Free Republic

<p>If you answered “California’s high speed rail line to nowhere” you win an evening with Nancy Pelosi!!</p><p>Okay. That was blatantly false. She’d never agree to that and I shouldn’t have teased you with even the possibility – get your hopes up and all.</p>

There was a lot that Joe Biden did wrong during the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. He failed to get our allies out before the country fell to the Taliban, then leaving them and hundreds of Americans behind. Because of his failures, 13 young Americans who served in our military were killed. One of the other things that the Biden team did was drone strike a family and then tell all kinds of false stories about it, claiming that they had hit a terrorist. First, they said there were no civilian casualties. Then we found out ten people, including several children,...

The popularity of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has surged in recent months as he engages in important last-minute discussions with President Joe Biden about raising the federal debt ceiling, according to the latest YouGov poll.Almost half (46 percent) of voters now say they approve of McCarthy’s performance, marking a notable 10-point increase compared to January’s figure of 32 percent. Meanwhile, approximately 36 percent expressed disapproval, a small improvement compared with the 37 percent recorded four months ago.McCarthy’s popularity was drawn largely across party lines, with Republicans showing much higher approval of his performance compared to Democrats. The poll found...

A Marine who refused to get the COVID-19 vaccine released from more than 100 days in the brig as she awaits a special court martial... Federal court documents revealed today showing the FBI abused a foreign spying law to target Americans.. In Syria government forces repelling a breakout attempt by a group of jihadists from the US base enclave... More than 10 blasts heard in Ukraine's capital Kiev early Saturday morning... The Greek Election this Sunday... Turkish politics the third-place candidate in the first presidential election round Sinan Ogan meeting President... A federal magistrate judge deciding to continue detention of...

Republicans are at a fatal disadvantage in the ballot-harvesting game, and it is important to understand why.We understand the impulse among some Republicans to throw up their hands in frustration when it comes to ballot harvesting. They advocate rapidly deploying their own ballot-harvesting operations in advance of the 2024 election. Some have likened it to a nuclear arms race. Mollie and Mark Hemingway have recently argued that “…our only hope of getting electoral arms control is if both sides have nukes.” But the nuclear weapons analogy is deeply flawed. Nuclear weapons are arguably a legitimate means of waging war, whereas...

The National Press Club is probably best known for its White House Correspondent’s Dinner. This site prefers to think of it as the site of the Alferd Packer plaque, a memorial to a cannibal who avoided hanging. The plaque is rather unassuming, its simple polished brass declaring: “The Alferd Packer Memorial Grill — In Memory of Stan Weston 1931-1984.” Weston was the public affairs officer at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who came up with a 1977 contest to name the USDA’s new cafeteria. But hold that thought for now. Packer was born in Pennsylvania in 1842. He made his...

Manufactured racial animosity is only made possible by out-of-context clips and willing accomplices in Big Tech and corporate media.What happens when a white, pregnant physician assistant who just left a 12-hour shift in a New York City hospital is accosted and has her Citi Bike hijacked by a group of troublemakers who are black? The woman is put on leave by her hospital. That’s not a bad joke. It’s yet another real-life example that proves viral out-of-context videos, manufactured racial animosity, and Big Tech and corporate media’s willingness to amplify it pose a grave danger to society. On May 12,...

In a dramatic and unprecedented move, California issued a mandatory, statewide shelter-in-place order on Thursday after Gov. Gavin Newsom warned 56% of Californians — 25.5 million people — could be infected with coronavirus in the next two months.

HELSINKI, April 15 (Reuters) - Finland's much-delayed Olkiluoto 3 (OL3) nuclear reactor, Europe's largest, began regular output early on Sunday, its operator said, boosting energy security in a region to which Russia has cut gas and power supplies. Nuclear power remains controversial in Europe, primarily due to safety concerns, and news of OL3's start-up comes as Germany on Saturday switches off its last three remaining reactors, while Sweden, France, Britain and others plan new developments. OL3's operator Teollisuuden Voima (TVO), which is owned by Finnish utility Fortum (FORTUM.HE) and a consortium of energy and industrial companies, has said the unit...

Who's miserable and who's happy?The human condition lies on a vast spectrum between “miserable” and “happy.” In the economic sphere, misery tends to flow from high inflation, steep borrowing costs, and unemployment. The surefire way to mitigate that misery is through economic growth. Comparing countries’ metrics can tell us a lot about where in the world people are sad or happy. Hanke’s Annual Misery Index (HAMI) gives us the answers. My version of the misery index is the sum of the year-end unemployment (multiplied by two), inflation, and bank-lending rates, minus the annual percentage change in real GDP per capita....

