Free Republic

House Speaker Paul Ryan questioned the legitimacy of California’s ballot-counting process Thursday, adding to claims from many Republicans that the state’s election procedures are flawed. “It defies logic to me,” Ryan told the Washington Post. “We had a lot of wins that night, and three weeks later we lost basically every contested California race. This election system they have, I can’t begin to understand what ballot harvesting is.” "Ballot harvesting" is when a third party collects completed ballots from voters and hands them over to election officials. The practice was legal for the first time in California this year. Ryan...

Newsom's "whether you like it or not" video was played over and over, likely helping passage of Prop. 8 -- only to be overturned by an activist Judge. California Gov. Elect Gavin Newsom is casting some big #MeToo stones forgetting that his house is all glass. California Democratic Party Chairman Eric Bauman has been accused of sexual harassment and assault. Staffers told the Los Angeles Times that during his time as party chair, Bauman, who is gay, would “regularly make sexually explicit comments in the workplace to men and women, including remarks about sexual acts, his and other staffers’ genitalia,...

Sheryl Sandberg asked Facebook’s communications staff to research George Soros’s financial interests in the wake of his high-profile attacks on tech companies, according to three people with knowledge of her request, indicating that Facebook’s second in command was directly involved in the social network’s response to the liberal billionaire.

There were Israeli air attacks in Syria late Thursday evening Israel says that when Syrian air defenses activated a missile landed in the Golan Heights..... President Trump cancelled a planned meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin because of the incident involving three Ukrainian warships blocked and seized by Russian border police for entering waters controlled by Russia...... President Trump arrived in Argentina for the G20 summit last night. A highlight of the summit involving the world's 20 largest nations economically will be the meeting of the leaders of the two economic superpowers, the United States and China..... President Trump's former...

... Trump’s economic policies have achieved record-low minority unemployment. His immigration policies will eventually curb illegal immigration and give clout to entry-level workers, who will have less competition from imported low-wage labor. Trump should go into minority communities and hold frank discussions with local leaders, many of whom oppose him politically, about policies geared toward economically empowering inner-city youth. Trump’s message should be that his economic agenda is aimed at ensuring that minority workers regain some clout over employers. In a growing economy short of labor, those who were once bypassed and ignored now, for the first time in decades,...

American enigmas... (1) Isn’t it weird that in America, our flag and our culture offend so many people, but our benefits don’t? (2) How can the federal government ask U.S. citizens to pay back student loans - when illegal aliens are receiving a free education? (3) Only in America are legal citizens labeled “racists” and “Nazis,” but illegal aliens are called “Dreamers.” (4) Liberals say, “If confiscating all guns saves just one life, it’s worth it.” Well, then, if deporting all illegals saves just one life, wouldn’t that be worth it? (5) I can’t quite figure out how you can...

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An NFL player with ties to South Florida is planning to pay a touching tribute to the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting victims... He’s now taking part in the NFL’s My Cause My Cleats initiative to help bring awareness of making schools safer....

Oh, I get it! I am a very good developer, happily living my life, when I see our Country going in the wrong direction (to put it mildly). Against all odds, I decide to run for President & continue to run my business-very legal & very cool, talked about it on the campaign trail... ....Lightly looked at doing a building somewhere in Russia. Put up zero money, zero guarantees and didn’t do the project. Witch Hunt!

NORTHEAST PHILADELPHIA (WTXF) - Philadelphia police have arrested and charged a man after they say he groped a young girl as she walked to school Wednesday morning. Police say the victim was walking on the 4500 block of Longshore Avenue around 8 a.m. when police say she was approached by Joshua Perierra-Lopez.

United Nations (U.N.) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Thursday...“I think that it is clear to me that the world is more polarized. We have more and more nationalist approaches being popular and winning election or having strong election results,” Guterres said. “We see the trust between public opinions and institutions — governments, political establishments but also International organization … being eroded.”

