Free Republic

So, this is real. Joe Biden actually did this. Here he is on video admitting it.Biden says he gave Putin a list of 16 things that are off limits for cyber attacks on critical infrastructure. pic.twitter.com/ijyQX4LU2l— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) June 16, 2021“I gave (Putin) a list, if I’m not mistaken I don’t have it in front of me, 16 specific entities, 16 defined as critical infrastructure” that Putin should not cyberattack, Biden said.We have questions.Did Biden make Putin pinky swear, cross his heart and hope to die if he attacks items on the list anyway?Does that list allow Putin a...

the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border is worsening. A dozen Texas counties, many of them not directly situated on the border, have declared emergencies due to the explosive increase in human trafficking that the open border is facilitating. ... the open border is facilitating an additional outbreak of lawlessness. The opioid fentanyl is now flooding across the border. ... The open border has created a massive economic boom for the cartels, which were already far better funded than Mexico’s police and military combined. Fentanyl is one of the primary drugs flooding across the border. The majority of fentanyl and its...

You’d be hard-pressed to get Joe Biden to offer an update, opinion, or even a single fact about the border.That’s a huge mess. It’s his job for that not to be a huge mess. The border is a national security issue. He handed it off to Kamala Harris more than a week ago. She laughed when the media asked if she was going to the border, then laughed at parents who want their kids back in school. Laughing at problems has been Harris’s chief public contribution to the administration so far.Biden’s chief contribution has been to make terrible decisions and...

Wednesday morning more than 1.3 million electric power customers across Texas remain without power during the coldest winter storm in decades. Gov. Greg Abbott put all of Texas’ 254 counties under a disaster declaration as the state has been hammered with a series of major and historic winter storms. The reasons for the collapse of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid are still being debated, and it’s certain that there is more than one cause and more information will come out.But one of the most contested issues is the role wind generation has played. Prior to the onset...

Congress is likely to pass the big COVID “relief” bill like the world’s second-largest kidney stone. My colleague Victoria Taft already highlighted some of the most egregious spending included in the bill, such as the horseracing regulations and the new cars for HIV/AIDS workers overseas. That one’s worth more than $193 million, begging the question of just how many restaurants, movie theaters, and other small businesses in these United States might have been helped with that money. A lot, I’d venture. Enjoy your $600, America. Don’t spend it all in one place! In addition to the $10 million for gender...

A little less than a week ago, blue Austin made itself a laughingstock across the rest of Texas. The all-Democrat city council and its left-wing Mayor Steve Adler voted unanimously to chop $150 million out of the city’s $434 million dollar budget. That’s a cut of one-third. Austin did this as the WSJ revealed that the fast-growing city of about a million leads the nation in the percentage increase of homicides in 2020. Yes, its rate of increase is worse even than New York and Chicago. Austin recently billed itself as safe. It can no longer honestly say that it...

The Seattle PD blotter for last Wednesday night reads like a month’s worth of crime, but without any bookings at the end. At about 9:00 p.m. a group of about 150 people gathered at Cal Anderson park. The group roamed about the Capital Hill neighborhood, doing massive amounts of property damage, looting, shooting fireworks, and committing arson.Individuals from the group broke the windows of a business in the 1400 block of East Olive Way and then started a fire inside. Seattle Fire was called to extinguish the fire.The group then went to the 1500 Block of 11 Avenue, breaking more...

Why do some evangelical Christians support President Trump? What's the appeal, to people who profess family values, of a man whose life includes multiple marriages and affairs and who tends to be crude?Let's dive into this alleged mystery.Turn with me if you will to the book of Isaiah, chapter 45. We come to the story of Cyrus the Great. He was not a king of Israel or Judah. He was emperor of Persia from 539-530 BC. Persia tended to be an enemy of the children of Israel. It's now called Iran, and continues to be an enemy of Israel.But...

In the last few days I read, with interest, two items running on highly respected, national conservative blogs. First, Brandon Darby and Bob Price reported on Breitbart.com on the failed lawsuit of Joe Pool, Jr., against conservative incumbent Texas Supreme Court Justice Jeff Brown. The full story has a lot of good information in it, but the lede really says it all: Republican Joe Pool, Jr. is seeking election to the Texas Supreme Court; however, instead of campaigning, he went to the courts seeking to have his Republican opponent removed as a choice for Texas voters on the ballot. The...

President Obama delivered remarks today supporting Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid’s decision to deploy the “nuclear option” ending minority filibusters of some judicial nominees. The Democrats tried to limit the effect of their action, stating that it only applies to nominees below the Supreme Court level. But the damage done will go far beyond judicial nominees. Bipartisanship in the Senate is dead. Harry Reid and Barack Obama had already done grave damage to it by passing Obamacare. Today they finished it off. Democrats currently hold a 53 seat majority, plus 2 Independents who tend to side with the Democrats. A...

