Free Republic

A thousand bodies have been recovered near the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, in recent days, with many of the killings possibly amounting to war crimes amid the Russian invasion, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet. "The scale of unlawful killings, including indicia of summary executions in areas to the north of Kyiv, is shocking," Bachelet told the Geneva-based Human Rights Council via video link. The council will decide on Thursday whether to launch an official probe into events that occurred in Kyiv and other regions in February and March while Russian troops were occupying the areas....

When revolutionaries undermine the system, earn the antipathy of the people, face looming disaster at the polls, it is then they prove most dangerous—as we’ll see over the next few months. Americans are now entering uncharted, revolutionary territory. They may witness things over the next five months that once would have seemed unimaginable. Until the Ukrainian conflict, we had never witnessed a major land war inside Europe directly involving a nuclear power. In desperation, Russia’s impaired and unhinged leader Vladimir Putin now talks trash about the likelihood of nuclear war. A 79-year-old Joe Biden bellows back that his war-losing nuclear...

A critical responsibility of our nation’s Commander in Chief is to uphold the constitutional rights of all citizens, regardless of age, race, socioeconomic status or background. This includes protecting our natural born right to self-defense guaranteed under the Second Amendment. Unfortunately for Americans today, resident Biden is proposing more failed policies at the expense of Americans’ right to protect themselves and their families. His recent unveiling of a new regulation aimed at so-called “ghost guns” coupled with his nomination of anti-gun politician Steve Dettelbach as the next director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), are the latest...

Few modern weapons have reached the iconic status of Turkey’s Bayraktar TB2 drone. Grainy footage from the drone’s cameras showing hapless targets in Syria, Nagorno-Karabakh and Ukraine war zones being blown up by its laser-guided bombs have cemented its reputation as a highly effective, lethal weapon. The drone first gained international attention during 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, where Azerbaijan’s TB2 fleet was crucial in determining the outcome of the war. Azerbaijan’s modernized armed forces used the TB2 to great effect against the Armenians, who attempted to re-use the tactics, techniques and procedures that won conflicts in 1994. More recently, TB2 has...

WASHINGTON, Sunday, May 11. The following was received at the War Department this morning: FORT MONROE, Saturday, May 10 -- Midnight. Norfolk is ours, and also Portsmouth and the Navy-yard. Gen. WOOL, having completed the landing of his forces at Willoughby Point, about 9 o'clock, this morning, commenced his march on Norfolk, with 5,000 men. Secretary CHASE accompanied the General. About five miles from the landing-place a rebel battery was found on the opposite side of the bridge over Tanner's Creek, and after a few discharges upon two companies of infantry that were in the advance, the rebels burned the...

IPray For The Peace of JerusalemRevelation 21The New Jerusalem, the Bride of the Lamb9 One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” 10 And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. 11 It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as...

Kansas has paid a heavy price since losing the Governor’s Mansion in 2018. But, with conservative leadership that knows how to fight and win, we’ve begun to take back our state. I’m a lifelong Kansan, a wife, a proud mom of four kids, a conservative attorney, and a citizen legislator. Prior to 2018, I’d never run for office — but I decided to step up because our Kansas House representative was a liberal incumbent who claimed to be a “Republican,” and it needed to change. After I dropped my kids off at school, I knocked on every door in the...

Top Democrats keep emailing me to tell me how angry they are. They’re asking for money, and people apparently donate more if those seeking handouts are in a rage. I mentioned recently that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) asked me for support on the grounds that she was made “sick to [her] stomach” by originalist Supreme Court justices moving to overturn the “constitutional right to abortion.” Then, the "Ragin’ Cajun," Democratic operative James Carville, emailed me saying he was “furious.” That was his one-word headline. “I’m so damn angry,” he went on, “I can hardly type this message to you.”...

The nationwide shortage of baby formula that has sent moms desperately rushing from store to store has evaded one lucky group: illegal immigrants detained by the border patrol. According to videos posted by a Florida lawmaker, the Biden administration has been shipping “pallets” of baby formula to migrant holding facilities. “They are sending pallets, pallets of baby formula to the border,” said Republican Rep. Kat Cammack in one of two online postings yesterday. “Meanwhile, in our own district at home, we cannot find baby formula,” she added, holding a photo of empty shelves where the formula would be.

This is the second part of a three-part series on ‘the Blob’ that runs American foreign policy. Read part one here. WASHINGTON – The Russian war on Ukraine has seen ‘the Blob’ reassert itself with a vengeance in the 11 weeks since Russia announced the commencement of hostilities on February 24. This article will examine the forces shaping President Joe Biden’s approach to the Ukraine crisis, and then move on to explore the state of foreign policy debate, or lack thereof, within Biden’s Democratic Party. Former high-ranking military officials, intelligence analysts and diplomats who served at various points during the...

Eric Reed, the trainer of Rich Strike, the horse who improbably won the Kentucky Derby as an 80-1 long shot, was asked about a derogatory tweet he was alleged to have sent about Vice President Kamala Harris. In January, Sebastian Gorka, a former advisor to President Trump, asked, “So what exactly are Kamala’s qualifications?” An account whose handle is @daddyrabbit1964 and went by the name of Eric Reed responded, “Heard she’s good on her knees!!” Reed appeared on ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” on Wednesday, and John Barr asked him if he sent that tweet. “I haven’t seen anything about it,”...

The arrest of Cardinal Joseph Zen today in Hong Kong automatically undermines Beijing’s international position without even granting any advantage to China – quite the contrary. The cardinal was the biggest critic within the Church of the 2018 agreement between the Holy See and China, and during the past three and a half years, with concrete albeit slow developments in relations, he became marginal in the Church’s internal debate on China. Today, his arrest brings him back to the center and gives him a stage that causes the whole Church trouble and embarrassment. The Pope has tried to hold the...

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