Free Republic

Former Biden White House press secretary MSNBC host Jen Psaki said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the White House wanted Hunter Biden to stop talking in public after defying the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena to give closed-door testimony. Anchor Kristen Welker said, “Jen Psaki, you had this surprise press conference by Hunter Biden this week. Did it help, or did it hurt?”

Nearly three years after the violent breach on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a lawmaker presented FBI director Christopher Wray with a new theory about how people arrived at the Capitol that day. "Do you know what a ‘ghost vehicle’ is?" Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., asked during a Nov. 15 House Committee on Homeland Security hearing. "You’re the director of the FBI, you certainly should. Do you know what a ‘ghost bus’ is?" Wray said he wasn’t familiar with the term. Higgins expounded. "These (ghost) buses are nefarious in nature and were filled with FBI informants dressed as...

CNN anchor Jake Tapper said Sunday on his show “State of the Union” that it was “stunning” former President Donald Trump was quoting Russian President Vladimir Putin on persecution of political rivals. Saturday, at a rally, Trump said, “Vladimir Putin, of Russia, said that Biden’s persecution of his political rival is very good for Russia because it shows the rottenness of the American political system, which can not pretend to teach others about democracy.”

It may be a “magical time of year,” but what we all really need right now is a good dose of realism about Israel and Palestine.

Six weeks after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, American Democrats can no longer deny that their party has an antisemitism problem which, if left unchecked, may very well split the party ahead of next year’s elections and likely for the foreseeable future.To be sure, the Democratic Party has had to reckon with allegations of antisemitism multiple times in recent years, but this time it is wholly different, with direct implications for the party’s political viability — or even its survival in its current form.While Israel has long been a touchy subject for progressives, the overt antisemitism we...

When you think of a fast food chain, the usual suspects come to mind: McDonald's, Chick-fil-A, KFC, Burger King. In recent years, the restaurant industry has changed to referring to fast food places as quick-service restaurants (QSR), and the new-ish hybrid of fast food and casual-dining restaurants (like Applebee's) is called fast casual. Where the definitions blur is with regional fast food chains, meaning a QSR that usually started out in a particular state as a mom-and-pop shop and gained a devoted following thus enabling them to grow. Sometimes it's a few stores that don't cross state lines. Other times,...

E-bike goes on fire I'm seeing this a lot lately. A guy in NYC was killed last week when his E-bike went on fire in his apartment.... https://www.mensjournal.com/pursuits/cycling/e-bike-battery-fire-kills-18th-person-this-year-in-nyc

Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, is relying on Second Amendment arguments that his father once slammed as “deeply” troubling to escape conviction on gun crimes. On Monday, attorneys for the president’s son filed a series of motions to dismiss federal charges handed down by Special Counsel David Weiss. Among the charges Biden’s attorneys want thrown out are firearm charges that were filed on the basis of Hunter Biden purchasing a gun as a drug addict. Hunter Biden’s initial sweetheart plea agreement — which was derailed this summer after it fell apart in court — would have forgiven the felony firearm conviction...

Explanation: Where are all of these meteors coming from? In terms of direction on the sky, the pointed answer is the constellation of Gemini. That is why the major meteor shower in December is known as the Geminids -- because shower meteors all appear to come from a radiant toward Gemini. Three dimensionally, however, sand-sized debris expelled from the unusual asteroid 3200 Phaethon follows a well-defined orbit about our Sun, and the part of the orbit that approaches Earth is superposed in front of the constellation of Gemini. Therefore, when Earth crosses this orbit, the radiant point of falling debris...

NEW YORK (AP) — The top strategist for the embattled super PAC backing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ‘ campaign for the White House resigned Saturday night in the latest sign of trouble for the GOP hopeful less than one month before voting begins with Iowa’s kickoff caucuses. Jeff Roe, the top adviser to Never Back Down, is the latest senior staffer to exit Never Back Down, which has been the largest outside group supporting DeSantis’ candidacy. He announced his departure on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, hours after The Washington Post published a story focused on internal disputes...

Ni silence, ni déni : des violences sexuelles atroces ont été perpétrées par les terroristes du 7 octobre. Elles doivent être universellement reconnues, fermement condamnées, et leurs auteurs sévèrement punis. Témoignages glaçants des femmes engagées dans cette cause. Neither silence nor denial: atrocious sexual violence was perpetrated by the October 7 terrorists. They must be universally recognized, firmly condemned and the perpetrators severely punished. Chilling testimonies from women committed to this cause.

