Free Republic

Guatemalan security forces have clashed with hundreds of Honduran migrants and asylum seekers travelling in a caravan bound for the United States. Police and soldiers, many wearing helmets and wielding shields and sticks, formed ranks on Saturday across a highway in the village of Vado Hondo, Chiquimula, near the Honduras border, to block the procession of migrants. snip------ Guatemala’s officials said as many as 9,000 migrants and asylum seekers have entered the country since Friday. About 6,000 pushed past about police and soldiers posted at the border on Friday; most entering without showing the negative coronavirus test that Guatemala requires....

For nearly a year it was the Trump show. Now President Joe Biden is calling up the nation’s top scientists and public health experts to regularly brief the American public about the pandemic that has claimed more than 425,000 U.S. lives. Beginning Wednesday, administration experts will host briefings three times a week on the state of the outbreak, efforts to control it and the race to deliver vaccines and therapeutics to end it. Expect a sharp contrast from the last administration’s briefings, when public health officials were repeatedly undermined by a president who shared his unproven ideas without hesitation. “We’re...

When Donald Trump pardoned Steve Bannon last week, the outgoing president blocked the former White House strategist's prosecution for bilking donors to an organization that claimed to be raising money for a wall along the border with Mexico. When Trump granted a commutation to Craig Cesal, by contrast, he freed a man who had already served 17 years of what was originally a life sentence for repairing trucks that were used to transport marijuana. As those examples reflect, Trump's acts of clemency mixed favors to cronies with relief for genuinely deserving federal prisoners hit with grossly disproportionate penalties. The controversy...

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has delivered Articles of Impeachment of Donald J. Trump and the appointment of Impeachment Managers to the U.S. Senate on January 25. The Senate cannot legally hold a trial on impeachment of a President or other official who has already left office. As we will watch, the Senate has extensive, long-established procedures -- but only as its own rules. The Senate must convene the next day at 1:00 P.M. But the Senate typically schedules the actual trial for later. Chuck Schumer says the trial will start February 8. Senate rules require a trial, whereas...

Female soldiers can let their hair down, and flash a little nail color under new rules being approved by the Army. But male soldiers will still have to shave. Army leaders announced Tuesday that they are loosening restrictions on various grooming and hairstyle rules, as service leaders try to address longstanding complaints, particularly from women. The changes, which also expand allowances for earrings and hair highlights and dyes, are particularly responsive to women of various ethnicities, and will allow greater flexibility for braids, twists, cornrows and other styles more natural for their hair. . . . At the same time,...

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- Iowa is one of 6 states which does not have a state constitutional provision protecting the right to keep and bear arms. A constitutional amendment has been working its way through the legislature for eight years.The amendment has passed its first hurdle in 2021, an Iowa House subcommittee, with a 2-1 margin.Amending the Iowa Constitution is a long and difficult process. The first step is for the legislature to pass the amendment. Second, an election must occur. Third, the legislature has to pass the amendment again. Fourth, the amendment must be passed in a referendum. The referendum is...

The $1.9 trillion relief bill that President Joe Biden wants Congress to pass now as his response to the COVID-19 pandemic would cost Americans more than the entire federal government cost in fiscal 1981. That year, according to the historical budget numbers that Biden's own Office of Management and Budget has published on the White House website, the federal government spent approximately $678,241,000,000. When that is adjusted for inflation from September 1981 dollars into December 2020 dollars (using the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator), it equals $1.895 trillion. Last March, President Donald Trump signed a $2.3 trillion spending law...

In considering the Trump presidency we must conclude that the reasons why Trump got elected in the first place exist now more than ever...When the nation's two-party system fails to resolve the issues of the day, voters look elsewhere. The Tea Party was a protest movement inside and outside of the Republican Party believed: —Government was no longer responsive to voters. —It also believed that big government was not the solution but, as Reagan so cogently explained, the source of our problems. Those problems included weak economic growth, government overreach, out-of-control spending, political and media elitism, attacks on traditional American...

CIUDAD JUAREZ - As U.S. President Joe Biden took the oath of office last Wednesday, Felipe Ortega sat in a van handcuffed and chained at the waist and feet, headed toward Mexico and the end of his 30-year life in the United States. A day earlier, the 58-year-old grandfather of eight U.S. citizens was on his way to work when immigration agents surrounded his car in Midland, Texas, just blocks from his home. They told Ortega he had an outstanding deportation order from 15 years ago. After one sleepless night in jail and a long ride to the border, Ortega,...

On Thursday, Anthony Fauci informed the World Health Organization that the Biden administration will participate in WHO's vaccine-sharing project. That reverses President Donald Trump's "America First" approach. Fauci says the goal is to ensure "equitable access" to vaccines for all countries in the world, rich and poor alike. Americans scrambling to get vaccinated have a right to know how sharing doses with poor countries will affect their own ability to get vaccinated. Biden is coming under pressure from the public health community to share the vaccine supply the U.S. has prepurchased before all Americans who want shots receive them. The...

With Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous quip in 1980, it mattered whether he said Republicans had become “the” or “a” party of ideas. “The” might imply that the mantle of ideas regularly shifts between parties, but history offers little support for this view. Long periods of mental stagnation seem to define both parties. No ideas are present in the climate spasms of the Biden administration, just a doubled helping of patronage handouts to established interest groups. Ideas briefly flourished in the early 2000s, when the debate was between a carbon tax and an inferior carbon tax, known as cap and...

TP Racing LLP, which operates Turf Paradise in Phoenix, Ariz., filed a civil lawsuit against American Home Assurance Company last week for what the racing group says is a failure to pay for COVID-related losses covered under the group's insurance policy. The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, seeks a jury trial for the racing group's claim on its American Home policy, which the company denied in July 2020. According to TP Racing, the organization maintained a policy with American Home which promised to pay for business income losses, losses caused by loss of...

The Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation is partnering with a Miami hospitality investment firm to renovate and reopen a new casino at the historic Fairmont El San Juan hotel in Puerto Rico, the tribe announced this afternoon. The venture is the first casino project outside of the continental United States for the Pequots. The tribe plans to put $12.5 million into revamping the 15,000-square-foot casino on the 15-acre resort property, which is set on a scenic beach near Old San Juan. The hotel first opened in 1958 and became a regional hotspot in the 1960s after Cuban casinos were shut down...

French schoolteachers and university students staged nationwide strikes and protests on Tuesday as they joined forces to demand more government support amid the pandemic. “No virus protocol, no school!” read posters carried by schoolteachers, demanding better virus protections at their schools, which have remained open since September amid concern over learning gaps and to ease the burden on working parents. “Sick of Zoom!” chanted university students, frustrated that they've been barred from campuses since October. Aside from virus fears, the common concern at Tuesday's protests in Paris, Marseille and other cities around France was economic. Teachers unions, who are negotiating...

POLICE have today threatened to dish out £200 Covid fines for people having snowball fights and sledging in the snow. Forces in London, Surrey and Wiltshire sent out warnings urging Brits not to break lockdown while enjoying the snow, saying "Covid regulations still apply." Police forces reminded Brits that 'Covid regulations still apply' in the snow Surrey Police tweeted today: "We are currently receiving lots of calls and reports relating to snowballs being thrown and people outside sledging. "Enjoy the snow today but please don't involve other people, particularly more vulnerable residents. "Please stay safe and remember that Covid regulations...

Many people snickered at the claim made in Texas v. Pennsylvania that there is only a one in a quadrillion chance that Joe Biden won all the swing states as currently claimed. The true meaning beneath the statistic is simple: the vote counts certified in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia are fake, so let's cut through all the noise and decide what to do next. "One in a quadrillion" is a rarified way of saying it just didn't happen. Texas's case was shot down because in the United States both grammar and logic have been overtaken by rhetoric. The old...

The current president has a “D” behind his name, suddenly tyranny is back in style (because for Democrats, authoritarianism has always been their preferred style of governance). Joe Biden has essentially been 'governing by dictate' since taking office President Joe Biden has issued more executive orders in his first week in office — not yet complete, as of this writing — than any of his 45 predecessors. As of January 25, 2021, Biden has ‘issued 33 executive orders, actions, proclamations, memoranda and agency directives,’ according to CNN. Twenty-one of these, according to the White House website, are executive orders. President...

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that the B.1.1.7 variant of COVID-19 which was said to be 50% to 70% more contagious, has now been discovered to also be 30% deadlier. The CDC warns it could become the dominant strain in the US by March.The UK's chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, broke it down this way, according to CNN. “If you took... a man in their 60s, the average risk is that for 1,000 people who got infected, roughly 10 would be expected to unfortunately die with the virus. With the new variant, for 1,000 people infected, roughly 13 or...

There were whispers that the virus had been manufactured in a laboratory in that city and that somehow the little spiky ball that has killed millions and brought the world’s economy to its knees escaped. But nobody much believed it and certainly what’s known as the mainstream press for the most part ignored it. Until now.

Despite the pandemic, almost two thirds of people around the world now view climate change as a global emergency. That's the key finding from the largest opinion poll yet conducted on tackling global warming. More than a million people in 50 countries took part in the survey, with almost half the participants aged between 14 and 18. The poll, called the "People's Climate Vote", has been organised by the United Nations Development Programme in conjunction with Oxford University. The organisers distributed poll questions through adverts in mobile gaming apps across 50 countries, between October and December last year. Around 1.22...