Free Republic

The House on Friday will make another attempt at passing legislation to avert a government shutdown, staging a vote on a revamped spending proposal that excludes the debt limit hike initially demanded by President-elect Trump, three sources told The Hill. The package would fund the government at current levels through March 14, extend the farm bill by one year and appropriate billions of dollars in disaster aid and assistance for farmers — the same provisions that were in Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) plan B proposal that failed on the House floor Thursday night.

It’s an idea straight out of the schoolyard: that you might one day accidentally count so high that you break the laws of math. A new preprint (that has not yet been peer-reviewed) seems to have done just that, however – and it could have huge ramifications for how we ought to understand infinity. It’s fitting that such a baffling result would have come from set theory: it’s an area with a reputation for being abstract and often counter-intuitive; it has its own esoteric alphabet and language; and it’s famous for results that seem either too basic to have even...

Texas taxpayers pay an average of more than $50,000 per pupil for the state’s government-run schools. Vance Ginn, an economist who runs the Texas-based Vance Ginn Economic Consulting firm, highlighted Tuesday on X that when maintenance and operations (M&O) and debt service (I&S) taxes are combined with current levels of outstanding debt, the total per-pupil cost is $50,334. The average private school tuition, meanwhile, is only $11,340 annually per pupil. In Birdville Independent School District alone, “Texas has taxpayers funding $42K+ per student at ‘public schools,’” wrote Ginn. “1) $15,125 per student for M&O and debt service. 2) $27,504 per...

What happened to knowing how many votes you have before making idiots out of yourselves... on national TV. If you don't have the votes, why vote at all? I can be dumb, so what am mising?

It was Christmas Eve 1881. I was fifteen years old and feeling like the world had caved in on me because there just hadn't been enough money to buy me the rifle that I'd wanted so bad that year for Christmas. We did the chores early that night for some reason. I just figured Daddy wanted a little extra time so we could read in the Bible. After supper was over I took my boots off and stretched out in front of the fireplace and waited for Daddy to get down the old Bible. I was still feeling sorry for...

Elon Musk waded into Germany’s election on Friday, expressing his support for a far-right anti-immigrant and anti-Islam party that's being monitored by the country’s domestic intelligence agency. “Only the AfD can save Germany,” the tech billionaire wrote on X, referring to the Alternative for Germany party. The German government declined to comment at its regular press conference on Friday. Europe’s most populous country is expected to vote on Feb. 23. On Monday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz's center-left coalition government collapsed after he lost a confidence vote. It is only the sixth time such a vote has been called in the country...

Party City, a longtime retailer and go-to source for many of party supplies, is closing all its stores and going out of business, according to a report from CNN. Company CEO Barry Litwin told corporates employees in a meeting Friday the company is "winding down" operations and and today was their last day working there, CNN reported. The retailer had more than 850 locations in the United States, according to its website, and had been in business for more than 30 years. “It’s really important for you to know that we’ve done everything possible that we could to try to...

Police are responding to an earlier stabbing in the Vulkan area of Oslo on Dec. 20. At least three people were reportedly injured following the incident in a store in the area. Police are heavily deployed in the area and have gathered witnesses in the Vulkan Hotel for questioning. Police have erected a cordon around the hotel and the incident site, both located on Maridalsveien Road. The suspect may be among the injured, but police have not released information confirming the suspect's whereabouts. Accordingly, the suspect may remain at large. A large police and emergency services presence is reported in...

House Republicans are planning to move forward with a last-ditch effort to avoid a government shutdown by voting on Friday afternoon to extend current government funding levels until mid-March, dropping a demand from President-elect Donald Trump to attach a debt limit increase to the spending package. The House will vote on a clean continuing resolution to maintain current spending levels until March 14 combined with $110.4 billion in disaster aid and economic assistance for farmers, according to lawmakers familiar with the plans. The spending package is the same bill that was shot down by the House on Thursday but excludes...

Why did Kamala Harris lose? According to a loud segment of the media, it was clearly the rampant misogyny and racism of a sick society. The fact that inflation nearly tripled from the Trump administration to the Biden-Harris term, that the cost of a mortgage was up more than 80 percent, that millions more illegal immigrants poured across the border without consequence, and that two major, intractable wars started could not possibly be the reason.

