Free Republic

... Take steel, a Trump preoccupation. One reason for exceptions is that domestic manufacturers have limited capability to produce steel of certain strengths, thickness and flexibility. Most higher-strength steels used in thin-walled pipelines are made overseas. Retrofitting plants to produce a type of steel for one or two projects could delay construction and increase the cost. More U.S. workers would have to be retrained, which may not be practical in the short-term. So contractors often have no choice but to import foreign substitutes. The American Petroleum Institute chronicled some of these supply challenges in its response to Mr. Trump’s earlier...

Former Vermont governor and Democratic National Comittee chairman Howard Dean called out conservative pundit Ann Coulter on Twitter. Dean said, "Hate speech is not protected by the first amendment."

The 'paper of record' attempts to turn a Jew killer into the new Nelson Mandela. The New York Times published an op-ed by arch-terrorist and convicted murderer Marwan Barghouti on Sunday. A respectable international newspaper giving a terrorist and a murderer an outlet to spread his venom and lies is detestable, but it’s also an affront to all those fighting terrorism worldwide. What the New York Times did to Israel is comparable to an international newspaper providing an outlet to Osama Bin Laden to spread his hatred and lies towards America. But who is Marwan Barghouti and why is the New York Times’s...

President Obama's former photographer posted a photo response to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) and musicians Ted Nugent and Kid Rock mocking a portrait of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a White House visit on Thursday. Pete Souza's photo, posted to Instagram, shows Obama sitting with his White House chief of staff Bill Daley beneath a portrait of former President Ronald Reagan. Palin and Nugent can be seen in their Thursday photo standing beside Clinton's official first lady portrait while making exaggerated gestures as Kid Rock stands with his arms folded. Souza is known to use his Instagram...

Photographs described by experts as 'extremely rare' which show the damage wreaked by the famous Dam Busters in World War II are to be auctioned next week. The aerial shots taken by German Intelligence depict the Möhne and Edersee Dams before the raid and after they were breached by the ingenious bouncing bomb, designed by Barnes Wallis, causing catastrophic flooding of the Ruhr valley. Operation Chastise, as the famous raid was officially known, was an attack on major dams in Germany's industrial heartland carried out on 16-17 May 1943 by the Royal Air Force's renowned 617 Squadron, based at Scampton,...

Agenda: Shortly after Donald Trump won the election, House Speaker Paul Ryan said that Republicans had to "go big, go bold, and do things." So far, the GOP has not delivered. "They have the House, they have the Senate, they have the presidency — and nothing's happening," lamented PJ Media co-founder Roger Simon earlier this week. "Nothing, that is, that Donald Trump doesn't do by himself. ... The Republicans in the legislature are a disgrace." Congress did pass, and Trump signed, 13 bills to undo last-minute Obama administration regulations. And the Senate approved Trump's Supreme Court pick. But what about...

John Lamb (at :06)....the jurors had a question and we all went up there just a few minutes ago.....(at :34)...it looks like right now until possibly next week, the jurors are thinking about going home today at one o clock......Andrea Parker (at 1:16) the first question indicated there's a contradiction in the jury instruction and the jury form....it goes to the conspiracy, what is the object of the conspiracy?......the judge thinks the wording is the confusion...(at 4:02)...I don't see how they can find a conspiracy when the people who supposedly conspired together never testified, they never had that evidence against...

A Canadian judge who wore a Donald Trump campaign hat into court after the US election is facing a disciplinary hearing and possible removal from the bench after his actions triggered an unprecedented number of formal complaints. In November, the Ontario court justice Bernd Zabel entered his courtroom in Hamilton, Ontario, clad in black robes and a red “Make America Great Again” baseball cap. He reportedly told those in court that the hat was meant to mark an “unprecedented” night in the United States and singled himself out as the lone Trump supporter among his colleagues. Days later, amid public...

