Free Republic

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made a terrible mistake Tuesday night when he released word that he was in favor of impeaching President Donald Trump. This mistake goes well beyond a simple political miscalculation. It is the physical manifestation of Washington Republican hubris, wrapped in a fog of frightened groupthink.Announced the eve of the House impeachment vote in the pages of The New York Times, McConnell’s plan reportedly rested on the belief that impeaching the outgoing president “will make it easier to purge Mr. Trump from the party.” Published just after the No. 3 House Republican, Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney,...

Distance learning in Los Angeles schools is definitely working better than it did last spring, but that’s hardly a ringing endorsement. Generally speaking, remote classes are still an abysmal operation in which most students lose out, and the ones with the greatest need lose most.That assessment comes not from school administrators or researchers but from the best source of all: L.A. teachers themselves, the people who are trying to transmit skills and knowledge while giving students some sense of normality in a world gone haywire. Their sentiments are especially noteworthy considering that their labor union, United Teachers Los Angeles, has...

WASHINGTON - President-elect Joe Biden brings more Capitol Hill experience than any president in decades, but his transition has stumbled in ways large and small, exposing the challenges of navigating a Congress that is a different place than when he last served in 2009. He rolled out an almost all-white national security team when allies were expecting diversity. He filled top posts with familiar Washington hands rather than fresh newcomers. His team clumsily floated some names and retracted others for the Cabinet. None of the setbacks has been politically devastating. But taken together, the slights and slip-ups of Biden’s interactions...

It’s official: Longtime Republican strategist Steve Schmidt is a Democrat. He told “Battleground” podcast co-host David Plouffe Monday night that he’ll change his party affiliation. ... Schmidt has enjoyed a long career in Republican electoral politics. He ran day-to-day operations for John McCain’s failed presidential effort in 2008, served as communications director for Lamar Alexander’s failed presidential primary bid in 1999, directed communications for Matt Fong’s failed California Senate race in 1998, and that same year headed up Tim Leslie’s failed attempt to become Lt. Governor of California. In 1995, Schmidt managed the failed campaign of Will Scott for Kentucky...

WASHINGTON - A crush of sign-ups expected Tuesday on the last day of open enrollment for HealthCare.gov could help solidify the standing of “Obamacare” as an improbable survivor in the Donald Trump years. In 36 states that use HealthCare.gov,- Dec. 15 is deadline day for coverage that starts Jan. 1, while another 14 states and Washington, D.C., have later dates. Analysts and advocates who follow the annual insurance sign-ups say interest has gotten stronger with the coronavirus pandemic gripping the nation. Also, the legal cloud hanging over the Affordable Care Act seemed to start lifting last month when Supreme Court...

An Arianespace Vega rocket carrying two satellites failed to reach orbit yesterday after experiencing a catastrophic failure eight minutes into the launch. Officials are attributing the loss of the rocket to a “series of human errors.” Vega Flight VV17 started off well, with the 98-foot-tall (30-meter) rocket departing the Guiana Space Center at 8:52 p.m. ET. The first three stages, all powered by solid-fuel, did their job, propelling the vehicle and its cargo over the Atlantic ocean toward space. It was when the liquid-fueled upper stage kicked in that things went sideways. According to satellite launch company Arianespace, the trouble...

NHS waiting times have spiralled to their highest level in 12 years, official statistics revealed today. The number of people in England forced to wait at least a year for routine treatment rocketed to almost 140,000 in September — the largest backlog since 2008. It marks a 100-fold surge in the waiting list compared to the same month last year, when 1,300 patients were put on hold for more than 12 months. NHS figures today also revealed cancer referrals hit a record low, with almost 30,000 suspected to be waiting more than two weeks between an urgent GP referral and...

Former President Barack Obama returned to the campaign trail Tuesday to drum up support for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, urging voters in the crucial battleground state of Florida to support his former vice president and casting President Trump as an attention-seeker who has turned the White House into a coronavirus hot-spot. Mr. Obama held a drive-in rally in Orlando, during which he urged Florida voters to come up with a plan to cast their ballots early. "This election requires every single one of us, and what we do this week will matter for decades to come," Mr. Obama said...

