Free Republic

Dr. Joseph Giordano, the surgeon credited with saving President Ronald Reagan’s life after a 1981 assassination attempt and remembered for one of the pithiest comebacks ever uttered in an operating room, has died at the age of 84. Giordano’s family announced this week that he passed last month at a hospital in Washington, DC, from an infection caused by a lengthy illness. Giordano was in charge of the George Washington University Hospital (GW) trauma team that worked on the president after he was shot by would-be assassin John Hinkley Jr. on March 30, 1981, as the president emerged from the...

Celebrities did not respond kindly to comedian Bill Maher visiting the White House for dinner with President Trump and were even more incensed over his retelling of the dinner. As Breitbart News reported, Maher finally divulged the details about his dinner with Trump weeks after teasing it, describing the president as gracious and completely different from the man he knew on television. “He’s much more self-aware than he lets on in public. Look, I get it, it doesn’t matter who he is at a private dinner with a comedian, it matters who he is on the world stage,” Maher said...

The Islamic regime is weak and teetering on its own structural flaws, but no one would know it by the rhetoric coming out of Iran. In fact, just as Moscow did before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Tehran is deflecting blame for troubles at home and engaging in double-talk abroad. Ask any Iranian observer and they will tell you that obfuscation has been standard practice of the regime since the Islamic Revolution. While U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff is preparing to meet his Iranian counterparts in Oman this Saturday, Tehran continues to quibble over whether...

The European Union will pause its first countermeasures against U.S. tariffs after President Donald Trump temporarily lowered the hefty duties he had just imposed on dozens of countries, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said on Thursday. The bloc was due to launch counter-tariffs on about 21 billion euros ($23.25 billion) of U.S. imports from next Tuesday in response to Trump’s 25% tariffs on steel and aluminium. It is still assessing how to respond to U.S. car tariffs and the broader 10% levies still in place. “We want to give negotiations a chance,” von der Leyen said on X....

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that House Republicans were criticizing the border deal because they are “following orders” from former President Donald Trump. While discussing the Senate immigration bill, Jeffries said, “It should not be dead on arrival. See, you know, we need more common sense in Washington, D.C., less conflict and less chaos.”

As flames tore through a West Maui neighborhood, car after car of fleeing residents headed for the only paved road out of town in a desperate race for safety. And car after car was turned back toward the rapidly spreading wildfire by a barricade blocking access to Highway 30. One family swerved around the barricade and was safe in a nearby town 48 minutes later, another drove their four-wheel-drive car down a dirt road to escape. One man took a dirt road uphill, climbing above the fire and watching as Lahaina burned. He later picked his way through the flames,...

As more details emerge about what really happened in Maui, one thing is unmistakable: the government has completely surrendered its delegated charge as the guarantor of unalienable rights, and in its current form, it is wholly unsuited to have any sort of authoritative role. A report out yesterday at The Hill detailed that Maui residents fleeing the blaze were barricaded in by several road closures, established by local authorities; those who heeded the orders died, and those who didn’t, escaped the flames. From the article:Those who disobeyed the barricaded road closures during the Maui fires survived the disaster, while many...

The court’s decision represents a victory against authoritarianism, but censorship by Covid scaremongers should still trouble Americans. ... Afederal judge halted California’s attempt to censor doctors when, last Wednesday, the court enjoined the state statute that banned medical professionals from spreading purported “misinformation” or “disinformation” to their patients about Covid-19. The decision represents the latest victory against the authoritarian edicts that quickly followed the outbreak of the pandemic three years ago but continue to this day. In August of 2022, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law Assembly Bill 2098 (AB 2098), adding a new provision to California’s extensive regulations...

The Miami Herald warned Wednesday that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is taking a page from disgraced former President Richard Nixon’s playbook with his attack on Disney. An editorial in the influential South Florida paper condemned DeSantis, a potential GOP 2024 presidential candidate, for his push “to strip Walt Disney World of the special taxing district that independently governs it” as “an act of pure vengeance” and “the stuff of Richard Nixon and his enemies list.”

Is Donald Trump summoning his inner Richard Nixon? One could draw that conclusion from the Trump administration’s recent announcement that it is withdrawing 2,000 U.S. troops from Iraq – more than one-third of the total deployed – which follows a similar statement on the exit of one-third of some 36,000 troops from Germany. That, in turn, followed announced troop withdrawals from Afghanistan in June, reductions from Syria, ongoing threats to remove U.S. troops from South Korea and implied threats to Japan as well if Tokyo doesn’t contribute more to the U.S. presence there of some 50,000 troops.

