officials in the second impeachment trial of Trump. He became an instant hero to the crowd at MSNBC and other anti-Trump major media (is there any other kind?). Vindman...

Don't Say "I've Got a Gun!" - Massad Ayoob examines the Philando Castile case - Critical Mas Ep 25

One of the fighters holed up in a steelworks besieged by Russian forces in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol has appealed to SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk to help evacuate them. Many civilians were rescued from the sprawling Azovstal plant last week under an agreement with Russia, but no deal has been reached with Moscow on allowing out hundreds of fighters, some of whom are wounded, after weeks of bombardment. “@elonmusk people say you come from another planet to teach people to believe in the impossible. Our planets are next to each other, as I live where it is nearly impossible...

When all you have is a hammer, everything does indeed look like a nail. This is the best way to describe government officials' unoriginal and often destructive thinking. No matter the problem du jour, the answer is always more government spending. But more spending requires more tax revenue, which is not always easy to acquire in the modern global economy. That's how we got the current effort by some United States officials to impose a global minimum tax. They are hammering away to extract more revenue from U.S.-based multinational corporations by limiting competition from countries with more welcoming tax systems....

John Lassiter, a close friend and informal adviser of McCrory who began working with him in Charlotte government in the mid-1980s, remains hopeful about McCrory’s chances Tuesday. He said he expected voters would “wake up” at the end of the campaign, and decide to vote for the person they supported previously. “It’s really unfair,” Lassiter said. “He is very conservative, particularly on fiscal matters and the role of government. At his core, his politics are pretty tried and true, and he has stuck to those despite the trade winds that come every cycle.” Lassiter, whom McCrory tapped to oversee and...

Public pension fiduciaries may soon be looking to distance themselves from advisors leading them down the ESG path. Reputational risk is the wonderfully vague term that is being used more and more to justify decisions to terminate a business relationship when an objective reason is unavailable. According to an excellent article in the Georgia Law Review, "Regulating Bank Reputation Risk," the concept of reputational risk really took off in the 1990s when federal regulators were looking for a way to incorporate subjective policy and social considerations when examining financial institutions. The first phase of using reputational risk as a regulatory...

John Hinderaker has been writing at PowerLine about the economic catastrophe taking place in Sri Lanka. Until very recently, that country was “not only food-secure, but a major agricultural exporter” of products like rice, tea and rubber. One would think that creating prosperity and lifting millions out of poverty would be welcomed by government and social activists. But no. The government of Sri Lanka decided to mandate new policies prompted not by the recommendations of anyone with experience in industry, commerce or basic economics, but by the howling of environmentalists demanding “all organic” farming. Despite the fact that more than...

MEXICO CITY/SAO PAULO, May 10 (Reuters) - Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Tuesday he would not attend the U.S.-hosted Summit of the Americas next month if all countries in the region were not invited, while Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is also likely to skip the meeting, sources told Reuters. The absence of the leaders of Latin America's two biggest economies would be a blow for the get-together of regional heads of state, which is expected to tackle issues from migration to the environment but also showcase democracy in the hemisphere. Mexico's leader, a leftist, has said he wants...

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Washington -- Do you remember the days when our liberal friends were forever claiming the moral high ground on almost any issue no matter how devoid of moral content the issue might be? They claimed it, of course, on issues of war and peace. "All we are saying is give peace a chance," the chorus would sing out. Yet they even claimed the moral high ground in the controversy about tobacco, though I do not recall what they sang. Possibly it would be something denouncing Winston Churchill as a colonialist or an empire-builder. I recall with great clarity their insistence...

Troops and armoured vehicles have been deployed across the city of Colombo and security officials given orders to shoot on sight anyone deemed to be participating in violence as anti-government protests continued to rock Sri Lanka. The crisis turned volatile earlier this week after pro-government supporters began attacking a camp of peaceful demonstrators who had been protesting against the government and the devastating economic crisis that has engulfed the island of 22 million people. As footage emerged on Wednesday of armoured military vehicles in Colombo and military checkpoints being set up across the country , fears grew that the path...

After angry public reaction to the leaked Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito draft opinion on reversing Roe v. Wade, Justice Clarence Thomas said: "We are becoming addicted to wanting particular outcomes, not living with the outcomes we don't like. We can't be an institution that can be bullied into giving you just the outcomes you want. The events from earlier this week are a symptom of that." The kind of events to which Thomas referred include pro-abortion activists blocking church entrances and protesting at the homes of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Alito. It is difficult...

Democrats are insane. We know this, they can’t hide it. They’re also evil. They used to hide this, but can’t or won’t anymore. Whatever the case, the curtain has been pulled back. But unlike the Wizard in the Wizard of Oz, Democrats aren’t even bothering to try to close the curtain, they’re quite proud of it. Good for them, I guess, but better for the rest of us – we can see these people for who and what they are. It ain’t pretty. The Treasury Secretary, former chair of the Federal Reserve (and someone I assume identifies as a woman,...

In the Senate, Hunt won a three-candidate race Tuesday for the GOP nomination in a district spanning five counties. As a Democrat, Hunt served 14 years in the House of Delegates before losing in the 2016 general election for a U.S. House seat. He also lost a 2018 nonpartisan race for an unexpired term on the state Supreme Court. Now as a Republican, Hunt defeated former Delegate Joshua Higginbotham and Mark Mitchem by a double-digit margin Tuesday. A fourth GOP candidate, Andrea Garrett Kiessling, was disqualified from running after a successful challenge to her residency. Kiessling had been promoted by...