Free Republic

When Joe Biden finally leaves the White House, he is set to get a pay raise. Because of his nearly 50 years in federal office, first as a senator, then vice president, and now .. his pension will be at least $13,000 higher than his current salary of $400,000, according to a National Taxpayers Union Foundation report. “Joe Biden represents a unique situation. With his long tenure in Congress and subsequent years as vice president and president, Joe Biden stands to benefit significantly from both systems, potentially receiving a combined payout starting at around $413,000,” said NTUF’s Demian Brady, vice...

The real responsibility for California’s high insurance premiums lies in state politicians’ and the governor’s policy decisions. Most insurers say because of California’s high cost to rebuild, they can’t keep premiums artificially low any longer. And why are California’s rebuilding and building costs so high? The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA): As Ed Ring reported for the Globe, over 50+ years, “CEQA has acquired layers of legislative updates and precedent setting court rulings, warping it into a beast that denies clarity to developers and derails projects. When projects do make it through the CEQA gauntlet, the price of passage adds...

Riots broke out in a multicultural area of the English city of Leeds on Thursday evening, with hundreds of residents setting fires, throwing stones, and clashing with police. Horrific images poured out from the heavily Pakistani Harehills area in east Leeds, with a double-decker bus being burnt to a crisp, a police car overturned, and widespread chaos. The incident reportedly broke out after four children were removed from their families by social services, which apparently enraged the local population, The Telegraph reports.

Whistleblowers tell me that MOST of Trump’s security detail working the event last Saturday were not even Secret Service. DHS assigned unprepared and inexperienced personnel

Former President Donald Trump might not understand what is going on in Ukraine, according to the country’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, however he said Friday he is happy to bring the Republican nominee up to speed if he returns to the White House in 2024. Zelensky made his claim about Trump’s ignorance in an exclusive interview with the BBC in London, adding he was willing to work with anyone who was in power in Washington. “Maybe he really doesn’t understand what goes on in Ukraine, so we have to work with the United States,” Zelensky told the BBC, repeating his previous...

The 'Writing on the Wall' has been ignored for several months. The Israeli defense establishment is in a state of complete shock. Though the writing was on the wall, no one saw it coming from a couple thousand kilometers away. That is despite the fact that Hezbollah has managed to successfully strike Israel dozens of times with drones without being detected. The Houthis and an Iranian militia from Iraq have successfully hit parts of Eilat, including a naval base, using drones from late 2023 to mid-2024, without being detected. Israel has essentially outsourced its defense responses regarding the Houthis to...

A Vain Battle If there was ever a battle fought in vain, this was it. Or at least, so it seemed at the time. The year is 1924. Vladimir Lenin, the father of the communist revolution, is dead; over 900,000 people pass through the Hall of Columns during the four days and nights that Lenin's body lay exposed to the public. Josef Stalin succeeds him as the new leader of the Soviet Union. During the following thirty years, he would murder 50 million of his own people. Jews and Judaism would be one of his primary targets. He sets up...

Mr Giri rushed to the location with his team, while instructing locals over the phone on the dos and don'ts involving the snake. After a quick inspection, the officials quickly got to work, using a rod to carefully bring the snake down from the bush. They then placed the cobra into a rescue bag and released it into the wild in the presence of the locals and forest department officials. ''What a gorgeous cobra. Thank you for saving him.'' Another wrote, ''So professionally done as compared to so many videos online!!'' A third commented, ''it is so satisfying to watch...

Democratic Party officials and media deny that there’s any connection between their inflammatory rhetoric labeling Donald Trump a fascist, would-be dictator, and even Adolf Hitler and the attempt on the 2024 Republican candidate. But media executives must believe Trump supporters have a point or MSNBC wouldn’t have given Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski a 24-hour timeout Monday to put some distance between the shooting and the fare that Morning Joe has been dishing out for nearly a decade. Same with music industry executives who canceled Jack Black’s worldwide music tour after the funnyman’s bandmate told an Australian audience that his...

National Instant Background Check System (NICS) numbers show firearm sales for June of 2024 were down five percent from 2023. They are still over 1 million for the month. According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, this is the 59th month of over one million sales a month. If July sales are over a million, it will be five complete years of over a million firearm sales a month. May, June, and July are traditionally the lowest months for firearms sales during the year, although the pattern is not absolute. Specific events can increase firearms sales. The assassination attempt, which...

