Free Republic

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes and other Republicans are considering writing a report next year alleging corruption at the FBI, The Washington Post has reported. Such a report would focus on the conduct of FBI officials during the probe into Russia’s meddling in last year’s American presidential election, according to people familiar with the plans. This comes as President Donald Trump and his supporters in Congress have intensified their attacks on the FBI, which is seen by many as a way to try and discredit special counsel Robert Mueller, the former leader of the bureau, and bring into doubt...

Sgt. Aaron Thompson was the first to arrive and "made the personal decision" not to wait for the dive team. He quickly removed his police gear, and punched through the ice to make a pathway to the boy, who was struggling in the icy water about 25 feet away from the shore, the release states. “Sergeant Thompson used his arms to punch through the ice, creating a pathway to the victim. Thompson was able to locate the victim under the ice and bring him back to shore where awaiting medical personnel began treating him," Lt. Crouse explained in a statement....

Tens of thousands of veterans have expressed interest in obtaining a new national Veterans Identification Card, intended as convenient proof of their service when they seek military discounts offered by retail and restaurant chains. The high level of interest apparently was too much for the online application site — operated by the Department of Veterans Affairs at vets.gov — and temporarily knocked it offline not long after it was rolled out at the end of November. Veterans Affairs has made improvements and is “monitoring the system regularly to ensure all veterans can access the application,” press secretary Curt Cashour said....

Serious question. I'm all for celebrating holidays. I like to celebrate. Better than sitting around all morose and angry at the world. I'd rather fill a pewter mug full of mead, turn up some upbeat music and celebrate. Whatever it is that needs celebrating. Now the Old Farmer's Almanac has been a sturdy and steady influence on me over the years and they are telling me that Kwaanza starts today - Dec 26 - and runs straight through Jan 1. That's New Year's Day, which I also celebrate. So that's a whole lot of celebrating, which is okay by me...

Barack Obama’s Obama Presidential Center, a three-building complex designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien on Chicago’s South Side, has made its intention to embrace its neighborhood very clear—specifically Jackson Park and the Midway Plaisance, the historic Frederick Law Olmsted–designed greenways that have hosted, among other things, the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, a.k.a. the “White City.” But what the Center hasn’t made as clear is that the complex’s footprint is growing, with its leaders recently proposing an aboveground parking garage that could take up about five acres of the Midway. The library’s concession for eating into this space is a...

A key state Senate committee will hold hearings in early 2018 to explore preventable causes of infant deaths, in part a response to an NJ Advance Media investigation into deaths that occur when parents share their beds with infants. The announcement by the state Senate Health Committee Chairman Joseph Vitale, D-Middlesex, comes as latest statistics show 41 infants suffocated while sharing a bed in 2015 -- the largest percentage of bed-sharing deaths reported in the state a single year. The NJ Advance Media report found the New Jersey's Child Fatality and Near Fatality Review Board had sounded an alarm about...

Please join me in helping my friend, Kelli Ward get to Washington. The establishment will come after her. John McCain will do everything he can to stop her. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen. Kelli Ward for US Senate

The vehicles are westbound on the 10 Freeway in Banning when the rocket’s plume begins to cut through the darkening sky. The driver in the vehicle with the camera and his children can be heard talking about the rocket in amazement while he slows for the wall of brake lights forming in front of them as other drivers take notice. Moments after they drive under the South San Gorgonio Avenue overpass, a thud is heard and then a white four-door vehicle in the next lane is shoved into the car in front of it by a van that rear-ended it....

<p>A singer and potential congressional candidate said Tuesday that she has filed a sexual assault complaint against President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager for hitting her twice on her buttocks during a Washington gathering in November.</p> <p>Joy Villa, a Trump backer who wore a “Make America Great Again” dress at the Grammys this year, said she plans to meet with detectives in Washington next week about the complaint against Corey Lewandowski.</p>

"We . . . see Him who has been made for a little while lower than the angels, namely, Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone" (Heb. 2:9). Jesus Christ was born to die as our substitute. At this time of year, it is difficult for us to see Jesus other than as a little baby. We of course know why He came, but we usually focus on His death on the cross at another time of year. But we must never forget...

