Free Republic

After four white students won the Martin Luther King, Jr., Day essay contest at the University of Montana, a flood of outrage poured resulted, condemning school officials as racist. No pleasing social justice warriors It was found this had much more to do with Montana’s demographics than racial “elitism.” “The University of Montana has very few black students, which is understandable, because the state of Montana has very few black people,” TheBlaze reported. “The fact that white students were the only winners wasn't due to racism by the judges, though. It turns out, no black students entered the contest at...

Four members of China’s military have been indicted by the U.S. government on charges of hacking into the credit-reporting agency Equifax Inc. and plundering sensitive data on nearly 150 million Americans, the Justice Department said. A federal grand jury in Atlanta returned a nine-count indictment last week that accused members of China’s People’s Liberation Army of conspiring to steal reams of data as part of a sophisticated hacking operation that exploited a major vulnerability in the software used by Equifax’s online dispute portal. “This was a deliberate and sweeping intrusion into the private information of the American people,” Attorney General...

President Trump is making good on his promises to “drain the swamp” and cut Obama-era holdovers from his staffs, especially the critical and recently controversial National Security Council. Officials confirmed that Trump and national security adviser Robert O’Brien have cut 70 positions inherited from former President Barack Obama, who had fattened the staff to 200. Since entering the White House, Trump has relied on staffs smaller than previous administrations and has noted how prior president’s had a much smaller NSC team.

A former Uber driver, cleared of launching a sword attack on police outside Buckingham Palace, has been found guilty of plotting a terror attack just months after his release. Mohiussunnath Chowdhury, 28, from Luton, had planned to target iconic tourist sites including Madame Tussauds, Piccadilly Circus and London's Gay Pride parade, using a vehicle, knife and gun. He was particularly fixated on the Royal Family and talked about launching an attack during the two minutes' silence on Remembrance Day. In December 2018, Chowdhury was unanimously cleared by an Old Bailey jury of a terrorist sword attack near the gates of...

The organizer of the Conservative Political Action Conference defended his decision to uninvite Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Ut.) — saying his vote for more witnesses and documents in President Trump’s impeachment trial would make him unsafe at the event. “This year, I’d actually be afraid for his physical safety, people are so mad at him,” American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp said in an interview Saturday on ‘Full Court Press’ with Greta Van Susteren. “The biggest problem we have with Mitt Romney is not that he’s just an individual following his political course. It’s the fact that he’s lied so continuously...

DES MOINES — The first signs of trouble came early. As the smartphone app for reporting the results of the Iowa Democratic caucuses began failing last Monday night, party officials instructed precinct leaders to move to Plan B: calling the results into caucus headquarters, where dozens of volunteers would enter the figures into a secure system. But when many of those volunteers tried to log on to their computers, they made an unsettling discovery. They needed smartphones to retrieve a code, but they had been told not to bring their phones into the “boiler room” in Des Moines. As a...

A French teenager who criticised Islam on Instagram has moved to a new school after receiving death threats. Education minister Gabriel Attal told broadcaster LCI on Monday that they had found a new school for Mila "to allow her to continue her life". Mila, 16, sparked a national row over free speech when she called Islam a "religion of hate". The teen's criticisms prompted fury but also drew support in France, where there are no laws against blasphemy. Her comments about Islam came after she received homophobic abuse from a Muslim commenter. Supporters started the hashtag #JeSuisMila (I am Mila),...

Granite State Democrats desperately want to pick a candidate who can beat Trump, but they’re not sure anyone on the primary ballot can do it. MANCHESTER, New Hampshire — It would be easy to mistake the feverish activity in New Hampshire over the past week for excitement. The state has been abuzz with Democratic presidential campaign events, armies of canvassers knocking on doors, curious voters from neighboring states coming to get a look at the candidates, and here in Manchester, swarms of reporters and camera crews.But when you talk to voters, the overarching feeling isn’t excitement or optimism, but anxiety....

It sure looks as though the end is near for Joe Biden's latest presidential campaign. Forecasting the future in politics these days is a fool's game -- as Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan noted on Saturday, journalists are "bad at predictions." So here is a caveat: It is still early in the primary process, there is no clear front-runner, and anything could happen. Still, Biden gave off the distinct odor of flop sweat over the weekend. At Friday's Democratic presidential debate, he conceded he is unlikely to win this week's New Hampshire primary. That, in turn, led some of...

This past weekend the Super Bowl rolled through Miami, bringing traffickers seeking to sell their victims online to sex buyers. The FBI Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force, working with the Metro-Dade Police Department, arrested three of these alleged sex traffickers during online undercover stings.  These arrests shine a light on sex trafficker’s use of the internet. A report by the non-profit Polaris Project states, “What we do know is that the internet has forever blurred the once bright lines between the social and the commercial and that traffickers have taken notice and adjusted their business models accordingly.”The FBI...

