Free Republic

… But the painful reality for Harris is that in private conversations over the past few months, dozens of Democrats in the White House, on Capitol Hill and around the nation — including some who helped put her on the party’s 2020 ticket — said she had not risen to the challenge of proving herself as a future leader of the party, much less the country. Even some Democrats whom her own advisers referred reporters to for supportive quotes confided privately that they had lost hope in her. Through much of the fall, a quiet panic set in among key...

Since its low energy announcement a few months ago, the 2024 Donald Trump presidential campaign has been a non-stop clusterfark of dinner dates with neo-Nazis, cavorting with the Conservative, Inc., likes of Lindsey Graham, disappointing fundraising, relitigating the 2020 election, and generating lame nicknames for a rival who is right on his Gucci’s heels. For his fans, it has been a festival of cognitive dissonance, as the OnlyTrumpers shriek that RON DESANTIS LOVES PAUL RYAN! and then excuse the photos of Trump literally endorsing Paul Ryan as some sort of 4-D chess or a cunning ploy to “keep his enemies...

CNN is undergoing a revamp with all its operations, supposedly in a move to make the network more geared toward unbiased journalism—think Bernard Shaw days. Some insufferable clowns have already been fired, but this will be a long-term project if it’s genuine. In the meantime, all doesn’t appear well on CNN’s This Morning set, where Don Lemon reportedly got into a shouting match with co-host Kaitlin Collins during a commercial break. That blow-up occurred on December 8, allegedly ruining late-night plans with the cohosts before a White House Christmas party. Poppy Harlow, another co-host, seems trapped in the middle. The...

Mark 6:53-56 Friends, today’s Gospel reports Jesus healing many people at Gennesaret. We hear that people brought the sick from all over the region and all of them were cured. “Whatever villages or towns or countryside he entered, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and begged him that they might touch only the tassel on his cloak; and as many as touched it were healed.”An awful lot of contemporary theologians and Bible commentators have tried to explain away the miracles of Jesus as spiritual symbols. Perhaps most notoriously, many preachers tried to explain the multiplication of the loaves and...

The famous Swilcan Bridge located on the 18th hole at St. Andrews’s Old Course seems to have been altered, and golf fans are not very happy about the changes. On Saturday morning, Twitter user @ukgolfguy shared a photo of the unmistakable landmark. In the picture, it appears that a circular stone pathway has been built on either side of the bridge—a structure which has been crossed by legends of the game throughout its history. The site is perhaps the most well-known golf course feature in the world. For golfers and visitors of the Old Course, it is criminal to pass...

Ann Arbor, Mich., was ranked the best place to live in the United States, according to a new review of cities most frequently cited on national lists. The city, located to the southwest of Detroit, is home to around 121,000 residents and the public University of Michigan. The region’s low crime rates, diverse job market, and growing technology industry helped push Ann Arbor to the top of the list. The Michigan city was followed by Raleigh, N.C.; Huntsville, Ala.; Fayetteville, Ark.; and Colorado Springs, Colo., respectively. Researchers based the list on 10 different rankings compiled by Business Insider, Travel +...

Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 @mtgreenee The Grammy’s featured Sam Smith’s demonic performance and was sponsored by Pfizer. And the Satanic Church now has an abortion clinic in NM that requires its patients to perform a satanic ritual before services. American Christians need to get to work.

Ward gives the details behind the F-22 shootdown of the Chinese Spy Balloon that occurred on February 4, 2023, the first kill by a Raptor in the history of that stealth fighter.

There’s no greater joy for dog owners than to see their canines happy with wagging tails. When the Dogs Of Instagram account launched a "Happiest Dogs on Earth" photo contest in January this year and asked dog owners to submit photos or videos of their pups living their best life, the results were extremely uplifting.

.....West’s presidential campaign did not receive any money in 2022, and that his political action committee, Kanye 2020, spent $142,000 from October to December 2022 but raised zero in donations during that period, the Daily Beast reported.....

The U.S. military has started a recovery mission for debris from the Chinese spy balloon that was shot down by a U.S. fighter jet on Feb. 4, according to the Pentagon.Several U.S. Navy and Coast Guard vessels established a security perimeter where the balloon hit the water, about six nautical miles off the coast of South Carolina, and were searching for debris, a senior defense official and a senior military official said on Feb. 4.“The nature of the debris is still being assessed. But recovery options will seek to recover all debris and any material of intelligence value,” the defense...

