Free Republic

ouse Jan. 6 Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., continues to keep House Speaker Nancy Pelosi out of the panel's investigatory purview, a top House Republican told "Life, Liberty & Levin" in the face of claims she rejected precautionary National Guard troops ahead of the riot. House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y. — who took over the role after House Jan. 6 Committee Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney was voted out of the post — called the panel "un-American." Stefanik pointed to Thompson's 2021 comment that "nobody is off-limits" from investigation including former President Donald Trump, but also cited further comments...

A Houston police officer spoke out for the first time about thwarting a potential mass shooting earlier this year, when a man with a rifle and 120 rounds of ammunition was spotted in a mall near a children’s dance competition. “I quickly bum rushed, tackled him. And my first reaction was to make sure that I get a hold of the rifle. No matter what I grabbed, make sure I grabbed that rifle,” Houston Sgt. Kendrick Simpo told ABC 13. “I had in my mind (that) I was going to get shot. I just had to bear the pain. I...

Two Trump advisers told the Washington Post that Trump was eyeing a September announcement, though one confidant said the odds were at “70-30 he announces before the midterms,” and others said Trump may do it sooner than September. CNN's Gabby Orr (formerly of the Washington Examiner) got even more specific. "It's actually him pushing his advisers to get him ready to announce before or shortly after Labor Day, is the latest timing I've been told," she said to a CNN panel. Labor Day is Monday, Sept. 5.

The iconic soundtrack to Peanuts is breezy, Latin-inspired jazz. This is the story of how musician and composer Vince Guaraldi came to make it. One of the most iconic songs of the 60s was not sung by a dynamic, charismatic singer like Aretha Franklin or Mick Jagger. There was no breathtaking guitar solo by the likes of Jimi Hendrix or Eric Clapton. It was not composed by Burt Bacharach or arranged by Johnny Mercer. The best-known visuals associated with the song, in fact, were a cartoon adolescent playing it on a toy piano, a crabby girl hanging out with him,...

The Queens bus rider assaulted in an alleged “anti-white” crime told The Post on Sunday that one of her attackers accused her of being a fan of former President Donald Trump before the assailants bashed her on the head. Jill LeCroix, a 57-year-old grandma of five, was left bleeding after she was blitzed by three black women July 9 while riding the city bus — an attack now being investigated by the NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force. “Before they hit me, the girl with the green hair said, ‘You probably like Trump! Don’t you?’ LeCroix recalled. “I said, ‘I love...

Hard to believe but it’s only just over a week since the latest Tory psychodrama began. It feels longer. So much longer. Time bends and stalls when you’re in the parallel universe of a Liz Truss speech. She leaves audiences begging for a lethal injection. The other leadership contenders are little better, registering mostly as absences on the space-time continuum. Negative energy.

Nearly 400 law-enforcement officers responded to the scene of the Uvalde school massacre, but their “overall lackadaisical approach” meant the gunman wasn’t confronted for more than an hour — helping him slaughter 19 fourth-graders and two teachers, a scathing new probe says. Responding to the May 24 mass-shooting scene in the Texas town were 376 law-enforcement personnel: 149 Border Patrol officers; 91 members of the state Department of Public Safety; 14 from the Department of Homeland Security; 25 from the Uvalde Police Department; 16 from the San Antonio Police Department and another 16 from the Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office, according...

Dr. Ashish Jha, White House Wuhan Coronavirus Response Coordinator, advocated for the return of state and local mask mandates during a Sunday morning media appearance. With the rise of the BA.5 subvariant, the usual suspects are again peddling the same tired "solutions" they've hawked for more than two years. Among the tiredest are mask mandates, which have consistently been shown to have negligible effects on transmission rates when areas with mandates are compared to those without them. This time around though, with deaths and hospitalizations remaining fairly low and the vast majority of cases being something akin to a common...

SNIP The 78-year-old music legend offered his commentary after The Weeknd’s Toronto concert received more media coverage than his. SNIP “And, by the way, with all due respect to The Weeknd or Drake or any of them. I am far, far, far more important than any of them will ever be, however many billions of streams they’ve got. There is stuff going on here that is fundamentally important to all of our lives,” he said. SNIP “I love Roger Waters, and Pink Floyd is one of my all time favorite bands, but this seems like an ‘old man yells at...

Arizona Republican Gov. Doug Ducey on Sunday warned voters in his state against Kari Lake, the far-right, gubernatorial candidate endorsed by former President Donald Trump. "Kari Lake's misleading voters with no evidence," Ducey, who co-chairs the Republican Governors Association, told CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union" when asked about Lake's embrace of Trump's debunked claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Lake became an early favorite in the August 2 primary by embracing the once-fringe extremism now mainstream within the Republican Party, including promoting election lies, doubling down against mask and vaccine mandates, and calling for the...

