Free Republic

24 hours before France goes to the polls in the European Parliament elections the Yellow Vests will again take to the streets of France. The numbers are down. Both the government and the Yellow Vests "The Yellow Number" agree but their statistics are vastly different. 15,500 if you believe the government's version of Week 27 but 42128 at 274 locations according to the Yellow Vests number. What the numbers will be this week remains to be seen. On the political front National Rally leader Marine Le Pen appealed for Yellow Vests support during the past week......

After centuries of tradition, it has become somewhat controversial for a woman to take the last name of her husband. Apparently some woman believe that is is demeaning to take the surname of the man she is marrying. This results in the husband and the wife having different surnames - which seems awkward to me. It would be even more awkward if the husband took the surname of his wife. Right or wrong, the man would have his masculinity questioned and would be the butt of jokes. Nobody ever makes fun of a woman because she changed her surname to...

In Manhattan federal court, District Judge Edgardo Ramos dismissed Trump's lawyers' objection to breaching his privacy and ordered Douche Bank and Capital One to turn over his records to two House of Representatives committees. Douglas Letter, general counsel for the House of Representatives, praised the decision, calling it "integral to proving that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. Admittedly, the Mueller investigation failed to find any evidence that Trump colluded with Russia, but that effort was rushed, under-manned and under-funded. That's why we must take over and ensure that no stone is left unturned in pursuit of...

Chicago developer Sterling Bay is getting ready to start construction on 30 apartments, and the groundbreaking will be held in an unusual place: within the walls of a new factory on Chicago’s Southwest Side. Workers in the South Lawndale plant next week will begin making modules that will be assembled this summer into 10 three-flat apartment buildings on vacant lots on Chicago’s Near West Side. They’ll frame out the structures and add drywall, plumbing, electrical, and even countertops and cabinets before pushing them onto trucks for delivery to the sites. If all goes according to plan, the first three-flat will...

I meant to post something last night, really, but we had a crisis involving the home cooling system suddenly not working and endangering my 89-year old mother (who has a history of heart failure). Thank G-d it's fixed now, but I realize just a prolonged power outage at the wrong time of year could be fatal. Anyway, yes, today is my 20th anniversary as Free Republic's you-know-what in the punch bowl, as well as its most grumpy and offensive member. I first signed up to defend Israel from the freaking NAZIS who were infesting the site back then. Eventually I...

The Utah Supreme Court has suspended a city judge for making "shirty and politically charged" comments from the bench and posting "indelicate" criticism online about President Donald Trump. Judge Michael Kwan will serve a six-month suspension without pay for repeatedly violating the Utah Code of Judicial Conduct. In his 21 years as a Taylorsville Justice Court judge, the Judicial Conduct Commission has issued Kwan two letters of education and the Supreme Court has publicly reprimanded him twice for various violations. One of those reprimands involved Kwan's "crass in-court reference to sexual conduct and a former president of the United States,"...

A review of Michael Malice's new book, The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics.

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats says the nation's spy agencies will provide the Justice Department all appropriate information for its review of intelligence activities related to Russian interference in the 2016 election. President Donald Trump claims his campaign was the victim of "spying" and has given Attorney General William Barr full authority to publicly disclose still-secret information collected during the investigation. Some former intelligence officials and Democrats worry that Barr will cherry-pick intelligence to paint a misleading picture about the roots of the probe.

Last week, police arrested two teenagers, Josue Fuentes-Ponce and Joel Escobar, and charged them with the murder of 14 year-old Ariana Funes-Diaz. She was killed in a tunnel, beaten with a baseball bat and slashed with a machete. She was found naked. Reportedly, the killers, members of MS-13, ordered her to strip before they murdered her. According to authorities, Fuentes-Ponce and Escobar killed the girl because they were worried she would report them to police. She had lured a man to Northwest Washington, D.C., where he was beaten, robbed, and interrogated about his gang affiliations. This was not the first...

