Free Republic

As for the economic aspect of Putin's mobilization, most commentators focus on the disastrous consequences for the skilled labor market and the loss of jobs by companies. This is all true: for example, back in July Putin admitted at a meeting with his ministers that a shortage of a million skilled workers is expected in the IT industry alone over the next two years, and now it is clear that this shortage will only get worse. According to a Rosstat survey of entrepreneurs, the lack of qualified workers is one of the top 5 factors limiting industrial production growth, and...

Democrat-controlled state governments may finally be starting to realize the precedent problem standing in the way of their gun-control agenda. As I wrote when the Supreme Court decided New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen in June, the Court declared in that ruling a strong restoration of the Second Amendment: “the Second Amendment protects the rights of law-abiding, adult citizens (“the People”) to keep and bear arms, particularly weapons in common use. Therefore, any law restricting that right needs to be consistent with the Nation’s ‘historical tradition of firearm regulation.’”

Of course, readers might be thinking, shouldn’t illegal immigrants convicted of federal marijuana possession just be deported? The better question is: shouldn’t any illegal alien caught by law enforcement be deported? Instead of that happening, it seems many such individuals occupy our federal prisons. According to CNN, “during fiscal year 2021 some 72% of federal offenders in a case of marijuana possession were non-citizens.” However, it should be noted that data doesn’t differentiate between those unlawfully present in the U.S. and those legally here, such as green card holders. Regardless, an immigration attorney told CNN that simple marijuana possession charges...

Well known GOP activist, Scott Presler, released a video on Twitter explaining his recent absence from events. He says he has a "...blood disease that triggered (his) anemia." He has been bed bound. Twitter users are wishing him the best.

Alittle less than a week before the midterm elections in November, a new PayPal account update will take effect that has sent the internet into an uproar — and also drawn condemnation from PayPal’s former president David Marcus. What’s happening: PayPal is updating its acceptable use policy, with the update taking effect on November 3. You might say to yourself, well, I don’t use my account with the financial services company for anything improper or illegal, so what do I have to worry about? Here’s why that might not necessarily be true: PayPal says it’s expanding its existing list of...

ROME — Pope Francis employed some of his strongest language to date Sunday in denouncing Europe’s “scandalous” rejection of migrants. “The exclusion of migrants is scandalous. Even more, the exclusion of migrants is criminal, it kills them right before our eyes,” the pontiff said in his Sunday homily, departing from his prepared remarks.

The reliably left-wing Los Angeles Times has published an unusually candida analysis: that California’s policymakers, given ample warnings about the state’s vulnerability to high gas prices, have failed to do anything to address the basic problems that cause them. The Times recounted how the state created special committees in the 1990s, and again in the last decade, to deal with the challenges created by California’s “green” regulations and its aggressive environmental rules on the one hand, and market realities on the other.

In the seven months since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the other former Soviet states have been adhering to a set of unwritten rules. Moscow realized that putting excessive pressure on its neighbors could destabilize the region, and therefore refrained from making too many demands of them. They were not required, for example, to recognize the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics, or express support for the “special operation”: it was enough to remain neutral. The main condition was to not supply Ukraine with weapons and ammunition (Kazakhstan suspended all of its weapons exports, just to be on the safe side)....

Hostilities were declared during Joe Biden’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. “I guarantee you. We’re going to end fossil fuel,” candidate Biden told a climate activist in September 2019, words that the White House surely hopes get lost down a memory hole. Toomey’s paper has all the receipts, so there’s no danger of that. As he observes, Biden’s position in 2022 resembles Barack Obama’s in 2012, when rising gas prices threatened to sink his reelection. Obama responded with a ruthlessness that his erstwhile running mate lacks. He simply stopped talking about climate and switched to an all-of-the-above energy policy,...

Backing the ticket in the West

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' deputy press secretary Jeremy Redfern humiliated MSNBC host Joy Reid by revealing how someone from the media figure’s team tried to reach out to the DeSantis administration but was completely rejected. In response to a tweet from Reid mocking DeSantis’ expression during his joint press conference with President Biden concerning Hurricane Ian relief efforts, Redfern shared a screenshot of an email correspondence between him and someone from Reid’s team who was seeking to "touch base" with the governor ahead of the midterm elections. The image of the email revealed that Redfern denied the "ReidOut" team...

