Free Republic

I have been meaning to write about the Jeffrey Epstein situation, which I think has become an unfortunate distraction. Thus, the New York Times headlines, “Trump’s base is in open revolt over the Epstein case.” This delights them. In my opinion, while Epstein was obviously a horrific person and was at one time well-connected, the political dimensions of the scandal have been absurdly overblown. Current demands for a release of the “Epstein files,” which can only mean the investigative files prepared by law enforcement, are misguided. Raw criminal investigation files are never released publicly, for excellent reasons. Any release of...

WASHINGTON, D. C. - U.S. Rep. Michael Rulli wants to mark the yearly anniversary of the day an assassin tried to shoot President Trump as a national “Faith and Defiance Day.” The Salem, Ohio, Republican announced Friday that he’s introduced a resolution to designate the yearly anniversary of the 2024 attempt on Trump’s life on July 13 as “Faith and Defiance Day” to honor Trump, and those who were killed and injured at the political rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Rulli says he was inspired when Trump stood up after a bullet grazed his ear, with his fist raised, “telling us...

A video posted on social media this week shows a police officer keeping his knee planted on the neck of a black man who pleaded that he couldn’t breathe and subsequently died shortly afterward. It happened Monday night, when cops were responding to a “forgery in progress.” Police arrived and saw the suspect sitting in a car. According to the Department, the man resisted arrest so he was placed in handcuffs, adding “he appeared to be suffering medical distress.” The Police Dept. added, “At no time were weapons of any type used by anyone involved in this incident.” What the...

Yesterday a video surfaced from George Floyd as he was pinned down by a cop and later died. It happened Monday night, when cops were responding to a “forgery in progress.” Police arrived and saw the suspect sitting in a car. According to the Department, the man resisted arrest so he was placed in handcuffs, adding “he appeared to be suffering medical distress.” This has caused tensions around the country and things are not looking good. The Minneapolis Police Department first requested an independent investigation by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and later contacted the FBI as well after...

Bill Cosby has a lot of legal problems, and he is now preparing to ask the U.S. Supreme Court for review. But it's not over the comedian's sexual assault conviction in April. That case may eventually get to the high court, but for now, Cosby wants the justices to weigh in on a defamation lawsuit he's defending against former supermodel Janice Dickinson. On Friday, in an application for an extension, Cosby's lawyer told Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy of a coming petition for writ of certiorari.

Hip-hop icon Jay-Z said the drop of black unemployment under President Trump does not make him a good leader because "money doesn't equate to happiness" in an interview with CNN's Van Jones that aired Saturday night. "To give him a little bit of credit too, he is somebody who is now saying, look, I’m growing – I’m dropping black unemployment," Jones said of Trump. "Black people are doing well under my administration." "Does he have a point that maybe the Democrats have been giving us good lip service, but no jobs. He may say terrible things, but putting money in...

A 2015 court case shows that the tech giant has been willing to play ball with the government before—and is only stopping now because it might ‘tarnish the Apple brand.’ Apple CEO Tim Cook declared on Wednesday that his company wouldn’t comply with a government search warrant to unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino killers, a significant escalation in a long-running debate between technology companies and the government over access to people’s electronically-stored private information. But in a similar case in New York last year, Apple acknowledged that it could extract such data if it wanted...

While racist xenophobes like Rudy Giuliani, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner and self-hating xenophobes like Ben Carson may not realize it yet, there is a special place reserved for them in the Land of Eternal Torment. You see, one day, many, many white people who have been duped by the anti-black coded messages that these and other Repugnican politicians throw out like swill to the swine may just come to their senses and condemn these demagogues for just what they are — greedy liars and swindlers who would just as soon see...

Published on Feb 27, 2014 http://townhall.com/tipsheet/

Mitt Romney leads the Republican field among New Hampshire primary voters for 2016. Yes, you read that right.

