Free Republic

Senate Republicans have delayed voting on their tax bill as a setback forced them to patch up the plan only hours before a planned final vote. Senators will rework the legislation Thursday night with the next in a series of roll call votes set for 11 a.m. on Friday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said. Republicans previously hoped they could pass a plan by late Thursday or early Friday. A hiccup earlier Thursday left the GOP scrambling to tweak its bill and win over skeptical senators. The delay does not necessarily mean Republicans will lack the votes to pass the...

In the late 1960s, when Ted Koppel covered the Vietnam War as ABC News’ war correspondent, he would ship his film by air back to the network’s New York studios, a journey that took two to three days. By 2003, when he began covering the Iraq War, Koppel could broadcast from the desert, bringing news to his viewers the same day it happened. Now, Koppel said Wednesday in a lecture at Trinity University, half the American public gets its news immediately on Facebook. “What social media does is give all of us the opportunity to say anything at any time...

Say, maybe President Trump’s powers are even greater than anyone imagined . . . On this evening’s Hardball, Chris Matthews asked Yamiche Alcindor, a New York Times reporter, who Trump actually listens to. She responded: “Who he actually pays attention to are all the people he calls up on the phone: Roger Ailes. All these other people that are just kind of out in the world: Steve Bannon.” Ailes died over six months ago, in May 2017. Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said on Thursday that people close to President Trump told him during the campaign that Trump has "early stages of dementia." During MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Scarborough said Trump is "completely detached from reality." "You have somebody inside the White House that the New York Daily News says is mentally unfit," Scarborough said.

The researchers found that liberals with higher news media literacy were less likely to believe any or all of the five liberal conspiracy theories -- among them that the federal government knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks beforehand, that Republicans stole the 2004 presidential election through voter fraud in Ohio, and that there's a link between childhood vaccines and autism. Likewise, conservatives with higher news media literacy were less likely to believe five conspiracy theories commonly associated with conservatives -- among them that Barack Obama was not born in the U.S., that global warming is a hoax, and that the...

President Donald Trump intends to reduce the size of Bears Ears National Monument by nearly 85 percent and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by almost half, according to news reports Thursday.Leaked documents obtained by the Associated Press show the total amount of land in the two monuments would drop from more than 3.2 million acres to about 1.2 million acres. The same reductions were reported by the Washington Post, which cited unnamed "individuals briefed on the matter," cautioning that there could be some changes before Trump officially announces the new boundaries when he visits Salt Lake City on Monday.Heather Swift, a...

SAN FRANCISCO — After nearly a week of deliberations, a jury of six men and six women has announced they have reached a verdict deciding the fate of an undocumented immigrant accused of fatally shooting 32-year-old Kate Steinle two years ago at San Francisco’s Pier 14.

A cache of hundreds of eggs discovered in China sheds new light on the development and nesting behavior of prehistoric, winged reptiles called pterosaurs. Pterosaurs were fearsome-looking creatures that flew during the Lower Cretaceous period alongside dinosaurs. This particular species was believed to have a massive wingspan of up to 13 feet, and likely ate fish with their large teeth-filled jaws. Researchers working in the Turpan-Hami Basin in northwestern China collected the eggs over a 10-year span from 2006 to 2016. A single sandstone block held at least 215 well-preserved eggs that have mostly kept their shape. Sixteen of those...

The Kate Steinle verdict is being handed down now. Live on Fox News

The cable news ratings for November have been tallied, and the fake news factory that is CNN found itself in a distant last place behind second-place MSNBC. As has been the case forever, Fox News held the top spot.Fox News trounced CNN in every conceivable metric, most especially in total viewers. Fox’s average of 1.43 million total day viewers more than doubled CNN’s pathetic 690 thousand. During primetime, the humiliation was even worse: Fox’s 2.299 million viewers nearly tripled CNN’s laughably low 855 thousand.Putting CNN in a distant last place was second place MSNBC, which nearly doubled CNN’s paltry primetime...

A prominent Alabama Republican says he hasn't decided which candidate he will vote for in the general election and he has no plans to endorse either the Republican or the Democrat. "I'm not taking a side in the Democratic-Republican controversy right now," he said. Only the Republican candidate in that controversy -- it wasn't Roy Moore he was talking about. Rather, it was Roy Moore who was doing the talking. The Republican then, in case you were wondering, was George W. Bush, running against John Kerry in 2004. That year, Alabama voters picked Bush over Kerry almost 2-to-1. But when...