A number of pro-Iranian militia bases and Iranian weapons caches in southern Syria were targeted by Israeli airstrikes on Thursday night, according to the Al-Arabiya news site. Explosions were also reported in and around the Syrian capital of Damascus, near its international airport, which Israel claims has been used by Iran to supply terror groups with advanced weaponry...The Israel Defense Forces refused to comment on Thursday night’s reported airstrikes, but denied a Russian media claim that an Israeli plane had been shot down. "The reports of an Israeli aircraft or other Israeli aerial platform being hit are false," the army...

Mounting evidence of voter fraud in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District could indefinitely delay the certification of a winner, as state election officials investigate whether hundreds of absentee ballots were illegally cast or destroyed. The North Carolina State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement has no plans to certify Republican Mark Harris’s 905-vote victory over Democrat Dan McCready, according to an agenda of a board meeting scheduled for Friday morning. The board is collecting sworn statements from voters in rural Bladen and Robeson counties, near the South Carolina border, who described people coming to their doors and urging them to...

BRECKENRIDGE HILLS • A Tennessee woman grabbed two knives from the shelf at a Family Dollar store here Tuesday and began stabbing a customer in the head, fatally wounding the victim. Cameka Cathey, 34, of Memphis, was charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action in the attack. She is accused of stabbing Marybeth Gaeng, 65, inside the Family Dollar Store at 9730 St. Charles Rock Road. Cathey entered the Family Dollar store and retrieved two knives from the shelf, according to court documents. She then approached Gaeng and stabbed her in the head. While employees were trying to help...

Thousands of migrants associated with the caravan have been treated in Tijuana, Mexico for infectious diseases, ranging from simple respiratory infections to tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, according to a recent report from the border.

Federal officers seized more than $2.7 million worth of drugs and arrested nearly 40 people over the last five days at border crossings in San Diego County and Calexico, officials said. The incidents happened between midnight Friday and midnight Tuesday at six ports of entry in the region. Customs and Border Protection officers “thwarted numerous smuggling attempts” involving a variety of drugs including heroin, cocaine, fentanyl and methamphetamine. In some cases, the drugs were strapped to people’s bodies. In other attempts, they were hidden in various parts of vehicles like the gas tank, trunk or seats. All told, authorities seized...

Border Patrol agents gave chase to the Chevrolet Silverado pickup, which had two people in the cab and nine in the bed, about 4:25 p.m., CHP spokesman Officer Travis Garrow said. The truck crashed while fleeing at an “extremely high rate of speed” on the two-lane interstate east of Crestwood Road near the Golden Acorn Casino. “It was spike-stripped by the Border Patrol, continued westbound, went up a dirt and rock embankment and rolled, ejecting either nine or 10 people out of the vehicle,” Garrow said. A male driver and a female passenger were believed to be the only occupants...

A handful of Central American migrants camped out at the U.S.-Mexican border waiting to plead their case for asylum in the US launched a hunger strike to protest the Mexican police blocking their way....[snip]. Mexican immigration authorities began transporting some of [them] via buses to a new shelter. Under .... immigration policies introduced by the administration of President Donald Trump, U.S. border officials say they may have to stay put in Mexico for months before they can petition authorities....[snip] On Thursday, ...[sob] Mexican police stopped more than a dozen from the caravan approaching the El Chaparral border crossing. “What the...

President Donald Trump’s former tax attorney for over a decade, Edward Burke, had his Chicago office raided by federal agents on Thursday.

The general idea is that these companies will be able to compete for contracts to deliver NASA science experiments to the surface of the moon by flying lunar landers on rocket launches purchased from other commercial space companies. Those individual contracts would substitute for NASA needing to build those capacities itself. But under this approach, NASA won't be alone in hiring these companies — the agency hopes to spur development that the commercial sector can also utilize. "We want to be first customers, not only customers," Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's head of the science mission directorate, said during the event. The...