Free Republic

Republicans retiring in 2018: Retiring Senate Republicans: Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tennessee Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Arizona Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-UtahRetiring House Republicans: Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas Rep. John Duncan, R-Tennessee Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas Rep. Rodney P. Frelinghuysen, R-New Jersey Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Virginia Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-South Carolina Rep. Gregg Harper, R-Mississippi Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas Rep. Darrell Issa, R-California Rep. Lynn Jenkins, R-Kansas Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas Rep. Frank LoBiondo, R-New Jersey Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Washington Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Florida Rep. Ed Royce, R-California Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pennsylvania Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas Rep. Dave Trott,...

Protesters set fires and hurled bricks in a daylong assault on the city hosting Donald Trump’s inauguration, registering their rage against the new president in a series of clashes that led to more than 200 arrests. Police used pepper spray and stun grenades to prevent the chaos from spilling into Trump’s formal procession and evening balls. Several spirited demonstrations unfolded peacefully at various security checkpoints near the Capitol as police helped ticket-holders get through to the inaugural ceremony. Signs read, “Resist Trump Climate Justice Now,” ″Let Freedom Ring” and “Free Palestine.”

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump continues to lose support among Republicans in the aftermath of a leaked video where he's caught making vulgar remarks about women. The most recent is former Secretary of State Colin Powell who said, two weeks before Election Day, that he is voting for Democrat Hillary Clinton. The ongoing condemnation from across the Republican Party by elected officials has resulted in 50 Republicans who have demanded he drop out or won't vote for him, according to NBC News' count. Here's how they break out: [cut] Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton said Trump "let us down again" and...

The 2017-2018 influenza epidemic is sending people to hospitals and urgent-care centers in every state, and medical centers are responding with extraordinary measures: asking staff to work overtime, setting up triage tents, restricting friends and family visits and canceling elective surgeries, to name a few. Tallia says his hospital is “managing, but just barely,” at keeping up with the increased number of sick patients in the last three weeks. The hospital’s urgent-care centers have also been inundated, and its outpatient clinics have no appointments available.

In 59 Philadelphia precincts, Mitt Romney received zero votes.

The electoral council in Venezuela says a fire in its main warehouse near the capital, Caracas, has destroyed most of the voting machines held there. Almost 50,000 voting machines and 582 computers used in the country's elections went up in flames, electoral council chief Tibisay Lucena said. She did not say if parliamentary elections due later this year could be affected by the loss of the machines. She also asked prosecutors to investigate the cause of the fire.

The House passed a Democrat-backed bill that would require election systems to use voter-verified paper ballots as an attempt to avoid election interference by a party-line vote of 225-184 on Tuesday, with only one Republican voting in favor. The Securing America’s Federal Elections (SAFE) Act — spearheaded by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) — would authorize $600 million for the Election Assistance Commission, which would be allocated to states to enhance their security ahead of 2020 and includes language that would ban voting machines from being connected to the internet and being produced in foreign countries. . . . . “I...

Representative Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) said Monday that “a whole range of utterly unacceptable conduct in a president would now be beyond reach” if the Senate acquits President Trump in his impeachment trial. Schiff, the lead House impeachment manager, said during closing arguments in the trial that “Trump could offer Alaska to the Russians in exchange for support in the next election, or decide to move to Mar-a-Lago permanently and let Jared Kushner run the country, delegating to him the decision whether to go to war.” Schiff also accused Trump’s legal team of employing the “dangerous” and “absurd” argument that...

FLASHBACK: Dr. Andrew Appel, a Princeton Professor of Computer Science, and an election security expert demonstrates in 2016 on Fox News how a Dominion Voting Machine could be hacked to switch votes from one candidate to another. pic.twitter.com/PHx9eDg7Nt — The Election Wizard🧙‍♂️ (@Wizard_Predicts) November 12, 2020 Dominion Systems Hacking Dr. Andrew Appel, a Princeton Professor of Computer Science, and an election security expert demonstrates in 2016 on Fox News how a Dominion Voting Machine could be hacked to switch votes from one candidate to another. VIDEO HERE: https://twitter.com/i/status/1326892069667950592

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen on Wednesday called on election officials in all 50 states to ensure that ballots used during the 2020 presidential election are able to be audited.

