Free Republic

PORTLAND, Maine — In the summer of 2010, former President George H.W. Bush sat down at his home in Kennebunkport and jotted a quick note to a young woman who had come to Maine for a work project. “Dear Taylor,” he wrote. “There are a lot of family fans of yours here at our lovely place by the sea. Please come over tomorrow afternoon for a swim and relaxation by our pool. I believe in long shots, so I hope this one works out.” The invitation was accepted, and the next day Taylor Swift came by with several of her...

@RepThomasMassie There will be much discussion of NATO Article 5 today, but few will mention Article 11, because it exposes the lie that Article 5 itself can obligate the US to war. Article 11 shows Article 5 does not preempt the Constitutional requirement that the full Congress votes on war.

Sexually transmitted diseases exploded in 2021, with syphilis rates reaching levels not seen in decades, according to an official from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Syphilis, a bacterial disease that shows up as genital sores and can lead to other diseases and even death, showed a huge increase last year. The rate of syphilis cases reached its highest level since 1991, while the total number of cases rose to its highest level since 1948, just three years after World War II. HIV cases also rose 16 percent from 2020 to 2021,The Guardian reports.

The world still overflows with opportunities however we are lacking committed takers. Those who are willing to explore the opportunities as opposed to wait for them to show up at the door. It seems like, for the new generation, working hard has turned into the enemy of dreams and a roadblock to life’s journey. The anti-work phenomenon, quiet quitting, is encouraging people to withdraw privately and silently. It is an utterly un-American act that will create an avalanche of self-destruction at a critical time for our nation. It is a movement that cannot be stopped by force but may ultimately...

Last week, U.S. Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., led a letter to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Robert M. Califf to request full agency compliance with their obligation under law to disclose Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting (VAERS) data for the COVID-19 vaccine. The letter was cosigned by U.S. Reps. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, and Tom Tiffany, R-Wis. The letter is below. Dear Commissioner Califf: We write concerned about the reports that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is refusing to provide records and analyses from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which your agency is obligated to disclose under...

OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) -- Another disturbing headline about the shooting in Oakland comes from the ABC7 I-Team, law enforcement sources tell us school officials have sent text messages to shooting victims, instructing them not to cooperate with police. We're hearing it's a pattern, and some parents at the school are worried that a lack of action by school officials after previous incidents may have led to this escalation in violence. Law enforcement sources tell the I-Team, Oakland police investigators have obtained text messages from the shooting victims' phones in which Rudsdale school officials tell them not to cooperate with police....

Meta is trading at its lowest since early 2019, and the stock is one of the worst performers this year in the S&P 500. The company’s problems are mounting, whether it’s the ad hit from Apple’s iOS changes or the growing threat posed by TikTok. “I’m not sure there’s a core business that works anymore at Facebook,” said Laura Martin, an analyst at Needham.

The Federal Reserve has taken a major step in the direction of facilitating an ESG compliant monetary network that effectively acts as a parallel system to that of the Chinese Communist Party’s infamous social credit scoring system. The Fed said in a statement Thursday: “Six of the nation's largest banks will participate in a pilot climate scenario analysis exercise designed to enhance the ability of supervisors and firms to measure and manage climate-related financial risks. Scenario analysis—in which the resilience of financial institutions is assessed under different hypothetical climate scenarios—is an emerging tool to assess climate-related financial risks, and there...

President Biden on Friday vowed to hold Russia accountable for its “fraudulent attempt” to annex Ukrainian territory and called on other countries to do the same. Biden blasted a move earlier in the day by Russian President Vladimir Putin to announce the annexation of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, four Ukrainian regions that he claimed were now part of Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says his country will file an expedited application to join NATO after Russian President Vladimir Putin signed treaties to annex parts of eastern Ukraine. In a statement, Zelensky called Ukraine and NATO “de facto” allies and said his country would seek formal membership in the alliance. “De facto, we have already proven interoperability with the Alliance’s standards, they are real for Ukraine — real on the battlefield and in all aspects of our interaction,” Zelensky said. “Today, Ukraine is applying to make it de jure. Under a procedure consistent with our significance for the protection of...

