Free Republic

A video of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis roaring with laughter has emerged, as the 2024 hopeful makes an apparent effort to loosen-up. The video, which first aired on C-Span, shows the governor engaged in a conversation with a man at a classic car show in Iowa on May 13. When DeSantis asks: 'I saw that you have like a 1955 Porsche in there. That one's nice. How much is that worth?' 'Ugh, we won't even talk about that,' the man responds. DeSantis was clearly tickled by the remark, and flung his head back to give a hearty-open mouthed guffaw. An...

The FBI conducted thousands of queries on digital data collected on U.S. citizens in 2021 and 2022 despite having no warrant and no justification under the FBI’s own rules, according to an internal report released on May 10.The audit, conducted by the FBI Office of Internal Auditing (OIA), was intended to examine the agency’s compliance with rules for querying data the government routinely collects on U.S. citizens under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA).FISA allows the government to collect electronic data, including phone calls, text messages, and emails of foreigners overseas, even if the communications...

If folks who had the means hadn’t left Chi-Town yet, get ready for the tax base to bleed my friends.Gooderer and harderer doesn’t begin to cover the good times they’ve voted in for themselves.The new Chicago mayor, long-time teachers’ union hack Brandon Johnson, had already raised the ire of the biggest local newspaper this morning with his want-ad for a deputy mayor.I don’t know what the Chicago Tribune thought they were getting with this guy, but they seem surprised and kind of pissed about it all the same.Editorial: On Brandon Johnson’s first day, he puts out a disastrous job description...

A Chinese stand-up comedian who goes by the name “House” has been fined $2 million for a joke he made which was deemed to take a mocking stance toward the ironically named People’s Liberation Army. Here’s the joke that got him fined:During the show, he began a skit about how he had adopted two stray dogs since moving to Shanghai.He went on to say that their chase after a squirrel one day reminded him of eight words, before he unleashed the controversial punchline, according to audio posted to Chinese social media site Weibo.“Fine style of work, capable of winning battles,”...

The leftist campaign to force Justice Clarence Thomas from the US Supreme Court let its inner clown out when the executive director of the AstroTurf smear group Fix the Court inadvertently released the names of its donors to a Washington Examiner reporter.Fix the Court has not only been a player in the current attacks on Justice Thomas, but they were also a major participant in the smear campaign directed at Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing.It all started innocently enough with Washington Examiner reporter Gabe Kaminsky taking a deep dive into the finances of the fake groups trying to...

Can’t move, won’t move. That’s increasingly the approach of Americans who are in the market for a new job. The share of job seekers who relocated to take up a new position fell to 1.6%, the lowest level on record, in the first quarter of 2023, according to a quarterly survey that’s been carried out by executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. for decades. Behind the shift in attitudes lies a post-pandemic surge in remote and hybrid positions, which has made it possible for more workers to stay where they’re living even as they change jobs. What’s more,...

In fact, on Monday, MSNBC beat Fox News in primetime in both total viewership and the key 25-54 advertising demographic. The Rachel Maddow Show, which now only airs on Mondays, defeated Hannity by over 500,000 viewers overall. The 8 p.m. hour, anchored by Will Cain, only pulled in 1.62 million viewer

Over the last week Ukrainian officials have been insisting that the long-promised counter offensive is delayed until the West can pony up more tanks, ammunition, artillery and other weapons. But, there has been a noticeable uptick in Ukrainian attacks on Russian positions. These assaults apparently were carried out as a symbolic gesture to appease Western demands that Ukraine do something to the Russians.You can tell that the Ukrainian attacks have been a bust by the very subdued reporting of the activity in the Western press. John Helmer of Dances With Bears provides a grim summary of the effort:On May 12,...

Illinois is forecasting that its program to provide healthcare to undocumented immigrants will cost the state $1 billion in 2024 – far more than the $2 million that Illinoisans were promised it would cost at the program’s inception, according to Wirepoints. In May 2020, Illinois became the first state to offer Medicaid for undocumented immigrants over the age of 65. Now-Congresswoman Delia Ramirez, then an Illinois state representative, sponsored the bill, and claimed the program would cost just $2 million per year. Unfortunately, this estimate was completely uninformed, with the program exceeding that in its first month. At the time,...