Sunday on NBC´s "Meet The Press," host Chuck Todd took President Barack Obama to task for the optics of going golfing moments after his statement on ISIS beheading journalist James Foley. Obama complained during his vacations he would "love" not to be followed by the press. “You know, it is always a challenge when you’re supposed to be on vacation, because you’re followed everywhere, part of what I would love is a vacation from the press," Obama said. The president did take some responsibility saying, “But there’s no doubt that after having talked to the families, where it was hard...

Former Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on Sunday blasted President Barack Obama's diplomatic strategy with Russia President Vladimir Putin regarding Syria's use of chemical weapons, saying Obama is now "following from behind." "You have Putin playing chess and Obama playing, frankly, a very lucky game of tic-tac-toe," Gingrich said on CNN's "State of the Union." "Putin stepped in to maximize Russian influence in the Middle East. That is a strategically defeat for the United States." "We are now relying on the Russians," said Gingrich, now a host of CNN's 'Crossfire." We're now following from behind -- not leading from behind....

Hollywood and the mainstream media have been portraying the Tea Party movement as racist and violent ever since it rose up during the early months of President Barack Obama's first term. Never mind that the Occupy Wall Street movement set the standard for ideologically driven violence, and that whenever Tea Partiers gather they typically leave the grounds cleaner than when they arrived.

Israel appreciates President Obama’s commitment to peace. Israel believes that for peace to endure between Israelis and Palestinians, the viability of a Palestinian state cannot come at the expense of the viability of the one and only Jewish state. That is why Prime Minister Netanyahu expects to hear a reaffirmation from President Obama of U.S. commitments made to Israel in 2004, which were overwhelmingly supported by both Houses of Congress. Among other things, those commitments relate to Israel not having to withdraw to the 1967 lines which are both indefensible and which would leave major Israeli population centers in Judea...

Obama didn't wait long after Tuesday's devastating elections to give critics another reason to question his leadership, but this time the subject matter was more grim than a pair of governorships. After news broke out of the shooting at the Fort Hood Army post in Texas, the nation watched in horror as the toll of dead and injured climbed. The White House was notified immediately and by late afternoon, word went out that the president would speak about the incident prior to a previously scheduled appearance. At about 5 p.m., cable stations went to the president. The situation called for...

On Christmas eve in 1938, the physicist Lise Meitner took a walk in the snowy woods of Kungalv, Sweden, with her nephew, Otto Frisch, also a physicist. A Jewish refugee who had recently escaped from Hitler's Germany, Meitner began discussing with Frisch some puzzling experimental results from a lab in Berlin. By the time their famous walk was over, Meitner had scribbled down for the first time the equations that demonstrated the possibility of extracting huge amounts of energy from the splitting or "fission" of uranium atoms. Seventy years ago today, the woman whom Albert Einstein called "our Madame Curie"...

"It's a glow-in-the-dark compass ring. So you don't get lost." -Josh (played by Tom Hanks), in the movie, "Big" Maybe what we need in California is a glow-in-the-dark compass ring. Or, maybe it's just Republicans that need one. Perhaps just Arnold Schwarzenegger. Heck, maybe it's all three. Let's face it...to our fellow citizens, Arnold is the face of California and the State GOP (with all due respect to Ackerman, Plescia and Sundheim). As Jon Fleischman and I wrote on the heels of the Governor's January 5 State of the State address, "Now, 'Mr. Hollywood' has come up with his BIGGEST...

NEW YORK (NNS) -- The 19th New York City Fleet Week came to a close May 31, as Sailors and Marines left New York City in their wake, headed for their next destination. While visiting the ‘Big Apple,’ Sailors, Marines and Coast Guardsmen participated in community service events, sports competitions, military demonstrations and Memorial Day remembrances in all five boroughs. “I’m just impressed by the good, positive attitudes and willingness to work that the young Sailors express,” commented Master-at-Arms 2nd Class Paul Ablaza, a Reservist with Naval Security Forces, Naval Weapons Station Earle, Colts Neck, N.J. “Seeing the dedication of...

WASHINGTON, April 19, 2006 – Four state governors just returned from Afghanistan, Iraq and Kuwait shared glowing reports today about the operations they observed there, but reserved their highest praise for the men and women in uniform they met, including National Guard troops from their states. Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack shares a meal with Iowa Army National Guard soldiers deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom during Vilsack's visit to Kuwait. Photo by Spc. Debralee P. Crankshaw, USA   The four governors -- Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack and West Virginia Gov. Joe...

WASHINGTON, March 16, 2006 – Iraqi soldiers and national police did a good job in helping quell unrest during the hours and days following the Feb. 22 bombing of a prominent Shiite mosque in Samarra, Iraq, a senior U.S. military leader said today. Iraqi security forces "performed very well; they were very deliberate; they were poised," the senior official, speaking on background, told military analysts from his headquarters in Iraq during a phone interview. The official said Iraqi forces provided "a settling influence on what was essentially a very emotionally charged atmosphere" after terrorists blew the top off the Golden...