Free Republic

Few Americans—thanks to our fine history instruction these days—know what the Credit Mobilier scandal was. From 1864 to 1867, a company called Credit Mobilier was created by executives of the Union Pacific Railroad. It was a railroad construction company that overcharged on construction costs and manipulated contracts. Its founder was Thomas Durant, and the company worked with American Congressmen, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi… Oh, sorry, Schuyler Colfax and Congressman Oakes Ames who were given low-price stock options and payouts in return for no federal oversight of the company and for subsidies and favorable regulations that would otherwise...

Two top House Republicans said Thursday they would examine whether President Biden “is a security risk and whether he is compromised by foreign governments” in connection with first son Hunter Biden’s “shady” overseas business deals. Reps. James Comer (R-Ky.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the respective incoming chairmen of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees, leveled the accusation as they announced their first order of business will be probing the Biden family. “Our investigation is about Joe Biden,” Comer said. “Was Joe Biden directly involved with Hunter Biden’s business deals and is he compromised? That’s our investigation.” “We’re not trying to...

Former President Donald Trump took aim at the entrenched Washington swamp by promoting three major reforms while kicking off his 2024 campaign for the White House.. . .The 45th president renewed calls for congressional term limits, campaign finance reform and a lifetime ban on lobbying by former members of Congress and Cabinet officials.“To further drain the swamp, I will push for a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on members of Congress,” he said. “It’s time.”That suggestion immediately drew a standing ovation from the audience.“And I will ask for a permanent ban on taxpayer funding of campaigns, a lifetime ban...

SANTA CLARA COUNTY, Calif. (KRON) — Ballots that were found discarded on a highway in San Jose have been examined, and most will be included in the official results of the recent election, according to a press release from the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced she will not seek re-election as leader of the House Democratic Conference after nearly 20 years at the helm, after her party narrowly lost the majority in the chamber in the midterm elections. "With great confidence in our caucus, I will not seek re-election to Democratic leadership in the next Congress," said Pelosi. "For me the hour has come for a new generation to lead the Democratic caucus that I so deeply respect, and I'm grateful that so many are ready and willing to shoulder this awesome responsibility."

Texas’ flu season is off to an early start this year, and doesn’t show any signs of slowing down, public health officials said this week. Texas is one of multiple states throughout the U.S. with a “very high” level of flu activity, Vinny Taneja, director of Tarrant County Public Health, said Tuesday. “I don’t think I’ve seen that in a long time on our flu map,” Taneja said during a commissioners court meeting Tuesday, referencing the maroon color being used to indicate the level of flu in Texas and across much of the southern U.S. Statewide, almost 8% of patients...

The researchers said that this could be because cooler temperatures increase the constrictions of blood vessels, which can cut off blood flow and oxygen to parts of the brain. Extreme heat can also cause vulnerable people to suffer strokes. In one study, scientists suggested that in the African ‘meningitis belt’, fine particles blown by the Harmattan winds intensifies meningitis transmission. In the Czech Republic, flooding was associated with more cases of tick-borne encephalitis. A limitation of the review was that all the studies took place in well-off countries, meaning the findings are not applicable to poorer regions, where climate changes...

Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake (R) declined to concede governor race to Democrat Katie Hobbs Thursday, raising concerns about the election process. The Associated Press and other outlets projected that Hobbs won the race on Monday. But Lake indicated she is assembling a legal team that is “collecting evidence and data” pertaining to the electoral process. “Rest assured, I have assembled the best and brightest legal team and we are exploring every avenue to correct the many wrongs that have been done this past week,” Lake said in a video address posted Thursday morning. “I’m doing everything in my power...

After leading the Democrats for the last two decades, the House Speaker announced Thursday that she will step down

Thursday on “CNN This Morning,” co-host Kaitlan Collins asked Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI), “what is the argument for you not running for president?” Collins said, “On another note, you’ve been asked a lot in almost basically every interview you’ve done recently about a 2024 run and running for president. You said you’re not interested in it. I guess my question is if you’re a supporter of yours, and you’re someone who doesn’t live in Michigan but is national and wants to see you run, what is the argument for you not running for president?

Marjorie Taylor Greene has called for “auditing” the additional billions that Biden wants to send to Ukraine. But her audit idea would still have our tax dollars going to Ukraine if the money passed the audit. Why doesn’t she propose, instead, to use the billions to help shore up Social Security and Medicare? Republicans are always whining that those programs are going broke and we can’t afford them without big cuts. If that’s so, how can we afford sending money to other countries - especially Ukraine, where the war is helping to drive up prices and restrict supply chains worldwide?...

