Free Republic

As the Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson picked up steam, Republican senators zeroed in on a particular case from 2013 in which she allegedly gave light sentencing to a teenager who pleaded guilty to child porn charges. Sen Josh Hawley grilled Jackson on Tuesday about her past leniency on sex offenders. The Arkansas Republican brought up the 2013 case of Wesley Keith Hawkins, 27, who was 18 when his laptop was found to contain graphic and disturbing videos of young victims who allegedly lived in the same house as him. Jackson, who presided over...

The right-wing fight to suppress the teaching of uncomfortable truths in public schools reached a comical new low this week in a Virginia bill that blatantly misstated a basic fact about U.S. history. Wren Williams, a 33-year-old Republican, pre-filed the bill on Tuesday, the day before he was sworn in as a new member of the Virginia House of Delegates. It proposed a new standard for regulating high-school social studies curricula in the state, including a requirement that students learn about “the first debate between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.” This was a clear misunderstanding of the 1858 “Lincoln-Douglas debates,”...

The nation’s most restrictive abortion law remains in place for now, after a federal appeals court on Thursday sided with the state of Texas. In a brief 2-1 order, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit refused the Justice Department’s request to reinstate an earlier court ruling that had blocked enforcement of the Texas law, which bars the procedure as early as six weeks into pregnancy and makes no exceptions for rape or incest. The brief order, which is expected to be appealed the Supreme Court, was backed by Judges James C. Ho, a nominee of Donald Trump,...

A Florida man exonerated of rape and murder after 37 years in prison is suing police and the city of Tampa over his wrongful conviction and initial death sentence. Robert DuBoise, 56, left prison in late Aug. 2020 after officials revealed new evidence that proved his innocence. Untested DNA evidence from a rape kit proved he did not rape and murder 19-year-old Barbara grams in 1983. No one else had been arrested.

The drone strike that the Pentagon claimed killed an ISIS-K suicide bomber in Kabul actually targeted an aid worker who had filled his car with water jugs, rather than explosives, according to a shocking new report. Zemari Ahmadi, 43, was driving the 1996 Toyota Corolla that was destroyed in the August 29 drone strike, killing him and nine family members, including seven children, according to a New York Times investigation. The Pentagon still maintains that only three civilians died, despite the family now detailing in the new report how their 10 relatives were killed in the blast. Days after the...

Junior softball player and West Point Cadet Leila Hurst is a genius, leading the charge in the war against unkempt beds. “Every morning until noon, cadets are in what’s called AMI (AM inspection),” wrote former Cadet Andrew Hutchinson. “When you’re in AMI, your door has to be propped open 90 degrees, your room has to be clean, and your bed perfectly made with hospital corners in the comforter. And there’s no sleeping allowed.” It’s not so easy to get up at the crack of dawn every day and make your bed to perfection. I don’t think I’ve ever woken up...

The Taliban has been seizing territory in Afghanistan at an alarming rate, having captured all or parts of 10 provincial capitals from the Afghan National Defense Security Forces (ANDSF) in the past week. Far from representing a reason for Joe Biden to halt the withdrawal, however, this rapid deterioration in Afghan security has exposed the bankruptcy of US policies for at least the past 15 years – and the stark unwillingness to tell the truth by a generation of senior US leaders. After President Bush’s initial objectives of disrupting al-Qaida and punishing the Taliban were accomplished by March 2002, the...

Prominent Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of California appears to have spent tens of thousands of campaign dollars on booze and limousine services, as well as over $20,000 at the luxury hotel where his wife works. The tens of thousands of campaign dollars include limo services, luxury hotels, high-end restaurants and alcohol delivery services over the course of the second quarter, according to FEC records reviewed by Fox News. The California congressman appears to have been driven in style with his FEC records showing the campaign spending over $10,000 on 26 rides from various limousine and luxury car services. Swalwell's campaign...

