Free Republic

If you’re starting to feel like you’re in some kind of a live punk’d version of The Sting (the classic Robert Redford, Paul Newman film for our younger readers) then you are not alone. Put another way, those of you who are beginning to feel that we’re not only living in an “upside-down world,” as some conservative pundits are wont to say, but are living in a world that has fully become one big con job, divorced from truth, then join the crowd. One of the active ingredients in this false construct of today’s fabricated reality is the notion that...

According to the respected Worldometer website, COVID-19 deaths in 2020 reached 1.8 million, a truly tragic and devastating number. There is no denying that we have experienced a real pandemic, and many of us have lost friends and loved ones to this virus in the last 12 months. Yet, for every person who died of COVID (or, whose death was hastened by COVID), almost 25 died by abortion. This is as staggering as it is horrifying. These babies died in the womb by human choice.Prof. Thomas Williams summarizes these year-end statistics, also looking at other, major causes of death: “Abortion...

There are still hotel/motel rooms available in the Washington area for the nights of January 5th and 6th. I had no reservation before this morning and just made one for Vienna, Virginia. That Courtyard by Marriott is only a four-minute walk to the Dunn Loring Fairfax Metro station for the Orange Line subway trains. The latest weather forecast has the high for January 6th at 45F and the low will be 31. It is expected to be "mostly sunny". When more of the schedule of events is established we Freepers may chose a place to meet. After the main festivities...

Scientists say that if a person infected with the coronavirus sneezes, talks loudly, or coughs, droplets containing particles of the virus are airborne and can land on surfaces. microbiologist at Rutgers University, told NPR the risk of getting infected from touching a surface with the virus is low. “In hospitals, surfaces have been tested near COVID-19 patients, and no infectious virus can be identified,” Goldman says. Instead, what is left over is viral RNA, Dr. Kevin Fennelly, a respiratory infection specialist with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), said there is no scientific data to back up the claims. “When...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Rules Committee Chairman James McGovern (D-MA) unveiled the rules for the 117th Congress on Friday, which contain “future-focused” proposals, including the elimination of gendered terms, such as “father, mother, son, and daughter.”

This has been a weekly post. Final count for this term is 234 judges confirmed (all existing nominees expire with the Congress tomorrow at noon). 3 Trade Court judges 174 District Court judges 54 Circuit Court judges 3 Supreme Court justices I started this little update in the late summer of 2017. The Republican Senate was wasting time and dragging its ass on getting judges confirmed. It had 52 senators (Luther Strange was appointed to replace Jeff Sessions and John McCain was still alive and sitting, not that that meant anything). So I started posting frequently and then weekly in...

What a difference a terrible year makes. Last year at this time, my wife, Colleen the travel agent, and I were getting ready to take 40 of her clients on a 15-day cruise out of Dubai to India and back. This year, thanks to the COVID-19 virus and the strict lockdowns imposed to fight it, the world's travel industry barely exists and Colleen and I will be spending January under house arrest. Unfortunately, house arrest has become the new normal for 40 million Californians. We've been locked down, masked up and ordered to stay in our basements for so long...

The invaluable Andy Ngô was out late on New Year's Eve. He wasn't partying, though. Instead, he was documenting Antifa's continued assault on Portland's government and business infrastructures.

Fraga says the charts and graphs they developed reveal good news for Democrats. “Indeed, looking at specific demographic categories, specifically race/ethnicity and age group, we’re seeing a boost in turnout specifically for African Americans that implies that democrats might have a shot at winning these elections,” Fraga said. The professor says data from early voting in the runoffs revealed something he said was remarkable. More than 100,000 new voters cast ballots. He says those are people who didn’t take part in November’s General Election, and that’s potentially another good sign for Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. “The new voters coming...

Iran said Saturday it plans to enrich uranium up to 20% at its underground Fordo nuclear facility “as soon as possible,” pushing its program a technical step away from weapons-grade levels as it increases pressure on the West over the tattered atomic deal.

So what’s all this concern about Communist China? Well, let’s start with a little history lesson. From 1966 until 1976 the great ‘Cultural Revolution’ took place in Communist China. Led by the Communist Party leader Mao Zedong, the end result was that upwards of twenty million Chinese citizens simply ceased to exist. Killed by their masters in the Communist Chinese Party for such crimes as ‘independent thought’. Of course, there were many other crimes against the people for which Chinese citizens were accused, tortured, and executed, but primarily they were killed at the whims of the local party officials in...