President Biden Thursday disputed comments made by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who remains confident that the "explosion" that killed two in Poland did not come from a Ukrainian missile. "That’s not the evidence," Biden told reporters from the South Lawn after arriving in Washington shortly after 12:30 a.m. Zelenskyy on Wednesday countered comments from NATO and Polish officials who said preliminary evidence suggested the "explosion" that killed two Poles in the village of Przewodow, roughly 30 miles from the Ukrainian border, likely came from Ukraine’s air defense system. FIRED BY RUSSIA "I have no doubt this was not our missile...

When I was 24 (1982) I went to see Gordon at the Opera House in San Francisco. It was the middle of a recession and the house was mostly empty... probably around 300 people. I had bought a nosebleed seat way up in the rafters.... Gordon when he came on looked around and said "Wow, things are tough all over." He then asked the people in the lower seats if they minded if he invited the people in the 'cheap seats' to come down and join them.. no one objected so I went down and grabbed a good seat. Gordon...

Important to understand is that there is not one single new original idea in Klaus Schwab's so-called Great Reset agenda for the world. Nor is his Fourth Industrial Revolution agenda his or his claim to having invented the notion of Stakeholder Capitalism a product of Schwab. Klaus Schwab is little more than a slick PR agent for a global technocratic agenda, a corporatist unity of corporate power with government, including the UN, an agenda whose origins go back to the beginning of the 1970s, and even earlier. The Davos Great Reset is merely an updated blueprint for a global dystopian...

DNA testing has identified the person whose partial foot was seen floating in Yellowstone National Park’s Abyss Pool this summer. Three months after the shoe-clad foot was spotted in the West Thumb Geyser Basin, National Park Service officials said the foot was that of 70-year-old Il Hun Ro, officials said Thursday in a news release. His family has been notified. The Abyss Pool is one of the park’s deepest and is about 140 degrees Fahrenheit. It was temporarily closed when Ro’s foot was found, though it has since reopened

What was supposed to be a red tsunami last week turned out to be a ripple. It didn’t take long for the GOP establishment to place the blame: Donald Trump! It couldn’t be because Mitch McConnell decided to spend $10 million supporting the treacherous Lisa Murkowski against the state’s GOP nominee, rather than in Arizona, Georgia, or Michigan. No, it was Trump. It wasn’t Kevin McCarthy’s embarrassing attempt to recreate Newt Gingrich’s successful “Contract with America” that galvanized America and brought the GOP 54 seats in a year with 2.99% inflation, with his facile “Commitment to America”. No, it was...

Fox News host Tucker Carlson accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy Wednesday of “lying” about the origins of a missile that killed two people in Poland Tuesday. “[Zelenskyy] was commanding the U.S. to lead the Third World War immediately. So as we said, this was not a minor AP story. The only problem was it was completely and utterly wrong. Zelensky, the unnamed intel officer, and the Associated Press had all been trafficking in dangerous misinformation,” Carlson said. “That became clear within a few hours, when pictures of the exploded missile surfaced on social media. People who know a lot about...

End of the electric car gravy train: Owners will pay £165 a year in road tax from April 2025 and models that cost over £40k face an added 'Tesla tax' of £355 a year Electric vehicles no longer exempt from Vehicle Excise Duty from April 2025 EVs registered after April 1, 2017 will pay a standard annual rate of £165 Decision made to 'make our motoring tax system fairer', All electric car drivers will pay £165-a-year in tax from April 2025 as Jeremy Hunt announced an end to tax exemptions for greener vehicles in his Autumn Budget As part of...

PALM BEACH, Florida — At least 12.5 million Americans watched some or all of former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign announcement speech live on Tuesday night, television and digital ratings reveal. Fox News and CNN, both of which carried parts of the speech live, saw massive ratings spikes during the Trump announcement, per Mediaite. Fox News surged to more than 5.16 million viewers during the Trump announcement—929,000 in the key 25-54 age key demographic—and CNN soared to 2.43 million viewers, including 656,000 in the key demographic. Newsmax, which carried Trump’s announcement live, also saw a surge in viewers up to...

An Idaho Democrat who carried an endorsement from Planned Parenthood learned that the hard way last week after initial reports from election night showed she had won a state House seat that covers parts of three counties, only for one of the counties to learn that those initial reports were incorrect. And the GOP came out on top after all. According to the Idaho Capital Sun, a nonprofit outlet, Democrat Karma Metzler Fitzgerald at first appeared to have won the race for House District 26, Seat B, which represents parts of Blaine, Jerome and Lincoln counties in the south-central part...