Attorney General Pam Bondi has joined Sen. Frank Artiles’ chorus of critics, suggesting her fellow Republican leave office for directing slurs, including a version of the N-word, at colleagues. “There is simply no room for racial, hurtful language spoken to your colleagues or anyone else,” Bondi

DAMASCUS, SYRIA (5:20 P.M.) – The long-awaited battle for Raqqa may very soon begin as the US-backed ‘Syrian Democratic Forces’ (SDF) advanced several kilometers in the northern Raqqa countryside today, seizing a dozen villages and hamlets from ISIS. As part of stage four of the Euphrates Wrath offensive, units of the YPG-led SDF launched a blitz offensive that saw Kurdish troops seize a large chunk of territory along a road running horizantally north of Raqqa, threatening to cutoff an ISIS bulge in the area. Effectively, the SDF were able to impose full control over the villages of Jisr Shahin, Al-Ruhayyat,...

Coming forward publicly for the first time, Perquita Burgess, along with her attorney Lisa Bloom, appeared on “The View” Thursday to discuss the sexual harassment she claims Bill O’Reilly directed toward her. O’Reilly was let go from Fox News the day before, and co-host Whoopi Goldberg introduced Burgess as potentially “the final nail in the coffin of Bill O’Reilly’s career at Fox News.”

Several dozen protesters gathered Thursday morning outside a state senator's South Florida district office, calling on him to resign. "Resign now," protesters chanted while holding signs aimed at Florida Sen. Frank Artiles, R-Miami. ....he used a variation of the "n-word" during a Monday night conversation....

Police in Germany have charged a man suspected of being behind an attack on the Borussia Dortmund team bus. Rather than having links to radical Islamism, he was a market trader hoping to make money if the price of shares in the team fell, prosecutors say. The 28-year-old, identified only as Sergej W, was staying in the team's hotel in a room overlooking the street where the explosion took place.

Mary McCord, the Department of Justice's acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security who is leading the investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, is stepping down from her post. McCord will officially leave her position next month, the Associated Press reports. According to the AP, she is leaving to pursue "other opportunities."

The sudden death of Judge Sheila Abdus-Salaam — and the hours that led up to it — remains shrouded in mystery. Shortly after the body of Abdus-Salaam, the first African American woman to serve on New York’s top court, was found floating fully clothed in the Hudson River with no apparent signs of trauma or criminality, local police said they were treating the death as an apparent suicide. But about a week later, following an inconclusive autopsy, ...

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio told Fox News he’s “gravely concerned” about Iran’s role in helping Syria develop its chemical warfare program that ended up killing dozens of people weeks ago. Rubio, a Republican, said he was troubled by reports that both Iran and Russia were complicit in Bashar Assad’s chemical weapons program. While the Trump administration accused Moscow of covering up the Syrian regime's chemical weapons attack, the U.S government has not mentioned Iran's possible role. {snip} “The thing that makes Iran so dangerous is it not only exports its weapons to proxies in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, but it brags...

All 11 French presidential candidates have made their final pitches in the last set-piece TV encounter ahead of Sunday's first round of voting. Both far-right leader Marine Le Pen and radical leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon voiced sharp criticism of the EU in the early part of the program. The TV encounter was then overshadowed by a deadly shooting in central Paris. Centrist Emmanuel Macron and center-right Francois Fillon both paid tribute to the police targeted by a gunman..... Mr. Fillon said he was cancelling all his campaign events on Friday, the final day of the campaign. Ms Le Pen said she...

Full Title: Putin sends troops to Russia's border with North Korea after China also sends soldiers to its boundary over fears Trump will attack Kim Jong-un, sparking a tidal wave of refugees Vladimir Putin is sending troops and equipment to Russia's border with North Korea over fears the US is preparing to attack Kim Jong-un. The Russian President fears there will be a huge exodus of North Korean refugees if his American counterpart, Donald Trump, launches military action against Pyongyang.

Mick Rich, who served as president of Albuquerque-based Mick Rich Contractors for over 30 years, is ready to take his hard hat to Washington. The Albuquerque-based Republican filed his statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission in February and will run against Democratic incumbent Sen. Martin Heinrich.

At this rate, the United States is going to need immigrants of all kinds to continue growth.A new Census Bureau study has just reported a sobering commentary on the current generation of young people.“There are now more young people living with their parents than in any other arrangement…What is more, almost 9 in 10 young people who were living in their parents’ home a year ago are still living there today, making it the most stable living arrangement.”It’s a factor largely of the economy, but also social mores and trends. The traditional lifetime pattern, you may recall, was for...