Free Republic

Russia's top diplomat said Moscow's overarching goal in Ukraine is to remove from power its "unacceptable regime," expressing the Kremlin's war aims in some of the bluntest terms yet as its forces pummel the country with heavy bombardment. The remark from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov comes amid Ukraine's efforts to resume grain exports from its Black Sea ports, something that would help ease global food shortages, under a new deal tested by a Russian strike on Odesa over the weekend. After the failed attempt to seize much of the country amid its February invasion, Moscow officials have stated that...

“The Republican National Committee’s partnership with the Georgia GOP and county parties is touting major strides in its ground game,” writes Emma Hurt at Axios. “By the November 2018 election, the group had just barely hit 1 million door knocks. This year, the partnership known as ‘Georgia Victory’ hit that milestone in mid-July.” The GOP’s 2022 efforts include major outreach to black, Asian, and Latino voters all over the state. The Republican National Committee has 75 dedicated field staff and is increasing its presence in Georgia. Additionally, Gov. Brian Kemp’s campaign has raised its ground game, while former senator Kelly...

The Jan. 6 committee has released more evidence showing then-President Donald Trump's reluctance to harshly condemn the violent mob of his supporters the day after their deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol. (snip) Among the lines crossed out were a reference to how he was “sickened” by the violence and a call by Trump for the Justice Department to prosecute the rioters.

Republican lawmakers are questioning the constitutionality of a Biden State Department program to fund the spread of atheism and humanism internationally. At the end of June, a group of 15 Republican members of Congress wrote to President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken about a State Department funding program from April 2021 that "would award grants of up to $500,000 to organizations committed to the practice and spread of atheism and humanism, namely in South/Central Asia and in the Middle East/North Africa." Noting that both atheism and humanism "are official belief systems," the GOP legislators wrote, "Any such...

I was struck with a memory of the first "Hunger Games" movie. This memory came while I was wondering about how foolish and corrupt Washington D.C. and the media seem to me. These are actually my people- I'm a multi-degree former Democrat. I was thinking about how to tell folks in the academic and urban bubble what they look like to folks who live and work where I live and work. Maybe I could help them understand why much of the country is so disgusted by our government and much of media which purports to cover our government. The movie...

VIDEORevenge of the Nerd?Was all this toxic Klaus Schwab megalomania which has plagued the world caused by the fact that the poor schmo is a pathetic nerd? I was wondering why Schwab's early life has been shrouded in such a mysterious cloak of secrecy. Apparently Schwab suddenly appeared in public in 1971 when he founded the European Management Forum which later morphed into the World Economic Forum. Before that not only is there very little record of Schwab's life but I found no photos of him. The earliest photo I found of him was from his mid 30s displaying the...

Dallas police are investigating reports of shots fired at an airport Monday morning. A brief snippet of police audio said officers were responding to the active shooter situation, but the shooter "is down." A traveler shared a photo on social media, tagging local news outlets, showing crowds being rushed out of the Dallas Love Field Airport due to a suspect shooter in the building.

FEAST OF SAINT JAMES, APOSTLE MATTHEW 20:20–28 Friends, today in our Gospel, the mother of James and John asks Jesus on their behalf for high places of authority in his kingdom. Ah, there is the voice of ambition. Some people don’t care at all about money or power or pleasure—but they care passionately about honor. A lot of people can identify with James and John. They want to go places; they want to be movers and shakers in society. Perhaps a number of people reading this reflection are filled with these emotions. But Jesus turns the tables on them: “You...

Dallas police are investigating reports of shots fired at an airport Monday morning. A brief snippet of police audio said officers were responding to the active shooter situation, but the shooter "is down." A traveler shared a photo on social media, tagging local news outlets, showing crowds being rushed out of the Dallas Live Field Airport due to a suspect shooter in the building. CANADA POLICE RESPOND TO ‘MULTIPLE SHOOTING SCENES’ WITH HOMELESS VICTIMS; ‘LONE’ GUNMAN IN CUSTODY Dallas Police on scene at an active shooting situation at Dallas Love Field Airport. Dallas Police on scene at an active shooting...

So far, no space exploring nations have claimed responsibility for the rocket. NASA has discovered the crash site of a "mystery rocket body" that collided with the Moon's surface earlier this year. The impact left behind a widespread "double crater," meaning it wasn't the average rocket. However, since its crash landing, none of Earth's space-exploring nations have claimed responsibility for the mysterious projectile, leaving NASA scientists baffled as to who was behind its launch. New images shared on June 24 by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter show the unusual impact site. After a rocket body impacted the Moon last year, NASA's...

