Free Republic

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. - This oceanside enclave is a lot like the rest of coastal California: Its signature pier juts into the Pacific as waves big enough to make surfers salivate break beyond miles of white sand. But when it comes to politics, this city of 200,000 south of Los Angeles loudly defies the blue-state stereotypes. Lately, the beach town has become a battleground, its council chambers a coliseum for culture warriors. The conservatives who now control city government have pursued policies that position Huntington Beach as the ideological counterweight to the state’s liberal leaders. In the past year alone,...

Two suspects, a male and a female, are in the custody of D.C. police after an officer-involved shooting in the southeast part of Washington. The shooting was reported around 5:45 a.m. at Carroll Apartments on 410 M Street SE, near Navy Yard, D.C. Housing Authority Chief of Police Michael Reese said. Reese said a veteran male officer was on regular patrol in the area when he encountered the two suspects, who were asked to leave the building. The armed male suspect opened fire on the officer, hitting him in the torso. Reese said the suspects fled to a nearby building...

Washington Post writer Maura Judkis is under fire this week for a column in which she mocks shoplifting stories as the “moral panic” of a nation built on “stolen land.”It is reminiscent of those who excused rioting in past summers “as an expression of power” and demanded that the media refer to looters as “protesters.” Now, the Washington Post is suggesting that it may be just desserts for a nation of colonizers and enslavers.The prior day, the Post ran another column downplaying accounts of stores closing due to shoplifting even though employees blamed rampant shoplifting in San Francisco.Judkis wrote a...

It has been clear for quite some time that the Biden regime, despite its show of support for Israel, is really on the side of Hamas. Now the regime is in serious talks to respond to Hamas’ brutal and inhuman murder of 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023 by giving it the biggest reward of all: a Palestinian state.If you are skeptical that Old Joe and his henchmen are really on Hamas’ side, consider the fact that, in November, they enabled the release of ten billion dollars in frozen funds to the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hamas’ primary financier. That...

For years, Iran and the Palestine Liberation Organization have vocalized their aspirations—“Death to Israel” and “Death to America”— and for years, under Democrats, the U.S. has funded Iran, which in turn, uses the money to support terrorists to advance these goals. Barack Obama and Joe Biden decided the best thing to advance peace in the Middle East was to give Iran access to hundreds of billions of dollars. On the other hand, President Trump decided that the best way to advance peace in the volatile region was to cut off funds to terrorism’s biggest sponsor (Iran), so it couldn’t fund...

One of the preposterous charges made against Israel by the Palestinians is that the Jewish state “harvests the organs” from dead Palestinians. This is a variant on the medieval blood libel that accused Jews of using the blood of Christian children in making matzos. Think of Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln, and William of Norwich — two children whose deaths were falsely attributed to Jews wanting to use their blood, which led to pogroms being unleashed against local Jewry in medieval England. But the Palestinian charge was apparently not preposterous enough for the Washington Post, which reported the charge as...

What's up with these Morning Joe regulars who had cultivated something of a benign image suddenly turning nasty? Yesterday, we noted BBCer Katty Kay with a mocking laugh as she suggested to Charlie Sykes that they do a DeSantis post-mortem, "before we consign him to oblivion and forget his name." Today, it was Eugene Robinson's turn to turn mean. Though Robinson is an ardent liberal, he has something of an avuncular air about him. But both in his current Washington Post column, snidely entitled "The Nation's Gain is Florida's Loss," and on today's Morning Joe, Robinson took nasty swipes at...

One of the preposterous charges made against Israel by the Palestinians is that the Jewish state “harvests the organs” from dead Palestinians. This is a variant on the medieval blood libel that accused Jews of using the blood of Christian children in making matzos. Think of Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln, and William of Norwich — two children whose deaths were falsely attributed to Jews wanting to use their blood, which led to pogroms being unleashed against local Jewry in medieval England. But the Palestinian charge was apparently not preposterous enough for the Washington Post, which reported the charge as...

The internet has been a huge boon for the accessibility of information. There are very few barriers to consuming classic literature or detailed scientific analyses or catalogues of news reports. There is also an exorbitant amount of garbage information, of course, and an entire universe of people who say stuff that they think will get people to click links that will earn themselves money. Cut through the 2024 election noise. Get The Campaign Moment newsletter. While confidence in American institutions has been in decline for some time, it’s not hard to imagine how the economic incentives of the internet contribute....

In Florida trial involving classified documents, Donald Trump’s lawyers are seeking more information about a Department of Energy clearance list Former president Donald Trump’s lawyers say they may use evidence suggesting that Trump had a high-level security clearance as recently as last year to bolster their defense that the former president was acting in “good-faith and non-criminal states of mind” when he took sensitive documents from the White House to his Florida residence after leaving office. The revelation came in a legal filing late Tuesday night in which Trump’s attorneys urged Judge Aileen M. Cannon — who is overseeing Trump’s...

