Free Republic

NASCAR has reinstated Noah Gragson after a suspension lasting just over a month, making him eligible to return to racing activities. NASCAR announced the news Tuesday with its weekly penalty report. A spokesperson said that “Noah Gragson has completed diversity and inclusion training” with partners at RISE (Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality), an alliance across major sports leagues that promotes diversity and equality through sports. Gragson was suspended by Legacy Motor Club and indefinitely suspended by NASCAR on August 5 for liking a racially insensitive social media post. On August 10, Legacy MC announced that Gragson had requested a...

During the state visit of the 46th President of the United States of America, Joseph R. Biden, Jr., to Israel next week, President Isaac Herzog will award him the Israeli Presidential Medal of Honor in a festive ceremony at the President’s Residence in recognition of his true friendship with the State of Israel, the people of Israel, and the Jewish People; his uncompromising decades-long commitment to Israel's security; his contributions to deepening, strengthening, and enhancing the strong and unwavering alliance between Israel and the United States of America; and his struggle against anti-Israeli and antisemitic hatred around the world. The...

Erykah Badu is singing the blues after unintentionally sparking Obama drama on social media. The soulful Grammy Award winner took to Twitter seeking the former first family’s forgiveness for being a "terrible guest" by posting pictures and videos of Barack Obama’s massive 60th birthday party in Martha’s Vineyard on Aug. 7. "Mr. And Mrs. Obama, Please forgive me 4 being the ‘terrible guest’ at such a sacred event for your family," Badu, 50, real name Erica Wright, tweeted Thursday. The "Window Seat" singer’s unauthorized social media posts showed the birthday boy with wife Michelle, 57, dancing mask-free among the hundreds...

Video Famed supermodel Chrissy Teigen was given an extra special honour last month after she got a follow back on Twitter by US President Joe Biden. While she may have been excited initially, it looks like the fashion icon soon started regretting her big feat as she became conscious of what she posted following the big achievement. Taking to her official Twitter on Tuesday, Teigen wrote: “I have tweeted a handful of times since my treasured @POTUS following. “In order for me to flourish as me, I must ask you to please lord unfollow me. I love you!!! It’s not...

I'd just like to thank the Admin Moderators on this website, whom I believe do a very good job (even though I was chastised on one of my earliest posts, because I didn't yet understand what the thread designation 'caucus' meant :-)

Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley defended President Trump as "truthful" and said she never questioned the president's fitness for office during a combative interview with Today's Savannah Guthrie. Haley, 47, has been defending the president on her media tour to promote her new book, With All Due Respect: Defending America with Grit and Grace, which was published on Tuesday. "I am way over time, but let me just quickly, because it’s been out there and you worked in this administration. Did you ever have any doubt about the fitness of this president?" Guthrie asked Tuesday morning. Haley, who alleged...

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell encouraged players to speak their minds on social issues Sunday in the wake of Colin Kaepernick's decision not to stand for the national anthem. While Goodell said he has not reached out to the San Francisco 49ers quarterback, the commissioner has praised the shift of players' activism from 'protests to progress.'

....Obama held a meeting Wednesday with 16 Cuban-Americans, including music producer Emilio Estefan.... ....Estefan asked the president to meet with Cuban dissidents and create a plan of action for a more democratic Cuba. "It doesn't make sense if you go and nothing happens in the end, I think this is good that Cuban people will decide and I think that in order to decide they will have to have free elections," Estefan said.

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews calls Obama the ‘perfect American’ — again MSNBC host Chris Matthews just can’t say enough nice things about President Obama. Already remembered for 2008 remarks about Mr. Obama’s speech sending a “thrill” up his leg, Mr. Matthews has now suggested the president may be “the perfect American.” Mr. Matthews‘ comments on Wednesday’s episode of “Hardball” came in context of discussion of Southern Poverty Law Center findings of a correlation between White House pushes for gun control and a rise in patriot group memberships. “I look at Obama as perfect American,” Mr. Matthews said, according to the show’s...

