Free Republic

A USA Today/Associated Press column published Thursday suggests lawmakers struggling to get traction on gun control may want to redirect their energies toward “bullet regulation.” Jeanine Santucci writes in USA Today, “Government leaders calling for reform say bullet regulation – including through the recording of sales, licensing of dealers or background checks – is necessary in the ongoing battle to curb mass shootings.” She notes: The Giffords group and other gun regulation advocates also propose that ammunition sellers be required to maintain records of their sales, and make the information available to law enforcement, as New Jersey will soon enact....

Rep.-elect George Santos also lied about attending a prestigious prep school a damning new report claims, as he's come under multiple criminal investigations for lying about major portions of his biography.

Elaine Chao, former President Trump’s Transportation secretary, is declining to respond to Trump’s latest use of a racist nickname to attack her and urging the media to not repeat it. Trump on multiple occasions has invoked Chao as he lambastes her husband, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and he did so again on Wednesday evening in a Truth Social post that included a racist nickname for Chao. MEDIA Elaine Chao: Media shouldn’t repeat Trump’s racism BY ZACH SCHONFELD - 12/29/22 10:18 AM ET SHARE TWEET Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his wife, then-Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao Samuel...

Twitter chief Elon Musk announced Wednesday there will be an open exchange of ideas about scientific claims at the social media giant. The new policy is in stark contrast to Twitter's rules prior to Musk's takeover, where questioning official narratives on COVID-19, the vaccines, transgender issues and more could result in suspension or outright bans. “New Twitter policy is to follow the science, which necessarily includes reasoned questioning of the science,” he wrote. In response to professor Gad Saad mocking Fauci's claim that attacks on him are attacks on science, Musk said anyone who makes such a claim "cannot be...

A Kankakee County judge has found that a key provision of Illinois’ sweeping criminal justice law is unconstitutional, potentially rolling back a controversial measure that would eliminate the use of cash bail as of New Year’s Day, according to a copy of the judge’s ruling obtained by the Tribune.The judge’s ruling affects only the pretrial release provisions of the law, known as the SAFE-T ACT, leaving all other measures intact. Judge Thomas Cunnington is expected to file his ruling Thursday morning. Cunnington’s decision stems from a lawsuit filed by about 60 state’s attorneys across Illinois. The ruling states that Gov....

The Presentation of Jesus Luke 2:22-35 Friends, today’s Gospel tells the story of the Presentation of Jesus in the temple.The Presentation of Jesus, perfected on the cross, is re-presented every time the Mass is celebrated. The Mass is certainly a festive meal, the moment when God feeds his people with his very Body and Blood; but the Mass is also a sacrifice, for it involves the offering of Jesus’ Body and Blood to the Father. The Son, bearing the sins of the world, is presented to the Father: “Through him, and with him, and in him, O God, almighty Father,...

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates is alleged to have said that when spies smell roses, they look for the funeral. And so, as an old spy, I smelled roses when Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky came to town just before Christmas. Zelensky was loved. He again showed his country’s bravery against Putin’s brutal war and in doing so gave a bravura performance speaking to Congress and the American public of his worthy cause ­— a cause for which the United States has given nearly $50 billion in a year’s time, with more already pledged. Expensive roses for a worthy cause. Still,...

n 16th century England, the proverb "You can't have your cake and eat it too" became popular, quoted when two conflicting options existed. As such, both could not be chosen as choosing to eat the cake left no more to have. President Joe Biden and now Pennsylvania Sen.-elect John Fetterman enjoy a variation of this proverb. For two years, Biden's deteriorating mental health has been of grave concern. And Fetterman, whose mental abilities, after a May 2022 stroke, to deal with serious issues of his office are questionable, will generate similar concerns once he is sworn in on Jan. 3....

Another year gone by. Another 365 days of drought, fire, flood and heat. With more to come in the New Year. You’ve heard it all before; I won’t ask you to relive every blow struck by the climate crisis over the last 12 months. But there are lessons to learn, and they’re not all scary. We’ve got plenty of reasons to worry — and also cause for hope. Here are my top 10 climate takeaways from 2022, with a focus on California and the American West. 1. Doom is not inevitable 2. Progress isn’t inevitable, either 3. The oil industry...

COCOA, Fla. – An 18-year-old man was arrested Tuesday after police said he accidentally shot a woman, also 18, dancing with him at a possible Cocoa house party nearly a month ago, according to Local 10′s Orlando news partner, WKMG. An arrest warrant affidavit shows officers responded to a shots fired call at 1044 Azalea Lane around 10:25 p.m. on Nov. 27. Upon arrival, police said they found a woman who had been shot and transported her to the hospital. Multiple witnesses told police that the victim had been “twerking” near 18-year-old Maurqice Thomas when a firearm in his possession...

