Free Republic

Many in traditional news media have suggested the Biden Justice Department's appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith to investigate Donald Trump is an ominous sign for the former president. But famed television journalist and best-selling author Bill O'Reilly has a different take, predicting it will boomerang on Democrats.O'Reilly told the "Just the News, Not Noise" television show that Attorney General Merrick Garland's appointee will have to probe what the FBI knew in advance of the Jan. 6 riot, whether law enforcement could have done more to prevent the tragedy, and why a reported eight bureau assets were embedded among the...

Long before the Nov. 19 shooting at an LGBTQ+ bar in Colorado Springs that killed five and injured at least 18, the city had a history as a flashpoint in American queer life. Located in the traditionally red El Paso County—home to three out of five military commands in the county, and a region former President Donald Trump won with 56.2% of the vote in 2016—Colorado Springs is home to many conservative evangelical groups including, notably, Focus on the Family. In the early 1990s, a time when gay rights were the subject of increasing restriction in many places across the...

NEW YORK, Nov 23 (Reuters) - Retailers ranging from Walmart to Barnes & Noble are installing cameras or locking away items to deter shoplifters and thieves as they brace for a post-pandemic rush of holiday shoppers this year. Some, including Walmart, J.C. Penney, Apple Inc. and Walgreens, put in place new surveillance systems or more security guards. Others, like Target and Barnes & Noble, sealed merchandise behind plexiglass or tethered it with steel cables to store shelves. The retail industry has decried theft this holiday season as it struggles with excess inventories and a pullback in consumer spending at a...

The weekend mass shooting at the Colorado Springs gay bar has reignited the debate over whether anti-LGBTQ political rhetoric encourages such attacks or otherwise helps create a hostile environment given the widespread access to high-powered weapons used in similar assaults. "This comes amidst a rise of violent rhetoric and threats against the LGBTQ+ people across the country. What we don't know yet -- while we don't know yet for certain the motive of this attack, hate has no place in this country, and neither do military style assault rifles, which is why we will continue to push for an assault...

* FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried and Ryan Salame pumped millions into super PACs and campaigns. * The company could deem the gifts "fraudulent transfers" and sue for refunds. It's happened before. * It's also possible the money is gone. "You can't get blood from a turnip," an election lawyer said. … But in bankruptcy, nothing is sacred. The same politicians and groups that happily received FTX's donations and welcomed SBF as an influencer in Washington, including Democratic PACs like the House Majority PAC and Women Vote and lawmakers like Debbie Stabenow, could soon find themselves forced to return those funds —...

Elizabeth Pixie is angry. She’s angry that her friend Daniel Aston died in a shooting at Club Q. She’s angry that she had to move to Colorado from Texas because she felt unsafe as a trans woman there. And she’s angry with people who have spread anti-LGBTQ rhetoric online — some for years — leading up to the shooting. “They can call it religion, they can call it politics, they can call it saving people,” Pixie, who lives in Colorado Springs, said. “Whatever fluff or s--- they want to sprinkle on it, they can do that, but at the end...

Tucker Carlson was among the conservative media figures that continued attacking LGBTQ people in the wake of the Club Q shooting. Some right-wing media figures and influencers have doubled down on the use of inflammatory rhetoric against the LGBTQ community in the wake of Saturday night’s shooting at a Colorado gay club that killed five. The rhetoric mirrors what LGBTQ advocates have warned about for months, most notably false claims that children are being sexualized or “groomed” by LGBTQ people and events. The Colorado shooter’s motive is unknown, but the primary suspect Anderson Lee Aldrich is facing five counts of...

Civil rights organizations are calling on advertisers to boycott Twitter in response to Elon Musk's weekend decision to reinstate former President Donald Trump's account on the social media site. Banned from Twitter in 2021 because of concerns he could incite further violence following the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, Trump was reinstated on the platform on Saturday based on the results of a Twitter poll posted by Musk. Now, groups including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Anti-Defamation League say Twitter's billionaire owner is breaking his previous commitment to create a "content moderation...

"Stochastic terrorism" is the latest front on the Democrats' disinformation war. A few days ago a youth opened fire with an AR-15 in a gay nightclub called Club Q in Colorado Springs, killing five and wounding 25. The shooter was subdued in the club and eventually arrested. This isn’t the killer’s first encounter with law enforcement. He was arrested in June 2021 after threatening to bomb his mother’s house with a homemade device. The Colorado Springs Gazette reported that the district attorney’s office didn't formally charge the shooter, hence he was allowed back into society. Colorado’s Red Flag laws which...

