Free Republic

As we all know, crimes like shoplifting are punished harshly by Chinese authorities, especially when committed by foreigners. The previous administration allowed Americans to languish in horrific foreign prisons for crimes far less egregious, yet President Trump wasted little time to bring up the accused UCLA players with expeditious, definitive results. Of course, the black activist left will never acknowledge President Trump's intervention in what could have been a long, drawn-out State Department negotiation that normally leaves the detained Americans in nasty jails for weeks, months, or worse. They'll probably insist President Trump was simply doing his job and probably...

The debate over gun control, which has heightened after mass shootings in Las Vegas and Texas, is playing out in San Carlos with the City Council considering a 45-day moratorium that would stop a new gun store from opening. The moratorium, if approved by council tonight (Nov. 13), would give City Manager Jeff Maltbie more time to research what regulations the city could impose on gun stores, according to a report to council from City Attorney Greg Rubens, Community Development Director Al Savay and Maltbie. About a dozen residents asked the council at its Oct. 23 meeting to impose a...

Congressional lawmakers raised concerns about President Donald Trump's ability to use nuclear weapons during a hearing Capitol Hill Tuesday amid bipartisan anxiety over launch process procedures and indications that the administration has considered the option of a first strike on North Korea. Members of the Senate foreign affairs committee called into question a decades-old presidential authority to deploy nuclear weapons in what was the first congressional hearing on nuclear authorization in decades. "We are concerned that the President of the United States is so unstable, is so volatile, has a decision-making process that is so quixotic that he might order...

Surprising liberals and the social justice wing of the American Church at today's U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops general assembly, Archbishop Joseph Naumann beat Cardinal Blase Cupich in an election for the chairmanship of the committee on pro-life activities. Cardinal Cupich, who many on the left had hoped would reshape the pro-life office of the USCCB in the style of his Chicago predecessor Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, lost the election 54 percent to 46 percent.  This means 82 bishops voted for Cupich, with 96 bishops supporting Naumann.

Roy Moore is a Steve Bannon fantasy candidate. He’s an insurgent populist, a self-described renegade who shares Bannon’s arsonist attitude toward the Republican establishment and cares little for the proprieties of D.C. Or the basic standards of a civilized society, apparently, given that two women have accused Moore of criminal sexual assault and three more say he tried to “date” them when they were teenagers and he was in his thirties. But to Bannon, who has returned to a leadership role at Breitbart since leaving the Trump administration, deviance is working alongside Mitch McConnell, not setting a conduct bar so...

Donald Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon is urging American Jews to join his war against the Republican establishment. "We're leading an insurgency movement against the Republican establishment," Bannon told the crowd at the Zionist Organization of America's annual gala. "We're a nation at war. This war is only going to be won if we bind together and work as partners,” he continued. During the event, Bannon played up the mutual disdain he and many Jews feel for Iran, and he accused congressional Republicans of “playing games.” "I am not a moderate, I’m a fighter,” Bannon said to loud applause....

European Islamist scion Tariq Ramadan was banned from the U.S. by the Bush administration in February 2004 for his financial support of a charity that funded terrorist groups. In January 2010, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton overturned that ban. Clinton personally approved a visa for the controversial grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Now, Tariq Ramadan is facing multiple accusations of rape and sexual assault of minors. Hillary Clinton's visa for Tariq Ramadan was seen as part of the new Obama administration policy of embracing more hardcore Islamists. The New York Times reported in 2010: Six years after...

An effort by Vermont utility regulators to settle the long-standing, contentious issue of how much noise neighbors of industrial wind projects should be subject to ended up upsetting both proponents of wind power and those who say the noise poses a health risk to people who live near turbines. Proponents of using industrial wind projects as part of Vermont's long-term goal of getting 90 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2050 say the new wind rules will make achieving that goal more difficult, if not impossible. "These rules will certainly have a chilling effect on wind energy in...

Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles E. Grassley signaled this week he won’t adhere to a strict “blue-slip” policy for judicial nominees, clearing the path for Republicans to install some of President Trump’s picks over the objections of home-state Democrats. Mr. Grassley said the blue-slip tradition was intended to make sure the president consults with senators about judicial picks from their states, but wasn’t intended to give those same senators an absolute veto. “A senator can’t use a blue slip to block a nominee because it’s not the person the senator would’ve picked. The president gets to nominate judges,” Mr. Grassley said...

The request alone was enough to trigger a political backlash, as critics of Mr. Trump quickly decried what they called “banana republic” politics of retribution, akin to autocratic backwater nations where election losers are jailed by winners. Democrats still vividly recall Mr. Trump on the campaign trail vowing to prosecute Mrs. Clinton if he won. “It was alarming enough to chant ‘lock her up’ at a campaign rally,” said Brian Fallon, who was Mrs. Clinton’s campaign spokesman. “It is another thing entirely to try to weaponize the Justice Department in order to actually carry it out.” But conservatives said Mrs....

