Free Republic

This week we honored the 2,977 Americans who lost their lives in the most deadly attack against the United States in history. Like Pearl Harbor Day, 9/11/01 is a day that should live in infamy. But will it? Will we remember what we learned that day? On that crisp New York morning, America was attacked by those who hate freedom, hate democracy, and hate peace. For a brief moment in this fresh, young century, still filled with hope and promise, these 50 states were indeed United. We stood together with one voice and we said to the world, "We are...

With lemon and black plumage, the Scott’s oriole flashes in the desert like a flame. But the bird’s name holds a violent history that Stephen Hampton can’t forget. He used to see the orioles often, living in California. Now that he lives outside the bird’s range, “I’m kind of relieved,” he says. Hampton is a birder and registered citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Winfield Scott, a U.S. military commander and the bird’s namesake, drove Hampton’s ancestors and other Native Americans from their land in the 1800s during a series of forced marches now known as the Trail of Tears. The...

Liberal Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, 83, said he doesn't 'intend to die on the court', in a hint toward retirement Progressives are pushing Breyer to step down so President Joe Biden can appoint a younger, liberal replacement Breyer also warned against court packing despite a 6-3 conservative majority 'If the Democrats can do it, the Republicans can do it,' he told NPR President Biden has set up a commission to look at reforming the Supreme Court But Breyer said more justices could likely cause people to lose trust in the court The party has expressed anxiety that the justice...

(The Associated Press called (Aug/2021) terrorists in Gaza throwing incendiary balloons onto Israeli civilians as "activists.")___ HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) Tweeted: "Activists" @AssociatedPress. https://t.co/Jl6QYU0hR7

Does it make Max Boot feel big to tell a former President of the United States to "shut up?" The Washington Post columnist and Never Trumper did just that on today's Morning Joe. In his recent Washington Post column, Boot argued that neither Trump nor Mike Pompeo nor Mike Pence, have any right to criticize Biden's handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal since they set it in motion. Boot summed up his position by trumpeting: "People like Trump and Pompeo just need to find a good opportunity right now to just shut up and stop criticizing something that they set in...

CHICAGO -- At least 44 people were shot, seven fatally, acorss Chicago over the weekend, police said. A One person was killed and two were wounded outside a gas station Saturday morning in Austin on the West Side. About 2:55 a.m., a man, 52, and two women, 62 and 24, were outside a gas station with about 20 other people in the 5100-block of West Madison Street when someone in a black Dodge Charger opened fire, according to Chicago Police. The man suffered gunshot wounds to the head and leg, the 62-year-old to the head, abdomen and lower backside; and...

Police are painting rainbows on the side of their squad cars in a bid to beat online hate crimes and 'give confidence' to the LGBT+ community. Critics have said forces should be focusing on 'real' issues such as knife crime and that the colourful cars might seem less intimidating to the public. The cost of painting the cars, described as 'hate crime cars', is 'quite minimal' but are believed to give a 'huge impact' on the community. Deputy chief constable Julie Cooke said: 'Cars are there in the communities on normal policing patrol just to show the community that we...

Sweden's Covid-19 strategy for schools is complex, but nonchalant attitudes and a lack of systematic protection for schoolchildren can only be described as irresponsible, argues Lisa Bjurwald in this opinion piece.In the US, liberal news media are reporting with horror that several Republican-led states will penalise schools that require masks. This despite the number of infected children soaring, not least in Republican states such as Florida and Texas, and despite leading public health experts including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommending universal indoor masking in schools this year. In Swedish schools, you’d...

The co-founder of fact-checking website Snopes has apologized for plagiarizing more than 50 articles and writing under a fake name. David Mikkelson, a computer science graduate who founded the site in 1994, blamed the behavior on a lack of journalistic training. 'I didn't come from a journalism background,' he said. 'I wasn't used to doing news aggregation. A number of times I crossed the line to where it was copyright infringement. I own that.' Following an investigation by BuzzFeed News, he is no longer allowed to publish articles on the page - although he retains his position as chief executive....

Biometrics in future of vaccine passports Any kind of document, especially a passport, needs to be built on a foundation that allows it to operate across borders and jurisdictions. Biometrics could be the easiest and fastest path to get started. It can add convenience and security, while identifying a person’s vaccination status easily. Modern biometric solutions have many different modalities at their disposal, from fingerprints and face to voice and iris recognition. The biometric modalities most likely to be used for vaccine passports, however, are anticipated to be face or voice recognition, as these can easily be performed on an...

