Free Republic

The Long Decline in the Middle AUGUST 1, 2022 BY TOM PIATAK The Long Decline in the Middle A graph making the rounds on Twitter shows that, since 1970, the share of aggregate national income held by the middle class has plummeted while the share held by the rich has skyrocketed and the share held by the lower class has barely budged. I do not know if this graph has all the particulars right, but its thrust is undoubtedly correct. The decades-long decline of the once-great American middle class is the overarching political reality that the professional conservative movement has...

The New York Times said Donald Trump must face prosecution over his "unprecedented assault" on American democracy to show that no one is "above the law." In an editorial published on Friday, the Times suggested that it is vital that the former president be criminally investigated over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results, including a plot to install fake electoral officials in a number of key states, before he "roused an armed mob" to storm the Capitol on January 6. The paper's editorial board said that while "no one should revel" in the prospect of a former president...

Don Lemon grilled White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre Thursday evening about who, if anyone at the White House, knew about the raid on Former President Donald Trump’s home beforehand.

Senate candidate John Fetterman isn’t just radical, he is a threat to the life and safety of every Pennsylvania citizen. by Newt GingrichI recently reviewed every U.S. Senate race in the country, and it became obvious that the most radical candidate, by a huge margin, is Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman.Fetterman can’t possibly win the Senate race against Dr. Mehmet Oz if the central issues become Fetterman’s record and policy positions. He is simply too pro-drug, pro-crime, pro-woke theology – not to mention anti-Western Pennsylvanian oil and gas jobs – to win in an essentially centrist state.Fetterman knows his record...

The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, was handed a win on Thursday by a Delaware judge in his attempt to terminate his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. Although Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick declared in her four-page ruling that Musk’s demands were “absurdly broad” and would “require Plaintiff to produce trillions upon trillions of data points,” she ordered Twitter to deliver data on over 9,000 accounts to his legal team.

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines along with other officials will give an "assessment" to top lawmakers about "the potential risk" to national security posed by former President Trump allegedly keeping top secret documents at his Florida residence, Fox News has learned. Haines sent a letter to Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. as well as Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and informed them both about the decision. In a joint statement, Reps. Maloney and Schiff said that they are "pleased" by the decision. "We are pleased that in response to our inquiry, Director Haines has confirmed that the...

Florida judge set an expedited timetable for suspended Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren’s lawsuit against Gov. Ron DeSantis. According to a release from Warren, both he and Gov. DeSantis agreed to the joint proposal, which would have all paperwork and preliminary injunction hearings completed by Sept. 20. A ruling would be “expected soon afterward”. Judge Robert Hinkle of the U. S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida approved and signed the scheduling order on Thursday. The order sets a Sept. 2 deadline for DeSantis’ legal time to file a response to the lawsuit, and a Sept. 9 deadline...

NATO’s Road to Perdition AUGUST 1, 2022 BY SRDJA TRIFKOVIC NATO’s Road to Perdition During the Cold War, leaders of the Soviet bloc presented a façade of rock-hard unity whenever they met. As late as January 1983, at the 18th session of the Warsaw Pact’s Political Consultative Committee in Prague’s Hradčany Castle, Communist Party and government leaders from the Soviet Union and its six putative allies pledged to continue “the struggle for the preservation of peace” and against militarism and revanchism. They agreed upon the continuation of détente and cooperation, and vowed to support the “movements of national liberation” around...

Journalist Bari Weiss asked former Attorney General Bill Barr if convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein may not have taken his own life. Epstein was discovered dead of an apparent suicide in his cell at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center in 2019, according to The New York Times, but some have speculated that he did not kill himself or may have been murdered. In an interview released Thursday, journalist Bari Weiss asked Barr, “Is it possible that Jeffrey Epstein didn’t die by suicide?” “No,” he responded.

Fighters from Chechnya, the war-scarred republic in southern Russia, are participating on both sides of the conflict in Ukraine. Pro-Kyiv volunteers are loyal to Dzhokhar Dudayev, the late Chechen leader who headed the republic’s drive for independence from Russia. They form the “Dudayev Battalion” and are the sworn enemies of Chechen forces who back Russian President Vladimir Putin and joined Russia in the months-long siege of Ukraine's key port of Mariupol and other flashpoints in eastern and southern Ukraine. One group of new Chechen arrivals, many of whom live in Western Europe, was being trained at a makeshift firing range...

FIRST ON FOX: A federal judge on Saturday announced its "preliminary intent to appoint a special master" to review records seized by the FBI during its unprecedented raid of his Mar-a-Lago home earlier this month, at the request of former President Trump and his legal team, citing the "exceptional circumstances." Trump and his legal team filed a motion Monday evening seeking an independent review of the records seized by the FBI during its raid of Mar-a-Lago earlier this month, saying the decision to search his private residence just months before the 2022 midterm elections "involved political calculations aimed at diminishing...