Abortion is often presented as a simple and safe solution to the perceived problem of an unintended, unwanted pregnancy. However, abortion kills innocent human beings and is an extremely risky procedure for the woman and her body. The effects of an abortion on a woman can be long-lasting and traumatic — especially when they see the bodies of their deceased babies after taking the abortion pill. Live Action previously published a report, entitled. “I Saw My Baby,” which documented the testimonies of multiple women who spoke about how they saw their babies after they induced abortions via the abortion pill...

Car plows into crowd at German Christmas market in suspected terror attack, leaving several injured and at least 1 deadA car plowed into a crowd of people shopping at a Christmas market in eastern Germany Friday — killing at least one and wounding several others in what officials are saying was a targeted attack.Horrifying video showed the driver ripping through the narrow pathways between the outdoor shopping village, in the city of Magdeburg, where dozens of people were gathered.The driver was immediately arrested after what authorities are calling a terror attack, MDR Sachsen-Anhalt reported. Police told the outlet that at...

A car drove into people at a Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg on Friday. Officials said they suspected it was an attack and that people were injured, but it was not immediately clear how many were harmed. The driver of the car was arrested, German news agency dpa reported, citing unidentified government officials in the state of Saxony-Anhalt. Regional government spokesperson Matthias Schuppe and city spokesperson Michael Reif said they suspected it was a deliberate act. Reif said there were “numerous injured” but didn’t give a precise figure. “The pictures are terrible,” he said. “My information...

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A case just taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court—Kerr v. Planned Parenthood—might just be the sleeper hit of the October 2024 term. At issue is public funding for abortion, something that pro-life states have been keen to limit for some time. The justices will consider the following question: Do Medicaid recipients have the right to sue—known as “standing”—over a state’s decision to bar Medicaid funds from going to abortion providers like Planned Parenthood? If the court’s answer to that question is no—effectively providing states a way to limit public funding for abortion—it would put a significant dent in taxpayer...

CV NEWS FEED // A satanic so-called “holiday display” is currently in the Minnesota State Capitol, according to recent reports. The office of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who does not personally approve of it, recently told a news outlet that the display is protected by the First Amendment. CBS News Minnesota’s WCCO News reported that the group Minnesota Satanists set up the display over the Dec. 14-15 weekend. A spokesperson for Walz told WCCO in a statement regarding the display: “The First Amendment means that he does not police speech in the State Capitol. That’s true whether it’s a religious...

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Kerr v. Planned Parenthood. At issue is a 2018 order by pro-life South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster directing the state’s Department of Health and Human Services to stop abortion facilities from receiving taxpayer funds from the state’s Medicaid program. The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is representing the South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. “We are pleased that the U.S. Supreme Court will take up Kerr v. Planned Parenthood,” said NRLC President Carol Tobias. “Taxpayers should not be forced into supporting or supplementing abortion facilities and states should not be...

Federal insurers should not reimburse patients seeking organ transplant surgery in China, the commission said in its new report.A congressional committee has offered several recommendations to the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government on how to end the Chinese regime’s horrific practice of forced organ harvesting, with measures that would discourage Americans from traveling to China for organ transplantation.The bicameral Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) released its 2024 annual report on human rights conditions in China on Dec. 20. The report, which is more than 300 pages long, documented China’s “massive failures to comply with international human rights...

Michael Tomasky was back on Morning Joe today, beating his dour, one-note samba: right-wing media is the root of all evil. Last month, we caught New Republic editor Tomasky blaming conservative media for Kamala Harris's defeat. He even claimed that right-wing media is more powerful than the MSM. As we wrote: "If only!"Today, Tomasky blamed right-wing media, singling out Rupert Murdoch for particular opprobrium, for Trump's current popularity, as reflected in majority support for his handling of the transition. Trump has nominated "unqualified extremists" across the board, and yet the public approves of the transition. He doesn't blame "people," he...

House Republicans on Friday began coalescing around a new plan to fund the government before the midnight deadline, preparing to vote on a temporary funding extension separate from other year-end priorities loaded into prior versions of the bill. The details were still being worked out Friday morning, lawmakers said, but the tentative plan is to split up votes on the disparate priorities and let them pass or fail on their own merits. That would likely mean a standalone vote on a “clean” extension of current government funding levels through March 14, passing on its own with bipartisan support. Then there...