Free Republic

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Sunday that a lot of the U.S.’s military aid to Ukraine “could have been done sooner.” “I think the only thing I would have said is that a lot of this could have been done sooner,” Gates said when asked by Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press” if he would have advised President Biden to do anything differently. “And, you know, they’re talking about potentially being six months, a year or more before the Abrams tanks get there,” he added. “I think the key thing about the Abrams tank decision was that...

A senate hearing to evaluate the suitability of Spokane Superior Court Judge Charnelle Bjelkengren, a Biden nominee for US District Judge for the Eastern District of Washington, resulted in some interesting answers. Sen. John Kennedy (R-La) asked Judge Bjelkengren several basic questions about the Constitution's Article II (the powers of the executive branch) and Article V (the power to amend the Constitution). To both, the Judge responded "nothing comes to mind at the moment." Considering that US judges frequently have to adjudicate issues in which the Constitution has some bearing it is disturbing that this nominee was so ill-prepared for...

While Germany’s Olaf Scholz was dragging his feet over tanks for Ukraine, the Baltic states and Poland gained moral ground ...reports from Berlin indicate that, far from being apologetic about his dithering, Scholz believes that he has acquitted himself well. He kept his Social Democratic party united on a profoundly controversial question. He also persuaded the Americans to supply their tanks alongside Germany’s. Sadly, much of this positive narrative is wishful thinking, for it ignores both the abrupt collapse of Germany’s influence in Europe and the continent’s profound strategic transformation because of the Ukraine war. The decision to supply Ukraine...

Welcome to the wonderful world of Bidenomics, giving the US 40 year highs in inflation leading The Federal Reserve to remove its enormous monetary stimulus (known as “The Punch Bowl.” I previously pointed out that US Real GDP was actually less than 1% year-over-year (YoY) in 2022, hardly a fantastic number given the trillions in Biden/Pelosi/Schumer spending (Omnibus, Infrastructure, etc) and Powell/Fed’s whopping monetary stimulus in 2020. But real disposable income, the amount households have left to spend after adjusting for inflation, had been falling for 7 straight months. In fact, REAL disposable personal income peaked in March 2021, shortly...

The delusion is strong with this one. A report on Saturday indicates that former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, mired around 3% in GOP Presidential Primary polls, looks ready to launch a quixotic bid next month for the Oval Office anyway. Haley’s senior aides are prepared to assume essential campaign roles once Haley gives the green light. She already possesses the necessary infrastructure thru her prominent political action committee and political nonprofit to build a ground game and campaign operation. Should Haley launch a bid for president as expected, such a move would mark a broken promise to former President...

Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that there was no “law that can stop that evil” when asked about the death of Tyre Nichols. Host Chuck Todd asked, “Let me start with what we saw. Senator Tim Scott said, ‘We’ve been here too many times before. We cannot continue down this path. America cannot stand silent. Let it serve as a call to action for every lawmaker in our nation at every level.’ What action would you like to see, Congressman?”

PERTH, Australia (AP) — Authorities in Western Australia were searching for a tiny but potentially deadly radioactive capsule that got lost while being transported on a truck from a mine to a depot in the city of Perth, officials said Saturday. It is believed to have fallen off the back of a truck on a 1,400-kilometer (870-mile) journey from the Rio Tinto mine in Newman to the the Perth suburb of Malaga. There are concerns the solid capsule may have already become lodged in another vehicle’s tyre and potentially be hundreds of kilometers (miles) away from the search area. It...

Can an extensive nation keep free government and avoid centralization? In 1787-1788, the Anti-Federalists didn’t think so and the Federalists couldn’t be sure. Charles de Montesquieu (1689 – 1755) wrote in The Spirit of the Laws, “It is natural for a republic to have only a small territory; otherwise it cannot long subsist. In an extensive republic, the public good is sacrificed to a thousand private views.” Only in small republics, ideally of the Greek city-state size, are private interests and abuses minimized and the general welfare of the public is better understood and within the reach of every citizen.1Free...

If there is some good news out there, count on some leftists to come along and take a huge dump on it. It’s what they do – they are the nail in the tire of your homecoming float, the rock you twist your ankle on while taking the field for the Super Bowl, the open-mouth belch during a moment of silence. Only miserable human beings could be such a destructive force every single time there is something that could actually unite Americans, because unity is kryptonite to the progressive movement. Honestly, if 9/11 happened today it would take about 5...

President Trump gave a moving speech in South Carolina on Saturday as he announced his leadership team in the state. When he pointed out RINOs, US Senator Lindsey Graham laughed. President Trump introduced his leadership team in South Carolina yesterday and according to many, it was a great speech.

