Free Republic

On the eve of his inauguration, Politico published an article that contains an anecdote that is actually quite disturbing. For higher-profile remarks, [Biden would] obsessively rehearse portions until he committed them to memory. And at times through the various iterations of outlining remarks, Biden could grow downright ornery. “I would never say this,” Biden once snapped at an aide, aghast over the prepared remarks he was reviewing, according to a person in the room during a speech prep session last year. “Where did you get this from?’” The aide explained that Biden had just said it in a public speech...

Thank you, Mr. President, for everything you’ve done. It shouldn’t be ending this way, but I and 74 million other Americans just want to thank you for all your efforts on our behalf over the past four years, actually since you came down the escalator at Trump Tower back in the summer of 2015. In no particular order: Thank you for restoring the U.S. as the world’s leading producer of energy – after your predecessor sternly lectured us that we “couldn’t drill our way” out of our dependence on unstable Middle Eastern oil providers. Thank you for the tax cuts...

Did you ever wonder what it’s like to live in a one-party state?Well, wonder no more. You’re living in one. The major means of communication—in today’s terms that means social media—have now been taken over completely by the left.Not only has Donald Trump—still the president of the United States—been permanently banned from Twitter, its rapidly growing, open-to-all substitute Parler has almost simultaneously been de-platformed by Google.You can’t get their app for Android anymore.Apple threatens to be next, demanding Parler kowtow (by Saturday!) to Cupertino’s vision of what the world should be....Sound Chinese?More than a bit.Think this was planned?Just the other...

SENATETommy Tuberville, Ala. Rick Scott, Fla. Roger Marshall, Kan. John Kennedy, La. Cindy Hyde-Smith, Miss. Josh Hawley, Mo. Ted Cruz, Texas Cynthia Lummis, Wyo.HOUSERobert B. Aderholt, Ala. Mo Brooks, Ala. Jerry Carl, Ala. Barry Moore, Ala. Gary Palmer, Ala. Mike Rogers, Ala. Andy Biggs, Ariz. Paul Gosar, Ariz. Debbie Lesko, Ariz. David Schweikert, Ariz. Rick Crawford, Ark. Ken Calvert, Calif. Mike Garcia, Calif. Darrell Issa, Calif. Doug LaMalfa, Calif. Kevin McCarthy, Calif. Devin Nunes, Calif. Jay Obernolte, Calif. Lauren Boebert, Colo. Doug Lamborn, Colo. Kat Cammack, Fla. Mario Diaz-Balart, Fla. Byron Donalds, Fla. Neal Dunn, Fla. Scott Franklin, Fla. Matt...

Like pretty much all conservatives, I have consistently criticized riots and other forms of political violence for many years. That includes yesterday’s Washington, D.C. riot. You can’t say the same about liberals, however. Until yesterday, one might have thought that liberals consider rioting and other forms of political violence to be as American as apple pie. You could write a book in support of that proposition, but for now let’s cite just a few examples. Do you remember when President Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2017? Leftist Democrats rioted in Washington that day. That riot was arguably worse, more...

I have had enough of the left pretending to have some moral high ground when it comes to political violence. After the storming of the Capitol on Wednesday, there are several Democrats calling for Trump to be “removed from office” despite having nothing to do with what happened. Nothing at all. The Democratic Party has zero moral high ground on this issue. They’ve done nothing to quell the violence and unrest on their side, which started right after Trump won the presidency. The media won’t bring this up, but in the aftermath of Trump’s election in November 2016, the left...

Kamala Harris has lived an unbelievable life. The aspiring vice president has detailed, in books and interviews, moments from her childhood and early adolescence that inspired her to pursue a career in politics by dating Willie Brown in the mid-1990s. Here are some of the most heartwarming examples: ... Her first day of preschool I remember sitting in a large group at the coloring station. A few of the kids were talking about their mommies and daddies, but everyone went quiet when I started to cry. The teacher rushed over to see what was wrong. Honestly I didn't even know....

An astonishing $36 billion has been lost to fraud in pandemic unemployment benefits, the Department of Labor reports. To put this figure in context, the entire unemployment system only paid out about $26 billion in 2019. That’s right: Bureaucrats lost to fraud more than is usually paid out in an entire year. The $36 billion lost—and that’s just the fraud we know about—amounts to an average of roughly $1,894 lost per current unemployment beneficiary. (What would we think of a private system that lost nearly $2,000 for each customer served?) These figures alone are horrifying, but a new bombshell interview...

As Covid-19 descended on California ... this year, economies began to shut down and the debate raged over what businesses were deemed “essential.” Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, and Alameda County authorities went back and forth over whether the Tesla plant in Fremont should be allowed to reopen. This dialogue was punctuated by a pithy tweet from Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, who describes herself as a progressive Democrat, “F*ck Elon Musk.” At that time, we had no idea how much that tweet, and attitude, would cost us. Nine months later, Elon Musk is gone. He is selling all his personal...

Three white-collar judges in San Francisco are reopening the judge-created, 1997 border gateway that has allowed at least one million wage-cutting economic migrants to flood into the jobs, housing, and schools needed by blue-collar Americans. “They’re basically saying, ‘Bring a child with you across the border and it is a get-out-of-jail card,'” said John Miano, a lawyer with the Immigration Reform Law Institute. The December 30 decision by the judges on the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected a careful 2019 regulation by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which is intended to replace the 1997 Flores rules....