Just like most everything else in 2020, the U.S. Presidential election was a mess. The level of incompetence and blatant disregard for the traditional electoral process is troubling, to say the least. More distressing is how so many elected officials abandoned their sworn obligation to the Constitution and allowed this farce of a process to continue despite the obvious abnormalities that manifested in key areas of the country. Yet, despite the obstacles, it still is not over – as there are many patriotic Americans ready to fight onward. We can’t have a process that isn’t trusted and believed in like...

The current president of Planned Parenthood is unafraid to use the word "abortion." In a Christmas-season interview with The Washington Post, Alexis McGill Johnson scolded those who would downplay the importance of abortion in her organization's work. She says it is "stigmatizing" to do so. For those who oppose abortion, this is a cause for gratitude. For decades, abortion has been subject to euphemisms from its advocates. "Choice," "freedom," "health," are all used to avoid saying the actual word "abortion." Which makes sense: Polls consistently suggest Americans don't like abortion. And why should we? We know in our hearts that...

After putting on a big show of shutting Times Square down for New Year's eve and telling New Yorkers that staying home is better, Mayor Bill de Blasio was out hoofing it up with his wife in the square: *snip* Basically, he converted the ball-dropping event into his own private party, and expected all of the New Yorkers to watch him instead, beating their mittens to applaud. Like he was some kind of Dear Leader. *snip* But De Blasio was out there, carving out an exception for himself, and not even trying to hide it. Other blue-state mayors and governors...

“In what is becoming all too common for Congress, the COVID-19 relief bill was dumped on the President’s desk filled with pork spending and pet projects, which significantly reduced the meaningful support that struggling Americans deserve. It is clear President Trump recognized the immense flaws of the bill but was backed into a corner due to Congress running out the clock and sending him an all-or-nothing proposal.” (Texas Speaker of the House Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton, Dec. 28.)“The bill they are now planning to send back to my desk is much different than anticipated. It really is a disgrace… it has...

On 28 September 2020, a warrant was served in Jacksonville Florida, just before 8 a.m. The warrant was not a no-knock warrant. There is evidence the officers serving the warrant attempted to announce themselves with loudspeakers and by knocking. The warrant was served by a Special Weapons And Tactics (SWAT) team and the DEA. When they did not get an answer, they started to break in. They were not wearing body cameras. Diamonds Ford started shooting at them. She hit one officer in his vest, which saved him from a bullet wound. She called 911 and told the operator her...

The late, great urban theorist, Jane Jacobs, wrote in her seminal The Death and Life of Great American Cities that, "there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error, and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings." She was explaining that people with innovative business ideas need an inexpensive place to get started. After all, the founders of Apple, Google, and Disney birthed their enterprises in garages. In California, these days, the cost of real estate—and everything else, for that matter—is so high, that few people...

While media bias is obvious to those on the right, those on the left dwell in a sea of misinformation and exaggeration related to the activities of the President. Trump did not start a war in the Middle East with Iran. The Chicken Little "reporters" and "journalists" on NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, and MSNBC, and the usual suspects in the newspaper business squealed on and on about the imminent possibility.Venting Their SpleensTrump did not start World War III with North Korea, although pundit after pundit on television, and innumerable journalists, at what used to be prestigious newspapers such as The...

Rep. Louie Gohmert has filed a new document in the lawsuit brought on by him and other Republicans to stop the Democrats from stealing the 2020 election. The new filing argues that Vice President Mike Pence has the authority to count Republican electors in contested states, or ignore the electors from those states altogether. The filing asked that the court displace Congress’s longstanding role in counting the votes of the Electoral College in Presidential elections, which would bring a “peaceful conclusion” to the presidential election process. On New Year’s Day Judge Jeremy Kernodle ruled that Republican lawmakers, led by Representative...

New York’s slow-footed COVID-19 vaccine rollout has been a mismanaged mess, critics said Friday, with recent data showing that even Florida has doled out shots at a faster clip than the Empire State. The harsh words come a day after The Post reported that New York State has injected less than a third of the vaccines it has - casting doubt on Mayor Bill de Blasio’s dream of jabbing a million city residents in January. “It’s chaos out there. The state has no idea what it’s doing,” said Rensselaer County Executive Steve McLaughlin, particularly taking aim at the leadership of...