For weeks now, President Donald Trump has been making the case that the coronavirus originated not in nature but in a lab in Wuhan, China. He said late last week that he had a "high degree of confidence" that was what happened (although he didn't specify why he felt that way) and on Sunday night in a Fox town hall offered cryptically "something happened." Enter Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and perhaps the single most prominent doctor in the world at the moment. In an interview with National Geographic posted on Monday...

More education typically leads to better health, yet Black men in the U.S. are not getting the same benefit as other groups, research suggests. The reasons for the gap are vexing, experts said, but may provide an important window into unique challenges faced by Black men as they try to gain not only good health but also an equal footing in the U.S. Generally, higher education means better-paying jobs and health insurance, healthier behaviors and longer lives. This is true across many demographic groups. And studies show life expectancy is higher for educated Black men — those with a college...

In a letter to a seven-year-old Wisconsin boy, Vice President Joe Biden considers the possibility of guns with chocolate bullets. Biden's letter reads: Dear Myles, I am sorry it took me so very long to respond to your letter. I really like your idea. If we had guns that shot chocolate, not only would our country be safer, it would be happier. People love chocolate. You are a good boy, Joe Biden The vice president was responding to Myles's suggestion that guns shoot chocolate bullets. “He said if we have chocolate bullets, nobody would get hurt and nobody would be...

The UK should stop using the term "special relationship" to describe its alliance with the US, former Prime Minister Sir John Major has said. The ex-Tory leader said the term was "patronising" and "sentimental" and should be "consigned to history". In a speech in London, he said the US would increasingly be looking to Asia for economic and political support. But the UK's trade, defence and cultural links with the US meant it could play the role of "candid friend". The term "special relationship" was first used by Sir Winston Churchill in a famous speech in 1946, reflecting the two...

Barack Obama must wonder sometimes if his luck has run out. Maybe he used it all up in 2008. "Yes, we can!" has devolved into "Hey, we might." *snip* And now, just when the high school principal in the Oval has been browbeating Congress to help create jobs, he is once more distracted from that task as he tries to save his own. He goes to fundraisers to tell people to stick with him, but he seems to be trying to reassure himself. "I have to admit," the president said in Chicago, "I didn't know how steep the climb was...

A mother has been arrested after a four year old girl was found stabbed to death with her heart and other organs cut out and strewn around her flat. Muslim mother Shayna Bharuchi, 35, was allegedly sitting in a her kitchen chanting verses of the Koran as her daughter Nusayba's disembowelled corpse lay next to her. The little girl's heart and other organs were found in different rooms around the flat in Clapton, east London. Police suspect she she carried out the killing as a religious offering as she listened to the Muslim holy book on an MP3 player at...

Thursday, June 24, 2010 The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 27% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty percent (40%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -13 (see trends).

Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico and his left-of-center Smer Social Democrats party, or Smer, will try to form a new cabinet despite failing to win a majority during Saturday general election during which voters also booted out most of Smer's potential coalition partners. Preliminary election results, released Sunday by the Slovak Statistics Office, are likely to lead to the replacement of Fico's left-of-center cabinet by a business-friendly right-of-center coalition which will also include politicians representing the post-Communist's country large Hungarian minority. That outcome is in line with Europe's recent shift to the right, with center- right coalitions having gained power...

WASHINGTON – Crime in the United States dropped dramatically in 2009, bucking a historical trend that links rising crime rates to economic woes. Property crimes and violent offenses each declined about 5 percent, the FBI said Monday, citing reports from law enforcement coast to coast. It was the third straight year of declines, and this year's drops were even steeper than those of 2007 and 2008, despite the recession. There were words of caution from experts. "It's fabulous news, but I would draw an analogy to global warming: Even if you believe the long-term trend is increasing temperatures, it doesn't...

WASHINGTON — The federal Minerals Management Service gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico without first getting required permits from another agency that assesses threats to endangered species — and despite strong warnings from that agency about the impact the drilling was likely to have on the gulf. Those approvals, federal records show, include one for the well drilled by the Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers and resulting in thousands of barrels of oil spilling into the gulf each day. The Minerals Management Service,...