“In addition to churning subscribers and losing $100 million a year, the Washington Post is also failing to engage audiences. Four years ago, the Post boasted 139 million monthly visitors. By the end of last year, it had less than 60 million”

White House officials are concerned that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could initiate a full-blown war against the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon in order to save his own political career, according to a Sunday report. “If the Gaza war ends tomorrow, Netanyahu’s political career will end with it, incentivizing him to broaden the conflict,” anonymous US officials told The Washington Post. Netanyahu has dipped sharply in opinion polls since the war with Hamas began, with the public evidently attributing to him a significant portion of the blame for the failures that enabled the terror group’s October 7 massacres. “The prime...

Is The Washington Post in full-scale collapse? A recent look at the numbers provides a fairly convincing answer to that question. According to the report, not only is the Post losing $100 million a year, but it lost over half of its online engagement by the end of 2023. The signs were already there by mid-year, and the worst has come to pass. See: The Washington Post Is Facing a Financial Buzzsaw“Of that audience, less than one in five read more than a single article per month, while less than one in 500 actually convert to a paying subscription.”— Josh...

A majority of Americans say the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot was an “attack on democracy that should never be forgotten,” according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll released this week. In the poll, 55 percent of respondents said the Capitol riot was an “attack on democracy that should never be forgotten,” but 43 percent said “too much is being made” of the riot and that it is “time to move on. Thirty-seven percent of respondents said former President Trump bears “a great deal” of responsibility for the Capitol riot, and 16 percent said he bears a “good amount”...

Washington Post crybaby and COVID advocate Taylor Lorenz is skipping her fourth Christmas because of "selfish people" who refuse to wear masks against a non-life threatening virus. Lorenz has labeled herself "disabled" due to an "illness" that puts her at a higher risk of contracting COVID. However, I think her "illness" is more along the lines of a radical Leftist disease that clouds her common sense abilities. She also claims she has "PTSD" from online "harassment." "Literally, what is the plan for high-risk/medically vulnerable and disabled people? Just let us die while the world marches on??" Lorenz wrote in an...

The presidential election is less than a year away, and economic issues are once again top of mind for voters around the country. Despite the economy’s rapid recovery from the pandemic, President Biden has struggled to convince Americans that his policies are improving their finances. In polls, the majority of Americans still say they trust former president Donald Trump’s handling of the economy over Biden’s. 1. Job gains The astoundingly strong labor market is arguably the White House’s biggest victory. 2. Unemployment rate Aside from a covid-fueled surge in much of 2020 and 2021, the national unemployment rate has remained...

The House, in a decisive vote Thursday, passed the annual defense authorization bill, delivering a bipartisan rebuke to its most conservative members who had sought to infuse the legislation with a wishlist of provisions targeting Pentagon policies on abortion, diversity and LGBTQ+ rights. The $886 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was approved by a vote of 310-118, having passed the Senate by an overwhelming margin Wednesday night. It proceeds next to the White House, where President Biden is expected to sign the legislation into law.

The testimony of three university presidents before a House committee last week provoked outrage after they suggested that calls on their campuses for Jewish genocide might not have violated their schools’ free speech policies. One of them, Liz Magill, was forced to step down on Saturday as president of the University of Pennsylvania, where I am a faculty member. But their statements shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Congress could have assembled two dozen university presidents and likely would have received the same answer from each of them. This is because the value of free speech has been elevated to...

A coalition of Catholic nuns has filed a lawsuit against gunmaker Smith & Wesson, calling for the company to stop producing AR-style rifles, which the women claim are “the weapon of choice for numerous mass murderers.” The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in a Nevada district court, alleges that Smith & Wesson has repeatedly ignored “red flags” and failed to respond appropriately to mass shootings in the United States. The lawsuit references some of the deadliest mass killings in recent U.S. history — including at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., in 2012; a high school in Parkland, Fla., in 2018; and...

A school district in Lynchburg, Virginia, has received multiple death threats after the Washington Post published an article that claimed the board created a “blueprint for how to belittle, betray and dismiss kids” because it refused a $10,000 donation from a radical LGBT-pushing group. The Lynchburg City School Board voted 7 to 2 against the creation of LGBT “safe spaces” in its schools – designed to take children out of lessons and allow them to talk about their feelings in “comfortable chairs, blankets and low light” – with funds from the charity “It Gets Better.” The rejection infuriated Petula Dvorak...