On this date in 1965, Israel’s greatest spy suffered an ignominious public hanging in Martyrs Square, Damascus. Eliahu Ben Saul Cohen — you can call him Eli(e) — was an Egyptian Jew who got recruited by Israeli intelligence to put his Arabic credentials to use in the cloak and dagger game. You could say he’d found his calling. After a spell establishing his cover story credentials in Argentina, he “returned” to Syria posing as a prodigal returning emigrant. There, he became the Zionist Richard Sorge. Brazenly infiltrating the ascendant Ba’ath party and Syrian elite circles as wealthy businessman “Kamel Amin...

A Temecula mother has complained that her 15-year-old daughter was made to read a sexually explicit play in drama class and is calling for a policy to prevent such instances in the future. Tracy Nolasco said her daughter, a Temecula Valley High School sophomore, had to read “Angels in America,” a Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Tony Kushner. The play, set in New York City in 1985, explores the AIDS epidemic as well as religion, race, politics, and homosexuality. Nolasco on Tuesday night, May 16, told the Temecula Valley school board that the drama describes sexual activity, sexual...

The idea seems to be to go through the walls of a building and blow up any nazis or money launderers or what not that might be hiding out there...

WASHINGTON, May 17 (Reuters) - Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis will officially enter the 2024 U.S. presidential race next week, according to two sources familiar with the decision, immediately becoming Donald Trump's biggest rival for the Republican nomination and shaking up a contest that largely has been one-sided. DeSantis will likely file paperwork declaring his candidacy on May 25 to coincide with a donor meeting in Miami, with a more formal launch the week of May 29, according to a source. The invitation for the May 25 event stated that donors would be put to “work,” an apparent allusion to...

Special Counsel John Durham’s report largely confirmed what Republicans have said for years about the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign. Durham found the FBI opened the probe, known as Crossfire Hurricane, with flimsy evidence, and detailed the FBI’s mishandling of the infamous Steele dossier, which falsely claimed the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin. Durham laid out in painstaking detail the FBI’s misstatements to a federal surveillance court to obtain warrants to surveil Trump campaign aide Carter Page and the Clinton campaign’s hand in spreading false information to smear former president Donald Trump as a Kremlin stooge. Much of...

Should children attend drag shows? Across America, libraries, schools and other public spaces are hosting children at “family friendly” homosexual- and transgender-themed story readings and performance exhibitions by sexually perverted men flamboyantly dressed as debauched women. At least 15 states are considering or adopting rules to stop such displays. But a lot of Americans think they are fine for children. A YouGovAmerica poll in April found that 2 out of every 5 Democrats support allowing children at drag shows, along with “just” 1 out of every 12 Republicans. There’s an appetite for this even in America’s “conservative” political party! Should...

Heartbreaking footage going viral on social media shows a mother explaining how she’s teaching her baby not to touch her without her express permission.

Likely CGTN will be the only way we will hear about this. I'm interested in knowing what these Asian nations are saying and what XI will be saying to them.

Eighty years ago, on May 16-17, 1943, an elite group of airmen, mostly from the Royal Air Force, but also with contingents from Canada and Australia, took off in nineteen Lancaster bombers from the RAF station in Scampton, Lincolnshire. Their mission was clear: Destroy three dams in Germany’s Ruhr Valley, thus taking out the hydroelectric power and the water supply to Germany’s industrial heartland, largely negating its value as a manufacturing center for the war effort. Recognizing their importance, the Germans had heavily fortified the dams, installing impenetrable torpedo nets below the waterlines to guard against an underwater attack, and...

President Biden would expand his 2020 margin of victory over former President Donald Trump if a rematch were held today, according to a new poll exclusively shared with The Post Wednesday. The WPA Intelligence survey of 1,571 registered voters found Biden, 80, leading 76-year-old Trump 47% to 40%. By comparison, Biden defeated Trump by 4.5 percentage points in the 2020 popular vote, while former President Barack Obama won re-election over Republican Mitt Romney by 3.9 percentage points in 2012. The poll, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5% and was conducted between May 10 and 13,...

WWE legend Billy Graham has died aged 79 after battling a 'myriad of health issues' while on life support. Graham had been in the hospital for a number of months dealing with a 'myriad of very serious health issues' and had been in the ICU for many weeks, according to a GoFundMe page set up to help him and his family. Graham died Wednesday after being taken off life support with his wife and daughter by his side, his family told TMZ.