Free Republic

WASHINGTON—Just days after Kristi Noem took office as President Trump’s head of Homeland Security, she accompanied U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials on a predawn raid of several neighborhoods in New York City. “Live this AM from NYC. I’m on it,” she posted on Jan. 28 at 4:43 a.m. on X, with a photo of herself sporting an ICE baseball cap and getting into a car. The problem: The raid was still ongoing when Noem posted about it, undercutting the element of surprise, according to people familiar with the operation. Noem’s handling of that early raid was emblematic of the...

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made psychiatric medications a focus of his review of the country’s childhood chronic disease crisis, claiming the drugs have been “insufficiently scrutinized” and are addictive. Childhood psychiatrists insist the drugs, for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and depression, are nonaddictive and proven safe and say they are more concerned about young Americans unable to access psychiatric medications that could help. Kennedy emphasized his skepticism of these medications during his Senate confirmation hearings. “Fifteen percent of American youth are now on Adderall or some other ADHD medication. Even higher percentages are on...

On Monday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” host and NBC News Chief Washington Correspondent and Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell stated that Israel lacks a clear plan for Gaza in the future, “And that just takes attention away from the fact that Hamas keeps rejecting these deals as well, and, again, has.” Mitchell said, “[T]here’s so much anger against Israel right now, from the White House, unspoken, from our allies who say they were outraged, Jordan, France, Qatar, others, by these repeated attacks, which they see as, first of all, evidence that Israel is not thinking about the...

This holiday season, many of us will be shopping in malls, joining holiday gatherings at entertainment venues, frequenting restaurants for holiday events and attending services in houses of worship. All these events have one thing in common: they will be held in public places, often with easy access by anyone. What they also have in common is that they are soft targets. Soft targets are public locations that do not have any obvious security protections in place. This is in contrast to hard targets, which are well guarded and fortified. Airports fall within the group of hard targets, with the...

Former President Barack Obama was ridiculed Tuesday for saying a “divided media” keeps him up at night in a recent interview. Jesse Watters argued on “Jesse Watters Primetime” that Obama was being starved for attention following his comments on “CBS Mornings.” Obama was asked what keeps him up at night. “The thing that I’m most worried about is the degree to which we’ve now had a divided conversation, in part because we have a divided media,” he said. “When I was coming up, you had three TV stations. And people were getting a similar sense of what is true and...

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said on Sunday that nobody should be surprised that former President Trump is reportedly set to announce his 2024 run. During an appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” co-anchor Martha Raddatz asked Christie about Trump teasing a 2024 run during a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, which comes as multiple reports say his announcement is imminent. Share Tweet ... More Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said on Sunday that nobody should be surprised that former President Trump is reportedly set to announce his 2024 run. During an appearance on ABC’s “This Week,”...

In conducting its overreach, the government has solidified in the hands and minds of millions of American patriots, and populists the world over, the very message Jones has been spreading. Infowars founder Alex Jones has finally been forced to pay for his conspiracy theories. A jury has levied civil damages of $965 million on him for speculating that the Sandy Hook shooting was “staged with actors” in a ruling that may change the nature of defamation law nationwide Few are willing to defend Jones’ remarks about Sandy Hook, and for good reason. His abhorrent mischaracterizations may have inculcated in his...

Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) is associated with a greater capacity for selective and sustained attention in adolescents, while alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) is associated with lower impulsivity, according to a study. The results confirm the importance of having a diet that provides sufficient amounts of these polyunsaturated fatty acids for a healthy brain development. During adolescence, important structural and functional changes occur in the brain, especially in the prefrontal area, which plays a major role in controlling attention. On the other hand, omega-3 unsaturated fatty acids are known to be critical for proper brain development and function. The most abundant fatty acid...

The Ukraine war is good news for Democrats because it distracts from their unpopular domestic issues, an article in Politico magazine argues. “Dems catch a break from the culture wars: War in Ukraine and the domestic economic fallout have given Democrats a chance to focus there instead of on other issues that dominated 2021,” read the headline on the lead story by David Siders and Elena Schneider in the Saturday morning layout at Politico’s website.

Former President Trump is drawing attention after giving an interview in which he admitted to firing ex-FBI Director James Comey and suggested that doing so allowed him to remain in office for four years. "A lot of people say to me, how you survived is one of the most incredible things," Trump told Fox News host Mark Levin in an interview that aired Sunday night. "Don’t forget, I fired Comey. Had I not fired Comey, you might not be talking to me right now about a beautiful book of four years at the White House, and we’ll see about the...