Ezra Klein: So last week on the show, I made the argument that Democrats should pick a candidate at the convention this year. That Joe Biden is capable of doing the job of president but that his campaign is not going well, that it is not clear, to me, at least, that he is capable of running successfully for president. This is the way political parties throughout most of American history have picked their nominees for president. But it’s a funny kind of suggestion, because it is somehow simultaneously novel and ancient. So what I wanted to do today was...

The greatest beneficiaries of violence. There have been four assassinations of presidents in American history, and every one of them has aided the Democrats. This is not to say that the Democrat party engineered the assassinations for its own advantage, but nevertheless, it’s true: each time a president has been killed, the Democrats were the beneficiaries. If Donald Trump had been murdered last Saturday evening, it would not have been the killing of a sitting president, but once again, the left would have reaped the benefits. When Abraham Lincoln became the first president to be murdered while in office, the...

Dear President, Please find below a summary evaluation of my recent discussions with leaders of Ukraine, Russia, China, Türkiye and President Donald J. Trump, as well as a few suggestions for your consideration. 1. It is a general observation that the intensity of the military conflict will radically escalate in the near future. 2. I personally witnessed that the warring parties are determined to involve themselves deeper into the conflict, and neither of them would like to make initiatives for a ceasefire or peace negotiations. Therefore we can assume that tensions will not decrease and the parties will not start...

Washington CNN — Multiple leading Democrats tell CNN they feel caught in what one described as a “doom loop,” with every move to keep President Joe Biden in or push him out further destroying their chances against Donald Trump. It’s breaking the resolve of even staunch allies. It’s feeding bad polls. It’s turning off more donors. It’s sustaining a media atmosphere where no matter what Biden does, he comes off looking like a failure. And for those who were hoping Biden would quit, the public and private pressure, several top Democrats worry, has been backfiring. “His last act will not...

Who green-lit the Trump shooting? On Saturday, July 14, a 20-year-old local boy with virtually no online footprint or history of political radicalism brought a ladder and rifle to the Pennsylvania grounds where presidential candidate Donald Trump was about to speak to supporters. The would-be assassin stationed himself on a low, unsecured, slightly sloped rooftop with a direct line of sight to Trump, a mere 130 yards away, and got off a shot that came within a hair’s breadth of killing the likely next President. A Secret Service sniper then eliminated the threat (but only after he got off a...

Government, Family, Military, Business, Healthcare, Education, Churches, and the Media. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: That if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. (1 John 5:14) Religion Forum threads labeled *Prayer* are closed to debate of any kind.

An Iranian-made drone sent by Yemen's Houthi rebels struck Israel on Friday, leaving one person dead and at least 10 wounded in a neighbourhood near the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv. The aerial strike — the first lethal Houthi attack in Israel — rumbled through the centre of the city, causing shrapnel to rain down and spreading shards of glass over a large radius. "We are holding an investigation today and in the coming days to understand exactly from where the threat was fired and what are the needed responses to defend the country and what are the attacking responses...

Less than a week ago, a lone assassin’s bullet came within millimeters of killing Donald Trump. Had it succeeded, the unrest and polarization we already endure in America would have gotten significantly worse. There will be endless theories and explanations about how this near miss will affect the election, inspire more violence, or stimulate calls for unity and calm. But what is it about Trump that has made him a target of relentless and unified defamation, or worse, from every established American institution for nearly a decade? Trump represents a movement. It is bigger than him, and it is bigger...

Should UNC-Chapel Hill, the flagship university of North Carolina, represent the diversity of the state? That is a question that seems to be on many minds. Because diversity does offer benefits, such as exposure to different cultures, interaction with others from different backgrounds, and opportunity for everyone, the answer usually comes back as an emphatic “yes.” And, of course, Carolina is known here as “the university of the people.” However, to thoughtfully answer the question, one must ask, “Represent the diversity of the state in terms of what? Ethnicity? Gender? Sexual orientation? Economic class? Viewpoint?” Depending on their politics, I’d...

Opioids, like morphine, are effective painkillers but have led to widespread addiction and serious side effects like respiratory depression, notably seen in the U.S. opioid crisis that claimed nearly 645,000 lives from 1999 to 2021. Researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz have identified a potential alternative, aniquinazolin B, from the marine fungus Aspergillus nidulans, which binds to opioid receptors and could replace opioids with fewer undesirable effects, after rigorous testing including over 750,000 calculations per substance using the MOGON supercomputer. Researchers at Mainz University have discovered a natural compound that could potentially serve as a long-term alternative to opioids and...