BILLINGS, Mont. — A wind energy company was sentenced to probation and ordered to pay more than $8 million in fines and restitution after at least 150 eagles were killed over the past decade at its wind farms in eight states, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. NextEra Energy subsidiary ESI Energy pleaded guilty to three counts of violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act during a Tuesday court appearance in Cheyenne, Wyoming. It was charged in the deaths of eagles at three of its wind farms in Wyoming and New Mexico. In addition to those deaths, golden and bald eagles were killed...

Shareholders in the Walt Disney Company have a lot to be unhappy about lately. Anyone unlucky enough to have purchased its stock on March 12, 2021, has lost over 52% of their investment at yesterday’s closing price. Simply Wall Street comments:In the wake of The Walt Disney Company's (NYSE:DIS) latest US$15b market cap drop, institutional owners may be forced to take severe actions[.] (snip)Significantly high institutional ownership implies Walt Disney's stock price is sensitive to their trading actionsThe top 25 shareholders own 38% of the companyAnd that’s not all. The company announced yesterday that it is abandoning two huge projects,...

Canada has enthusiastically embraced euthanasia. And maybe that’s not surprising given that socialist countries must inevitably ration treatment, and the best rationing is accomplished by limiting the number of people who need serious care. However, many Canadians are now thinking of euthanasia, not just as a cure for untreated or untreatable illnesses, but also for homelessness and poverty.These numbers come from a Research Co. poll asking Canadians about their attitudes toward Canada’s expanding Medical Assistance in Dying (or MAID) program:One third of Canadians are apparently fine with prescribing assisting suicide for no other reason than the fact that the patient...

PBS wrote the following:The US Capitol Building in Washington DC:This building is so radioactive, due to the high uranium content in its granite walls, it could never be licensed as a nuclear power reactor site.Original: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interact/facts.htmlArchive: https://web.archive.org/web/20000609114742/https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interact/facts.htmlTherefore, anyone who works in the U.S. Capitol Building, but is afraid of radiation from nuclear power, is very ignorant of science and math.

Boston, Mass., May 16, 2023 / 13:00 pm The FBI and local police have opened an investigation after three mutilated animals were left on the property of a pro-life pregnancy center in Orlando, Florida, last week. On May 10, a staff member from the facility discovered the decapitated corpses of a “very large” chicken, baby lamb, and another “large bird” in front of the clinic, according to Bob Perron, executive director of the Catholic-based JMJ Pregnancy Center. When the staff member informed him about the dead animals, Perron thought it was a joke. “I mean, who would even think that...

Archbishop Elpidophoros of the Patriarchate of Constantinople’s Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America hopes to implement the jurisdiction-wide practice of girls serving in the altar and being tonsured as readers. This would include not just young children, but even students of the Archdiocese’s Hellenic College-Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, according to a resolution submitted to the Metropolis of New Jersey’s Clergy-Laity Assembly yesterday. The resolutions, which are intended to be passed on to the Archdiocesan Clergy-Laity Congress, read: Resolved: That the Metropolis of New Jersey Local Assembly convey to the Archdiocesan Clergy-Laity Congress the request to develop the role...

An owner of a restaurant that held a private event for the San Francisco Republican Party — the content of which reportedly made a San Francisco Chronicle reporter vomit — told SFGATE in an interview Thursday that he would not have hosted the event if he had known it was going to be as controversial as it turned out to be.

It was just like the old days: As New York wrestles with a race-tinged tragedy, Al Sharpton sends a nastygram. SNIP Yet Friday’s race-baiting, however deplorable, is also ironic. It may have benefited Sharpton’s interests — and certainly his ego — but it also undercut a black mayor struggling to govern an increasingly unstable city. Indeed, government in New York — even in Albany — is now overwhelmingly run by black, brown or otherwise minority incumbents. How does racializing a crisis help them?

[Catholic Caucus] Archbishop Paglia on relevance of 'Humanae vitae' today The President of the Pontifical Academy of Life offers his thoughts on a bioethical perspective that he says calls for a worldwide alliance among all the sciences for the future of the planet and humanity.By Vatican NewsA two-day Congress organized by the Jérôme Lejeune International Chair of Bioethics opened on Friday, 19 May on the subject “Humanae Vitae, the audacity of an Encyclical on Sexuality and Procreation”. In his introductory greeting to the assembly, Cardinal Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, emphasized...

Washington State University fired its head football coach Nick Rolovich and refused to accommodate his sincerely held religious beliefs, a lawsuit against the university argues.SPOKANE, Washington (LifeSiteNews) — A Catholic head football coach allegedly fired for refusing to violate his conscience over taking the abortion-tainted COVID-19 jab had two high-profile supporters accompany him during a recent court date for his lawsuit. Nick Rolovich is a devout Catholic who lost his job at Washington State University after he refused to take the abortion-tainted COVID jab; Democratic Governor Jay Inslee had mandated in 2021 that all state employees would be required to...