CP33 with accessories and 50 rd mag extension, courtesy Dean Weingarten At the Kel-Tec booth at the shot show, I talked to Kel-Tec lead design engineer Toby Obermeit and engineer Ryan Williams. One of the first things I saw was the new extension magazine for the CP33. It holds 50 rounds of .22 LR. It was mentioned last year as a coming product and should be available this summer.The CP33 has been an enormous success story. They are very popular; they have a reputation for both accuracy, reliability, and a good trigger. The CP33 only weighs 24 ounces with a...

If House Democrats are unsure how to move forward post-impeachment, President Donald Trump's unhinged performances last week at the National Prayer Breakfast and in the East Room of the White House should provide some clarity. Trump unleashed a stream-of-consciousness tirade Thursday, using inflammatory words like "scum," "sleazebags" and "crooked" to describe his perceived enemies. This was Trump uncensored and uninhibited, seemingly liberated from the confines of impeachment and determined to exact revenge on his public list of enemies. It was a demonstration of remarkable pettiness but also a warning that if he is left unchecked, there are few boundaries he...

Actress and left-wing activist Jane Fonda wore an old gown she had in her wardrobe to this year’s 92nd Academy Awards to fight climate change. At the Oscars on Sunday evening, Fonda presented the award for Best Picture in an Elie Saab gown that she wore in 2014 to the Cannes Film Festival — a decision she made after being inspired by teen climate change activist Greta Thunberg.

MANCHESTER, NH -- Elizabeth Warren isn’t struggling like Joe Biden. But she isn’t soaring, like Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders. Instead, the Massachusetts senator enters a critical stretch of the campaign relegated to the murky middle. She has to convince voters she has a viable path to the nomination, even if that path is unclear. Her campaign has spent millions of dollars flexing organizational muscle throughout the country, but she’s lagging in her own backyard ahead of Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary. “I think it’s going to be tough if she doesn’t do well,” said Neil Levesque, executive director of the...

MANCHESTER, N.H. —Democratic leaders have edged toward the brink of open war with one another in recent days after a series of jarring setbacks that could jeopardize the party's chances against President Trump, who continues to solidify his iron-fisted control over the Republican election apparatus. The infighting focuses largely on the failed caucus process in Iowa, with state and national Democratic leaders at odds over who deserves blame, as well as an increasingly bitter dispute over the rules governing who gets into future nationally televised candidate debates — a process that could allow billionaire Mike Bloomberg to make the stage...

If anything is certain this election season, it’s that everything is uncertain. Should the strong economy continue and nothing too crazy happens, it’s conceivable that Republicans could hang onto the executive, the Senate, and even regain the House. President Trump will be on the ballot in all those districts Democrats swiped from Republicans, and now they’ll also have their own record, or lack thereof (impeachment, anyone?), upon which to run. The Senate will come down to a few key races in Maine, Arizona, Colorado, and North Carolina, but Democrats will have to win them all in order to gain the...

BRUSSELS - The European Commission had to apologize again on Monday for a comment by foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who had questioned young people’s commitment to the fight against climate change, referring to it as “Greta syndrome”. Speaking in Brussels on Wednesday, Borrell said he had doubts about young people’s genuine engagement to tackling climate change, and questioned whether they were ready to change their lifestyles by measures to cut carbon emissions. “It is fine to demonstrate for climate change as long as you are not asked to contribute to pay for it,” Borrell said, calling this attitude “Greta...

BEIJING - People across China trickled back work on Monday after an extended Lunar New Year holiday as the government eased restrictions imposed to counter the coronavirus, but the World Health Organization (WHO) said the number of cases outside China could be just “the tip of the iceberg”. The death toll from the epidemic rose to 908, all but two in mainland China, on Sunday as 97 more fatalities were recorded - the largest number in a single day since the virus was detected in the city of Wuhan in December. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said there had been...

Ten years ago Democrats chose not to use their 60-vote Senate majority to pass card-check legislation letting unions avoid secret-ballot elections. Even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to bring up the bill for a vote. How political times have changed. House Democrats last week passed the PRO Act, 224-194, that would impose a back-door card check and gut the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act in the most sweeping pro-union legislation since the 1935 Wagner Act. The bill codifies Obama -era National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) rulings that overturned decades of labor law. Employers would have to hand over workers’ private information to...

You’ve successfully conducted adoptions since 2005. But suddenly, in 2019, prosecutors come after you, claiming you are engaging in human trafficking. What drastically changed over 14 years? This is the nightmare that has happened to Paul Petersen, who until January 7 was the Maricopa County Assessor in Arizona. Petersen was pressured into resigning his position after prosecutors got him indicted for bringing women from the Marshall Islands to the U.S. to give birth, then give their babies up for adoption. The prosecution says it’s illegal human trafficking. Prosecutors in Arizona, Utah and Arkansas are seeking federal and state charges against...