Editor-at-Large of The Weekly Standard Bill Kristol accused President Donald Trump of trying to “shut down” the Russia investigation Tuesday, despite the White House’s continued cooperation with special counsel Robert Mueller. “The president hates the investigation. He fears it, and he wants to shut it down or curb it as much as he can,” Kristol said on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports.” “It may be that he intends to fire Mueller,” Kristol added. “Trump is trying systematically to discredit the FBI … and he’s doing so by attacking individuals, by attacking the whole organization, by saying the whole thing is a...

“[Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation. For in Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the first-born from the dead; so that He Himself might come to have first place in everything. For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all...

The Los Angeles Times posted an article yesterday suggesting that Donald Trump's presidency and the future of the Republican Party is in danger...because of white college graduates. Their argument? This demographic, who once supported Trump, has had enough of the President's 'shenanigans.' Republican hopes for keeping control of the U.S. Senate next year will hinge on affluent, mainly white suburbs like Summerlin, Nev., where Trump’s unpopularity is weighing on GOP Sen. Dean Heller in his run for reelection. It’s an open question whether the Republican Party — encumbered by Trump’s often racially charged cultural appeals to blue-collar voters — has...

WASHINGTON — Democrat Joshua Cole will not contest his narrow election loss to Republican Bob Thomas, despite earlier indications that he was considering asking the House of Delegates for an election do-over. Thomas won the 28th District race by 73 votes. Cole had repeatedly raised concerns about the 147 total voters in the Stafford and Fredericksburg area who cast votes in the wrong races across the 28th, 88th and 2nd House districts because they were assigned to the wrong districts in a state voter registration database. Cole, who had signaled he was strongly considering filing a contest, will instead continue...

She now adheres to the royal family's strict no-public politics rule, but Meghan Markle hasn't always been so quiet about America's First Family. Three years ago, the actress, raved about Ivanka Trump, 36, on her now defunct lifestyle website The Tig. 'Let's take a moment and discuss Ivanka Trump. Staggeringly beautiful, no question, but so incredibly savvy and intelligent that she’s not just carved a niche for herself under her father’s famed Trump notoriety, she has undoubtedly created her own empire,' Meghan wrote. 'It’s so easy to knock the girls who come from privilege – to assume they rested on...

Former U.S. Ambassador John Bolton Tuesday applauded cuts to the United Nations budget, saying they are a "real opportunity" for President Donald Trump's administration to rethink the United States' share of what it contributes to the world agency and possibly even pulling out of the U.N. Human Rights Council. "There are plenty of parts of the U.N. system that don't deserve any U.S. funding, let alone a cut," Bolton told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" program. "I think if the administration really wants to review what the options are available to us, they should think about having the U.S. in the...

Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin may have been reticent to celebrate the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution, but it had no qualms about celebrating a hundred years since the founding of the Cheka, Lenin’s political police, on Dec. 20. Alexander Bortnikov, head of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and a veteran of the old Soviet KGB, was predictable in his message. His agency was, he claimed, “free from political influence.” It “does not serve any party or group interest” and even its bloody-handed past was nowhere near as reprehensible as assumed. Yes, he conceded, it was the engine of Stalin’s Great Terror,...

An Oxford University researcher... an art historian at Britain's Oxford University has claimed that the full name of Leonardo da Vinci's mother was Caterina di Meo Lippi. Professor Martin Kemp said Caterina was a poor peasant, probably an orphan, living with her grandmother in a decrepit farmhouse about a mile from Vinci in the Italian Tuscan hills, The Times reported. The name emerged from previously overlooked archives in Florence and Vinci, including property tax records, Mr Kemp said. Caterina's father disappeared when she was young, leaving her to be brought up by her grandmother. In 1451, when Caterina was 15,...

The number of Russians who regret the collapse of the Soviet Union is the highest in nearly a decade, according to an independent Levada Center poll published Monday. In polls taken since 1992, an average two-thirds of respondents said they lamented the collapse of the USSR, peaking at 75 percent in 2000 and dipping to 49 percent in 2012.

CNN Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter offers a weekly guest list full of liberal journalists, and then occasionally he interviews a conservative....if the objective is to offer a conservative underlining one of Stelter's favorite points. That happened again on Christmas Eve, when S.E. Cupp, host of a talk show on HLN (a sister network of CNN), sounded the company talking points on how the "mainstream media" are a "pillar of democracy" and attacked Fox News as resembling a "very friendly" dictator's channel. First, Cupp explained to Stelter that the media's ardor against Trump has sharpened the sense among conservatives that...