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) colluded with Google to auto-install contact-tracing spyware on the smartphones of over a million Massachusetts residents. Though this collusion is not authorized by any statutory law, Margret Cooke, Acting Commissioner/General Counsel for DPH asserted a public benefit justification. "The purpose of the spyware was to distinguish between citizens who were obeying our pandemic lockdown orders and those who were flouting them," Cooke said. "Since few owners of smart phones were voluntarily downloading the app that would allow us to track their movements we reached an agreement with Google to surreptitiously install the app...

Calls to hold FTX and its now-disgraced founder accountable continue to mount, but it remains to be seen whether Bankman-Fried's political donations and connections can help him avoid maximum punishment. … An estimated $57 million went to Democrat candidates and groups, while roughly $22 million went to Republican candidates and groups. … Plenty of Republicans also received his money, including Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). His biggest right-wing check was a $105,000 check to the Alabama Conservatives Fund. Salame, meanwhile, gave $2.5 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, which is connected to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell...

It’s been widely reported that former billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, the now-bankrupt guru behind the cryptocurrency FTX, was a major player on the Democrats’ fundraising landscape. He funneled more money to left-wingers than everyone except their favored multi-billionaire George Soros.

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — The lights were literally going out on this year’s U.N. Climate Change Conference in Egypt as weary negotiators engaged in the final hours of heated, middle-of-the-night bargaining. Yet one of the summit’s most powerful diplomats had to work the phones from afar, isolated in his hotel room after contracting covid-19. It was hardly the first time U.S. special climate envoy John F. Kerry, 78, has been tripped up in trying to exert U.S. environmental leadership. The former secretary of state is the face of the U.S. government’s response to climate change, but his résumé of accomplishments...

The collapse of cryptocurrency giant FTX has revealed an intricate web of donations and connections to the country's political establishment — Democrats and Republicans, regulators and academics — centered around the company's now-bankrupt founder, Sam Bankman-Fried.This extensive network, held together through political donations and personal relationships, exposes potential conflicts of interest in the coming investigations into Bankman-Fried and has raised questions about whether the former crypto mogul will be held accountable for alleged wrongdoing.Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), for example, has been pictured meeting with Bankman-Fried on multiple past occasions, both smiling with their arms around each other. She also traveled...

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Three teens are among at least 22 people shot, three fatally, in shootings across Chicago over the weekend, police said. A fifteen-year-old girl and a 44-year-old man were killed and another person injured in a shooting in the Austin neighborhood Sunday night, Chicago police said. The shooting occurred at about 11:40 p.m. in the 5800-block of West Augusta Boulevard, police said. The victims were standing on the sidewalk with several others when a male gunman approached on foot and fired shots at the group, police said. The girl was pronounced dead after being transported to Stroger Hospital...

House and Senate Democrats are pleading with President Joe Biden to open American taxpayer-subsidized Obamacare rolls to hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. In a letter signed by 86 House and Senate Democrats, the lawmakers beg Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to rescind a federal regulation that would open Obamacare to DACA illegal aliens — paid for by American taxpayers.

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs will be the next governor of Arizona, barring a recount that says otherwise. And when the Democrat is sworn in, she’ll likely thank her handlers privately for their media strategy in getting her over the finish line after looking like the underdog going into Election Day against outspoken Republican Kari Lake. Hobbs embraced the same strategy that served Joe Biden as a candidate and continues to serve him as president: almost entirely avoiding the media, shunning any interviewer who may ask a tough question and rejecting the opportunity to debate an opponent. Hobbs did...

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who is expected to lead House Democrats in the next term, pushed back on notions that the caucus is in “disarray” and expressed optimism on Sunday that Democrats will maintain unity in the face of a GOP majority. During an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” co-anchor Jake Tapper asked Jeffries about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) telling The New York Times there was “healing that needs to be done in our caucus” after Jeffries emerged as Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) likely successor.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is demanding to see all communications between Democratic Party officials and the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission following the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, whose founder and former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, is a prominent Democratic donor. "... [Y]ou must conduct a full conflict-of-interest review to ensure that Mr. Bankman-Fried’s status as a top donor to the Democratic Party did not insulate him from oversight and accountability," Hawley wrote in a letter Friday to Attorney General Merrick Garland, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler and Commodity Commission Chairman Rostin Behman....

It’s worth taking a glance at the numerous figures, especially Democrats, who buddied up to the former crypto tycoon over the years. ... Not that long ago, Sam Bankman-Fried was on top of the world. Sporting a net worth of approximately $15.6 billion, Bankman-Fried was the CEO of FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange platform launched in 2019 that had accumulated more than a million consumers by 2022. At 30 years old, he was extremely successful — that is, until last week when he was exposed as a con artist. After a Nov. 2 article from the digital currency news site Coindesk...