The U.S. Virgin Islands on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against banking giant JPMorgan Chase, accusing the Wall Street corporation of turning a “blind eye” toward the conduct of the late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Virgin Islands Attorney General Denise George said in a complaint filed in a Manhattan District Court that JPMorgan Chase facilitated the trafficking of minors for sexual abuse at the hands of Epstein. The bank knowingly “provided and pulled the levers through which recruiters and victims were paid,” George wrote. George further alleged in the complaint that the banking giant ignored red flags for years as it...

Three high-profile Democratic governors are struggling to stabilize their states’ retirement programs due to a falling stock market and may have difficulties paying out benefits in the coming years.

Trying to survive high inflation under Joe Biden is difficult, but surviving The Federal Reserve’s counterattack to Bidenflation is even more difficult. Two people who constantly appear in the business are ARK’s Cathie Wood and TSLA’s Elon Musk. A third we can add is Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX and Alameda Research infamy. So which one was the best at surviving Bidenflation and The Fed’s counterattack? Answer? None of them. Since the same day last year, we have seen M2 Money growth plunge and The Fed Funds Target rate rise rapidly from 25 basis points to 4.50%, a rapid increase. But...

On this date in 1661, the French customs officer and writer Jacques Chausson (English Wikipedia entry | French) was burned at Paris’s Place de Greve for sodomy. Chausson with another man, Jacques Paulmier, forced themselves upon a handsome 17-year-old aristocratic youth, “and [Chausson] while embracing him [the victim] undid the button of his pants at the same time, and then Paulmier began knowing him carnally, and committing with him the crime of sodomy. Having felt this, he began to shout and struggle, and then an old woman, working that day at the home of Mr. Petit, merchant and head of...

U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s win in Nevada guaranteed that Democrats would retain control of the Senate after the 2022 midterm elections. It also confirmed the strength of the Democratic Party in the West. Since 1992, Democrats have flipped the region away from Republican control, a shift that began with the end of the Cold War and carried through a Pacific Coast economic recession, anti-racism demonstrations and violence in Los Angeles and the area’s increasing diversity. I am a professor of political science who has published on the subject of critical elections and how regional realignments in voting patterns have...

HARRISBURG — The American population might be growing, but Pennsylvania remains a leading state for Americans to flee, rather than stay. The commonwealth is one of 18 states to lose population in 2022, according to new data from the Census Bureau, and one of the worst performers. The data is confirmation of a long-running trend: Pennsylvania has a population problem, and the end isn’t yet in sight. The latest Census data shows the American population grew by 1.26 million (0.4%) since a year ago, with the primary growth being more than 1 million immigrants landing on American soil. Natural change...

At what point does affirmative action become apartheid? Bloomberg Law breaks down the numbers for Biden’s judicial appointments. Of the 97 judges confirmed by the Senate in the last two years, three quarters of them are women, and nearly half of the appointees — including Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson — are women of color. And while most presidents pick from a pool of existing judges, government attorneys and lawyers in private practice, Biden has cast a wider net. About one-third of Biden’s confirmed judges have experience as public defenders and a dozen are former civil rights lawyers, according...

Dylan Mulvaney exploded on the scene in 2022 and went from a nobody working on plays in New York to wearing a dress and interviewing the President of The United States. Michael Knowles finally answers the question of how this all happened.

"The Republican Party of 1912 decided it would be better off renominating William Howard Taft, even though its voters would have preferred another Roosevelt term. The resulting split ushered in Woodrow Wilson and the first academic globalists, whose bright ideas laid the groundwork for a second world war on the eve of the conclusion of the first. ... But, despite the obvious differences, we’re heading for a 1912-repeat, in which the Republican Party ignores its own voters. The Republican machine has no intention of letting us choose Trump again: He is not a uniparty team player. They’d rather lose an...

One of the most notorious political scandals in American history, the Watergate Scandal is set to be exposed yet again in White House Plumbers (2023), an all-new miniseries coming this Spring. The notorious scandal that would ultimately remove President Richard Nixon from power remains to this day an unprecedented act of political espionage, showing what even people in the highest and most respected institutions in the country are willing to do in the name of the greater good. It's a well-documented historical event that has been depicted and referenced in various movies and shows, but with White House Plumbers, it's...