Free Republic

Although Oregon has long been a blue stronghold, political analysts say the state’s gubernatorial race is no sure thing, the Baker City Herald reported Tuesday. Most recently, the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics changed the race from “Leans Democratic” to “Toss-up,” pointing to the volatile nature of potentially splitting a governor’s race between three candidates.

Appearing on "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast on Thursday, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg alleged that the FBI warned the company of a "Russian propaganda dump" prior to the New York Post publishing a story that included damaging information on then-candidate Joe Biden from his son Hunter Biden's laptop.

Former Attorney General William Barr said that former President Donald Trump was resorting to “extortion” to continue to exert influence over the Republican Party, and said he still hasn’t decided what to make of the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago and the government’s recovery of hundreds of pages of classified documents. In a lengthy interview published Thursday, former New York Times editor Bari Weiss asked Barr why more Republicans did not simply come out and say that Trump’s claims that election fraud had prevented him from winning the 2020 election were, to use Barr's previous word, “bullshit.” “The tactic that Trump...

“He that hateth dissembleth with his lips, and layeth up deceit within him; When he speaketh fair, believe him not: for there are seven abominations in his heart. Whose hatred is covered by deceit, his wickedness shall be shewed before the whole congregation” (Proverbs 26:24-26).

When the laws in Texas, Idaho and Tennessee go into effect, a dozen states in total will have banned abortion.“Trigger laws” banning most abortions with limited exceptions are set to take effect in three states — Texas, Idaho, and Tennessee — on Thursday, Aug. 25. When these laws go into effect, a dozen states in total will have banned abortion, most through “trigger laws” passed before the overturning of Roe v. Wade on June 24. According to SBA Pro-life America, the laws going into effect could prevent as many as 69,000 abortions each year across the three states. Katie Glenn,...

The Justice Department has released a 2019 memo that put to rest any prosecution of former President Donald Trump over allegations contained in the Mueller report. Special counsel Robert Mueller, whose investigation was criticized by Trump, was hired to probe allegations of collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia. He found no such connections. However, Mueller’s report cited 10 instances in which he believed there could have been possible obstruction of justice, without saying if they merited prosecution, according to NBC News. That prompted a DOJ review, which culminated in the nine-page memo released Wednesday. The memo said there...

Rome Newsroom, Aug 24, 2022 / 07:37 am In a message Wednesday, Pope Francis warned against letting ideology influence the Church’s ordained and lay ministries, and said he plans to initiate a dialogue with bishops on the topic. Francis’ reflection was published on Aug. 24 for the 50th anniversary of Saint Pope Paul VI’s motu proprio Ministeria quaedam, which updated norms for lectors and acolytes following the Second Vatican Council. An instituted ministry is a type of formal, vocational service within the Catholic Church. It can be either lay, such as lector, acolyte, or catechist (added by Pope Francis in...

Sheriff's deputies in the Florida Keys seized 70 pounds of suspected cocaine that was discovered floating in the ocean on Tuesday, just days after another bale of narcotics was found offshore. The Coast Guard originally spotted the drugs Tuesday around 2:30 p.m. and called the Monroe County Sheriff's Office. Deputies located nearly two dozen smaller packages with a green "100%" marking and turned them over to the U.S. Border Patrol.

On Thursday’s broadcast of NBC’s “MTP Now,” Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) defended President Joe Biden’s student loan program and said she’s “really tired of these armchair economists who love to take the shots and get attention, but aren’t really working hard to try to solve some of our nation’s problems.” Host Kristen Welker asked, “I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you about the other big news today, which is the President’s announcement on student loans. He’s extending the pause. He’s giving relief of $10,000 to those who make less than $125,000. Some economists, though, are warning that it...

The New Jersey branch of the National Education Association is running an advertisement condemning concerned mothers and fathers as 'extremists.'(LifeSiteNews) — One of the strange and unintended effects of the Covid lockdowns was that for the first time many parents were exposed to what educators were teaching their kids. Many were shocked, and the resulting backlash torqued an already-growing parental rights movement rooted in opposition to LGBT indoctrination and Critical Race Theory (CRT). At first, progressives insisted that parents, if not lying, were simply following for the fevered conspiracy theories of raving right-wing pundits. Then along came activists like Christopher...