Because of the prohibitive cost of designing, developing, and fielding a strategic bomber force, only three countries field strategic bombers, able to hit continents thousands of miles away; China, Russia, and the United States. And the B-21 Raider stealth bomber is set to provide the U.S. Air Force with 100 bombers for at least the next 30 years. The B-21 Raider gets its name honoring the Doolittle Raiders, U.S. Army Air Force men during World War II. Just months after the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and the U.S. suffering defeat after defeat in the Pacific theater, President Roosevelt ordered...

As if the FBI’s reputation were not already in tatters, we have yet another bombshell, courtesy of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, about FBI malfeasance during the 2020 election. It turns out that the FBI used its previously concocted Russia hoax as an excuse to pressure Facebook to censor the factually correct Hunter Biden laptop story, which the New York Post broke. In an appearance Thursday on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook suppressed news of the laptop and its contents in the weeks preceding the 2020 presidential election, after FBI agents requested to meet with Zuckerberg’s staff...

A New Mexico man has been arrested for allegedly trying to establish an ISIS training center in the state. According to a press release from the Department of Justice, Herman Leyvoune Wilson, aka Bilal Mu’Min Abdullah, 45, of Albuquerque, was indicted by a federal grand jury on August 23. Wilson is accused of attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and attempting to obstruct, influence and impede at least one official proceeding. The indictment alleges that from January 23, 2020, to November 20, 2021, Wilson “attempted to establish...

China will discourage abortions and take steps to make fertility treatment more accessible as part of efforts to boost one of the world's lowest birth rates, its National Health Authority said on Tuesday. Support measures from taxation and insurance to education and housing would be improved and implemented, with local governments encouraged to boost infant care services and family friendly workplaces, according to guidelines published on the authority's website. The authority said it would carry out reproductive health promotion to enhance public awareness while "preventing unintended pregnancy and reducing abortions that are not medically necessary." China's fertility rate of 1.16...

Explanation: Inside the Cocoon Nebula is a newly developing cluster of stars. Cataloged as IC 5146, the beautiful nebula is nearly 15 light-years wide. Climbing high in northern summer night skies, it's located some 4,000 light years away toward the constellation Cygnus the Swan. Like other star forming regions, it stands out in red, glowing, hydrogen gas excited by young, hot stars, and dust-reflected starlight at the edge of an otherwise invisible molecular cloud. In fact, the bright star found near the center of this nebula is likely only a few hundred thousand years old, powering the nebular glow as...

On August 14, The Atlantic published a blasphemous article by Daniel Panneton titled, “How Extremist Gun Culture Is Trying to Co-Opt the Rosary.” In it, he tries to portray the sacramental, first promoted by Saint Dominic, as an extremist far-right symbol that poses a violent threat to society. Here are some of the things the author said in his article: * Attacking those who faithfully recite the Rosary in reparation for sin, he stated that “armed radical traditionalists have taken up a spiritual notion that the rosary can be a weapon in the fight against evil and turned it into...

Memorial of Saint Monica Matthew 25:14–30 Friends, on this day we remember St. Monica, who prayed persistently for the conversion of her son, St. Augustine of Hippo. Even though petitionary prayer—asking God for something—seems simpler and more basic than contemplation, it’s more difficult to make sense of theologically. If God is omniscient, what is the point of telling him what you need? And if God cannot change, what is the point of asking him for anything? The prayer for the liturgy of St. Monica sheds some light on these questions. The text begins as follows: “Lord, you graciously received the...

Haven't we been told for the past 2 years that elections were secure, safe, and beyond corruption?' For nearly two years now, we've been told that people who question our election integrity are a "threat to our democracy" and anyone who says otherwise is just leading the American people "down this path of lies." It was strange then, that President Joe Biden told a group of rallygoers in Maryland on Thursday that Democrats have plans to "make sure no one, no one, ever has the opportunity to steal an election again." [Emphasis added.] "If we elect two more senators, we...

Russia is pulling all of its fighter jets out of Crimea in an apparent response to recent explosions at Russian military outposts in the region, a secret NATO report seen by Insider said. Russia has already moved ten aircraft — six Su-35S and four MiG-31BM jets — out of Crimea and into Russia and is set to continue until all fighter jets are removed, the report, which was dated August 22, said. The first ten jets were moved from Belbek airfield in Crimea to Kushchevskaya and Marinovka, two regions in Russia, the report said. "Russia has dispersed 10x fighter aircraft...