Failure-proof freedom is not possible. But we strive for it. Herbert Hoover knew in 1936 just how bad “perfect” plans could become. What good did it do the pharaohs in Exodus to resist the will of God and think that they could overcome the pestilences He sent them. Nowadays entire societies think that by shutting down they can conquer a pandemic. The world is slowly realising that lockdowns don’t save us and the economic truth of what we are as workers, traders and customers. This knowledge may come too late to save the Trump presidency. But will the spirit of...

When Republicans conceded that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, it gave the likes of former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former FBI Director James Comey an alibi for their otherwise unfounded investigation of the Trump campaign. Failure by Design

Former governor of Ohio John Kasich will speak at the Democratic National Convention tonight. With the ongoing — and frequently overwrought — worries that the U.S. Postal Service will collapse upon the waves of ballots in the mail, it is a near-certainty that Kasich will remind us, for what seems like the millionth time, that his father was a mailman. Way back in 2014, our John J. Miller wrote, “If Kasich had a dollar for every time he mentioned his father’s job, he might be able to retire with the equivalent of a generous postal-service pension.” Almost every candidate mentions...

A detached electrical connector on the second stage of Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket caused a failure on a July 4 mission that destroyed seven small commercial satellites, but the company said Friday it is on track to resume launching before the end of August. Once the electrical system disconnected in flight, it cut power from the rocket’s battery to the electric turbopumps on the Electron’s second stage Rutherford engine. That caused the engine to switch off prematurely around five-and-a-half minutes after the rocket took off from Rocket Lab’s launch base in New Zealand. The early engine shutdown prevented the rocket...

Excerpt from comments: Sebastian Ortega[.] Proof that Democrats destroy everything and drive everyone away[.]

RUSH: There also, ladies and gentlemen, you know, one of the themes that I have been on for a long time, but I’ve been intensely trying to drive home a point for the last two weeks, three weeks, and that is the utter failure of the Democrat Party to come through for its constituents. You’ve heard me say this I don’t know how many times. Maybe you’re a little tired of hearing me say it. The Democrat Party has been promising utopia. And yet where is all this police brutality happening? In Democrat blue states. It’s so bad that they’re...

One day after former President Barack Obama called on Americans to “a president, a Congress, a U.S. Justice Department, and a federal judiciary that actually recognize the ongoing, corrosive role that racism plays in our society and want to do something about it,” his predecessor, George W. Bush has weighed in on the death of George Floyd and racism in America with an open letter posted to social media.

Forced to address why her husband tried to use the office of the governor to get his boat in the water ahead of everyone else, @GovWhitmer claims it was just a "failed attempt at humor." short video at link. She did not comment on her failed attempt at governing.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) released an update of its coronavirus model on Monday that dropped peak hospitalization projections for the United States by 34 percent in three days, from 86,479 total hospital beds needed to 56,831 total hospital beds needed. The IHME admitted in an update accompanying the release that the dramatic drop in projected peak hospitalization resources required was the result of the inclusion of three days of actual hospitalization data from April 10-12 that was remarkably different from the projections for those days released just three days earlier on Friday, April 10. A review...

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and President Donald Trump’s top adviser on matters related to the coronavirus, said in a January interview that the virus was “not a major threat” to the U.S. “Bottom line. We don’t have to worry about this one, right?” Newsmax anchor Greg Kelly asked Fauci on January 21. “Obviously, you need to take it seriously, and do the kinds of things that the CDC and the Department of Homeland Security are doing, ” Fauci responded. “But, this not a major threat for the people of the...

...The relief for small businesses is not adequate. A tax credit for some small businesses for 50% of wages paid to employees during the coronavirus crisis is absurd. Most have been ordered to be closed so there were no wages and they had to fire employees so they could collect unemployment. They need business loans suspended and property taxes. That will put pressure on states to lift the absurd closures.

Private hospital beds should be made available to treat people with coronavirus, Labour and the GMB union have demanded. They say there are around 8,000 beds in at least 570 private sector hospitals in the UK. The call comes as Labour and the GMB say the NHS is now expected to "deal with a national health emergency despite being under strain from years of privatisation and cuts". GMB general secretary Tim Roache said: "The prime minister says this is 'the worst public health crisis for a generation' - well he needs to start acting like it. "It can't be right...