Free Republic

"Never trust a man who lays his hand on his heart when he assures you of anything," goes the old axiom. That's why I never trust a Democrat who makes any promise ever about a federal agency or program. Take Medicare. In 1966 when Medicare began, it cost $3 billion. The House Ways and Means Committee estimated that Medicare would cost about $12 billion by 1990. Instead, it cost $107 billion and today costs the government close to a trillion dollars.So when Joe Biden and the Democrats assured Americans and Republicans in Congress that the $80 billion the president wanted...

Maryland hasn’t elected a Republican senator in nearly four decades, but according to new polling, that streak could soon come to an end. A Goucher College poll released Tuesday has former Governor Larry Hogan edging out either of his likely Democratic opponents. In a hypothetical race against Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, 44 percent of respondents said they’d back Hogan, 40 percent said they’d vote for Alsobrooks, and 11 percent were undecided. In a hypothetical race against U.S. Rep. David Trone, Hogan took 43 percent of respondents, Trone took 42 percent, and 10 percent of respondents were undecided. "What...

The Israel Defense Forces has been progressing with its internal investigations into the military’s failures in the lead-up to the Hamas terror group’s October 7 massacre, with new details revealed Thursday on the subjects and periods each unit is investigating. The probes are aimed at drawing operational conclusions for the military and will not look into the policies of the political leadership, avoiding a fight with government leaders who have insisted that investigations wait until after the end of the war against Hamas. The investigations, by units seen as having had a role in the failure to notice Hamas preparations...

CLEVELAND — Women’s college basketball continues to grab the nation’s attention at an unprecedented rate, and the metrics prove it. The Final Four game between Iowa and Connecticut on Friday was the most-watched basketball game ever aired on ESPN; an average of 14.2 million viewers tuned in, and the broadcast peaked at 17 million viewers. Iowa defeated U-Conn., 71-69, to advance to its second consecutive national championship game with star guard Caitlin Clark leading the way. The previous record for an ESPN basketball broadcast was 13.51 million viewers for Game 7 of the 2018 NBA Eastern Conference finals between the...

Employers in the US added more than 300,000 jobs last month - the biggest gain in almost a year - as the boom in the world's largest economy continued. The jobless rate fell to 3.8%, as most sectors, including health care, construction and the government added roles, the Labor Department said. It marked another month of stronger-than-expected growth. Economists had forecast job gains of about 200,000. Analysts said the strong figures could delay cuts to US interest rates.

Donald Trump has raised $50.5 million at a Florida fundraiser for his 2024 re-election campaign - the highest amount ever raised at a single event. Saturday's $250,000-a-ticket bash was held at the Palm Beach home of Trump supporter John Paulson, and slightly exceeded the $50m fundraising total organizers predicted. The enormous amount is almost double the $26 million Joe Biden's campaign recently raised at a New York City bash which boasted the added star-power of former Democrat presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. 'It's clearer than ever that we have the message, the operation, and the money to propel President...

On March 18, 2008, the Second Amendment hung in the judicial balance. That morning, the U.S. Supreme Court would hear oral arguments in District of Columbia v. Heller. The question was stark: is the Second Amendment “right to keep and bear Arms” an ordinary individual right? Or would the Court hold that the Second Amendment right is so feeble that the District of Columbia’s handgun ban could be upheld? The lead attorney, Alan Gura, had initiated the case since 2002. At the Supreme Court, I was one of the other three lawyers who joined Gura at the counsel table to...

Populist Peter Pellegrini has been elected president of Slovakia, succeeding the liberal Zuzana Caputova. Mr Pellegrini, 48, defeated the pro-Western Ivan Korcok, a former diplomat, with 53% of the vote. A former prime minister, he is an ally of Prime Minister Robert Fico, and shares the PM's dovish attitude towards Russia. Mr Fico and his allies now control Slovakia's parliament, government and soon the president's office.

Representative Madeleine Dean (D-PA) said Friday on CNN’s “News Central” that former President Donald Trump “would be a useful idiot” to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Dean said, “When we’re talking about this very critical subject, I can’t think of anything more starkly clear. Mr. Netanyahu, I believe, is waiting his days out because he would like to have the return of what I believe is a useful idiot to people like Mr. Netanyahu.” She added, “Mr. Netanyahu, after all, let’s think about this, he was not honest about how he was going to prosecute this war. He told us...

Vast swaths of the United States are at risk of running short of power as electricity-hungry data centers and clean-technology factories proliferate around the country, leaving utilities and regulators grasping for credible plans to expand the nation’s creaking power grid. In Georgia, demand for industrial power is surging to record highs, with the projection of new electricity use for the next decade now 17 times what it was only recently. Arizona Public Service, the largest utility in that state, is also struggling to keep up, projecting it will be out of transmission capacity before the end of the decade absent...

