Free Republic

Bill Clinton: Young Americans shocked to learn Arafat turned down Palestinian stateIf 'you walk away from once in a lifetime peace opportunities, you can't complain 25 years later when the doors aren't all still open,' says former US presidentBy ToI Staff 5 December 2024, 7:51 pmFormer US president Bill Clinton on Wednesday said young people in America today "can't believe" that late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat walked away from a Palestinian state during peace negotiations with Israel under his mediation as president..."All [young people in America] know that a lot more Palestinians have been killed than Israelis. And I tell...

NEW YORK - The jury in the Daniel Penny trial told the judge they couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict on the first charge of second-degree manslaughter, prompting the judge to issue an Allen charge urging them to make every effort to agree. One of the jurors was seen rolling his eyes as the instructions were read. The judge reiterated the responsibility of the jurors to reach a decision, explaining that "deliberations were not intended to be easy," but that they should "harmonize" their views and reach a decision. The defense has emphasized that the jury cannot deliberate on the second...

A more accurate headline would have been: “Joe Biden Pardons His Bagman.” Yes, I understand, the pardon was issued to Hunter Biden, who happens to be the son of the worst president in U.S. history, now leaving office in disgrace and humiliation. But the real reason Hunter Biden got the blanket pardon is not so much because he is Dementia Joe’s son. He got it because for decades he served as the family bagman – the guy who traveled around the world collecting millions in payoffs for the racketeering enterprise known as the Biden Crime Family. Do not doubt me....

Greg Kelly Calls for Hegseth to Drop Out, Backs DeSantis By Sandy Fitzgerald Pete Hegseth, defense secretary nominee, has "serious baggage" and is not the right pick, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is the "perfect fit" that President-elect Donald Trump needs, Newsmax's Greg Kelly said. "No one's perfect, but it's a perfect fit," Kelly said Wednesday on his program, "Greg Kelly Reports," about Florida's Republican governor. "Administrating the Pentagon, the biggest federal bureaucracy, and making it lethal again and not woke and all those things. I think it's a perfect fit." Kelly said he did not support DeSantis' run for...

Pete Hegseth is being Kavanaughed. And the only people dumb enough to fall for it are Republican senators. I was willing to hear arguments that Hegseth wasn’t the best choice for Secretary of Defense. In his 40s, he’s on his third marriage, and while the rape allegation from his visit to a conservative conference in Monterey is clearly false, I was wide open to the argument that his actions demonstrated poor judgment. I was prepared to hear an argument. Like many combat veterans, Hegseth had some post-war chaos in his life. Discussion was merited. But the more these arguments have...

oston City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson was arrested today by the feds on public corruption charges that saw her allegedly “embrace a culture of cashing in” by stealing thousands from taxpayers in an “egregious” kickback scheme at City Hall — allegations that have the mayor calling for her resignation. Fernandes Anderson, 45, was indicted on five counts of aiding and abetting wire fraud and one count of aiding and abetting theft concerning a program receiving federal funds, according to court records and a publicly available indictment. She is set to be arraigned at the Boston federal courthouse on Friday at...

AUSTIN — Speaker Dade Phelan said Friday he will not seek a third term as leader of the Texas House. Phelan was opposed by a majority of House Republicans, including many who will be serving their first term when the Legislature convenes in January, but had insisted for months that he would prevail. Friday morning, he withdrew, potentially clearing space for a supporter, Rep. Dustin Burrows of Lubbock, to replace him in the race for speaker. Burrows filed paperwork to run for speaker Thursday. Phelan did not endorse a candidate in his withdrawal statement. “By stepping aside, I believe we...

The study examined how EV growth in the western United States will impact the regional electric grid by 2035. If current trends persist, with the majority of charging occurring at home overnight, peak electricity demand could surge by up to 25%. This increase would necessitate significant investments in new generation and storage capacity, likely involving natural gas—a counterproductive measure for decarbonization efforts. Optimizing the placement of public charging stations has been a focus of research, but long-term solutions require accurate modeling of charging behaviors, including where, when, and how frequently drivers charge their vehicles.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Democrat Kamala Harris tried to run away from her beliefs and policies as fast as she could.Open borders, abolishing fracking, health care for illegals, higher taxes, and forcing people to buy electric cars are not popular policies, so she had to lie.We are constantly told that James Carville is a very smart Democrat strategist. I have not seen evidence of this intelligence. Throughout the 2024 campaign, Carville watched Kamala and continually said she was going to win. He did not lecture the campaign about how stupid they were. In late October, Carville said, in a...

The West should cooperate with Russia “for the sake of the universe” because the Kremlin will use “any means” to defend itself, the Russian foreign minister has said.Sergey Lavrov made the warning in a 90-minute interview in Moscow with US talk show host Tucker Carlson that has been criticised as a gift for the Kremlin’s propaganda machine.“They must understand that we would be ready to use any means not to allow them to succeed in what they call a strategic defeat of Russia,” Mr Lavrov said.Mr Lavrov was talking two weeks after the Kremlin unveiled a new intermediate-range missile called...