The greenies’ dream of “clean” (except for millions of dead birds) energy from wind farms is dying in the face of the poor economics (even with tax subsidies) and unreliable technology. The big players in constructing wind turbines are facing massive losses and write-downs and cancelling big offshore wind projects. Brace yourself for demands for even more subsides to the failing industry.The green energy subsidiary of German electrical equipment giant Siemens just reported Thursday that it lost nearly a billion dollars in the last quarter. Via Fox News (Hat tip: Beege Welborn, Hot Air):Global green energy company Siemens Gamesa reported...

Donald Trump called one-time ally Chris Christie “sloppy” after the former New Jersey governor predicted the ex-president wouldn’t win in 2024 and needled him for losing his re-election bid in 2020 — saying “that loss to Joe still stings.” The war of words erupted Sunday after Christie posted on Twitter that Trump, 76, was the only candidate to “lose to Biden outside of Delaware.” The 45th president shot back that Christie’s 2016 campaign “went down in flames.” Trump who announced his third straight White House run Nov. 15, took to his Truth Social platform to lambaste Christie after his appearance...

For a few days last week, Americans focused their attention on the sky as a Chinese spy balloon floated across most parts of the continental U.S. The Biden administration waited until last Saturday to finally shoot the balloon down. The whole incident and the responses from both Beijing and Washington exposed serious policy miscalculations on both sides. Most people want to know why the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sent a spy balloon to the U.S. a week before the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to Beijing. There are several probable explanations. One is that CCP might want to...

Axios is positioning this announcement as FTX asking for political donations to be returned. However, the request is realistically from the FTX debtors. (Via Axios) – Bankrupt crypto exchange FTX is sending notices to former donor recipients asking for the donated funds to be returned, the company said in a press release Sunday. Why it matters: Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX Digital Markets Co-CEO Ryan Salame were two of the largest political donors during the last election cycle. Now the company’s debtors want the money back.

On Feb. 6, the Senate will vote on a ‘Right to Abortion Amendment’ that would make abortion a ‘fundamental right’ in the commonwealth.Just after Virginia Democrats used their state Senate majority to block multiple pro-life bills, Virginians filled the streets of their capital city last week in the first statewide pro-life march since the overturning of Roe v. Wade.This Monday and Tuesday, Virginia lawmakers will vote on a handful of life bills. Feb. 7 marks “crossover day,” with each house concluding action on legislation aside from budget bills.On Feb. 6, the Senate will vote on SJ 255, a “Right to...

A political committee, funded in part by Senate President Don Harmon’s campaign that helped expand the Democratic majority on the Illinois Supreme Court, failed to file timely campaign reports as required by state law and didn’t disclose the bulk of its $7.3 million in spending until after the election. The committee — All for Justice — spent heavily on television ads in support of winning Democratic Justices Elizabeth Rochford and Mary Kay O’Brien. The commercials painted Republican opponents as virulent anti-abortion candidates, politically potent attacks given the U.S. Supreme Court decision that sent the issue of abortion rights to the...

I just completed Eric Metaxas’ latest book, Letter to the American Church, in which he masterfully takes apart the various excuses and justifications many Christians have offered for doing nothing—i.e. remaining silent—in the face of tyranny. The takeaway message of the book? We do not serve a God who expects us to keep our head down and stay out of trouble.In short, Mr. Metaxas’ book implores the churches in America today to do something more than the churches of Germany did in the 1930s when they sat by and silently watched the evils of tyranny unfold before their very eyes...

Looking at the horrific footage emerging from Turkey and Syria reminds me, once again, of the earth’s overwhelming power. All the Gaia-worship in the world won’t change that—although rising affluence and building codes can help. Eastern Turkey was hit in the night with a 7.8 magnitude quake, which is enormous. The Loma Prieta quake, which liquified the ground near the San Francisco Bay, destroying blocks of houses and apartments, while taking down part of the Bay Bridge and a freeway, was only 6.9 on the Richter scale. A second, 7.5 magnitude earthquake hit again in the morning. The first count...

Back from Africa: Francis Insinuates Benedict Supported Pseudo-MarriagesOn his February 5 return flight from Juba, South Sudan, Francis accused critics of exploiting Benedict XVI’s death but didn't mention Archbishop Gänswein by name.“Benedict's death has been instrumentalised by people who want to add grist to their mill. Those who exploit such a good man, so close to God… these people are unethical, they are people of a political party, not of the Church,” he ranted.Then, Francis took himself advantage of Benedict by insisting that rumours about Benedict's dissatisfaction with some of his decisions [such as forbidding Mass] were “false." When he...