Free Republic

United States Federal law 18 US Code 1503 in summary reads "whoever corruptly or by threats or force… endeavors to influence, intimidate, or impede any grand or petit juror, or officer in or of any court of the United States… in the discharge of his duty… influences, obstructs, or impedes, or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede the due administration of justice shall be punished." On May 2, a draft opinion leaked from the United States Supreme Court in an unprecedented breach of etiquette. It appears from that draft Roe v. Wade will likely be reversed, and the topic of...

The world’s political and economic elites have descended once more on Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum (WEF), after a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic. This year’s round of talks, which run from May 22 to 26, will deal with, among other topics, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, food shortages, climate change and inflation. As Statista’s Anna Fleck details below, according to data from The Global Consumer Survey, the latter issue is at the forefront of residents’ minds in several countries around the world. You will find more infographics at StatistaInflation has become an increasingly common concern in...

Climate change is an existential threat that impacts not only our operations and readiness but also our infrastructure, our forces, and their families. Rising sea levels, recurring flooding, and more frequent and destructive hurricanes threaten our coastal installations. Changes in global climate and other dangerous trans-boundary threats, including pandemics, are only expected to worsen, posing increasing challenges for our forces, platforms, infrastructure, and supporting communities, and driving or intensifying conflict and humanitarian disasters around the world. The DON will adapt to these challenges that are increasingly putting pressure on our force and the systems that support it. To combat these...

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The great mission of the early twentieth century Progressives was to transform our constitutional order without ever amending the Constitution itself. The intellectual leader of the movement was Woodrow Wilson. The fundamental idea was to replace the messy and contentious system of separated powers and slow bi-cameral lawmaking with a cadre of supposedly apolitical administrative “experts” who could run the country smoothly and efficiently. The idea sounded rather benign to most people at the time, and probably still sounds benign to most people today. Who could be against having “experts” to run significant government agencies? But a hundred-plus years into...

In this administration, it's always someone else's fault. Inflation is now the No. 1 concern of voters, so the White House first blamed COVID. Then Donald Trump's tax cuts. Then Vladimir Putin. Then meatpackers and the poultry industry, Big Oil and pharmaceutical companies. Now, Democrats have identified a new inflation scapegoat: plastic. Visa, Mastercard, American Express and other credit cards hidden away in your wallet. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) has had it out for credit cards for almost two decades, even though over that period, credit cards, which were once reserved for the rich, are now nearly ubiquitous in our...

President Joe Biden’s administration has slowly but steadily been creeping towards an escalation of United States involvement in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Now, despite personal promises from Biden suggesting otherwise, U.S. officials say they are considering sending special operations forces into the Eastern European country to guard the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv. In addition to deploying dozens of special forces troops, officials are evaluating also sending a Marine security guard detachment to the affected area. The Wall Street Journal reported that discussions of U.S. military involvement in Ukraine are still preliminary and have yet to reach the president’s desk, but they...

BALTIMORE, Friday, May 23. The regular boat from Old Point has arrived. The American's special correspondent states: The steamer from White House this afternoon brings a number of passengers from the headquarters of Gen. McCLELLAN'S army, which were in proximity to Bottom's Bridge, over which a portion of the army has already passed, the Second Division having crossed the Chickahominy at New-Bridge, about seven miles further up, and within eight miles of Richmond. It was rumored that a proposition for an armistice for ten days had been made by the rebels, but of course no such idea could be entertained....

The American Trucking Association released a statement in October 2021, citing retiring driving veterans and lower wages as the partial cause for the shortage of more than 80,000 drivers. However, another cause for this shortage is being attributed to adult-use legalization and drivers testing positive for cannabis. A March 2022 U.S. Department of Transportation summary report states that as of April 1, 2022, 10,276 commercial truck drivers tested positive for THC. (Although this is a significant decrease in numbers, compared to 31,085 violations in 2021 and 29,511 violations in 2020.) Cannabis leads the data as the highest positive drug tests...

FANNETTSBURG, Pennsylvania -- The first time I accidentally stumbled onto the cracked Back Road street sign in this Franklin County unincorporated town years ago, while covering the 2012 presidential race between then-President Barack Obama and Sen. Mitt Romney, I knew I had to turn onto it even though I had no idea where it led. It was impulsive but proved helpful in taking my reporting in a different direction, to understand what voters were thinking. It helped me understand, with all of the potential of flipping this state red, why voters were using their energy and dissatisfaction with Obama to...

