Free Republic

A U.S. citizen who kept an Islamic State flag and a cache of weapons in his New York City apartment was sentenced Friday to 22 years in prison after pleading guilty to providing material support to the terrorist group, the Justice Department announced. Sajmir Alimehmeti, a 26-year-old Albanian turned U.S. citizen, was sentenced Friday by U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer, who called him a "ticking time bomb." He called the Bronx man's conduct "terrifying." In February 2018, Alimehmeti admitted providing material support to the group.

Nearly 100 mayors across the United States are begging President Trump to import as many refugees to the country as possible in order to “bring cultural vibrancy and diversity� to American communities.In a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last month, about 88 mayors — from Denver, Colorado to Columbia, South Carolina — urged Trump to end his latest executive order that gives American communities more veto power over whether they want refugees resettled in their communities.The mayors said that more refugees are needed to bring about “cultural vibrancy and diversity� to their often small towns, though they admit refugees are an initial...

Law scholar Alan Dershowitz predicted the next Democrat elected president of the United States will be impeached as a result of the same "open-ended" criteria the party is currently using to impeach President Trump. "They have created open-ended criteria which bear no relationship to the word of the Constitution itself," Dershowitz said Sunday on Fox News. "If President Trump is impeached, it will set a terrible precedent, which will weaponize impeachment, and the next Democrat who gets elected will be impeached." How many foreign policy decisions have been made by presidents over the years in order to help them get...

Rep. Denny Heck, D-Wash., said one of the reasons for his announced retirement from the House of Representatives is that a growing number of Republicans and Democrats in Congress "simply don't believe in compromise, don't believe even in principled compromises" anymore. In an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press with Chuck Todd" to be broadcast Sunday, the four-term representative of a district that includes the Washington state capital, Olympia, also said he will "go to my grave not understanding how some of my colleagues could simply turn the other way and overlook the president's behavior and his misdeeds." "My soul...

Brutal. That's the way to sum up the Daily Beast description of wealthy Democrat candidate for president, Tom Steyer. The purpose of their Saturday article by David De La Fuente was to shame the Democrats into including "candidates of color' at their next presidential debate but a big take away from the story was that it basically described Steyer as a scam artist. Not only were Democrats in general shamed in "Democrats Must Not Have an All-White Debate—and the White Candidates Should Say So" but what really stood out was the brutal slamming of Tom Steyer. Before we look at why De La...

House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday and admitted to host Chuck Todd that impeachment is about preventing Trump from being reelected in 2020.

School-bus drivers Billie McClinsey and Brad Mayer didn’t like being represented by the Teamsters and wanted to put the matter to a vote. That should have been straightforward. Federal law provides that if union opponents collect signatures from 30% of their co-workers, they can ask the National Labor Relations Board to schedule a vote. But the process is frequently made convoluted and oppressive. As a result, Messrs. McClinsey and Mayer are trapped—likely indefinitely—in the union they oppose. The NLRB is soliciting comments on proposals to lift barriers that limit workers’ right to remove a union. Messrs. McClinsey and Mayer work...

After a bone marrow transplant, a man with leukemia found that his donor’s DNA traveled to unexpected parts of his body. A crime lab is now studying the case. Three months after his bone marrow transplant, Chris Long of Reno, Nev., learned that the DNA in his blood had changed. It had all been replaced by the DNA of his donor, a German man he had exchanged just a handful of messages with. He’d been encouraged to test his blood by a colleague at the Sheriff’s Office, where he worked. She had an inkling this might happen. It’s the goal...

WASHINGTON — Almost from the moment that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her lieutenants decided this fall to pursue the impeachment of President Trump, they made a fateful judgment: If the president intended to do nothing but stonewall and subvert their inquiry, they were not going to be the ones politely sticking to lofty traditions. Mr. Trump’s lawyers have made a similarly cold calculation. After a year of defying without consequence Congress’s attempts to investigate the president’s conduct, they have no intention of taking part in what they view as an illegitimate impeachment, initially conducted without a formal House vote in...

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ran a victory lap after Amazon announced that they were purchasing office space in New York City without any of the subsidies that were offered in the previous deal. Last year, Ocasio-Cortez expressed outrage when Amazon announced it would split its new headquarters, HQ2, between New York City and northern Virginia. She was frustrated that New York officials had promised the corporation tax breaks to entice them to choose their state for the new campus. “Amazon is a billion-dollar company. The idea that it will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks at...

