Free Republic

In 1987, McDonald’s launched an ingenious sweepstakes based on the game of Monopoly. Customers would purchase sandwiches, fries, drinks, etc., that included peel-off game pieces on the packaging — potentially rewarding them with anything from a Filet-O-Fish to a new car to $1 million. People went wild for it and business spiked by 40 percent for the fast-food giant, which kept it up for years. But it wasn’t all happy meals. “It seemed like an opportunity for ordinary people to get ahead, but there were consequences,” said Brian Lazarte, co-director of the HBO docu-series “McMillion$,” premiering Monday, about the contest. In fact,...

Rep. Adam Schiff on Thursday delivered a last-minute pitch to have witnesses in President Trump’s Senate impeachment trial. Schiff said that he wants one week devoted to closed-door depositions from witnesses in the trial as senators prepare to vote on the matter Friday. “I will make an offer to opposing counsel, who says this will stretch on indefinitely if you decide to have a single witness,” Schiff, the lead House impeachment manager, told senators. “Let’s cabin the depositions to one week. I think we can. I think we should. I think we must,” the California Democrat added. Trump’s legal team...

A high-profile case prosecuted by Amy Klobuchar when she was a top Minnesota county attorney has come under fire — with questions arising over whether the teen her office put behind bars for life is actually guilty. Findings from an investigation conducted by the Associated Press challenge the 17-year-old case that the presidential hopeful has promoted to show her commitment to racial justice. Myon Burrell, who is black and was 16-years-old in 2002, was convicted for firing a stray shot that killed 11-year-old Tyesha Edwards, who is also black, as she was doing homework at her dining room table in...

Remember when Jimmy Carter published a whiny, self-serving book about his political downfall called “What Happened”? Remember when Mike Dukakis pushed filmmakers to do a four-hour fan documentary about himself? Remember when George H.W. Bush mocked Bill Clinton at the Grammys? Yeah, me neither. Previous losing presidential candidates had the dignity to back off and bow out of politics. Yet here is Hillary Rodham Clinton, the recurrent canker sore on America’s butt, which is politics. This week she again tried to reintroduce herself to us all as anything but what she is, which is a sore loser. Her attempts to...

SNIP “We both have a dream in life and that is to get Gayle to smoke weed,” Winfrey said of her best friend, while talking with Schumer on a recent episode of her podcast “Oprah’s Super Soul Conversations.” Winfrey explained that as long as she’s known the “CBS This Morning” co-host, King has stayed away from the hard stuff. “In all the years that I’ve been besties with Gayle and that’s since 1976, and I’ve been with Stedman [Graham] since 1685, in all those years neither he nor Gayle has ever had a sip of anything,” she said, adding that...

Eli Manning bid farewell to the Giants and the NFL on Friday, officially announcing his retirement after bringing two Super Bowl titles to Big Blue over 16 seasons as their quarterback. Giants co-owner John Mara also announced that the Giants will induct Manning into their Ring of Honor next season and “no one ever will wear No. 10 again.”

Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden freaked out at a reporter Wednesday after a campaign event in Mason City, Iowa, after he was grilled about his ongoing feud with Bernie Sanders.

He has a dream — of leading a New York City that is home to far fewer Midwesterners. Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams — the leading fundraiser in the 2021 mayoral race — used Monday’s Martin Luther King Jr. national holiday to deliver an inflammatory broadside against newcomers from the nation’s heartland. “Go back to Iowa, you go back to Ohio,” he said during a speech in Harlem. “New York City belongs to the people that was here and made New York City what it is.” Speaking at the National Action Network’s “King Day Celebration,” hosted by founder the Rev....

Former New York City mayor and 2020 presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg said Monday he would vote to convict President Donald Trump if he were in the Senate, but added that he views impeachment as “not good” and “a political process.” The billionaire 2020 hopeful’s comments came during an interview with NBC’s “Today Show,” when host Craig Melvin asked how he would advise senators who are acting as jurors in the upcoming impeachment trial. “The president’s actions, eventually, as information came out, it convinced me he should be impeached,” Bloomberg answered, adding that he thinks there should be a fair trial....

he younger brother of former Democratic Rep. Katie Hill has been found dead in his Southern California home. Hill — who resigned from Congress last year — remembered her brother Daniel Brett Bennett on Sunday as a young man with “so much promise.” “Yesterday my brother Danny – a young man who overcame so much in his short life with so much promise ahead – passed away,” Hill wrote. “My heart is breaking & I’ll miss him forever. Prayers for our family in this impossibly difficult time would be appreciated.” Bennett, 20, was found unresponsive at his home in Santa...

ALBANY — New Yorkers think race relations in the Empire State are going down the tubes, a new poll has found. Only 5 percent of voters surveyed in a new Siena College study released Monday, Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, said race relations are excellent, while 28 percent rated them as good. Meanwhile, a combined 64 percent of New Yorkers described relations as fair, at 42 percent, or poor, at 22 percent. The most dismal view comes from New York City, where 29 percent of residents think race relations are poor, compared to 20 percent of suburbanites and 15 percent...