Joe Biden got into a spat with a voter at a campaign event in Iowa on Thursday in an exchange that had the Democratic 2020 hopeful lashing out at the man and seeming to call him 'fat'. The man in the audience described himself as an 84-year-old retired farmer, then argued that Biden was too old to be president and pressed him on his son's business activities in Ukraine.

Former Vice President Joe Biden confirmed Wednesday night that his son Hunter will join him on the campaign trail amid controversy surrounding his personal life and business dealings. The Democratic presidential front-runner told the Reno Gazette Journal during a campaign stop in Reno, Nevada that he did not know when Hunter would campaign with him, saying that he was busy teaching at a West Coast law school. (RELATED: Sarah Sanders: ‘The Only Corruption In This Entire Process Has To Do With The Bidens’) “I see him. I talk to him and I’m proud of him,” Biden said of his son....

As an undiscovered artist, he is better situated than most: living in a rented, 2,000-square-foot house in the Hollywood Hills off Mulholland Drive, with a Porsche Panamera in the driveway, plenty of natural light and a pool house he has transformed into an art studio. From the edge of the sloping property — it was leased for $12,000 a month starting last June 15, according to the homeowner — he has a view onto the San Fernando Valley below: Burbank and Universal Studios to the east, the 405 freeway to the west. For years, vodka and cocaine were constant companions....

Nick Flor-ProfessorF @ProfessorF In NBC News' 10/8-10/9 2016 poll, Hillary Clinton was up +14 FOURTEEN POINTS Just like Biden today—a double digit lead. What's happening? IMO, the game is to tweak polls to sway independents & undecideds to "go with the crowd; the popular candidate" — Biden. Be not fooled.

Kiddie sex is possibly the most controversial topic any movie can examine. Slip anything into your movie about sex involving a child (whether the child is being molested by someone older, or is doing it with another child) and you guarantee plenty of censorship and angry chatter about censorship, not to mention pretentious eggheads trying to make the case that people are taking this way too seriously and kiddie sex totally isn't what the movie's about. Sometimes those pretentious eggheads are right, and the detractors really are focusing too much on one little scene or insinuation to the exclusion of...

One privacy activist responded: “This decision will be added to the timelines of the most significant expansions of domestic surveillance in the modern era.” WITH ONLY DAYS until Donald Trump takes office, the Obama administration on Thursday announced new rules that will let the NSA share vast amounts of private data gathered without warrant, court orders or congressional authorization with 16 other agencies, including the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the Department of Homeland Security. The new rules allow employees doing intelligence work for those agencies to sift through raw data collected under a broad, Reagan-era executive order that...

Over the last few days of the race, Donald J. Trump intends to travel all over the country. He's going to Florida, North Carolina, Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and even Minnesota, he said Saturday. It’s an impressive travel schedule, but it may reflect the biggest challenge facing him right now: It’s still not clear exactly where and how he would win. Hillary Clinton has a consistent and clear advantage in states worth at least 270 electoral votes, even if the race has undoubtedly tightened over the last few weeks. But even that understates the challenge facing...

The Obama administration’s former Attorney General Loretta Lynch has made an impassioned video plea for more marching, blood and death on the streets – a video that was later posted on the Facebook page of Senate Democrats as “words of inspiration.” The video is less than a minute long and begins by stating that people are experiencing “great fear and uncertainty,” with the unstated implication it is due to Donald Trump’s takeover of the White House. Without offering any specifics, Lynch goes on to say that “our rights” are “being assailed, being trampled on and even being rolled back.” But...

Several federal programs are helping local law enforcement to acquire heavy weapons, either by making funds available or by providing the equipment directly. One program at the Pentagon transferred surplus military equipment worth nearly half a billion dollars to local police last year. Grants provided by the Department of Homeland Security total another $1 billion, and Holder's department provides hundreds of millions more. The ACLU has called for a moratorium on the Pentagon's program, which transfers surplus military equipment, arguing that the Pentagon should not provide local police with armored personnel carriers or automatic weapons. "At the end of the...