The U.S. Navy has released its report into the submerged grounding of the nuclear-powered fast attack submarine USS Connecticut on an uncharted seamount in the South China Sea in October, revealing an “accumulation of unit-level errors” leading up to the incident. The investigation ultimately determined the grounding was preventable. The submarine’s Commanding Officer, Executive Officer (second in command), and “Chief of the Boat” were previously relieved of their command “due to loss of confidence.” The USS Connecticut (SSN 22) grounded on an uncharted seamount “while operating submerged in a poorly surveyed area in international waters in the Indo-Pacific region” on...

In 2020, demand for ammunition grew. Ammunition became difficult to find. Ammunition prices shot up. Record gun sales were recorded in 2020 and 2021. We were in another ammunition supply bubble. The ammunition bubble may be starting to leak. At the local Walmart, on May 19, 2022, there were about 20 thousand rounds of Federal Automatch in 325 round bulk packs. At $21.16 per 325 rounds, that is 6.51 cents per round, significantly lower than this correspondent has seen for months. The Automatch has generally received good reviews for reliability and accuracy, when used for the ordinary tasks a .22...

If an American president has ever given as mendacious, anti-American and hate-filled a speech as resident Joe Biden did in Buffalo, New York, last week, I am not familiar with it. Nor are you. Biden used the terrible mass shooting of black people in a Buffalo grocery store to smear America, divide Americans and foment race-based hatred. A decent man would have given an entirely different speech. A decent man would have gone to Buffalo and said something like this: "My fellow Americans, what happened here in Buffalo was pure evil. Let there be no equivocating about this moral fact....

Joe Biden’s cognitive challenges have stripped away his political savvy and left him in the raw, revealing his real essence—a racialist of the first order. Joe Biden has had a long history of racist outbursts. Can we even remember them all? The “put y’all back in chains” insults to an audience of black professionals, his dismissal of black interviewers variously as “you ain’t black” or ”junkie,” his he-man racialist Corn Pop mythologies, his recent condescending reference to a black professional as “boy,” and on and on. The Left has always contextualized his racial outbursts in the same fashion his decades-long...

Food for Thought Original by Junius P. Long “If we concentrated on the really important stuff in life, there’d be a shortage of fishing poles” If you can get arrested for hunting or fishing without a license, but not for being in the country illegally …you might live in a country founded by geniuses but run by idiots. If you have to get your parents’ permission to go on a field trip or take an aspirin in school, but not to get an abortion … you might live in a country founded by geniuses but run by idiots. If you...

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No communist was ever as dedicated to economic suicide as the current class of idiots who rule us. igh inflation, overregulation, and a general sense that things are going in the wrong direction remind us of the late 1970s and early ’80s. But today the underlying problems that were responsible for our woes in that time are vastly worse. The coming reckoning for Washington’s insanely irresponsible monetary policy may dwarf the troubles from all recent recessions and periods of inflation. The Federal Reserve has created a doom loop between the housing market and inflation. For years it has printed tens...

A liberal bragging about winning a journalism award is a lot like someone bragging about having sex at a brothel: once you pay, that’s what is supposed to happen. If you’re a liberal “journalist,” collecting Lucite bricks of varying shapes with your name laser etched in it is a full-time job. No profession awards itself more worthless prizes, with the possible exception of Hollywood. But the reality is journalists are less like the guy who brags about the prostitute and more like the actual prostitute. A prime example of this is CNN’s John Harwood. You almost have to feel bad...

IPray For The Peace of JerusalemGenesis 67 The Lord then said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation. 2 Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, 3 and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth. 4 Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and...

On the final day of his high-stakes strip to Asia, President Joe Biden urged international leaders in Japan to do more to stop Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and said there would be no change to "strategic ambiguity" on Taiwan, a day after frustrating China when he suggested the U.S. could send troops to the region. "This is more than just a European issue. It's a global issue," Biden said of the Russia-Ukraine War Tuesday, alongside leaders of Japan, India and Australia. In his remarks, Biden described the Eastern European war as a "dark hour" in history. "We’re navigating a dark...