SACRAMENTO — Turns out “Sí, se puede” isn’t just a rallying cry. It’s a threat. Gov. Gavin Newsom just learned that the hard way. On Wednesday afternoon, after a morning of glory in which Newsom signed a number of important laws to break the logjam on affordable housing in California, word started leaking out that he would also put pen to paper on Assembly Bill 2183, a measure by the United Farm Workers meant to make it easier for those who labor in our fields to form a union. It’s a bill Newsom has fought against vehemently for months and...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Friday that his nation has formally submitted an expedited application to become a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). NATO is an intergovernmental military alliance launched after World War II as a counter against Soviet aggression in Europe. The announcement occurs as the Russian invasion of Ukraine enters its seventh month. “Ukraine was and remains a leader in negotiation efforts. It was our state that always offered Russia to reach an agreement on coexistence on equal, honest, decent and fair terms,” Zelensky said in a video message. “It is obvious that this...

This list only includes destroyed vehicles and equipment of which photo or videographic evidence is available. Therefore, the amount of equipment destroyed is significantly higher than recorded here. Small arms, ATGMs, MANPADS, loitering munitions, drones used as unmanned bait, civilian vehicles, trailers and derelict equipment are not included in this list. All possible effort has gone into avoiding duplicate entries and discerning the status of equipment between captured or abandoned. Many of the entries listed as 'abandoned' will likely end up captured or destroyed. Similarly, some of the captured equipment might be destroyed if it can't be recovered. When the...

The CEO of a crisis pregnancy center in Buffalo, New York, says the police and FBI will not give back his surveillance footage from the night abortion extremists firebombed his facility because they are afraid it may inspire rightwing violence. The perpetrators have not been caught, and the FBI does not seem to have even investigated the act of pro-abort terrorism, nor any of the other acts of violence against pro-life centers and churches this year. Since May, there have been 98 attacks reported against churches, pro-life pregnancy centers, maternity homes, and other pro-life organizations, according to the Catholic News...

The core index of the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation went up in August, despite a historically aggressive campaign of interest rate hikes intended to slow it. The Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index (PCE), which measures the value of goods and services purchased by “persons” residing in the U.S., was down slightly in August from 6.4% to 6.2% annually, but was higher than economists anticipated, according to CNBC. This decline was almost entirely off the back of falling energy prices, with so-called core PCE, which does not consider the more-volatile food and energy indices, increasing in August from 4.7%...

President Joe Biden is preparing to sign an executive order protecting 600,000 illegal immigrants from deportation, NBC News reported Thursday, citing “people close to the White House.” The move is being made in advance of a decision from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals regarding the future of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. DACA protects illegal immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children — so-called Dreamers — from deportation and allows them access to work permits. As of December 2021, 611,470 migrants were protected under the program, according to the Migration Policy Insitute. The Fifth...

Former President Bill Clinton said on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” podcast that “there is a limit” to how many migrants the United States can accept before it causes disruption. ZAKARIA: Let me ask you about another issue you guys are going to take up at CGI, refugees. And one of the things that I think the right has hammered at, with regard to the Democratic Party and President Biden, is this issue of refugees coming into the United States. And I think it’s fair to say that the asylum system seems to be broken. This was meant to be a...

We still have three daily newspapers here in New York — the Times, the Post, and the Daily News. I subscribe to the first two, but not to the Daily News. And I almost never read the Daily News either. From my occasional encounters, my observation is that the Daily News has completely gone over to wokism, and is just a cut-rate, slimmed-down version of the Times, pushing the progressive narrative on all issues without concern for evidence or facts. But like the Times, the Daily News can sometimes, undoubtedly inadvertently, shine a bright light on the twisted thinking of...

A quick study by two scientists calculates that climate change made Hurricane Ian 10% rainier than it would have been if there were no such thing as global warming. Climate change added at least 10% more rain to Hurricane Ian, a study prepared immediately after the storm shows. Thursday's research, which is not peer-reviewed, compared peak rainfall rates during the real storm to about 20 different computer scenarios of a model with Hurricane Ian's characteristics slamming into the Sunshine State in a world with no human-caused climate change. “The real storm was 10% wetter than the storm that might have...

Multiple experts contacted by Fox News Digital argued that there isn't sufficient evidence to suggest climate change caused Hurricane Ian or any individual natural disaster. The experts' comments come as a series of media outlets, Democrats and progressive commentators continue to blame the hurricane on human-caused global warming. Hurricane Ian slammed into southwest Florida as a Category 4 storm on Wednesday, causing more than a million residents to lose power and prompting stark safety warnings from Florida officials. "What they're trying to do is politicize the pain and suffering of these people to promote their green agenda," Gregory Wrightstone, the...