The US Army is facing a TikTok mutiny as Gen Z recruits are taking to social media to whine about low pay, 'sh***y' food and fitness tests. The brazen posts - by uniformed troops on US bases - represent an audacious challenge to top brass amid a recruitment crisis. The Army fell short of its target by 25 percent last year. One of the posts by military influencer Anthony Laster slams Army life for having 'No Privacy, The Pay Sucks, Sh***y Food, Disrespectful Leadership, NO SLEEP!' and has been viewed more than 600,000 times. Laster, from Chicago, has more than...

In July, an NBC News poll showed that American perception of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had soured considerably over a five-year period - and had done so partially along party lines. **SNIP** Well, the FBI has gotten the message loud and clear, apparently: Even after its involvement in the Russia hoax and the investigation that led to charges against former President Donald Trump, it still needs to do more to alienate roughly 17 percent of Republican voters. So, it’s reportedly made an important change, adding three letters to the LGBT acronym. According to TheBlaze, a leaked email allegedly sent...

Bad smells, loud talking and getting too close, too quickly are all major red flags when dating someone new, Americans told Fox News. “I think just being really friendly and touchy with other girls is a red flag,” Cassie, from Arizona, told Fox News. Joseph said it’s a red flag if a potential girlfriend starts invading his personal space. “When she’s getting a little too comfortable and kind of breaching the privacy zone,” he told Fox News. “And, you know, the individual barrier zone.” SNIP The most common red flag for men — with nearly two-thirds agreeing — is if...

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin dismissed as complete nonsense remarks by U.S. President Joe Biden that Russia would attack a NATO country if it won the war in Ukraine, adding that Russia had no interest in fighting the NATO military alliance.The war in Ukraine has triggered the deepest crisis in Moscow's relations with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and Biden warned last year that a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia would trigger World War Three.In a plea to Republicans not to block further military aid earlier this month, Biden warned that if Putin was victorious...

How do you train an army to fight a war that is different from any you've ever experienced? Support for Ukraine has played a vital role in shaping the progress of the war in Ukraine to date. Ukrainian efforts have heavily leveraged munitions and systems supplied by their allies - but training has also been a key area for allied support Unlike weapon systems however, evaluating the performance of NATO's training efforts are harder to determine. Reporting tends to focus on the quantity of troops going through these programs, but less reporting focuses on whether the training properly matches the...

I am not sure where to get vitamin and mineral advice particularly ratios. Pcp sends me to nutritionist who is clueless. Osteopathy? Naturopaths? I understand now that ratios od vitamins D magnesium and calcium have to be looked after to not demineralize bones or clog arteries. Your thoughts appreciated. I will leave this here and come back to it later.

Two mass shootings of U.S. World War II infantrymen in Belgium marked this date in 1944. It was the second day of the Battle of the Bulge, Nazi Germany’s surprise last offensive in the Ardennes. Hitler, in an inspired albeit ultimately unsuccessful gambit, intended here to burst through the thin-spread Allied line under cover of air power-negating foul weather, and still his western front enemies in time to fortify his east before the Red Army could destroy the Reich. Needing to inflict a demoralizing lightning defeat, Hitler authorized rougher treatment of POWs than was usual on the western front, resulting...

Perhaps knowing it will irk the liberal media, former President Donald Trump praised Vladimir Putin's rebuke of President Joe Biden as exposing "the rottenness of the American political system." "Remember, this: Joe Biden is a threat to democracy," Trump told his Durham, New Hampshire, campaign rally Saturday in a speech that aired live and in its entirety on Newsmax. "He's a threat."

Richie DeVillier steered his boat around floating carcasses. His son leaned over the edge of the boat, holding a calf's head above the floodwaters as they tried to lead the shell-shocked animal to higher ground. Many of the living cattle they had found so far would not survive the next few days. Their bodies were already bloated from standing in water for so long, the coarse black hair sloughed away in patches. The DeVilliers lost about 60 of their 300 cows and calves, plus seven horses. [snip] "We were artificially in the bowl that's created by the highway construction," he...