“‘. . . as a testimony to them’” (Matthew 8:4). Christ’s miraculous healings were significant in His earthly ministry. They displayed genuine concern for human need and testified that He was God. But several times Jesus stated, “Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (Matt. 9:5–6; cf. Mark 2:9; Luke 5:23). The healing miracles simply illustrated the cleansing of sin, which was Jesus’ primary purpose within God’s redemptive plan. Curing leprosy was an...

In the gospels, Jesus was invited by a certain chief Pharisee to his house. Other Pharisees had been invited as well, men who were leading keepers of the law. When the host called his guests to be seated, there was a sudden scramble for the chief seats at the head table. Scripture tells us that Jesus “noted how they chose the best places” (Luke 14:7, NKJV). It was a brazen display of pride, a need to be seen and recognized. When Christ himself sat down to eat, he gave that roomful of Israel’s top religious leaders this word of rebuke....

Until a few months ago, Mohammed Wahid Haykalyar owned a busy restaurant in the heart of Kabul, where people came from all over the city for steaming plates of saffron rice and braised lamb. His monthly earnings of $3,000 were more than enough to pay for his children’s English-language lessons and after-school soccer practice. These days, he doesn’t even have money to buy food for his family. The government’s ability to manage the economy has largely broken down. The inexperienced Taliban leadership, which overthrew the republic when U.S.-led troops left the country, is isolated and under sanctions, and knows little...

Britain’s Northern School of Contemporary Dance (NSCD) because it is “built around white European ideas” and is too “gendered”. The school has dropped ballet from its auditions process because of its “potentially contentious nature”, according to The Telegraph. “It is essentially an elitist form. Young people need to pay to take ballet classes as a general rule and for a vast number of potential students, they’ve not had access to ballet,” explained the head of undergraduate studies at the dance school, Francesca McCarthy, in comments to the notionally right-leaning newspaper. “It is a very specific form that is built around...

Is Russia worthy of being called a “great power,” let alone a superpower? Not to kick someone when they’re down, but it’s difficult to argue that Vladimir Putin represents anything other than a middling regional state, albeit the largest country in the world and one with nuclear weapons. In the first place, until the Russo-Ukraine War, consider how irrelevant and inconsequential Russia was. For the most part, regarding international relations, Russia scarcely mattered. Moscow has nary a footprint in the Middle East (mainly Syria) and is nonexistent in Asia and other parts of the world. Russia has lost influence in...

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The bulk of her book is a brag fest about how she kept subverting the White House’s push to open up the economy – that is, allow people to exercise their rights and freedoms. Once Trump turned against her, and eventually found other people to provide good advice like the tremendously brave Scott Atlas – five months later he arrived in an attempt to save the country from disaster – Birx turned to rallying around her inner circle (Anthony Fauci, Robert Redfield, Matthew Pottinger, and a few others) plus assembling a realm of protection outside of her that included...

In the Netherlands, dairy farmer Martin Neppelenbroek is near the end of the line. New environmental regulations will require him to slash his livestock numbers by 95 percent. He thinks he will have to sell his family farm. “I can’t run a farm on 5 percent. For me, it’s over and done with,” he said in a July 7 interview with The Epoch Times. “In view of the regulations, I can’t sell it to anybody. Nobody wants to buy it. [But] the government wants to buy it. And that’s why they [have] those regulations, I think.” Neppelenbroek made the remarks...

Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger on Sunday said it would be "quite crazy" if the Secret Service did indeed delete text messages related to the riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. During an interview on the CBS News program "Face the Nation," the Illinois Republican - who along with Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming are the only GOP members of House committee probing the riot - told host Margaret Brennan that the full details of the situation have not yet been uncovered. "We're going to know more Tuesday," he said, adding that the panel has issued a subpoena...

A man in Oklahoma is accused of killing his friend on a fishing trip Saturday after he believed the friend had summoned the legendary Bigfoot monster to eat him. Larry Sanders, 53, was taken into custody this weekend and is facing a first-degree murder charge, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation said. Sanders allegedly killed Jimmy Knighten on Oklahoma's South Canadian River during a bare-handed fishing trip gone wrong, according to a report. The two had a fight that ended with Sanders striking and strangling Knighten, Sanders confessed, according to authorities. The victim's body was found Sunday, the Oklahoma State...