Free Republic

On the same day that the House of Representatives canceled its vote on Ryancare, Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks filed a simple one-line bill to repeal Obama’s signature health care law. The Huntsville Republican titled the bill ‘Obamacare Repeal Act.” It is short and to the point, AI.com reported. “Effective as of Dec. 31, 2017, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is repealed, and the provisions of law amended or repealed by such Act are restored or revived as if such Act had not been enacted,” the bill reads. Brooks, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, told constituents last...

Secretary of Defense James Mattis has asserted that climate change is real, and a threat to American interests abroad and the Pentagon’s assets everywhere, a position that appears at odds with the views of the president who appointed him and many in the administration in which he serves. In unpublished written testimony provided to the Senate Armed Services Committee after his confirmation hearing in January, Mattis said it was incumbent on the U.S. military to consider how changes like open-water routes in the thawing Arctic and drought in global trouble spots can pose challenges for troops and defense planners. He...

Mensa Winners The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again invited readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are the winners: 1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time. 2. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole. 3. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with. 4. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly. 5. Bozone (n.): The...

A 21-year-old Ann Arbor woman pleaded guilty as charged to one count of false report of a misdemeanor in 15th District Court on Monday, March 6. Halley Bass admitted in court that she fabricated a story about a strange man scratching her face in downtown Ann Arbor on Nov. 15. “I was suffering from depression at the time,” Bass told Judge Elizabeth Pollard Hines. “I made a superficial scratch on my face. It was visible and I was embarrassed about what I’d done. So I made up a story and told a friend that a stranger had done it while...

The Washington Post has a new motto, displayed right below the paper's logo on its homepage: "democracy dies in darkness." It's a new thing for the paper, which never had a motto or slogan in its 140-year history. Not through World War I, or the Great Depression, or World War II, or the Cold War, or Vietnam, or Watergate, or the War on Terror, or — or anything. Through all that time, including the period when the Post was lionized for shining light on Watergate, did the paper have a motto. But now, it is "democracy dies in darkness." The...

I do hope that Gavin “Toast” Schmidt, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS), followed the advice I gave him a few months back. Because it now looks very much as if he and many of his colleagues are about to face exciting new job opportunities, hopefully in areas best suited to their talents, such as the challenging world of fast-food retail. Yes, as we predicted, NASA is going to be stripped of the two main roles it enjoyed under the Obama administration – Muslim outreach and green propaganda – and return to its original day (and...

President Donald Trump reunited with First Lady Melania Trump on Friday afternoon for his first weekend getaway from the White House after a whirlwind week which left Washington – and the world – reeling. 'I told you I'd win that election,' he told a crowd that welcomed him in Palm Beach after a flight aboard Air Force One. The first lady gave him a kiss at the bottom of the stairs he used to exit the presidential aircraft after the flight from outside Washington. Traveling with the president aboard Air Force One was Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, who chairs a...

here were two Trump-administration scandals du jour on Thursday. One concerned a joke the president made at the National Prayer Breakfast, in which he asked those present to pray for better ratings for his successor on the New Celebrity Apprentice television show. But the main reason for a daily dose of outrage against President Trump wasn’t generated by sympathy for Arnold Schwarzenegger or even dismay over a joke about prayer. Rather, it was the reaction to the reports about what appears to have been a stormy conversation with Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull...(clip) But those damning Trump for this latest...

Mexico said Wednesday that the Associated Press’ account of a call Friday between President Trump and his Mexican counterpart is inaccurate. “The assertions that you make about said conversation do not correspond to the reality of it,” the Mexican government said in a statement on the wire service’s reporting. “The tone was constructive,” according to a statement from Mexico’s foreign relations department, “and it was agreed by the presidents to continue working and that the teams will continue to meet frequently to construct an agreement that is positive for Mexico and for the United States.”

Thursday on CNN International, former Mexican President Vicente Fox said today while addressing Republicans in Philadelphia President Donald Trump reminded him “of Hitler addressing the Nazi party.” Partial transcript as follows: REPORTER: Do you get a sense, though, that it’s the U.S. president who us driving events and Mexico’s president finds himself a prisoner of them? FOX: Well, that much and that part yes. When I saw today’s gathering of the Republican party retreat and Trump being there reminded me of Hitler addressing the Nazi party. And I think it’s important to remind to congressmen from the Republican party that...