Former President Donald Trump said it would be "a great act of disloyalty" if Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis opposed him in the 2024 presidential primary. "If he runs, that’s fine. I’m way up in the polls," Trump, the only declared 2024 presidential candidate, told The Associated Press in an interview after his campaign event Saturday in South Carolina. One of the most recent polls, released Jan. 20, showed that Trump is leading DeSantis by 20 points in the 2024 GOP primary. Polls have been mixed over the past year, with DeSantis ahead in some and Trump winning in others....

Former President Donald Trump did not hold back when asked about the possibility of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis running for the White House in 2024. Trump, who is the only Republican to announce a campaign, said that it would be a “great act of disloyalty” if the governor challenges him. Trump held campaign events in New Hampshire and South Carolina on Saturday and sat down with the Associated Press for an interview afterward. The outlet pointed out that there are a growing number of potential challengers, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence and former South Carolina...

At a recycling plant on the outskirts of Kyiv, a short drive from the site of a helicopter crash that killed 14 people (including Ukraine’s interior minister) a week earlier, a group of sorters, most of them middle-aged women, are ripping apart hundreds of Russian books. The cover of Tolstoy’s “Childhood, Boyhood and Youth”, days away from being reborn as a coffee-cup sleeve or an egg carton, goes into one garbage bag. The novel’s pages, destined to end up as paper for other books, in Ukrainian, or as cheap toilet-paper, go into another. Next comes a selection of poems by...

Discussion of the Russia-Ukraine war in Washington is increasingly dominated by the question of how it might end. To inform this discussion, this Perspective identifies ways in which the war could evolve and how alternative trajectories would affect U.S. interests. The authors argue that, in addition to minimizing the risks of major escalation, U.S. interests would be best served by avoiding a protracted conflict. The costs and risks of a long war in Ukraine are significant and outweigh the possible benefits of such a trajectory for the United States.

The website Just Security, author former CIA operative Douglas Johnson, is very concerned about the House Subcommittee on Federal Government Weaponization. [SEE ARTICLE HERE} The concern is clouded under the auspices of fearing politicization by questioning the intelligence community about weaponized government. The article is a mainstream bureaucratic outlook where the professional intelligence apparatus views themselves as beyond being accountable to the elected public officials, specifically the House members of the committee. The permanent unelected officials have a self-perception above the reach of the elected officials. In essence, there is no public accountability model within their view of their operation....

U.S. taxpayers will be on the hook for $30 million in new cooperative grant funding to reduce plastic pollution in India, according to a notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) posted by the United States Agency for International Development MIssion in India. "The purpose of the activity is to reduce plastic pollution, including in the marine environment, through improvements in solid waste management and advancing a plastics circular economy in selected regions of India," according to the posted synopsis for the program, Innovations for Reducing Plastics for a Cleaner Environment in India (inREPLACE). Under the terms of the grant's cooperative agreement...

“Most of these voting machine companies have big issues. And then you go to mail-in, and that’s another issue. And the security of elections is not being addressed. We are being gaslit like none other. And if our vote does not count, the future of our country is in serious jeopardy. We look at the guy who’s sitting in office as president right now, and if you look at the details of how that happened and how many millions more votes he got than Obama and Trump. The fact that Trump got millions and millions more votes than he got...

The House Intelligence Committee is aiming for a reset under new leadership and awaiting Democrats' replacements for a pair of booted members. With partisan anti-Donald Trump Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., removed from the committee by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., Rep. Michael Turner, R-Ohio, takes over the gavel as chairman with an eye toward more bipartisan work. "That's the goal," Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., told The Hill. "I think we've got really good, thoughtful members. We've got the right leadership in Turner. And we're trying to get back to that more bipartisan approach."

Governor Chris Sununu (R-NH) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that it was not the government’s job to address cultural issues. Anchor Dana Bash said, “I want to play something that you said in your inaugural address earlier this month.” During his inaugural speech, Sununu said, “It’s not right to tell a private business what they can or cannot do. It is not the New Hampshire way to force locally elected and accountable school districts or town councils to bend to the statehouse’s will. That’s not leadership, and it’s not conservative, and it is certainly not freedom.”

Critics of domestic terrorism laws, including some civil rights groups, oppose them “because of the risk of politicization, because they can be used against politically disfavored groups by the government,” Patrick Keenan, a professor of law at the University of Illinois, said. A 2017 Georgia law defines domestic terrorism as a felony intended to kill or harm people; “disable or destroy critical infrastructure, a state or government facility, or a public transportation system"; “intimidate the civil population or any of its political subdivisions”; and change or coerce state policy or affect the conduct of government “by use of destructive devices,...