When Susan Fowler rocked Uber’s world with a meticulous account of the company’s sexual harassment and gender discrimination issues, the ride-sharing service turned to its only female board member to help clean up its culture (and its image). Arianna Huffington was perfectly poised to position herself as the feminist savior who would advocate for Uber’s women—she oversaw the subsequent Eric Holder investigation, and promised that “no brilliant jerks will be allowed, and no one will be protected because they are top performers.” But being a powerful woman with a stake in a company, and its profits, doesn’t mean Huffington was...

We’ll see. It’s nice to read the op-eds about a “reckoning” with Clinton and tweets like this one… Chris Hayes …but the mystery will forever linger how Democrats would have reacted to him vis-a-vis the Weinstein revelations if he were on television again every day as First Gentleman of the United States, not an ex-president whose main job now is showing up to charity events with the Bushes. Would there have been any Weinstein revelations at all during a Hillary Clinton presidency, knowing how they might blow back at her and Bill? Even the some of the recent liberal columns...

Authorities say a teenage girl has been killed in a hunting accident in Alabama. News outlets report the 15-year-old was shot on Monday about 20 miles southwest of Birmingham. Jefferson County Sheriff's deputies believe the girl and an adult family friend had been on a youth hunt. Authorities say the girl climbed down from a tree stand while they prepared to leave. As the friend passed down her rifle, deputies say the gun fired and struck the teen.

Sex and the City can still be saved — if Sia Furler has her way. Amid rumors that series star Kim Cattrall refused to sign on for a third movie for the HBO franchise, the Austrian singer-songwriter has expressed her displeasure over the scrapped Sex and the City 3 and is ready to take matters into her own hands. In an interview with Zane Lowe on Apple One radio, Sia even offered to take Cattrall’s place in Sex and the City 3. “‘I was like, I’ll play Sam, like nobody cares!” Sia said. “Like they just want the movie. We...

Three people were shot and killed Tuesday when a shooter opened fire near a Northern California elementary school, authorities said. The shooting was reported near Rancho Tehama Elementary school as some parents were dropping off their children. The shooter was killed by police officers after he also wounded children at the school, however, it was unclear if the shooting happened on school ground. It was also not immediately known if the shooter was counted among the people killed.

Today the jurors in the corruption trial of Senator Bob Menendez (D – NJ) will go back to work on orders of the judge, seeking to break what appears to be heading for a deadlock. Of course, if you don’t read conservative blogs or watch Fox News, you probably didn’t know that. There’s been a vacuum in terms of coverage on the major networks and most of cable news. One glaring example of this is MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell, who freely admits that he hasn’t mentioned the trial once since it began.Why is that? He was actually asked about it...

Lorry driver Abu Fawzi thought it was going to be just another job. He drives an 18-wheeler across some of the most dangerous territory in northern Syria. Bombed-out bridges, deep desert sand, even government forces and so-called Islamic State fighters don’t stand in the way of a delivery. But this time, his load was to be human cargo. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters opposed to IS, wanted him to lead a convoy that would take hundreds of families displaced by fighting from the town of Tabqa on the Euphrates river to a camp...

A Republican congresswoman said Tuesday she was told recently by a trusted source that a member of Congress exposed himself to a staffer. Rep. Barbara Comstock, R-Va., said at a House hearing on preventing sexual harassment on Capitol Hill that she was told about a staffer who quit her job after a lawmaker asked her to bring work material to his house, then exposed himself. "That kind of situation, what are we doing here for women, right now, who are dealing with someone like that?" Comstock asked. Stories of sexual harassment and gender hostility are continuing to come to light...

To mark the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, time capsules that were buried 50 years ago across the country are being unearthed. The 1917 upheaval, including the October Revolution, saw the toppling of the Russian monarchy and the Russian Empire eventually replaced by the Soviet Union. Young people in 1967 wrote letters to their 2017 peers, celebrating the achievements of Soviet rule and anticipating exciting developments in space exploration and science. But they could have hardly imagined that - 50 years later - flights to Mars would still be a distant reality, and that the Soviet Union would have...

On Monday, a fifth woman came forward with allegations that Roy Moore sexually assaulted her when she was 16 years old and he was a prosecutor in Etowah County, Ala. The accusations to date are both plausible and disgusting. When Moore was in his early thirties, he allegedly sought out and sexually assaulted numerous teenage girls, including a 14-year-old. Moore has denied it, sort of, although his weird interview with Sean Hannity on Friday left the strong impression that the charges are most likely true. Yet it’s hard to understand why voters in Alabama are only just now realizing that...