Free Republic

Fifteen years ago, I helped make the case for what became California’s Citizens Redistricting Commission. It was a first-of-its-kind body of 14 ordinary Californians, neither politicians nor their appointees. It was balanced with equal Democratic and Republican representation, charged with drawing fair districts after the 2010 Census. The argument was simple, as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger put it: “Gerrymandering has created an absurd reality, where politicians now pick their voters instead of the voters picking their politicians.” In this effort I often partnered with a type of Democrat one rarely sees these days: the reform-minded Democrat.

[snip] In an interview with Steve Schmidt, a founder of the disgraced Lincoln Project, asked whether the country has a “rhetoric problem” in light of multiple assassination attempts on President Trump, Schmidt pointed squarely at Trump: “I think that there's one person, beyond and above all others, who's responsible for poisoning the rhetoric in America. And that guy's name is Donald Trump . . . He's an insurrectionist, the foremost domestic enemy of the Constitution in American history. He is a vile and disgusting man. A convicted sex predator, and likely a pedophile.” Steve, we've got your "vile and disgusting...

A Florida doctor accused of fatally removing the wrong organ from a patient was recently arrested while working a shift for Lyft — much to the horror of his vacationing passengers. Thomas Shaknovksy, 44, was cuffed April 13 in Miramar Beach, Fla., on charges of second-degree manslaughter while carting around two customers in his silver Mitsubishi. An officer with the Walton County Sheriff’s Office hauled Shaknovksy out of his car and handcuffed him while pressing the suspect against the back driver’s side window, where one of his stunned passengers was sitting, according to police body-camera footage obtained by NBC News....

On this week’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said impeaching President Donald Trump will not be the Democrats’ priority if they win the majority in the House in November. Host Shannon Bream said, “I love to talk with you more about these redistricting fights. That Virginia referendum goes to its state supreme court tomorrow, and many others. But obviously, Democrats are feeling bullish on flipping the House. And this week, Axios reported that there’s a push for day-one impeachment — Democrats pushing their colleagues to begin building the case against President Trump. Now, in...

A shooting near President Donald Trump and several Cabinet members Saturday night is putting a spotlight on the Secret Service’s funding shortfall amid an ongoing standoff in Congress.

UFC President Dana White said being at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner during the shooting was “-–-ing awesome,” in a characteristically unfiltered reaction rapidly circulating on social media. White, 56, a longtime Trump ally, said he was seated “right in front of the president” when the gunfire broke out, and described the hectic scene to a reporter recording him on his phone. “It started getting noisy — tables getting flipped over, guys running in with guns and screaming ‘get down!'” he recalled. “I didn’t get down, it was -–-ing awesome. I literally took every minute of it in. It was...

A Los Angeles County deputy district attorney has revealed he is close friends with the parents of the gunman snared at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Paul Thompson, a Democratic major crimes division prosecutor, told the California Post he lives next door to the family but said Cole Allen “pretty much kept to himself.” He said the Caltech-educated gunman, who is accused of trying to storm the doors just yards away from President Trump, still lived with his parents at the address in Torrance. SNIP He continued: “I’m friends with his father. I know them to be really nonviolent and...

A chorus of bipartisan criticism is mounting over the security loopholes at the venue for the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner — while President Trump and his allies insisted Saturday’s shooting proves the need for his planned über-secure White House ballroom. Critics slammed the security loopholes that allowed guests to check into the historic Washington Hilton hotel without undergoing weapons screenings from the outside. Authorities say that’s how Cole Tomas Allen was able to sneak a shotgun, a handgun, and multiple knives into the building where President Trump, most of his cabinet, and many top members of Congress were mingling...

Well— it happened again. Thank heavens, they failed again. Some curious patterns are emerging from the three shooters. All three episodes share a common shape: a lone, heavily armed man, apparently motivated at least in part by politics, probing the edges of Trump’s protective bubble and exploiting a specific vulnerability in the environment. When does a ‘lone wolf’ become a pack? In Butler, Pennsylvania, shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks climbed onto an unsecured rooftop just outside the rally perimeter; in Florida, Ryan Wesley Routh built a sniper’s hide along the fence line of Trump’s golf course; and at the Correspondents’ Dinner,...

It is broadly agreed by constitutional scholars that the purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to constitutionalize the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Many in Congress initially argued that the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 granted citizenship and the rights and liberties attached to that status. Others argued that there should be explicit legislation, which resulted in the Civil Rights Act the following year. Still others thought the Civil Rights Act was insufficient because future majorities could repeal it. This concern became the impetus for the Fourteenth Amendment, which constitutionalized the Civil Rights Act.The citizenship clause was a...

