Free Republic

Peggy Noonan’s observation in the Wall Street Journal that the most recent jihadist mass murderer is “an idiot”—unlike the men who perpetrated 9/11, but like all who have struck us since—provokes more thought than likely went into it. Noonan correctly notes that 9/11 led us to expect more attacks with comparable planning and execution. Instead, we’ve been hit by random idiots, the most sophisticated of whom (the Bataclan murderers) operate at an elementary infantry level. So what? Our ruling class concludes that more and better policing has precluded attacks on the scale of 9/11, limiting Islamist terrorism to a level...

U.S. Cardinal Blase Cupich praised Jesuit Fr. James Martin for being what he called the “foremost evangelizer” of young people in the Church today.  “He really is one of the, if not the foremost evangelizer in the Church today, especially for young people,” said the Pope Francis-appointed Cardinal, who is the Archbishop of Chicago, while speaking at The University of Chicago Institute of Politics on Monday.  Martin, a Vatican consultant and editor-at-large of the Jesuit-run America magazine, is one of the most recognized proponents of homosexuality within the Catholic Church today.  The Jesuit priest has called for the Church to...

Hillary Clinton is reportedly in secret negotiations with ex-British spy Christopher Steele to buy a second 'dirty dossier' on Donald Trump . The second report allegedly contains more salacious charges against the President, a Clinton author claims. Last month, it emerged that Clinton's presidential campaign helped fund research that led to the now-infamous dossier of explosive allegations against Trump . Now, author Edward Klein claims former Clinton campaign aides, still reeling from the shock 2016 election loss, are in talks with former MI6 agent Steele, according to the Daily Mail . Klein claims an advisor told him: "Steele didn't release...

A 22-year-old man was arrested in Chino Hills on Tuesday on suspicion of repeatedly pouring boiling hot water on his girlfriend's dog.

“While there’s no one solution to the epidemic of gun violence, it’s past time for Congress to take common sense steps to strengthen critical safeguards and stem the tide of rising gun violence plaguing our communities.”(Washington, D.C.) – Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) joined a number of her colleagues today to introduce the Assault Weapons Ban of 2017, a bill to ban the sale, transfer, manufacture and importation of military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines.“From last month’s horrific scene on the Las Vegas strip to the heart-wrenching stories coming out of Sutherland Springs, TX, too often we’ve had to reach...

Apparently the President is at a grand and historic welcome ceremony in China. No one is showing it. Tucker Carlson is doing his show with Donna Brazile and occasionally mentions it but they aren't showing it. Disgraceful.

Although Angela Merkel was returned for her fourth term as German Chancellor, the gains made by the Alternative for Germany Party (AfD) seem to have created an issue with her ability to form a majority coalition. Groups within the Bundestag who traditionally make up the “Jamaica Coalition” (based on party colors) are refusing to sign up…Is this an opportunity for more gains for the right and centre right? Or is something more sinister at play? When AfD won over 90 seats in its first big election breakthrough, parliamentarians knew that forming a workable coalition would prove more troublesome, but what...

He did so when NBC News’ Ali Vitali asked if he would support more gun control for would-be gun purchasers. She said, “You’ve talked about wanting to put extreme vetting on people trying to come into the United States, but I wondered if you’d consider extreme vetting for people trying to buy a gun?”

The Democrats have two very different profiles. One is their public face of absolute moral purity. They’re just better people than Republicans. That’s what you’re buying when you walk into the Democratic store: pure virtue. They’ve got nothing else on the shelves. No beef jerky, no wiper fluid, no Gatorade. The other profile is reality: In the backroom, where the employees eat lunch, the Democrats and their fat-cat donors are committing unspeakably sleazy and immoral acts. Everyone on the left knows this. That’s why, the moment Harvey Weinstein was exposed as a sexual predator, his reflexive response was not to...

Unlike most cryptocurrency hacks, however, the money wasn’t deliberately taken: it was effectively destroyed by accident. According to the Daily Mail, the lost money was in the form of Ether, the tradable currency that fuels the Ethereum distributed app platform, and was kept in digital multi-signature wallets built by a developer called Parity. These wallets require more than one user to enter their key before funds can be transferred. On Tuesday, Parity revealed that, while fixing a bug that let hackers steal $32m out of few multi-signature wallets, it had inadvertently left the second flaw in its systems that allowed...