The proposals by three key advisers, including Trump's incoming Russia-Ukraine envoy, retired Army Lieutenant-General Keith Kellogg, share some elements, including taking NATO membership for Ukraine off the table. Trump's advisers would try forcing Moscow and Kyiv into negotiations with carrots and sticks, including halting military aid to Kyiv unless it agrees to talk but boosting assistance if the Russian President refuses. When asked about his view of Donald Trump, who is set to return to the White House next month, Lavrov described him as 'a very strong person, a person who wants results, who doesn't like procrastination on anything.' But...

One of the country's largest health insurers has reversed its decision to no longer pay for anesthesia care in certain states if the surgery or procedure goes beyond a particular time limit. The original move by Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, which would have started next year, alarmed doctors and policymakers. "There has been significant widespread misinformation about an update to our anesthesia policy. As a result, we have decided to not proceed with this policy change," the company said in a statement to NPR on Thursday afternoon. "To be clear, it never was and never will be the policy...

Washington — House Republicans on Thursday blocked two Democratic resolutions that would have compelled the House Ethics Committee to release a potentially damaging report on its investigation into former Rep. Matt Gaetz, voting to refer the matter back to the committee. Democratic Reps. Sean Casten of Illinois and Steve Cohen of Tennessee introduced twin privileged resolutions, forcing floor action within two legislative days. In a 206 to 198 vote, all but one Republican voted to refer Casten's resolution back to the Ethics Committee. Cohen's resolution met the same fate in a 204 to 198 vote, with one Republican voting with...

If you would hear it from the liberal internationalists, the battle for the future of democracy is being fought in Tbilisi. There, protestors are facing off with – in Brussels’ telling – a pro-Kremlin gang eager to drag Georgia into Russia’s orbit. The European Union, it claims, is supportive of Georgia taking a democratic path. But Brussels does not want a democracy – it wants a client state. How did we get here? It started when the Georgian government (now opposition) blundered into a major war with Russia, back in 2008. Georgia lost that war, and the government was resoundingly...

TikTok's bid to overturn a law which would see it banned or sold in the US from early 2025 has been rejected. The social media company had hoped a federal appeals court would uphold its argument that the law was unconstitutional. TikTok's lawyers told the court in September that a ban would have a "staggering" impact on the free speech of its 170 million US users. But the court ruled the law "was the culmination of extensive, bipartisan action by the Congress and by successive presidents." The law was "carefully crafted to deal only with control by a foreign adversary,...

Democratic city councilor in Boston, Tania Fernandes Anderson, was arrested on Friday morning on charges of funneling tax dollars through federal employees to hide her personal debts. Anderson, a former illegal immigrant, was arrested on charges of five counts of aiding and abetting wire fraud and one count of aiding and abetting theft concerning a program receiving federal funds.

With only a little over 40 days left of his disastrous presidency, Joe Biden will stumble out of office ranked by voters as our worst modern president. His obscene pardon of his criminal son Hunter did not help his standing. J.L. Partners polled 1,006 registered voters and asked them to rank Biden and every other president reaching back to Richard M. Nixon. Biden scored lower than Nixon. “Some 44 percent placed [Biden] as one of the worst two, while only 14 percent placed him in the top two, giving him a net score of 30 points underwater,” reports the Daily...

There are at least four steps Trump can take immediately to make good on campaign promises to vanquish DEI from the federal bureaucracy. According to the White House, “hours after taking the oath of office,” President Joe Biden embarked on an ambitious “day one,” “whole of government” agenda to “advance racial equity.” What followed was a shock-and-awe program of racial preferences. During his term, Biden signed three signature pieces of legislation — the American Rescue Plan Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act — which gave certain preferred racial groups access to programs, benefits, and special treatment,...

Liberals often deny the existence of the Deep State. Thus we see columns like this, in the New York Times: "What Happens When You Fight a ‘Deep State’ That Doesn’t Exist." And this one by David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker: "There Is No Deep State." But on today's episode of CNN This Morning, host Kasie Hunt acknowledged something that is effectively a synonym for the Deep State. Describing the challenges facing Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy in their Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE] undertaking to render the federal government more efficient and less costly, Hunt said: "There is...

Europe’s ultra-powerful new WEAVE telescope, undergoing its inaugural ‘first-light’ instrument activation, recorded a collision between galaxies in a region of deep space called Stephan’s Quintet, where one of the galaxies was traveling at two million miles per hour. Designed to study the composition of stars and galaxies, the William Herschel Telescope is a 20-million Euro collaboration between France, Italy, the UK, the Netherlands, and Spain, with the latter hosting the actual facility in La Palma. The facility’s Enhanced Area Velocity Explorer (WEAVE) wide-field spectrograph’s Large Integral Field Unit (LIFU) is the first of the telescope’s instruments to be activated and...