Jimmy Kimmel, host of the Disney-owned ABC late-night show Jimmy Kimmel Live!, put on a mock White House Correspondents’ Dinner roast during Thursday night’s broadcast in which he fanaticized about President Donald Trump’s death in a joke aimed at First Lady Melania Trump. Firing off one-liners about President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Stephen Miller, among other White House officials, Kimmel set his sights on the First Lady. “And of course, our first lady, Melania, is here. Look at So beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow,” Kimmel said to the delight of the studio audience....

Washington establishment’s totally opposed to Trump. They don’t want anything that Trump campaigned on to happen. They don’t want an outsider coming in and succeeding and thereby demonstrating how it can be done. Nobody on the outside is supposed to be able to come in and reform Washington and improve it. The establishment has set it up so they have an exclusive, exclusionary club that very few people are capable or qualified to be part of, and that’s that. So the last thing they can afford is for somebody like Trump, who’s not a politician by trade, to come in...

HISTORIC PHOTO 10:15PM, President Donald Trump rushes into the Oval Office after an assassination attempt — analyzing intel on what happened Flanked by Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, JD Vance, Stephen Miller and more

Explanation: Inside the head of this interstellar monster is a star that is slowly destroying it. The huge monster, actually an inanimate series of pillars of gas and dust, measures light years in length. The in-head star is not itself visible through the opaque interstellar dust but is bursting out partly by ejecting opposing beams of energetic particles called Herbig-Haro jets. Located about 7,500 light years away in the Carina Nebula and known informally as Mystic Mountain, the appearance of these pillars is dominated by dark dust even though they are composed mostly of clear hydrogen gas. The featured image...

Children in Gaza are being raped and then blackmailed into joining Hamas or having their sexual abuse made public, investigators in the enclave say.

Both eruptions came from a sunspot region on the sun's western limb, AR4419. The first solar flare peaked at 9:07 p.m. EDT on April 23 (0107 GMT April 24), followed by the second at 4:14 a.m. EDT (0814 GMT) on April 24. These are the strongest solar flares we've seen in 78 days, according to solar physicist Ryan French. The bursts of radiation from the flares triggered strong radio blackouts on the sunlit side of Earth — the first affecting parts of the Pacific Ocean and Australia and the second impacting East Asia. The active sunspot region is putting on...

Ok now that all the sappy stuff is done, what the hell is the Secret Service doing? Sorry, gonna rant a bit here and drop the formal tone. Like, I expected security cameras at every bend, bugged hotel rooms, armed agents every 10 feet, metal detectors out the wazoo. What I got (who knows, maybe they’re pranking me!) is nothing. No damn security. Not in transport. Not in the hotel. Not in the event. Like, the one thing that I immediately noticed walking into the hotel is the sense of arrogance. I walk in with multiple weapons and not a...

26 April 2026 4th Sunday of Easter Consecration of the new altar, San Rafael Arnaiz Parish, Madrid Readings at MassLiturgical Colour: White. Year: A(II).First readingActs 2:14,36-41'God has made him both Lord and Christ'On the day of Pentecost Peter stood up with the Eleven and addressed the crowd in a loud voice: ‘The whole House of Israel can be certain that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ.’ Hearing this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the apostles, ‘What must we do, brothers?’ ‘You must repent,’ Peter answered ‘and every...

At a town hall in Oklahoma this week, former US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg responded to a voter's fears that Republicans want to put trans and gay Americans in concentration camps. "Well, we all know that can't be ruled out," he said. "Why don't we compare and contrast the Republican and Democrat position on the LGBTQ+ issues?" "Republicans want to keep trans folks out out women's sports, locker rooms, lavatories, and prisons," Buttigieg observed. "Republicans insist that LGBTQ+ individuals are abnormal and shouldn't be allowed to follow their dreams. The obvious way to prevent this would be to put...

A man suspected of shooting two Chicago police officers inside a hospital room Saturday morning had been a fugitive for weeks, had two violent felony cases pending against him, had escaped from electronic monitoring, and was listed as an absconder by the Illinois Department of Corrections, according to court records and multiple government sources. The officers were standing guard over the man at Swedish Hospital, 5140 North California Avenue, when he gained access to a gun and shot them around 10:50 a.m., CPD Superintendent Larry Snelling said. On January 11, (Judge) Lyke then gave the man permission to leave home...