An obelisk with Soviet stars at the top that was the centrepiece of a monument commemorating the Red Army's victory over Nazi Germany has been toppled in the Latvian capital. (Aug. 25)

"A valuable present for Ukraine on the occasion of its Independence Day! U.S. President Joe Biden announced the allocation of nearly $3 billion in military aid to our state. The package includes air defense systems, unmanned aerial vehicles, artillery systems, and radars," Ukrainian media outlets quoted Shmyhal as saying on social media. In addition, the Ukrainian state budget on Wednesday received another $3 billion as a non-refundable grant from the U.S. via the World Bank mechanism, the prime minister said. "This is the first tranche from the additional $4.5 billion of direct budget aid," he said.

ROME — The head of the Russian Orthodox Church has canceled his planned attendance at an interfaith meeting in Kazakhstan next month where he was expected to meet with Pope Francis, a top Orthodox official said, in a sign of further deterioration in relations over Russia’s war in Ukraine. Metropolitan Anthony of Volokolamsk, head of foreign relations for the Moscow Patriarchate, was quoted by the Ria Novosti news agency as saying that Patriarch Kirill would not be attending the Sept. 13-15 meeting and that therefore any meeting with Francis was off. Kirill has justified the invasion of Ukraine on spiritual...

An unredacted, internal Department of Justice memo shows the rationale of its leadership in deciding not to prosecute then-President Donald Trump on obstruction of justice charges following the Mueller report's publication. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) secured the memo's release following a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that the DOJ improperly withheld the memo from the watchdog group, which had sued to obtain it. “Because the department did not tie the memorandum to deliberations about the relevant decision, the department failed to justify its reliance on the deliberative-process privilege,”...

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed Thursday on “The Joe Rogan Experience” that the FBI approached the social media company during the 2020 presidential election and pushed them to crack down on alleged “Russian propaganda” before the Hunter Biden laptop story was published by the New York Post. Zuckerberg made the remarks when asked by host Joe Rogan how Facebook handled big news items that were controversial, like the Hunter Biden laptop story. “I mean, basically, the background here is the FBI, I think, basically came to us, some folks on our team, and was like, ‘Hey, just so you know,...

CHICAGO - A man suspected of pushing a person off a CTA platform on the Near West Side in early August has been arrested. James Stamps, 28, of Joliet, was taken into custody Monday in the 2600 block of South California Avenue in Little Village, according to Chicago police. On the morning of Aug. 7, police said Stamps approached a person at the Illinois Medical District Blue Line platform in the 400 block of South Damen Avenue and pushed them onto the tracks. Chicago police have not released details about the victim's condition. Stamps was charged with a felony count...

[H/T Melian]Have you seen President Trump's powerful 4 minute video message? Don't miss it!A NATION IN DECLINE Q is the result of the sacrifices and commitment of countless patriots to win back our captured country from the Deep State and achieve the transformation President Trump promised in this campaign video. President Trump has said the awakening of the public is key to this transformation.Q describes this awakening as follows: "The Great Awakening ('Freedom of Thought’), was designed and created not only as a backchannel to the public (away from the longstanding 'mind’ control of the corrupt & heavily biased media)...

According to the Center of the American Experiment, the changes will impact teacher licensure programs and “require aspiring educators to ‘demonstrate’ ideologically driven content in their coursework to obtain their teaching license.” This goes for educators who end up teaching at private schools, too. -snip- In another section on “planning for instruction,” the draft standards say a teacher should “create opportunities for students to learn about power, privilege, intersectionality, and systemic oppression in the context of various communities and empower learners to be agents of social change to promote equity.”

A controversial cartoon published in New Brunswick's largest French-language newspaper is prompting pushback over how it portrays Muslims. The cartoon, published in the Aug. 17 edition of l'Acadie Nouvelle, shows a caveman dragging a woman by her hair. Below is an illustration of a man wearing a turban and carrying a gun, using a leash to drag a woman wearing a burqa. "Evolution?..." is written above the cartoon. The National Council of Canadian Muslims issued a statement calling the cartoon Islamophobic and said it spreads stereotypes that "fuel widespread hatred." Lina El Bakir, the organization's Quebec and francophone community advocacy...

Someone mentioned this in the comments section and I'd never heard of it. The Curley Effect named after a Boston, MA politician. Defined: Curley's strategy of driving opponents outside of the city, described by Harvard economists Andrei Shleifer and Edward Glaeser in "The Curley Effect: The Economics of Shaping the Electorate," increased his political base by using distortionary economic policies, leading to long-term economic stagnation. Thought this would be a subject for further research or the journalists on here because we seem to see this being used in NYC and other major cities and - with our open border -...