Speaking about the terrorist group ISIS in an interview Thursday, President Donald Trump called the group’s fighters “sneaky, dirty rats.” “We have evil that lurks around the corner without the uniforms,” he told Fox News’ Sean Hannity, in an interview set to air Thursday night. “Ours is harder because the people we’re going against they don’t wear uniforms. They’re sneaky, dirty rats and they blow people up in a shopping center and they blow people up in a church.” Mr. Trump’s rhetoric about ISIS is nothing new: he made combating the group a central promise of his campaign, even saying...

President Trump hung a portrait of Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office on Tuesday, The New York Times reports, an apparent nod to the populist sentiments of the new administration. Trump's rise has often been compared to the populist election of Jackson, including by some of the new president's own team. Chief White House strategist Steve Bannon called Trump’s inauguration speech on Friday “Jacksonian,” saying it struck the populist and patriotic tones Jackson was known for.

ABC News apologized Tuesday after the Monday night edition of Nightline edited a quote from former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer in a way that made it appear that he was more critical of current White House press secretary Sean Spicer than he actually was. “[Spicer’s] briefing made me uncomfortable. It was too truculent, too tough. It looks as if the ball was dropped on Saturday,” Nightline quoted Fleischer as saying. But Fleischer took to Twitter to complain that he had been taken out of context.

The New York Times faced a backlash Thursday after its only source for a negative story on former Texas governor Rick Perry accused them of taking his remarks out of context. The Times reported Wednesday evening that when Perry accepted Donald Trump‘s nomination for the Secretary of Energy position, he “initially misunderstood” what the job even was. “Mr. Perry gladly accepted, believing he was taking on a role as a global ambassador for the American oil and gas industry that he had long championed in his home state,” they wrote. “In the days after, Mr. Perry… discovered that he would...

Donald Trump has already made America great again for two women dining at his DC hotel - by comping their thousand-dollar dinner bill and kissing one of them. When Jenna Setticasi made the trip from Florida to the nation's capital to take part in the inauguration celebrations, she may not have expected to get up and close and personal with the president-elect. But that's exactly what happened during the software developer's meal with a friend, Michelle Rosser-Seiz, and her family at the Trump International Hotel in DC. Trump received a hero's welcome as he made a sudden surprise visit to...

The Trump administration is seeking major cuts to federal spending upon taking office, with plans to eliminate agencies and programs to reduce the budget by over $10 trillion. The National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities would be eliminated, according to a new report on the administration’s spending priorities published by the Hill. Both arts agencies have budgets of roughly $147 million. The NEA awards millions of dollars worth of grants for art projects each year, which have included plays about assassinating Christopher Columbus, food stamps, and gun-control activist lesbians, climate change poetry, and “Doggie...

In his first dance as commander in chief, President-elect Trump will take the dance floor with Melania to the tune of Frank Sinatra's "My Way," according to a source with knowledge of the official inaugural balls. The Washington Examiner has learned that Trump plans to take the floor as the 45th president at the Liberty Ball just as Nashville-based jazz singer Erin Boehme delivers opening song "Mack the Knife," which will be live broadcast for tens of millions of Americans to watch on TV.

Well, here’s a new declaration from outgoing President Obama. He’s declared himself to be the “father of the Tea Party.” In an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, the anchor (and former Clinton operative) asked the president what sentence would describe him. Stephanopoulos cited the quote by the late Congresswoman Clare Booth Luce, who said “the greater the man, the easier it is to describe him in a single sentence.” Luce uttered this in 1962 when asked by then-President Kennedy what was on her mind. The 44th president said of himself, “President Obama believed deeply in this democracy and the...

Senator Marco Rubio exited the confirmation hearing for Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State nominee and, important to note – RUSHED TO CNN, to tell media he was “uncertain” and “doubtful” if he’d support Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State. Moments earlier Senator Marco Rubio engaged in the following questioning of T-Rex:

A highly-anticipated declassified US intelligence report, aimed to prove that Russia supported Donald Trump, has turned out to be a huge embarrassment. The annex that contained factual material that was thought to provide evidence of RT influencing the American public was compiled in December 2012, right after the reelection of Barack Obama.The report focuses on television shows and interviews that took place four years before Trump was elected, and well before he was even a politician. In Annex A of the report, intelligence agencies claim that “Kremlin's TV Seeks To Influence Politics, Fuel Discontent in US.” Buried at the bottom...