Free Republic

Conservative Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) announced Wednesday he will hold up any funding bill to keep the government open past Sept. 30 if it includes funding for the war in Ukraine.“Today I’m putting congressional leadership & @POTUS on notice that I will oppose any effort to hold the federal government hostage for Ukraine funding. I will not consent to expedited passage of any spending measure that provides any more U.S. aid to Ukraine,” Paul wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.That means if Senate Majority Leader Schumer (D-N.Y.) wants to add Ukraine money to a stopgap...

Will Ron DeSantis win Iowa? https://t.co/V0tevNaJWU— Tomi Lahren (@TomiLahren) September 14, 2023

Seven years after Brexit, the writing is on the wall. But an official return isn't palatable for either sidePeter Foster has spent his life nurturing networks of contacts with insights and views that fill his new book about Brexit. The first half examines “what went wrong” with the British departure from the EU and the second half asks what can be done about it. What is being done is that process is going into reverse. As Foster relays, there is nothing certain or easy about this developing rehabilitation. But there are areas where the UK will or can move much...

It seems like President Donald Trump is showing up everywhere these days, and that's understandable, given the current GOP primary campaign cycle and the former President's ongoing legal battles. But now, in what may be the strangest appearance of the primary season, President Trump has shown up in Sweden.In the form of a steak.Hail to the beef?A Swedish man was shocked when he fired a steak on the grill — and saw former President Trump’s mug staring back at him.The hunk of meat bears a somewhat uncanny resemblance to Trump’s signature blond bouffant and pouting lips.“I realized the steak looked...

When CNN announced that former Bay Area reporter Sara Sidner would be coming to delve into San Francisco’s lethal cocktail of fentanyl and homelessness, I knew what to expect. For the May 2023 special, Sidner asked people living on the streets why they came to San Francisco to be homeless and got the same answers I’ve gotten for years: It’s easy. Easy to get drugs, do drugs, put up a tent, steal to support your habit — and San Francisco will pay you more than $600 a month for the pleasure. It may not come as a surprise, but cities...

Of course, Ron DeSantis can come back and win. Anybody in the race can win – we saw Trump come back in 2016 when most everyone wrote him off in the general. Now it’s the Florida governor’s turn to be written off, but he’s not exactly in the same place that Trump was. DeSantis is a strong second right now. For him, it’s not a matter of a miracle happening, threading a bunch of needles to win the general when rational betters would bet against you like in 2016. No, Ron DeSantis has a plan, and there’s a method to...

For discussion. I have wondered if the Espionage Act covers ex Presidents in regard to their Presidential Records. In my opinion there may be a serious argument that they may not be governed by the Esionage Act based on the following… 1) prior to the implementation of the Presidential Records Act (PRA passed in 1978 implemented in 1981), ex Presidents routinely took possession of their Presidential records. (From National Archives website “Prior to the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which first applied to President Reagan, all of the official records of the White House were considered the personal property of...

Just asking. Media says it's going to be a box office smash.

The rapid increase in interest rates over the past year could cause some collateral damage to the U.S. government's finances. That is because as interest rates rise, the federal government's borrowing costs on its $32.48 trillion in debt will also increase. Interest payments on the national debt are projected to be the fastest-growing part of the federal budget over the next three decades, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a group that advocates for reducing the deficit. Payments are expected to triple from nearly $475 billion in fiscal year 2022 to a stunning $1.4 trillion in 2032....

What do you think, Freepers? A lot of you tell me it's a dead-end job and no one wants it and that it usually marks the end of a political career. But I think Rand would be suited to it. He is principled and can have a say in staff hires and domestic policy. I think he'd be a good and active vice president! HW Bush was VP and didn't stop him so there's that. The office is what you make of it I feel and I dont think Rand would turn it down. Lets face it he's going no...