A Moscow TV presenter and executive once dubbed Vladimir Putin 's “top television propagandist” is quitting his post and leaving Russia amid the war with Ukraine, say reports. Ultra-loyalist Russian news site RIA FAN reported that Sergey Brilev, 49, was terminating his role as a Vesti programme host, and "will leave the post of deputy director of the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company”. He will also leave Russia, according to reports.

As economic data indicate that the United States is heading for a recession, the White House published a blog post last week that appeared to dismiss the rule-of-thumb recession definition. The National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonprofit entity generally recognized as the country’s business cycle scorekeeper, defines a recession as “a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and lasts more than a few months.” Though the group examines economy-wide data such as employment, real personal income, and personal consumption expenditures to help determine the length of business cycles, the marketplace has developed a rule-of-thumb...

Russia’s planned big-ticket arms sales in Africa are expected to take a hit as a result of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, U.S. defense and intelligence officials told Foreign Policy, depriving the Kremlin of a major revenue source as the five-month war continues to devolve into a bitter stalemate. The Defense Department and U.S. intelligence officials believe that Russia’s severe losses of high-end equipment in Ukraine, including hundreds of tanks and helicopters disabled by American- and European-provided shoulder-fired rockets, will begin to cause significant slowdowns in the Kremlin’s arms deliveries into Africa, which could give inroads to Russia’s competitors, such...

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) told Breitbart News he thinks former President Donald Trump will make another run for the White House in 2024 and he would support the 45th president in such a campaign. “America is going to be much better off if President Trump is our nominee,” Jordan said on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Sunday with host Joel Pollak, “and if he wins, and that’s what I’m for. I’ve been for that. Since he left on January 20th, I wanted him to run in 2024. I think he’s going to. I think he is the right candidate.”

Critical elements of one of the most cited pieces of Alzheimer’s disease research in the last two decades may have been purposely manipulated, according to a report in Science.But a neuroscientist in Tennessee, Vanderbilt University professor Matthew Schrag, said in a Science article that he and other reviewers have identified as many as 10 papers on the protein that deserve deeper scrutiny. The report also cited other prominent researchers who have had difficulty replicating results of the studies on the specific proteins.“I focus on what we can see in the published images, and describe them as red flags, not final...

Disturbing video released by the NYPD Sunday shows a man being hit by a car and then robbed as he lay splayed out on the ground, struggling to survive. The 39-year-old victim was walking on the sidewalk at 898 E. 169th St. in the Bronx when a black, four-door sedan slammed into him around 6:40 a.m. Saturday, according to police. The video shows the victim being thrown into the air before he lands on the street. Two men who were in the vehicle that hit him got out and went through his pockets, taking his belongings, cops said. “The individuals...

Ivan Fedorov, the Mayor of Melitopol, in an Quote from Fedorov: "It is worth noting one thing that I have heard from more than one person. The occupiers say that if they leave Melitopol, and the fact that they are already implying this is good, they say: ‘If we leave the city, everything is mined, everything will be destroyed.’ And this is definitely not about ensuring the security of our infrastructure." According to Fedorov, the Russians have now captured the entire infrastructure of the city. "Today they can be in one school, tomorrow they will be in another, and they...

Above, a map of Thacker Pass, where a Chinese-dominated firm is set to mine U.S. lithium. It could ship it to China for processing -- but there are doubts whether it will all return. July 20, 2022 A Chinese-dominated mining company has procured millions of dollars in American subsidies to extract lithium in the United States – but, given a dearth of U.S. processing capacity, the mineral is likely to be sent to China with no guarantee that the end product would return as batteries to power President Biden's envisioned green economy. Critics say the scenario would increase U.S. energy...

As the imposition of a tax on the use of fossil fuels is debated in Pennsylvania and Virginia, along comes an analysis showing the failure of such efforts to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide in the name of saving the planet. Under a multi-state compact known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), Virginia already taxes producers of electricity on the basis of how much carbon dioxide they emit in burning fossil fuels — mainly coal and natural gas. Efforts to have the state withdraw from RGGI appear to have stalled. Pennsylvania officially entered RGGI July 1 and would begin...

Several individuals connected to a 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign plot to cast Donald Trump as a covert Kremlin collaborator are working in high-level jobs within the Biden administration—including at least two senior Biden appointees cited by Special Counsel John Durham in his “active (and) ongoing” criminal investigation of the scheme, according to recently filed court documents. Jake Sullivan, who now serves as Biden’s national security adviser, and Caroline Krass, a top lawyer at the Pentagon, were involved in efforts in 2016 and 2017 to advance the Clinton campaign’s false claims about Trump through the media and the federal government, documents...