Protesters in Puerto Rico called for Gov. Wanda Vazquez to resign Monday after stores of relief supplies were found unused in a locked warehouse over the weekend as the island reels from a powerful earthquake. Dozens gathered outside La Fortaleza, Puerto Rico’s governor’s mansion, banging on frying pans, denouncing Vazquez and holding signs with messages including “Government, Absent, Criminal, Negligent.” “I have never come out to protest but this caused me so much anger and indignation,” protester Rubi Oliveras told El Vocero newspaper. “How is it possible that you say you care about the country and yet you let so...

The New York Times endorsed not one, but two candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination on Sunday. The paper’s editorial board gave their blessings to progressive candidate Elizabeth Warren and centrist Amy Klobuchar in a surprise endorsement that split from tradition. The editorial board announced their endorsements toward the end of an episode of “The Weekly,” the Times’ television show that airs on Hulu. In an article posted to the Times’ website soon after the episode aired, the board noted their two endorsements were a “break with convention.” In endorsing Warren, the board wrote her campaign writes seriously about policy,...

Political figures have long used their families to route power and benefits for their own self-enrichment. In my new book, “Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite,” one particular politician — Joe Biden — emerges as the king of the sweetheart deal, with no less than five family members benefiting from his largesse, favorable access and powerful position for commercial gain. In Biden’s case, these deals include foreign partners and, in some cases, even U.S. taxpayer dollars. The Biden family’s apparent self-enrichment involves no less than five family members: Joe’s son Hunter, son-in-law Howard, brothers James and...

He put the fat in fatwa. A morbidly obese ISIS fanatic dubbed “Jabba the Jihadi” has been captured by Iraqi forces — who loaded him onto a flatbed truck because he couldn’t fit in a police car. The 560-pound mufti Abu Abdul Bari, also known as Shifa al-Nima, was nabbed Thursday by an elite SWAT team of the Nineveh regiment in the city of Mosul, according to Stars and Stripes.

He put the fat in fatwa. A morbidly obese ISIS fanatic dubbed “Jabba the Jihadi” has been captured by Iraqi forces — who loaded him onto a flatbed truck because he couldn’t fit in a police car. The 560-pound mufti Abu Abdul Bari, also known as Shifa al-Nima, was nabbed Thursday by an elite SWAT team of the Nineveh regiment in the city of Mosul, according to Stars and Stripes. The jumbo jihadist was known for “provocative speeches against the security forces” and is considered one of the top leaders of “ISIS gangs,” Iraqi security officials said in a statement....

A 104-year-old US Marine Corps veteran wants people to share some love this Valentine’s Day. Maj. Bill White, who served in World War II and was injured in the Battle of Iwo Jima, is asking members of the public to send him cards for the Feb. 14 holiday, KTXL reports. The California native hopes to add the cards to his scrapbooks, where he keeps a lifetime’s worth of memories on bookshelves arranged by year. “I’ll save every one of them like I’ve been saving little things that have come up until right now and they’ll be a personal part of...

Abby Huntsman announced on Monday she’s quitting “The View” to join her father, Jon Huntsman Jr., on his Utah gubernatorial campaign. But Page Six is told that the campaign isn’t the real reason for her exit from the ABC fixture, which has recently been rocked by a breakdown in the relationship between Meghan McCain and her fellow panelists. “It’s an unhealthy environment — just the way that things are handled during shows and how people deal with each other,” said an insider familiar with Huntsman’s thinking. “It’s intense.” “Abby made an issue [to executives] about the overall environment. She’s felt...

The former US Treasury Department staffer accused of leaking confidential information to a reporter pleaded guilty Monday to a single count of conspiracy. Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards admitted before Manhattan federal court Judge Gregory Woods to spilling secrets to a Buzzfeed reporter about the Mueller investigation and probes into Paul Manafort, Rick Gates and Russian agent Maria Butina. The 41-year-old’s plea comes as she was approaching trial on charges including conspiracy to make unauthorized disclosures between October 2017 and October 2018 while working for the treasury department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Prosecutors accused the Virginia woman, who was arrested in...

The family of a man who Democratic donor Ed Buck allegedly killed by supplying him with methamphetamine filed a wrongful death suit in civil court against him, a report said. In the suit, sisters of Timothy Dean claim Buck “forcibly and repeatedly injected Mr. Dean with crystal methamphetamine” against his will, NBC reported. Dean died of a meth overdose in Buck’s West Hollywood home in January 2019. Buck pleaded not guilty in October to federal charges that he caused the overdose deaths of Dean and another man, Gemmel Moore. In their suit, Dean’s family claim Buck has, “a history of...