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg claimed last month that “everything that we have proposed has been paid for, and we have proposed no tax increase on the middle class.” The South Bend, Ind., mayor is incorrect on both counts: He hasn’t said how he’d pay for all his proposed spending. He has endorsed one explicit tax increase on the middle class, and his recent retirement plan provides an outline for another. Add it up, and middle-class workers could face a trillion dollars in new taxes. To support family caregivers, Mr. Buttigieg’s retirement plan restated his prior commitment to enact “an...

On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks argued 2020 Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden had “one of the best weeks of the campaign” and Biden’s confrontation with a voter in Iowa “showed vigor, showed toughness,” and gave Biden control of the news cycle. Brooks stated, “I do think Joe Biden had a — one of the best weeks of the campaign. He had an ad mocking…President Trump…and then he went after that voter. Which I think showed vigor, showed toughness, showed he’s doing well, and I think also allowed him to control the news...

House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Doug Collins (R-GA) on Sunday blasted Chairman Jerry Nadler, saying Monday's scheduled impeachment hearing needs to be postponed. According to Collins, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) handed over thousands of pages of documents less than 48 hours before Monday's scheduled impeachment hearing. "This is how desperate, how desperately focused they are on impeaching this president," Collins told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo. "Last week we had our first hearings with the law professors and Jonathan Turley put it to bed about how they're actually abusing power. The next morning Speaker Pelosi comes on and...

Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey on Tuesday proposed investing $100 billion in historically black colleges and universities and other minority-serving institutions, a broad proposal in a Democratic field that has offered varying plans to prop up this longstanding yet struggling arm of the educational system. Many H.B.C.U.s, as historically black colleges and universities are commonly known, have faced widespread financial woes recently, with some schools losing accreditation and facing plummeting enrollment. Mr. Booker’s proposal comes at a precarious time for his presidential campaign: Despite crossing the 200,000 individual-donor threshold last month, he is still short four qualifying polls for...

And a new poll by American Action Network finds three more “moderate” Democrats are likely to face defeat in November for backing the sham impeachment. AAN polled in the swing districts of Reps. SUSIE LEE (D-Nev.) and ANTHONY BRINDISI (D-N.Y.) and the very heavily Trump district represented by Rep. KENDRA HORN (D-Okla.). HERE’S THE TOPLINE: IMPEACHMENT APPEARS — at this point, according to this polling — to be a liability. In BRINDISI’S and LEE’S districts, 53% of voters are less likely to vote for them if they support impeachment. 48% of voters are less likely to vote for HORN —...

Five major websites often used for wedding planning have pledged to cut back on promoting and romanticizing weddings at former slave plantations. Pinterest, The Knot Worldwide — which owns The Knot and WeddingWire — and Brides announced Wednesday that they would make a variety of changes, including removing all references to plantations on their sites and prohibiting adjectives like “charming” to describe venues where many Americans’ ancestors were once enslaved, tortured and raped. And on Thursday, Zola said it would remove plantations from its venue listings. The developments, a number of which were reported by BuzzFeed News, came in response...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) recently blathered on about climate change, as she is wont to do.

The strongest indicator yet that Hillary’s mulling a 2020 run? She appeared Wednesday, for the first time ever, on Howard Stern. There was hardly a pretense she was there to promote the book she co-wrote with daughter Chelsea, long ago a bestseller. As those who listen to the show know, Stern publicly begged Hillary to appear during the 2016 campaign. After Donald Trump won, Stern said one guest shot could have moved the needle her way. “If she had come on the show …,” Stern mused in May. “The way I helped Donald was I let him come on and...

Wealthy Chinese to buy their way into U.S. citizenship by lending money to the U.S. real estate industry...the bill allows wealthy Chinese to get into the United States after 'first buying Portuguese citizenship.'.....Wealthy Chinese can buy “golden visa” citizenship from Portugal’s government in as little as 35 days.... If House bill H.R. 565 is approved by the Senate and becomes law, then the new Chinese citizens of Portugal will be able to move into the U.S. by getting E-1 Treaty Trader or E-2 Treaty Investor renewable visas. The bill does not yet have enough support to pass the Senate, but...

Urgent!"From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] By Ms. LOFGREN: H.R. 5038. Congress has the power to enact this legislation pursuant to the following: Article I, Section 8, clause 4 provides Congress with the power to establish a ``uniform rule of Naturalization.'' [Page H8784]"