While the planet's surface temperatures over the past century have risen to unprecedented levels, records have shown a slowdown in the pace of warming over the past 15 years. Scientists have proposed several theories of natural climate variability and heat redistribution that may have contributed to the slowdown to varying degrees. A new study, however, suggests that the slowdown itself may be a mirage — the result of temperature records that have considerably underestimated the pace of warming since 1997. The global coverage of temperature measurements is incomplete, and that can cause biases in temperature records — research datasets deal...

When Thanksgiving 2013 is over, will Americans remember it as the holiday when the Obama administration body-snatched their friends and family and turned them into Obamacare robots? Maybe it happened to your own loved ones. Maybe Cousin Sue brought her favorite cranberry Jell-O mayonnaise salad but when she opened her mouth she sounded like Jay Carney on a roll. As for Uncle Al, there’s a reason he kept asking “Have you thought about signing up for health insurance on the new marketplace?” every time it was your turn at Scrabble. BarackObama.com told them to. Turning Thanksgiving into Obamacaring was clearly...

It’s been 35 years since 918 people, including 257 children, died on Nov. 18, 1978, at the Peoples Temple massacre in Jonestown. The mass murder inside the South American jungle commune in Guyana was engineered by Jim Jones, a murderous cult leader, and was the only time in American history a member of Congress, Leo Ryan, D-Calif., was killed in the line of official duty. Most of the victims were forced to commit suicide by drinking a fatal cocktail of poisoned punch spiked with a Valium tranquilizer. In the days that followed the slaughter of the innocents, Jonestown became a...

Speaking from the White House Rose Garden on Monday morning, President Obama addressed the website glitches and delays that have plagued the initial rollout of the Affordable Care Act, declaring the “product” to be good and reminding his audience that the healthcare law is “not just a website.” Since its October 1 rollout, the online registry for the Obamacare health exchange has been beset by website glitches, long wait times, and clunky programming. “You probably heard the new website where people can apply for health insurance and browse and buy affordable plans in most states hasn’t worked as smoothly as...

Make room, guys. The girls are coming to the Boy Scouts of America's national jamboree. For the first time, female participants will be among the more than 40,000 Scouts and leaders attending the national gathering that occurs every four years. The jamboree runs July 15 to 24 at the Summit outdoor adventure site in southern West Virginia.... Letting them participate was "just the right thing for us to do," Pritchard said. "This was just the next logical step for us to take, to give those members of our program an opportunity to enjoy what we have here as well, to...

'What America needs is not Robin Hood, but Adam Smith' Ever since Sen Paul clearly distanced himself from his dad's wackadoodle foreign policy, I've been starting to think this guy's closer to my own views than what I've been seeing and hearing from Ryan or Rubio -or anybody else- lately: ______________________________________________________________________ After enduring the latest Five Year Plan from Dear Leader, we were last night offered enlightened responses from Sen Marco Rubio (for the Republicans) and fellow GOP Senator Dr Rand Paul, who brought a comprehensive indictment of the Obama fiscal-death-spiral (along with a bright, Reaganite alternative vision) delivered specifically on behalf of the TEA...

MINNEAPOLIS, MN – A citizen activist group antagonistic to the political goals of the Tea Party movement has nonetheless indicated a willingness to converse. In what may be characterized as “the sincerest form of flattery,” video documentarian Annabel Park weeks ago created the “Coffee Party Movement.” Despite its relatively brief existence, it has already garnered significant media attention, most notably in recent articles by the New York Times and Washington Post. Over the weekend, an open letter was addressed to Park by a member of the Tea Party movement (this writer) welcoming “civility and inclusiveness in political discourse,” a nod...

"Hear our cry, Obama." "Deliver us, Obama." Video at link.

Excerpt - After dumping its $10 million contract with Jerry Seinfeld after just three ads (only two of which even aired) Microsoft has created new ad copy where regular people and a few celebrities say, “I’m a PC!” One problem with the campaign’s credibility: the ad work was created using Macs. Flickr user LuisDS found that metadata on the creative copy of the “stereotyped PC user” and other photos appearing on Microsoft’s “I’m a PC” website revealed that they were produced using Macs running Adobe Creative Suite 3. One might expect that Microsoft would use Windows PCs running its own...