Matt Lauer’s abrupt firing from NBC News after accusations of inappropriate sexual behavior has left the network with a huge hole to fill. NBC made Lauer the face of morning television. He had been co-anchor of Today for 20 years and was being paid an annual salary in the $20 million range, according to The Wall Street Journal. He was fired on Wednesday after a staffer filed a complaint alleging he engaged in misconduct during NBC’s coverage of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. NBC News Chairman Andy Lack wrote a memo to the staff, saying the allegations made...

Embattled Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore was interrupted by protester Wednesday evening as he spoke during a church service in southern Alabama. Moore began his remarks by blaming liberals for the country's political woes. "Who are they? The liberals. They don't want conservative values," Moore said from the pulpit of Magnolia Springs Baptist Church in Theodore. "They are the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender ... who want to change our culture. They are socialists who want to change our way of life. Putting man above God. And the government is our god. They are the Washington establishment. They want to keep...

Popular tech companies—Google, Facebook, Twitter, and others—have strongly protected free speech online, a policy widely associated with the legal norms of the United States. American tech companies, however, operate globally, and their platforms are subject to regulation by the European Union, whose member states offer less protection to expression than does the United States. European regulators are pressuring tech companies to control and suppress extreme speech. The regulators’ clear warning is that, if the companies do not comply “voluntarily,” they will face harsher laws and potential liability. This regulatory effort runs the risk of censorship creep, whereby a wide array...

The Congressional Office of Compliance secretly paid close to $100,000 in taxpayer funds to settle sexual harassment claims from at least two young male staffers who worked for disgraced former Congressman Eric Massa, multiple sources with direct knowledge of the matter told ABC News. The claims were settled after Massa, a Democrat from upstate New York, resigned in 2010 amid a pending ethics investigation into allegations he groped and sexually harassed members of his staff.

U.S.—Stunned meteorologists reported Wednesday that the sea level has risen an astonishing 300 feet overnight, as the sweat from celebrities trying to cover up their sexual harassment scandals rained down “in buckets.” Vast swathes of the United States are now entirely underwater, including major coastal cities and regions, as the investigations into various celebrities and TV personalities continue. “This is a worldwide disaster,” one NBC News anchor (not Matt Lauer) said. “We saw an uptick when Harvey Weinstein’s deviant behavior came to light, but when it became clear the revelations wouldn’t be slowing down anytime soon, celebrities and otherwise...

In the interest of intellectual honesty and transparency, let's begin with a few important concessions to skeptics of the GOP tax reform bill: First, not every single American would be a winner under the plan.  A small percentage of US taxpayers would see a tax increase (disproportionately, these would be higher-income itemizers from high-tax states), and a number of deductions that help certain people with heavy medical expenses and student loan debt would be eliminated (proponents say much or all of the resulting blow would be mitigated by lower rates and a doubled standard deduction).  Second, among the "losers" would...

The intercontinental ballistic missile that North Korea launched on Wednesday appears to be significantly larger and more powerful than previous versions, according to independent analysts. "It's a monster," says Vipin Narang, an associate professor at MIT who tracks the North's nuclear capabilities. The missile is so much larger than previous versions that Narang suspects it could carry a powerful thermonuclear weapon, regardless of whether the North has managed to make a compact, missile-friendly version. "They wouldn't have to miniaturize much," Narang says. Other analysts are less sure about what the missile could carry and where it could reach. David Wright,...

Matt Lauer’s lawyers trying to get him $30M payout after firing By Emily Smith November 30, 2017 | 5:41pm Lawyers for Matt Lauer are working on landing the shamed anchor a $30 million golden sexual parachute following his NBC firing. Sources close to the disgraced newsman say his team is working on a plan to get him paid through the remainder of his $20 million a year contract – which still has a year and a half to run. Modal Trigger Matt Lauer and Eddie Burke Jr.MATT AGUDO/INSTARimages.com A source close to Lauer’s team said, “They are currently looking at...

EXCLUSIVE: A potential legal battle is brewing between Michael Moore and Harvey and Bob Weinstein over Fahrenheit 11/9, the sequel Moore is making to his 2004 film, which became the biggest grossing documentary of all time. Titled Fahrenheit 11/9 to commemorate the day Donald Trump pulled off a shocking victory to become U.S. president, the new film focuses on how it happened and all the chaos that followed in his first year in office. The Weinsteins have controls over the docu and sources said they are right now blocking Moore and his WME reps from being able to set the...