Viewers have slammed the BBC for 'forcing politics' into London's controversial New Year's Eve light show after 300 drones made the shape of a BLM fist and shone in EU colours over London's skies. Thousands of revellers eager to bid farewell to a miserable 2020 tuned into BBC One to watch the highly-anticipated pre-recorded display. But outraged Britons slammed the show as 'ridiculous' after the drones made the shape of a Black Lives Matter fist and a turtle with Africa on its shell - alongside the NHS logo and a depiction Captain Sir Tom Moore in the sky. The fist...

Carmakers will increasingly find themselves in a race to shut, switch or sell factories producing vehicles with internal combustion engines to avoid being left with “stranded assets”, as regulators set a course for a decade of electrification to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Traditional manufacturers are currently playing a “zero sum game” because growth in electric car sales eats into the value of internal combustion engine factories, which “are effectively stranded assets”, a leading analyst has warned. Philippe Houchois, an analyst at Jefferies, an investment bank, said carmakers’ share prices will be in large part dependent on their ability to avoid...

A sustained effort is under way to deny children access to literature. Under the slogan #DisruptTexts, critical-theory ideologues, schoolteachers and Twitter agitators are purging and propagandizing against classic texts—everything from Homer to F. Scott Fitzgerald to Dr. Seuss. Their ethos holds that children shouldn’t have to read stories written in anything other than the present-day vernacular—especially those “in which racism, sexism, ableism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hate are the norm,” as young-adult novelist Padma Venkatraman writes in School Library Journal. No author is valuable enough to spare, Ms. Venkatraman instructs: “Absolving Shakespeare of responsibility by mentioning that he lived...

A recent CBS This Morning segment insisted that too many emails – “little” messages such as “thank you” and “got it” – would contribute to global warming. Speaking on Wednesday, correspondent Mark Phillips attempted to downplay the fact that COVID-19 would lead to a decrease in global carbon emissions. He focuses on how emails could offset the saved carbon emissions from less flying, driving, and commuting as a result of COVID-19 and lockdowns. Phillips, however, emphasizes that humans ought to “hold the smugness.” “Working from home is not cost-free, and the more of us who do it, the more environmentally...

In March, Governor Cuomo's administration ordered nursing homes to accept infected coronavirus patients and prohibited even testing incoming patients for the virus. The same month that Cuomo began the process of infecting countless nursing home residents with the virus, he also began freeing thousands of criminals from prison to protect them from the virus. Over 3,000 criminals have been freed from New York State prisons to protect them from the virus, and New York City’s Mayor Bill de Blasio freed 1,500 criminals, and they swiftly began committing a variety of crimes, but despite the media hype claiming that prison was...

And here we thought that the world might have contained this disease to the United States. Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who has demanded and enforced some of the world’s toughest mask mandates, got caught in a pub bald-facedly chatting up some of her constituents. An onlooker was sufficiently shocked enough to take a picture of it, and the Scottish Sun ran it as a Page 1 story:EXCLUSIVE: Nicola Sturgeon says sorry for ‘no mask’ in pub Covid breachhttps://t.co/VH7wlyoJNc pic.twitter.com/beu5rCpdMl— The Scottish Sun (@ScottishSun) December 22, 2020

Reading Glenn Reynolds’ heartening article in the NY Post —“It’s time for the ‘Deplorables’ to become the Unconquerables”—inspired me to say something I’ve been thinking for a while. It’s time for the “Deplorables” fully to take over the Republican Party. Some have suggested starting a new party—and I can understand that, given the frustrations—but why go to the trouble when you have the numbers to have all the power? An existing party apparatus is sitting there and is there for the taking. Let’s do it. Just to be clear—who do I mean by the “deplorables”? They are the decent, hard-working...

No one does more harm to journalism than people in journalism. The Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin unveiled this week two awards honoring disgraced former CBS News anchor Dan Rather. “The Dan Rather Medals for News and Guts honor the process of journalism as much as the end product,” the organization announced Wednesday. “They will be awarded to professional and collegiate journalists who go the extra yard — overcoming obstacles like stonewalling and harassment — to get the story that tells truth to power.” A spokesperson for the Moody College of Communication confirmed in...

The 2020 presidential election is unlike any that came before and requires unprecedented measures to protect it, our republic, and our future. Both the degree and the scale of voter fraud were unprecedented. In swing states, President Donald Trump had large leads on election night. Then, late that night, counting was stopped and election observers were ushered out. And then, huge, statistically impossible vote dumps occurred, giving Joe Biden the lead. This pattern, which occurred only in the states where Biden needed to reverse the results in order to win, and which hadn’t occurred in previous elections, points to a...

As in-person early voting began Monday for the January 5 run off election for two U.S. Senate seats in Georgia, significant changes for absentee ballot signature verification and drop boxes put into place by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and the State Election Board ahead of the November 3 presidential election without the state legislature’s approval are still in place. Local county registrars began mailing approved absentee ballots to voters for the January 5 run off elections more than three weeks ago on November 18, according to Georgia’s election calendar. Neither (1) the use of drop boxes for voters to...