Gina detailed how she turned to food as a source of comfort during her childhood. “I got really jealous of my sister, and I remember what made me forget that pain of being abandoned was eating — and by the time I was 10, I was already over 150 pounds,” she recalled. The reality star claimed that she also suffered physical and verbal abuse at the hands of her father as a young girl. “My weight started to cause problems for me because I started getting bullied a lot, so that led to me acting out and getting punished a...

Joe Biden is in England now, preceding meetings with European officials and the G-7.It didn’t start off well as Joe got attacked by a cicada. The cicadas actually grounded a press plane.President Biden gets attacked by a cicada before departing to Europe for the first foreign trip of his presidencypic.twitter.com/B9muQ3KcKO— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) June 9, 2021Then Biden and his wife later landed at Royal Air Force Mildenhall in England, where Biden met with U.S. Air Force personnel stationed there.Jill Biden (is she in charge now?) had to scold Joe to “pay attention.” She sounds like an old grandmother scolding a...

At Safeway and picked up my dinner. Standing in line minding my own business. Gal in front of me starts looking around and suddenly turns directly to my face "You need to back up!" she exclaimed. Slight LOL "I don't think I heard you" my reply "You are standing to close! You need to move away!" She hissed. "Okay" I responded. Walked past her and she says "Whuh!", place my dinner on stack of beers at front of the register and then exclaims "Well, that's..." I kept on walking. I don't need no shit off some thin lipped, mealy mouth,...

Pluto Channel on ROKU has several good movies available this month. Mickey Rourke stars in the quirky movie "ASHBY" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3774466/ Also they offer Clint Eastwood in "The Line of Fire", Sean Connery in "The Untouchables", and the family friendly film of "Hugo" for a Sunday afternoon view. A pleasant Sunday afternoon to all.

Following a dramatic deterioration in official diplomatic channels between the US and Saudi Arabia when over the weekend the Saudis threatened the U.S. with dumping billions in Treasuries if Congress were to pass a bill probing into their alleged support of Sept 11 terrorists in the aftermath of last weekend's 60 Minutes report on the classified "28 pages" from the Septemeber 11 commission, moments ago the Obama administration made a stunning admission, when for the first time it revealed on the record that the Saudis were the original source of funding for Al Qaeda. As Politico reports, Obama's deputy national...

....Obama will deliver a statement from Edgartown, Mass. on Thursday at 12:15 ...

Blinking Causes Brain To Go Off-Line 03 Jan 2013 New research from Japan suggests that blinking does more than stop our eyes drying out: it is an active process that causes the brain to go off-line, into a more reflective mode, before giving renewed attention. Tamami Nakano of Osaka University and colleagues write about their findings in the 24 December online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, PNAS. In earlier work, where they had invited volunteers to watch Mr Bean videos, Nakano and colleagues discovered that people's eyes blink when they need to pay less attention,...

Romney is stuck at dead center in the Opinion Polls. In order to move the Romney poll needle in a positive direction, why not encourage timid Mitty Romney to SEAL his Federal and State Tax Records when he announces who his Veep will be? In this way Romney would be calling Obama's Bluff, something that Obama has warned others not to do. The Veep announcement and the Sealing of Romney's tax records would give The Media a double surprise at a time of maximum Media audience. Sunday talk shows would then be forced to talk about Obama's sealed School and...

Media: Talk about the elite lagging behind a more sophisticated public. Newsweek, trying to overcome its slide into obscurity, thought it could grab attention by smearing Tea Party favorite Michele Bachmann. Big mistake. The smear came in the form of this week's cover story, which tried unconvincingly to depict GOP presidential candidate and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann as "The Queen of Rage," with a cover shot that made her look maniacal. But if anything, Bachmann comes across as Thatcheresque in her unmovable opposition to more deficit spending. Question her opposition a journalist may do, but don't make it out as...

Probably the most imprtant secular trend in recent employment data, one that has a far greater impact on the macroeconomic themes than Birth/Death and seasonal adjustment manipulated month to month shifts in the employment pool per either the household or establishment surveys, is the labor share of national income. In a 2004 paper from the St. Louis Fed, the authors make the following statement: "The allocation of national income between workers and the owners of capital is considered one of the more remarkably stable relationships in the U.S. economy. As a general rule of thumb, economists often cite labor’s share...