It’s possible that Chris Matthews has publicly discussed his drinking past before, but I had never witnessed it until tonight. When, on this evening’s Hardball, a winning Dem candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates started to discuss the opioid crisis, Matthews spoke up: “I was lucky not to have that [opioids.] I think I drank over the years too much and I quit.” Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

BREAKING: 7 new indictments filed in DC, that's 31 total! President Trump wasn't kidding when he said today would be a big!

A former star of the hit series Smallville has been identified as a high-ranking member of a sex cult. Last month, the New York Times broke the story about a secret sorority that brands women, puts them on starvation diets and beats them if they don't recruit enough 'slaves'. The group, called DOS, is reportedly a secret society for the highest ranking female members within the self-help group NXIVM. To outsiders, NXIVM is just a run-of-the-mill self-improvement group, offering classes that teach the answers to living a successful and fulfilling life. But ex-members told the Times that NXIVM functions as...

The Black Cube operative claimed to be working on women’s rights advocacy and reportedly asked McGowan to speak at an upcoming event she was organizing. Penn and McGowan met in person on several occasions in New York and California, and even spent time on the Venice boardwalk, according to the New Yorker. Penn pressed McGowan for information about her allegations against Weinstein, and eventually managed to obtain a copy of the actress’s unpublished book. The operative even kept up the ruse after the New Yorker published explosive allegations against Weinstein last month, revealing that he had been accused of sexual...

Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton revealed she owns a pink "pussy hat," which became the symbol of the Women's March on Washington a day after President Trump's inauguration. "I do!" Clinton told the New York Times when asked if she owned the pink hat. "I was given one that's going into my archives." Thousands of women donned the pink knitted beanies with cat ears as a symbol of solidarity as they marched in late January. "The idea is both a play on pussy hat, pussycat, and also references the hot mic from the ‘Access Hollywood' video. It does reference...

RUSH: Here is one more sound bite, Larry Sabato. Some people say in Rio Linda Sabato, but it’s Sabato. He runs the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. He’s a renowned political scientist of great repute among some, and he was on Shannon Bream’s show on the Fox News Channel last night — Fox News @ Night, Fox News After Dark — and she said, “Did Ed Gillespie try to embrace some of the president’s policies while not necessarily embracing him? What led to this resounding defeat?” SABATO: Virginia is now a blue state. We’ve been calling it...

NJ Transit sidelined 44 train engineers -- the people who actually drive the trains -- over the past year after testing required in the wake of a September 2016 rail crash in Hoboken found that they suffered from sleep apnea. NJ Transit screened 373 engineers for sleep disorders, said Nancy Snyder, an NJ Transit spokeswoman. Out of those engineers, 57 were taken out of service until a full sleep study could be conducted, she said. Of the 57 engineers, 44 were found to have sleep apnea and remained sidelined until they met treatment requirements, Snyder said. Another 13 engineers were found not to have a sleep disorder,...

Attention parents and guardians: make sure your Paypal password isn't obvious or simple. One tech-savvy nine-year-old girl from Immingham, Lincolnshire, gave her father a bone-chilling shock after blowing roughly $1,300 on a dream trip to Disneyland Paris. Ian Wilson, the child's father, was fast asleep when his daughter, Susan, got ahold of his phone and began a little midnight shopping spree (well, maybe not so little) after figuring out his Paypal password. Dishing out the benjamins, Susan spent over $500 on flights and a hotel gift card, another $300 on a VIP trip to the Eiffel Tower and just shy...

The "Pylos Combat Agate," as the seal has come to be known for the fierce hand-to-hand battle it portrays, promises not only to rewrite the history of ancient Greek art, but to help shed light on myth and legend in an era of Western civilization still steeped in mystery. The remarkably undisturbed and intact grave revealed not only the well-preserved remains of what is believed to have been a powerful Mycenaean warrior or priest buried around 1500 B.C., but also an incredible trove of burial riches that serve as a time capsule into the origins of Greek civilization. But...

Corker to hold hearing on president's nuclear weapons authority By Brandon Carter - 11/08/17 07:41 PM EST Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) announced Wednesday the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would hold a hearing next week on “the executive’s authority to use nuclear weapons.” “A number of members both on and off our committee have raised questions about the authorities of the legislative and executive branches with respect to war making, the use of nuclear weapons, and conducting foreign policy overall,” Corker said in a statement announcing the Nov. 14 hearing. “This continues a series of hearings to examine these issues and...