Free Republic

When a panel of Democratic Party insiders endorsed President Joe Biden’s preferred lineup of early presidential nominating states Friday, they didn’t just shatter the exalted status of Iowa and New Hampshire voters. They also formally aligned themselves with a demographic reckoning decades in the making, reflecting the growing clout of the racially diverse coalition that brought Biden to power — and implicitly rebuking two overwhelmingly white states that rejected him in 2020. For political obsessives, the change — which must still be voted on by the whole committee — feels sweeping and swift. Steve Phillips, a Democrat and author of...

In an unusual step for the military, the Army has invaded favelas of Rio de Janeiro and killed top leaders of the Comando Vermelho (Red Command) drug cartel, which supports the Communist criminal Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Observers take this to indicate the beginning of a federal military intervention. The drug gangs were the only ones to celebrate the alleged election victory by criminal Lula Oct. 30, firing automatic weapons in the air in the favelas. President Bolsonaro cracked down hard on the Brazilian drug gangs. (snip)Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, will be in Brasilia today Monday 5...

The grieving boyfriend of Madison Mogen, one of four murdered University of Idaho students, broke his weeks-long silence about the monstrous killings during a heartbreaking memorial in the town where one victim grew up. “None of these people deserved this,” Jake Schriger said at the Friday vigil in Post Falls, hometown of slain student Xana Kernodle, 20. Schriger — who knew all four victims — recounted his first date with Mogen, 21, at The Breakfast Club in Moscow, and how that friendship blossomed into romance. “She was the first person I talked to every morning and the last person I...

If Elon Musk truly believes that Twitter is a front in the “battle for the future of civilization,” he has a chance to prove it. The Biden administration has already threatened to investigate Musk on multiple occasions, which isn’t surprising considering its unprecedented antagonizing about free expression. Democrats such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts have promised to create new “rules” governing discourse on the private social media platform. (Remember when leftists were pretending to be fans of free-association rights?) Hillary Clinton’s approach has been more sweeping, calling for the European Union to create a technocratic speech regime to govern...

Elon Musk is vowing more Twitter revelations to come Sunday — albeit delayed "another day or two" — after outing President Joe Biden's administration for directing political censorship operations at Twitter. There are "more smoking guns" to reveal, Musk promised Saturday night on the Twitter Spaces audio platform. He also noted the ire he is bringing upon himself for exposing the political bias on the social media giant, preemptively saying, "I do not have any suicidal thoughts. "If I committed suicide, it's not real," he added, a reference to the theorists that repeat the mantra that Jeffrey Epstein did not...

Former Vice President Mike Pence on Monday pushed back on former President Trump’s assertion that the Constitution should be disregarded to allow for him to return to the White House in the wake of new revelations about Twitter’s handling of a controversial story about Hunter Biden. “I must tell you that I think that everyone that serves in public office, everyone that aspires to serve or serve again should make it clear that we will support and defend the Constitution of the United States,” Pence said on WVOC radio in Columbia, S.C., ahead of a visit to the state on...

Government parties within Germany are now telling the public to follow mask-wearing rules first implemented during COVID in order to slow the spread of cold and flu. Politicians within the ruling Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) are now telling the German public to follow mask-wearing procedures first put in place during the country’s COVID lockdowns in order to fight cold and flu. The advice stands in stark contrast to a claim made by the opposition Alternative for Germany party (AfD), which has blamed government lockdowns for causing the current spike in illness the...

Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd) abandoned plans to try and knock Mayor Lori Lightfoot off the ballot — even after uncovering a “pattern of fraud” that suggested she may not have the 12,500 valid signatures required by law. After a “cursory review” of all of the 40,000 signatures that Lightfoot filed and getting “into a secondary” review to see if those signatures match the signatures of those voters, Hopkins said he “got it down to about 17,500 signatures” when he “ran out of time.” “Had we had a couple more weeks, there is a clear pattern of fraud. We might have...

Not long ago, many international human rights organizations were warning of anti-democratic behavior by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been lionized by the Western press since the start of Russia’s invasion, but in the not-so-distant past, many international human rights organizations and concerned Ukrainians were sounding the alarm on dangerous and anti-democratic patterns of behavior exhibited by the president.On Feb. 3, 2021, Zelensky enacted sanctions on three television stations believed to be affiliated with Viktor Medvedchuk, a leader of the Opposition Bloc party, critic of Zelensky, and duly elected member of parliament.The channels were immediately taken off...

Second Week of Advent Luke 5:17–26Friends, our Gospel for today tells that wonderful story of the healing of the paralytic. People gather by the dozens to hear Jesus, crowding around the doorway of the house. They bring him a paralyzed man, and because there is no way to get him through the door, they climb up on the roof and open a space to lower him down.Can I suggest a connection between this wonderful narrative and our present evangelical situation? There are an awful lot of Catholics who are paralyzed, unable to move, frozen in regard to Christ and the...