During the period when social media was increasingly putting pressure on legacy media outlets, driving down their profits, a phrase crept into the national lexicon. “Learn to code.” While it was no doubt said in a derisive or at least humorous fashion by most, it carried an underlying assumption that most people accepted. Perhaps you should learn to code. That’s where the jobs of the future would be. But the period when that will be true may turn out to have a much shorter lifespan than anticipated. The rise of Artificial Intelligence and chatbot apps is already automating the work...

Fox News analyst Brit Hume said Monday that former President Trump’s defense for keeping classified documents was borderline “incoherent.” “His answers on the matter of the law seem to verge on incoherent,” Hume said after a portion of Trump’s interview with Fox anchor Bret Baier aired on the network. “He seemed to be saying the documents were really his and he didn’t give them back when he was requested to do so, and when they were subpoenaed because he wasn’t ready to because he hadn’t sorted them or whatever from his golf shirts,” Hume said. “It was not altogether clear...

Most mainstream scientists argue that the possible existence of spacecraft from a non-human origin is an “extraordinary claim” that is not worth a serious study until “extraordinary evidence” falls to their lap. The reason this evidence has to fall into their lap is because they are not engaged in the search for such evidence, and so its non-existence is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The simple answer to Enrico Fermi’s paradox: “Where is everybody?” is “To find out whether you have neighbors, you better use a telescopes or check your backyard for objects that came from the street.” Over the past two...

Poll: Would you vote for Mike Pence as President?

Researchers from Ariel University have conducted a study of wind speed statistics in the Samaria region of Israel and have found that the area holds potential for wind energy production. The study analyzed 11 years of wind data provided by the Israeli Meteorological Service and found a cumulative mean wind speed of 4.53 m/s and a prevailing wind direction characterized by a cumulative mean azimuth of 226°. The study's co-author, Professor Asher Yahalom from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics at Ariel University explained that "we analyzed long-term wind data for the Samaria region and found that wind speeds...

President Biden took aim at Republicans for not taking action in the wake of the latest Texas mass shooting that left nine people dead and again called on Congress to pass an assault weapons ban. “Too many families have empty chairs at their dinner tables. Republican Members of Congress cannot continue to meet this epidemic with a shrug. Tweeted thoughts and prayers are not enough,” Biden said in a statement Sunday.

Earlier this month, Larry Kudlow insisted that it is "it's incumbent on the U.S. government, no matter who's in power, to maintain the reserve currency status of the dollar." Kudlow laments that a toppling of the dollar from that perch "seems to be the direction we're going in." Kudlow's remarks came a day after Donald Trump declared that China is trying to displace the U.S. Dollar [sic] as the NUMBER ONE CURRENCY" and that if this occurs, it would be the biggest defeat for our Country [sic] in its history." Neither Trump nor Kudlow actually explain why maintaining reserve currency...

On Wednesday, the Russian government said that two drones from Ukraine had attacked the holy of holies in Russia — the ancient Kremlin — and that the U.S. assisted Ukraine in the operation. Here’s a video released by the Russian government appearing to show something exploding above the Kremlin. Astonishing footage of last night's drone attack on the Kremlin pic.twitter.com/3rghCHdIed— Francis Scarr (@francis_scarr) May 3, 2023Video analysis is not my forte, so I will not comment on the authenticity of what was recorded. But a drone being able to work its way through two or three layers of air defenses?...

What if we asked a highly sophisticated artificial intelligence program to analyze all Americans eligible to be president and come up with the names of everyone who has the characteristics required for someone in that important job — things like character, competence, integrity and common sense. Raise your hand if you think the names “Joe Biden” or “Donald Trump” would show up in the top million names the AI program would spit out. Besides Biden, Trump and maybe members of their immediate families, I’m guessing not a lot of hands would go up. But here we are. Almost nobody wants...

A universal vaccine that protects against all strains of the flu virus may be a step closer.The annual flu vaccine currently protects against four strains of the virus which scientists believe are most likely to be in circulation in the coming winter. But a vaccine that protects us from all types of flu — which kills between 10,000 and 30,000 people a year in the UK — is one of the holy grails of medicine. There are three different types of flu virus affecting humans — A, B and C, with various sub-types (including 29 of type A alone) which...