All five GOP members of Iowa’s congressional delegation voted to certify President Joe Biden’s election on Jan. 6. They actually made history and Iowa unique that day. Only two states have multiple Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives with none voting to object — Iowa and Washington. Washington, of course, doesn’t have any GOP senators, whereas Grassley and Ernst are both Republicans. This means Iowa is the only state in the entire country with multiple Republicans in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate to not have one single congressional representative object to the 2020 Presidential Election. Carlin is actually...

More than half a century since they were modernized, hate crime laws in the U.S. are inconsistent and provide incomplete methods for addressing bias-motivated violence, according to a new report by advocates for better protections. The report, first shared with The Associated Press ahead of its Wednesday release, is a comprehensive national review of hate crime laws that shows gaps and variances in the laws. Due to the complexity of hate violence, certain statutes meant to protect racial minorities and marginalized groups are less effective, as a consequence of bias in the criminal justice system, the report says. The existing...

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced some "big news" on Monday. He's running for re-election. "We’ve been through a lot," Pritzker wrote in a tweet, "and I’ve been so proud to see Illinoisans come together during the toughest of times." Pritzker said he's "excited to fight for the state I love" alongside Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton, "and there’s no limit to what we can do going forward."

First Lady Jill Biden — who is featured on the August cover of Vogue after the fashion magazine broke a decades-long tradition by snubbing former First Lady Melania Trump during her four years in the White House — says people can “breathe again,” now that former President Donald Trump is out of office. Mrs. Biden said President Joe Biden came in and “heal[ed] this nation.” “During the campaign, I felt so much anxiety from people — they were scared,” Jill Biden told Vogue. “When I travel around the country now, I feel as though people can breathe again.”

Appearing Wednesday on NBC’s Late Night with host Seth Meyers, former President Bill Clinton argued that suspending the Senate filibuster would be an act of “preserving democracy” in the United States.

Sen. Joe Manchin on Tuesday said he will support a Democratic show-vote on an election reform bill after getting fellow Democrats including Stacey Abrams to voice support for voter ID rules that they had previously denounced as racist. The vote will fail and a final bill wasn’t even drafted ahead of a doomed 5 p.m. motion to invoke cloture, which requires 60 senators to agree to proceed. Democrats hold just 50 seats and the only major unknown was whether they would stick together in the base-rallying gesture designed to show pushback on Republican state election reforms that President Biden claims...

Tennessee is the latest state to ban teachers from teaching certain concepts of race and racism in public schools, where teachers risk losing valuable state funding if they violate the new measure. Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed a measure into law Monday after it attracted some of the most impassioned debates inside the GOP-controlled General Assembly this year. He signaled his support after it cleared the Legislature, arguing that students should learn “the exceptionalism of our nation,” not things that “inherently divide” people. “We need to make sure that our kids recognize that this country is moving toward a more...

After Rand Paul received a suspicious package containing white powder at his home on Monday, the Kentucky Republican senator pointed the finger at an improbable alleged instigator: the 1980s pop star Richard Marx. “As a repeated target of violence, it is reprehensible that Twitter allows C-list celebrities to encourage violence against me and my family,” Paul said in a statement. “Just this weekend Richard Marx called for violence against me and now we receive this powder-filled letter.” After Paul said on Sunday he would not get vaccinated against Covid-19, Marx tweeted that if he ever met the senator’s erstwhile neighbor,...

A Tennessee Republican falsely declared Tuesday that an 18th century policy designating a slave as three-fifths of a person was adopted for “the purpose of ending slavery,” commenting amid a debate over whether educators should be restricted while teaching about systematic racism in America. During lengthy debate on the GOP-controlled House floor, several (b)lack lawmakers expressed concerns about the bill’s impact on how certain subjects would be taught in schools, specifically highlighting the Three-Fifths Compromise. The policy was made during the nation’s Constitutional Convention in 1787 and classified that three-fifths of a state’s slave population could be counted toward its...

In a sharp rebuke to Trump-era policies, Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday formally scrapped a blueprint championed by his predecessor to limit U.S. promotion of human rights abroad to causes favored by conservatives like religious freedom and property matters while dismissing reproductive and LGBTQ rights. Blinken said a report prepared for former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that sought to pare down the number of freedoms prioritized in U.S. foreign policy was “unbalanced,” did not reflect Biden administration policies and would not guide them. The report from Pompeo’s Commission on Unalienable Rights had been harshly criticized by human...