Boy, looks like I missed the hysteria. Instead of thumbing my way around the internet to catch the latest news on the complete devastation of Russia’s Kerch bridge that unites Crimea with Mother Russia, I was at a gun range being trained by a retired Delta Force operator. He is a hell of a teacher.Needless to say, my time was better spent (and cheaper) compared to what Ukraine spent on its spectacular failure to destroy the Kerch bridge. Failure? Yes. The initial images of a veritable Dante’s furnace, complete with rolling clouds of black smoke and frantic tongues of flames...

A youth basketball coach was stabbed to death on a New York City subway Thursday night, the seventh murder victim on the subway system in gun-controlled NYC this year. The New York Daily News reported 36-year-old Charles Moore was attacked around 10:30 p.m. while exiting the “northbound No. 4 train at the elevated station at E. 176th St. and Jerome Ave.”

Michael Cohen, once former President Donald Trump's attorney and fixer, said that New York Attorney General Letitia James' massive fraud lawsuit will "financially destroy" his old boss and may ultimately lead to him going to prison. James filed a sweeping civil suit against Trump, his business, and his three eldest children in September. She seeks to permanently bar the Trumps from conducting business in New York and pursuing at least $250 million in damages. In an in-depth interview with Salon magazine before releasing his second book "Revenge," Cohen said: "Right now, that case will financially destroy him." He added that...

On a four-mile rural road eerily nicknamed the Devil's Promenade, just off the old Route 66 in the north-east corner of Oklahoma, a paranormal mystery has puzzled spirit seekers for more than 100 years. The Hornet Spook Light – a mysterious, basketball-sized glowing orb named for the former town of Hornet – has been appearing in the night sky here since 1881. No-one knows what this peculiar, smouldering ball of light signifies, where it comes from or what it's composed of. Even the Army Corps of Engineers have concluded that it's a "mysterious light of unknown origin". It moves, spinning...

Governor Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that his policies will respect parents want their transgender children to use the bathroom and pronouns of their choice. Anchor Jake Tapper said, “The American Academy of Pediatrics says these kinds of laws about bathrooms and excluding people, ignoring their gender identity, the American Academy of Pediatrics say these laws can increase anxiety, depression, and suicide in transgender youth. Did you talk to transgender youth?” Youngkin said, “We’ve had interaction across the administration. What we’re not saying is there’s no accommodation. We’re saying parents have to be engaged...

Over in Europe, things are looking bad for the economy, largely driven by a rapid increase in household and business energy bills. In the UK, average household energy bills have recently risen to about triple where they were just a year ago; and Bloomberg reports that “tens of thousands” of UK businesses are at risk of closure due to soaring energy costs. In Germany, KAKE reports on October 7 that energy costs are “savaging German industry,” with natural gas prices in particular up 400% from January to September 2022. So how did they get into this mess? You might think,...

Besieged by angry viewers, denounced by then-President Trump, questioned by some of its own stars, Fox News found itself in a near-impossible spot on Election Night 2020 after its election-analysis team announced before any other network that Joe Biden would win the pivotal swing state of Arizona. Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott proved so flummoxed by what ensued that she warned colleagues, "We can't give the crazies an inch." That's according to the account of a lawyer for Dominion Voting Systems, which is seeking $1.6 billion from Fox in a defamation suit over false allegations on the network that the...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last week denied a legal petition by Center for Food Safety, Pesticide Action Network of North America and others, demanding that the agency fix its failure to regulate pesticide-coated seeds, which are known to be widely harming bees and other pollinators.Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) denied a legal petition by Center for Food Safety (CFS), Pesticide Action Network of North America and others, demanding that the agency fix its failure to regulate pesticide-coated seeds, which are known to be widely harming bees and other pollinators.These crop seeds are coated with systemic insecticides...

Beginning with “We the People” the Constitution is a compact, an agreement among equals, the people of the American civil society. The events of 1787-1788 could have been scripted straight out of John Locke’s Second Treatise. A preexisting civil society came to the conclusion that its current form of government was inadequate to secure its unalienable rights, which, per the Declaration is the broad purpose of government. Through state sponsored conventions special delegations of the sovereign people debated the pro/con of establishing a new government. Just as Locke described the steps that men emerging from the State of Nature naturally...