The Affordable Care Act runs more than 2,600 pages and now hundreds of thousands of regulations. No one knows every single provision that is in the law, which Congress did not even bother to read before passing it. Among its most controversial provisions is the mandate forcing Americans to purchase health insurance or face fines from the IRS. Those fines can even take the form of wage garnishment. Americans who fail to comply and pay the fine can end up in jail. There is, though, a provision buried in Obamacare that provides a way out of having to comply with...

Journalist Michael Hastings was killed early Tuesday morning in a bizarre car incident in Los Angeles. Hastings, 33, was best known for writing the Rolling Stone story that ended in Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s resignation as head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Hastings’ final story, “Why Democrats Love to Spy on Americans,” was a searing take on the NSA snooping scandal, which Hastings described as “North Korea-esque.” Hastings pulled no punches as he linked the NSA scandal to the Department of Justice’s spying on reporters and the IRS abuse scandal. Hastings built a case that the same Democrats who turned Bush-era...

Barack Obama has been re-elected president. Like most on the right, I misread America. The United States of America faces huge problems as a nation. Our economy is skidding, we have racked up massive debt to an unsustainable level, and we are no longer a culturally confident or united nation. We are a scattering of enclaves, barely on speaking terms, swaggering and vibrant Texas suspiciously eying bankrupt but arrogant California, rural and traditional Oklahoma has nothing in common with corrupt and secular Illinois, and so forth. Our entitlement spending threatens to engulf red state and blue state alike. We now...

video at link... The third new finding in the documentary is the explicit threat to attack the consulate to retaliate for the U.S. killing of a local al-Qaeda big shot. That comes at about the 3:53 mark. The threat aired in June. Its title: “Take U.S. Consulate in Retaliation for Abu Yaya Al-Libbi.” We also know what President Obama was doing with his intelligence in the weeks leading up to the attacks: He was paying little or no attention to it. He had it delivered to his iPad and…that’s all we know. He had attended fewer than half of his...

HotAir interviews Duncan Hunter. He always makes more sense than the rest of the pack.

Accent lessons By Michelle Malkin   ·   March 07, 2007 10:02 AM Inspired by Hillary Clinton's command performance in Selma, Alabama, Hot Air presents: My Fair Lady, Southern Style: VIDEO -http://hotair.com/archives/2007/03/07/my-fair-lady-southern-style/ Or here at YouTube -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk7hFnB4JnA HILARIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Idiotic. Disgusting. Stupid. Moronic. I guess you could say that Ann loves to shock us, but at this point, who’s shocked? She obviously can’t behave well enough to attend a respectable political gathering. It’s not a lack of intelligence. It’s an indifference to self-control and a preening sort of narcissism that compels her to need the spotlight, even if it’s unflattering. (For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s audio of her calling John Edwards a “faggot” at CPAC today.) --- Michelle Malkin - ***4:15pm update*** Ann Coulter just finished her riff on Al Gore, tossed...

Back from Baghdad By Michelle Malkin   ·   January 17, 2007 04:04 AM The digs at FOB Justice My HotAir.com colleague Bryan Preston and I are back from Iraq. Thanks to Allah and Ian for holding down the fort at HA and thanks much to guest-bloggers Mary Katharine Ham, See-Dubya, and the Big Lizards for filling in here during my absence. Be sure to bookmark their blogs. Our first Hot Air in Baghdad video report is here. Bryan's first post-trip essay, a thorough assessment of "mistakes, fumbles and ways forward to win--and what victory actually looks like," is here. He's also...

My Hot Air colleague Bryan Preston and I have been in Iraq, embedded with an incredibly dedicated Army unit in Baghdad tasked with training Iraqi security forces (both Shia and Sunni) conducting counterinsurgency operations, and carrying out civil affairs work. Yes, there is danger and chaos and unspeakable bloodshed in parts of Baghdad. Sectarian violence--compounded by everyday street crime and tribal conflict--is rampant. Corruption, incompetence, and apathy infect the Iraqi government. You've gotten endless news coverage of all that. But there are also pockets of success and signs of hope amid utter despair. I'll give you more details of...

My blogging has been lighter than usual the past few weeks due to family time, Fox News duties, holiday chaos, holiday illness--and, yes, planning for a trip to Iraq. As you know, ex-CNN newsman Eason Jordan extended an invitation to me three weeks ago to go to Iraq to investigate the Associated Press/"Jamil Hussein" story. He offered to pay for a trip. As you'll recall, I asked if he would offer to cover travel and security costs for Curt from Flopping Aces--who broke open the story of AP's dubious sources on Thanksgiving weekend and continues to lead the blogospheric search...