Free Republic

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci defended “gain-of-function” research in 2012 — wherein scientists extract viruses from the wild and engineer them to infect humans in order to study potential therapeutics including vaccines — as research worth risking a pandemic over. “In an unlikely but conceivable turn of events, what if that scientist becomes infected with the virus, which leads to an outbreak and ultimately triggers a pandemic?” Fauci wrote in a paper reported on by The Australian. “Scientists working in this field might say — as indeed I have said — that the benefits...

A retired research assistant professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia died of multiple stab wounds before firefighters found in his body in the trunk of a burning car Friday. Boone County Medical Examiner Valerie Rao said after an autopsy that Jeong H. Im, 72, of Columbia was stabbed several times, but she declined to elaborate. MU police yesterday named Im as the victim. His body was found in the trunk of his burning white, 1995 Honda inside the Maryland Avenue parking garage, MU police Capt. Brian Weimer said. The case was under investigation by the Mid-Missouri Major Case Squad. No...

Saul Alinsky was a brilliant man. Evil, but brilliant. Unfortunately, whether we like it or not, everyone on the Left from the President on down is playing by his rules in the political arena. Not all liberals have read his book or know his name, but his tactics have become universal. Sadly for conservatives, when two evenly matched forces go head-to-head outside of a fairy tale, the side that tries to play nice usually ends up with its head in a box. So, don't lie or become an evil person like Alinsky, but learn from what he wrote and give...

On Wednesday evening, moments after finishing a summit meeting with African leaders at the State Department, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff delivered a stark message to President Obama as they rode back to the White House in Mr. Obama’s limousine. The Kurdish capital, Erbil, once an island of pro-American tranquillity, was in the path of rampaging Sunni militants, the chairman, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, told the president. And to the west, the militants had trapped thousands of members of Iraqi minority groups on a barren mountaintop, with dwindling supplies, raising concerns about a potential genocide. With American...

Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko has died after being shot at his home in Kiev, according to police. Mr Babchenko, 41, was reportedly found bleeding in their apartment block by his wife and died in an ambulance. After writing about a crashed Russian military plane in 2016, Mr Babchenko said he received death threats and left his home country. He previously worked as a presenter on Ukrainian channel ATR TV, and has written about his military service. Ukrainian law enforcement confirmed his death in a Facebook post, written in Ukrainian. Kiev police chief Andriy Kryshchenko also told the media they suspected...

A 3,300-year-old treasure trove of gold found in northern Germany has stumped German archeologists. One theory suggests that traders transported it thousands of miles from a mine in Central Asia, but other experts are skeptical. Archeologists in Germany have an unlikely new hero: former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. They have nothing but praise for the cigar-smoking veteran Social Democratic politician. Why? Because it was Schröder who, together with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, pushed through a plan to pump Russian natural gas to Western Europe. For that purpose, an embankment 440 kilometers (275 miles) long and up to 30 meters (100 feet)...

A venture capitalist and political fundraiser was sentenced today to 144 months in federal prison for falsifying records to conceal his work as a foreign agent while lobbying high-level U.S. government officials, evading the payment of millions of dollars in taxes, making illegal campaign contributions, and obstructing a federal investigation into the source of donations to a presidential inauguration committee.Imaad Shah Zuberi, 50, of Arcadia, California, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Virginia A. Phillips, who also ordered him to pay $15,705,080 in restitution and a criminal fine of $1.75 million.In November 2019, Zuberi pleaded guilty to a three-count information...

If, as expected, Mitt Romney wins his race for a Senate seat from Utah he may become the most powerful man in the United States Senate. As many of us remember, Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts, ran for president in 2012 and lost to Barack Obama. It wasn’t one of those totally humiliating losses—the map did not turn blue—but we assumed Mitt Romney would fade into history. Well, maybe not. The seat will remain Republican-held for President Trump come January of 2019, but this one could very well turn out to be the swing vote in the Senate. If Democrats...

More than 4 million people who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 did not vote this year. But by applying new voter science, Obama nudged enough replacements in key states — many who were rare or first-time voters — to give him his margin of victory (leveraged even larger by the Electoral College). Years of stealthy multimillion-dollar efforts paid off forAmerica’s left in the 2008 and 2012 victories by President Barack Obama. Using new voter science to get rare and first-time voters to go to the polls, the races have changedAmerica’s electorate — those who make the country’s decisions by...

Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid heaped praise on Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, in a recent podcast, raising questions about the former Senate Democratic leader's suggestion during the 2012 presidential campaign that the latter didn't pay his taxes. Reid told the Salt Lake Tribune that he and Romney had a "make up" meeting of sorts after Romney lost his presidential bid as the Republican party's nominee.

The BBC and the Associated Press (AP) recently reported that Chinese authorities prevented their journalists from visiting mineshafts and bat caves in China’s Yunnan Province, where a team of Chinese scientists conducted research on the source of the CCP virus, which sparked the COVID-19 pandemic.Meanwhile, the World Health Organization will send a team of scientists to China this month to investigate the origin of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, known by the scientific name SARS-CoV-2. But the international community has questioned WHO’s role in enabling the Chinese regime to conceal the spread of the virus in the early stages...

Michael O’Hanlon — an appointee to the Central Intelligence Agency External Advisory Board under the Obama-Biden administration — visited a Chinese Communist Party-run think tank identified by the U.S. government as conducting “undercover intelligence gathering” operations and seeking to coerce foreign actors into backing the Chinese Communist Party’s “preferred policies.” Also at the Director of the Brooking Institute’s Foreign Policy Research Team and adjunct professor at Georgetown and Columbia Universities, O’Hanlon visited the China Association for International Friendly Contact (CAIFC) on August 23rd, 2012 – the same year his Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) External Advisory Board stint ended. Under President...

In 59 Philadelphia precincts, Mitt Romney received zero votes.

From The Western Center for Journalism in a piece entitled, "Spanish Company Will 'Count' American Votes Overseas In November,' they state the following in this excerpt: "When the Spanish online voting company SCYTL bought the largest vote processing corporation in the United States, it also acquired the means of manufacturing the outcome of the 2012 election. For SOE, the Tampa based corporation purchased by SCYTL in January, supplies the election software which records, counts, and reports the votes of Americans in 26 states-900 total jurisdictions-across the nation. And if that doensn't make you squirm, George Soros is closely associated with...

During his campaign rallies, President Donald Trump proclaimed, "We got 'em all" or "We have it all!" In the coming weeks -- if not days -- Americans will find out specifically what he means. Those specifics promise to shake Americans to their core by revealing years of entrenched political corruption reflected in electoral fraud. Lawyer Sidney Powell is providing a preview. Powell, who apparently had been helping Trump's legal team prepare a case against alleged election fraud, told Howie Carr, a conservative radio host in Boston, on Friday: "We've got a number of smoking guns -- and we may...

For years, many Republicans and conservatives have charged that President Barack Obama was shielding embarrassing intelligence and policy details about Iran in order to support the nuclear deal reached last year. With Donald Trump's upset victory, the party of Lincoln will have an opportunity to declassify and disclose this information. While no decisions have been made, two early picks to Trump's cabinet suggest this is going to happen. Let's start with retired general Michael Flynn, the next president's choice to be national security adviser. Flynn served for two years as Obama's director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2012 to...

Earlier this week, the bitcoin community was shocked when a digital wallet containing roughly $1 billion in bitcoin...was emptied by an unknown individual. The Department of Justice announced on Thursday that it had seized the wallet’s contents as part of a civil forfeiture case targeting the Silk Road. The government said it retrieved the roughly 70,000 bitcoins with the help of an unnamed hacker, whose identity is known to the government but who is simply referred to as “Individual X” in court documents. “Individual X” allegedly hacked the Silk Road’s payments system some time in 2012 or 2013. The government...

Interesting buzz on twitter and beyond that the same software used in Michigan was used extensively in 2012 and Romney really won. Forget if BHO is a NBC, what if he really did not win?

CNSNews.com)- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) told a recent gathering of the Women’s Political Committee that the spirits of suffragists Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Alice Paul spoke to her at the White House. Pelosi said she heard them say: “At last we have a seat at the table”. A video recently posted on Youtube shows Pelosi speaking in May describing her first meeting with President Bush in the White House after becoming part of the Democratic House leadership. In the video Pelosi says, “He’s (Bush) saying something to the effect of we’re so glad to welcome...

It really can’t get much worse. Now the individuals who are releasing the Biden tapes and documents claim the Bidens were responsible for offering up CIA agents in China. . . . According to the report, the Bidens provided the identities of large numbers of CIA agents to the CCP as part of their relationship. This is the first we have heard of this and are currently unable to confirm this but this is a very big deal if corroborated.