A Home Depot worker has died from his injuries six weeks after being shoved to the concrete floor by a serial shoplifter he tried to stop stealing three pressure washers worth $800. Gary Rasor, 83, died on December 1 after he confronted the suspect at the store's garden center on October 18. The grandfather put his arm out to stop the man from rolling away a cartful of shoplifted pressure washers. He was seen on surveillance footage being shoved to the floor by the thief, who was clad in a Calvin Klein hoodie and face mask. Rasor, who had worked...

[Catholic Caucus] Again: Francis Is Protecting a Convicted AbuserFrancis personally blocked an excommunication of Father Marko Rupnik, a famous Jesuit artist who is accused by several (!) consecrated women of sexual assault and psychological abuse, MessaInLatino.it reports citing “high-level sources.”Earlier this year, a canonical trial convicted Rupnik for absolving in confession an adult and consenting female sexual accomplice. The verdict was unanimous and the punishment was excommunication.But a few hours after the sentence was announced, Francis lifted the excommunication at Rupnik's request. The Company of Jesus had already prepared a statement on the matter but was stopped.The Jesuit Procurator General...

One of the victims' parents in the Idaho killings said police are investigating something "mail-related" in their ongoing search for the suspect who fatally stabbed four University of Idaho students last month. The parents of Kaylee Goncalves spoke to Fox News on Sunday about the ongoing investigation and the updates they've received from police. Asked about the last time the parents talked with police, Steve Goncalves, Kaylee's father, told Fox host Lawrence Jones it was last week. He also said that he and his wife were asked to sign a "waiver form" to allow police to investigate "something that was...

According to the “Twitter Files” released by Elon Musk and journalist Matt Taibbi, the same FBI agent who played a crucial role in conducting illegal surveillance on Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign also played a part in censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 election. As reported by the Daily Caller, the files posted by Taibbi with Musk’s approval revealed many more key details about the process by which Twitter systematically censored conservative viewpoints, leading up to the banning of the New York Post’s story in October of 2020 just days before the election, even despite dissent from within...

George Stigler, the Nobel Laureate economist from University of Chicago, penned an excellent paper on regulatory capture. Regulatory capture occurs because groups or individuals with high-stakes interests in the outcome of policy or regulatory decisions can be expected to focus their resources and energies to gain the policy outcomes they prefer, while members of the public, each with only a tiny individual stake in the outcome, will ignore it altogether. Which leads us to who were the biggest contributors to the midterm elections. This list didn’t include the now infamous Sam Bankman-Fried and George Soros. big Deomcrat donors. This is...

Ukraine said Russia had destroyed homes in the south and knocked out power in the north in a new round of missile attacks on Monday as the West tried to limit Moscow's ability to finance its invasion by imposing a price cap on Russian seaborne oil....Russian forces have increasingly targeted Ukrainian energy facilities in recent weeks as they faced setbacks on the battlefield, causing major power outages as winter sets in....A Russian oil blend was selling for around $79 a barrel in Asian markets on Monday - almost a third higher than the price cap, according to Refinitiv data and...

Former White House Press Secretary and current MSNBC analyst Jen Psaki issued a warning to members of the Dem Party who are writing off former President Donald Trump. Appearing on Meet the Press, Psaki said Trump is still the favorite to win the GOP nomination because he ‘has some evil charisma that helped him win the nomination’ before. CHUCK TODD: Yamiche, people say, “We’ve been here before with them. Is this time different? YAMICHE ALCINDOR: – the fact that we even have to ask that question shows you that there’s still this grip that former President Trump has on the...

MESA, AZ — The City of Mesa has reached an $8 million settlement with Laney Sweet, the widow of Daniel Shaver, and his two children. Shaver was shot and killed by now-former Mesa Police Officer Phillip Brailsford in 2016.

The British newspaper Financial Times called Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy Person of the Year, in an article published on Dec. 5.FT reasoning for the choice was that "the president of Ukraine embodies the resilience of his people and has become a standard bearer for liberal democracy."

“Sometimes in the shower, I realize they’re gone. I just have these scars.” Camille Kiefel, 32, had her healthy breasts removed in 2020 to align with her nonbinary gender identity. She says her doctors approved the surgery after two Zoom meetings, breezing past a whole host of mental health issues. Now that Camille is in a better place mentally, she realizes her surgery was a mistake. So, two and a half years later, she’s suing her social worker, therapist, and the gender clinics they work for — Brave Space Oregon and Quest Center for Integrative Health — seeking up to...