• Obama is one of five new species of darter fish discovered by researchers • The freshwater fish has distinctive bright orange and blue colours and is generally found in fast-flowing rivers around America • Other species named after Teddy Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and vice president Al Gore A new species of fish has been named after President Barack Obama by the researchers who discovered it. The freshwater fish has distinctive bright orange and blue colours and is generally found in fast-flowing rivers around America. It is one of five new species of darter - the smallest member...

Remember during 2008's Democratic primaries when Saturday Night Live did a hilarious sketch mocking a CNN debate as being a disgraceful suck-up to then presidential candidate Barack Obama? A repeat of this happened in real life Sunday evening when during a press conference from the APEC summit in Hawaii, CNN White House correspondent Dan Lothian actually asked the President if the GOP candidates were "uninformed, out of touch, or irresponsible" (video follows courtesy Right Scoop with transcript and commentary, photo courtesy AP):

On the Republican campaign trail, he derides any such public aid. But the healthcare law he signed as Massachusetts governor allows it. Reporting from Washington— The Massachusetts healthcare law that then-Gov. Mitt Romney signed in 2006 includes a program known as the Health Safety Net, which allows undocumented immigrants to get needed medical care along with others who lack insurance. Uninsured, poor immigrants can walk into a health clinic or hospital in the state and get publicly subsidized care at virtually no cost to them, regardless of their immigration status.

...Praising Mrs. Obama...Estefan said, "We're so proud of you. Thank you for giving our young women somebody incredible look up to."

e.o.m.

The great love of my life marries today and I am not the groom. I had my chance, a few years ago, but did not realize until too late how fleeting my moment with her was meant to be. Whether it was my fault or hers, and, let's face it, it was probably mine, I will wonder always about the life I might have had with the most loving and loveable woman I have ever known. Sometimes, I finally now understand, love, even crazy love, is not enough. Sometimes, as the romance novelists know, timing is everything. But today is...

I recently had the great pleasure of meeting Carlos Slim. He had decided to invest in the New York Times Co. and thought it would be a good idea to get to know me and my senior colleagues. It was obvious from the moment we met that he was a true Times loyalist. We had an enjoyable conversation about what was happening in this country and everywhere else in the world. Carlos, a very shrewd businessman with an appreciation for great brands, showed a deep understanding of the role that news, information and education play in our interconnected global society....

FRiends, today marks ten years that I have been on FreeRepublic. I want to say thank you to Jim Robinson for providing this site and for providing a forum for conservatives to bounce ideas off each other and to wax eloquently(or just plain wax ad nauseum)on the political issues of the day.I want to say thank you to all of you for the insights and knowledge so freely shared here that enhances the understanding of a myriad of subjects every day, and which has helped me to make sense of the events of the last ten years. Although many in...

In visiting Syria this week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi no doubt meant well. She wants dialogue. As a woman, mother, and now the third-highest-ranking elected official in American politics, she has achieved a great deal in life by talking with people. On this trip she made a point of showing how easy it is to interact with Syrians, with an itinerary that included a visit to a souk in Damascus - where she was photographed holding out her hand while a cheerful vendor gave her some nuts. Unfortunately, that photo-op sums up the best that can be said about Pelosi's...

Last Friday, Barbara Walters embarrassed herself conducting a fawning interview with Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's Marxist budding dictator. This is a more serious mortification than Rosie O'Donnell spouting nonsense on ABC's The View, which Walters hosts and partly owns. Not since Herbert Matthews of the New York Times wrote about the Fidel Castro the humanitarian, just as his fortunes were flagging in the late 1950s, have we seen a major American journalist go so gaga over a would-be Latin dictator. Walters' offering on Hugo Chavez on ABC's 20/20 went far beyond the garden-variety media bias seen so abundantly in print news...

Geopolitics: Radical chic is thriving in the whirl of parties at the United Nations these days, and no one is being courted more solicitously as one of the downtrodden than Evo Morales of Bolivia. You remember "radical chic," don't you? The 1960s and 1970s phenomenon, described by Tom Wolfe in his "Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak-Catchers" tells how New York's glitterati threw black-tie parties to court supposedly "real" revolutionaries — like Black Panthers, Puerto Rican separatists or Indian liberationists — in a bid to feel "authentic." It's been a long time, but radical chic isn't dead. Which explains why...