A tweet showing aggressively anti-Trump actor John Cusack sitting down during a military salute at the Cubs’ Wrigley Field raised some eyebrows yesterday: “Here’s [John Cusack] staying firmly seated during tonight’s military salute at Wrigley Field.” John clearly did NOT like getting called out. He instantly blocked the original poster. And then he went absolutely HAYWIRE. The man managed to argue that he was simply not standing YET, that patriotism is for chumps, and that Wrigley Field is promoting the military industrial complex, all in one very twisted twitter rampage

“Oh god, I’m scared,” David Letterman says. He’s pacing backstage before his interview with Kanye West for the first episode of his Netflix show’s second season. The first season of My Next Guest Needs No Introduction kicked off with President Barack Obama, but Letterman seems genuinely more nervous about sitting down with Kanye. The hour-long conversation that follows—this episode along with four others all start streaming next Friday, May 31—is not only one of the best interviews Letterman has ever conducted, it’s also one of the most coherent and engaging interviews Kanye has ever given, even if it does go...

Today’s Campaign Update, Part II (Because The Campaign Never Ends) You seriously just cannot make this stuff up. – In the minds of any thinking and honest and well-meaning person, an effort to declassify a bunch of documents so that the American people can judge for themselves the truth about any matter is an admirable, even patriotic act of public transparency. But for Democrat politicians in Washington, DC, and Adam Schiff specifically, that’s not the narrative. Not the narrative at all. I kid you not, the bug-eyed, pencil-necked Congressman from California (because where else would he be from?) actually told...

We are thinking about relocating to North West Virginia (Winchester area?) in the next year. All my research says it's a nice place but I would appreciate anyone with local knowledge to help. I know it's kind of "blue", but coming from Washington state anything will be better than what I deal with now. Feel free to freep mail or reply.

VIDEO The corrupt coverup of the Jussie Smollett case is unraveling. On May 23, a Chicago judge ordered that the case records of Jussie Smollett be unsealed. In addition, retired Judge Sheila O'Brien held a press conference demanding a special prosecutor be appointed to investigate the coverup involving former Michelle Obama chief of staff Tina Tchen who pressured incredibly corrupt Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx who supposedly RECUSED herself from the case to seal the Smollett case court records.

Or is this a lost art? Many shooting instructors will agree that shooting inside 20 feet usually doesn’t require having a perfect sight picture. In a defensive situation, it makes sense to have point-shooting abilities. After-action reports show that, almost without fail, people don’t look at the front sight in a panic situation. Our instinct is to look at the threat. So why not develop that instinct into a usable shooting skill? Brief History Point shooting has been used by archers since the dawn of man. Training with firearms has its roots back in the OSS (Office of Strategic Services...

Ahead of the EU elections, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has blasted “stupid nationalists,” who dare to “love their own counties” and dislike migrants. Juncker took to CNN on Wednesday to share his belief the nationalist politicians pose a distinct threat to European unity with their stance on migration. “These populist, nationalists, stupid nationalists, they are in love with their own countries,” he said, urging the EU to show “solidarity” with migrants instead. They don’t like those coming from far away, I like those coming from far away… we have to act in solidarity with those who are in a...

As Donald Trump Jr. points out: 'I Don't Think the Party of Infanticide Is Exactly Praying for Anyone.' At the rate that contrived gut-deep hatred of President Donald Trump is going, someday soon when looking up the word ‘deranged’, in the dictionary there’ll be a picture of Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi beside it. The Democrats, in a frenzied rage since election night 2016 and egged on daily by their running dog media, are getting out-of-control crazier by day. They invested 40 million tax dollars and a lot of bunk in the Robert Mueller III Special Counsel, most of it...

Academic postmodernism is no stranger to the idea that classical Enlightenment values such as reason, equal treatment, and individual agency should be cast aside for the sake of racial and sexual grievances. We should denounce reason and science as the legacy of “dead white men”—or so we are told. Western academia has become both ideologized and infantilized, perhaps not unlike a giant kindergarten ruled over by a class of partisan bureaucrats who employ increasingly Orwellian tactics: censorship, data falsification, morality policing, doublethink, doublespeak. There is one paradox central to American identity politics that not only runs afoul of Supreme Court...

The “old, white men” problem has been rolling down crooked rails for a long time now, driven by progressive feminist radicals. In newsrooms in the 1990s, I regularly heard how a City Council or County Commission or group of Legislators were just a bunch of “old, white men” invariably from female reporters. “White males” have long been the target of the left and their media allies in the now fully formed and mainstreamed identity politics of diversity. And now the last element has been demonstrated clearly in no less a publication than the Wall Street Journal. WSJ Headline: “CEOs Under...