President Biden taunted former president Donald Trump Saturday for his evening high-dollar fundraiser — dissing the “bunch of hedge fund billionaires” who were gathering in Florida to support him. “This campaign is Scranton versus Palm Beach,” Biden said in a video posted to X. “Folks, you know Trump is down in Florida today raising money from a bunch of hedge fund billionaires who want him to cut Social Security and Medicare and their taxes,” he claimed in the 54-second clip.

A candidate running for Senate in New Jersey was ruthlessly goaded on social media after claiming the “climate crisis” was to blame for the Friday earthquake that rocked the tri-state area. Green Party member Christina Amira Khalil shared the controversial message just minutes after the quake, which was the strongest temblor to strike near the Big Apple in 140 years. “I experienced my first earthquake in NJ. We never get earthquakes. The climate crisis is real. The weirdest experience ever,” Khalil wrote on X.

Explanation: The arms of a grand design spiral galaxy 60,000 light-years across are unwound in this digital transformation of the magnificent 2005 Hubble Space Telescope portrait of M51. In fact, M51 is one of the original spiral nebulae, its winding arms described by a mathematical curve known as a logarithmic spiral, a spiral whose separation grows in a geometric way with increasing distance from the center. Applying logarithms to shift the pixel coordinates in the Hubble image relative to the center of M51 maps the galaxy's spiral arms into diagonal straight lines. The transformed image dramatically shows the arms themselves...

YOU'RE THE ONE Les tells the story proudly now, with an ending that few would have ever predicted when he was in high school. He remembers the turning point as though it were yesterday. Just a chance encounter and an offhand comment... but it changed his life forever. He had slipped quietly into the back of a classroom to wait for a friend that day. The last thing he wanted was to be noticed, but the teacher asked him to go to the board and work out a problem. Les pointed out that he wasn't a student in that...

President Volodymyr Zelensky, in an interview with national television on April 6, called on international partners to provide Ukraine with modern air defense systems to defend against Russian attacks. Russian troops have intensified their attacks during the spring, mainly targeting energy and civilian infrastructure. According to Ukraine's Interior Ministry, Russia has conducted around 30,000 strikes on Ukrainian territory in 2024. As Moscow increased its attacks, the shortage of air defense systems in Ukraine became more tangible, particularly in the territories proximate to the front line. "I will not tell you how many Patriot systems we have. I can say that...

A proposed sales tax hike to fund stadium projects in Kansas City failed this week at the ballot box. When pro sports teams don’t get the public funds they seek, some double down on a pitch to voters or go to legislators. Others threaten to move. Like a loss in the playoffs, voter rejection of a stadium tax plan will force the Kansas City Royals and Chiefs to reevaluate their approach. The April 2 defeat of a three-eighths cent sales tax to fund a new downtown Royals ballpark and renovate the Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium was almost assuredly not the end...

Two people have died and seven were injured in a shooting early Saturday at an outdoor mall in Doral, Fla., local authorities said. “The preliminary information that we do have from investigators is that there was some type of a dispute or altercation amongst patrons at a local facility within this commercial establishment,” Detective Alvaro Zabaleta of the Miami-Dade Police Department said in a press conference, referring to the late-night shooting that occurred at a club around 3:30 a.m. at the CityPlace Doral mall.

KYIV: Ukraine could run out of air defense missiles if Russia keeps up its intense long-range bombing campaign, President Volodymyr Zelensky warned in remarks aired on Saturday. The Ukrainian leader’s starkest warning to date of the deteriorating situation faced by his country’s air defenses follows weeks of Russian strikes on the energy system, towns and cities using a broad arsenal of missiles and drones. “If they keep hitting (Ukraine) every day the way they have for the last month, we might run out of missiles, and the partners know it,” he said in an interview that aired on Ukrainian television.

A California college president is vowing to get tough with anti-Israel student protesters terrorizing her campus. Roughly 150 students at Pomona College in Claremont demonstrated at an administrative building on campus housing school president Gabrielle Starr’s office Friday, then stormed the building and refused to leave, according to the San Bernardino Sun. Video circulating on X showed students calling on the school to “stop funding genocide” and berating police officers as “KKK.” They briefly occupied Starr’s office, according to eyewitness accounts. At least 18 students were reportedly arrested. Several of the students used “a sickening, anti-black racial slur in addressing...

Bible Prophecy clearly states that at the end of the age, the world will experience a significant increase in geopolitical turmoil, including at least three named wars, rumors of war, international distress, and three major military conflicts as outlined in Psalm 83, Ezekiel 38-39, and Revelation 19. Combined with the other "birth pangs" which are all seemingly converging within a single generation. According to Jesus, these signs of the times would signal the end of the current age. The major issue we have today with recognizing these signs is that the prophecies outlined in Scripture primarily only focus on the...