Free Republic

President Trump’s job approval rating is at 42 percent according to a new Marist poll, the highest it’s been in the poll since he took office more than a year ago. Trump's approval rating rose from the 38 percent he received in the poll last month. And the percentage of Americans who strongly approve of Trump held at 24 percent from last month’s survey, an all-time high for the president.

A former corporate-fraud prosecutor carried out the “most serious” example of public corruption by a U.S. Department of Justice attorney in years by stealing more than 40 whistleblower fraud cases in 2016 and trying to sell the secret information to companies under federal investigation, prosecutors said.

SANTIAGO, Chile — A trade pact originally conceived by the United States to counter China’s growing economic might in Asia now has a new target: President Trump’s embrace of protectionism. A group of 11 nations — including major United States allies like Japan, Canada and Australia — signed a broad trade deal on Thursday that challenges Mr. Trump’s view of trade as a zero-sum game filled with winners and losers. Covering 500 million people on either side of the Pacific Ocean, the pact represents a new vision for global trade as the United States threatens to impose steel and aluminum...

The election season got started this past Tuesday in Texas, and the primary results are being analyzed for clues about what they mean for November. The results confirmed that the Democratic enthusiasm is real, but it's probably not strong enough to turn Texas blue. The number of votes cast in Democratic primaries nearly doubled those from four years ago. However, the 1,037,779 Democratic voters fell half a million short of the GOP's 1,543,674 votes. Primary votes don't translate directly into general election results, but there's nothing in the data to suggest a big blue wave sweeping over Texas. However, not...

If you've been paying attention to the WAR going on between Trump and the Deep State up there in the DC swamp, you are aware that we're coming down to "crunch time."  One of the early - in MY lifetime - warriors against the ages old forces of darkness we now call the Deep State was Representative Larry McDonald.  Because some of you younger folks knew little or nothing about him, a few months ago, I sent out a link to a 6 minute video I posted to YouTube of my introduction of Larry at one of his last excellent...

While crews shore up seawalls and coastal infrastructure and residents brace for another powerful storm, a coalition that includes architects, engineers, planners and downtown Boston businesses is putting pressure on the House to pass a bill requiring the state to plan for the effects of climate change. The Massachusetts Climate Change Adaptation Coalition sent a letter Monday to all state representatives urging them to reach out to House leadership and ask for action on a bill (S 2196) requiring the state to develop a comprehensive adaptation management action plan in response to climate change. The coalition — which includes dozens...

Something that now seems ordinary, until you think about it historically – and realize it is actually, stunningly, extraordinary, is the level of transparency President Trump has delivered to his administration. Citizen government by a person who understands the value of the camera and the opportunities of the microphone. Here President Trump frames a cabinet meeting with the media for over 20 minutes while outlining initiatives and objectives. No prior president has ever allowed even a small percentage of the deliberative access delivered by President Trump. POTUS keenly dominates the narrative; outlines the milestones; establishes the expectations and summarizes the...

Somewhere in the process of digging down through 7 feet of snow near the top of a mountain, measuring the snowpack and jotting down numbers, Cheyenne Kiecker discovered something that, for her, felt impossible: Maybe she does like science after all. In February, Kiecker and her classmates studied the snow at Lookout Pass in North Idaho. She learned how the snow impacts the runoff into streams and rivers and lakes, how it affects the fish and the spring foliage, how it changes the wildfire season. And she's learned that in recent decades, the snowpack in the very spot she and...

Answering a question about which there could hardly have been much doubt, Yale’s admissions blog said last month the university would not penalize prospective students who are suspended for joining antigun protests in the wake of the Parkland shooting. “Yale will NOT be rescinding anyone’s admission decision for participating in peaceful walkouts for this or other causes.” (Skip) The post’s author, senior assistant director of admissions Hannah Mendlowitz, makes clear that Yale considers participation in such a walkout to be a plus, rather than a subject of indifference. “For those students who come to Yale, we expect them to be...

NeighborhoodScout, a web-based platform that, among other things, tracks crime statistics, released its annual list of the Top 100 Most Dangerous Cities in the U.S. for 2018. According to a press release, the list is based on a comparison of the safety of cities with 25,000 or more people nationwide, "based on the number of violent crimes (murder, rape, armed robbery, and aggravated assault) reported to the FBI to have occurred in each city, and the population of each city, divided by 1,000." The calculation reveals the rate of violent crimes per 1,000 residents.The most dangerous city in American, according...

The Florida House gave final legislative approval Wednesday to a bill banning gun sales to anyone under 21, sending the measure to Gov. Rick Scott, who has not said whether he will sign it into law. More significantly, there is serious consideration in Congress of a similar national ban. On top of this, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Walmart, L.L. Bean and Kroger have all moved to discontinue gun sales to anyone under age 21. We all know what prompted these well-meaning actions. It was the horrific attack at a Florida high school last month by a 19-year-old that claimed the lives...

Oh, desperation, thy name is Robert Mueller! Or something like that. Going against all precedent to see a crime where there never was one, the special counsel is now pursuing the potential back channels Trump administration officials set up with the Russians in Seychelles shortly before he took office. According to a Washington Post

An FBI agent and his estranged wife were killed in Crownsville Wednesday morning in what Anne Arundel County police say was a murder-suicide on the day the two were expected back in divorce court. Officers responded to a report of a domestic assault in progress in the 500 block of Arundel Boulevard at 8:05 a.m. Police said the caller had dialed 911 on behalf of another woman who “was being threatened by her recently estranged husband.” Upon arriving at the home, officers found a man and a woman outside a home who’d both been stabbed, the department said, adding that...

OSLO - Global fisheries output will slump by 20 percent by 2300 and by 60 percent in the worst-hit North Atlantic region if governments fail to slow long-term global warming, a U.S. team of scientists said on Thursday. Unchecked long-term warming would thaw sea ice around Antarctica and disrupt ocean currents, winds and the growth of tiny plankton, the report found. Worldwide, ever more nutrients would sink to the ocean depths, away from fish near the surface. “Marine ecosystems worldwide will be increasingly starved for nutrients,” lead author J. Keith Moore of the University of California, Irvine, told Reuters of...

USCIS Director Announces They Will Put America First In Mission Statement The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services department announced that they will move towards an ‘America First’ approach to their responsibilities. They now promise to prioritize the the interests of American citizens in their decision-making as well as consider national security and safety as their primary concern moving forward. Why this wasn’t the case before is beyond me. Here’s the full statement by current USCIS Director Lee Francis Cissna: “In my short time as director of USCIS, I continue to be impressed by the commitment and dedication that employees...

“I know nothing,” isn’t just the motto of Sergeant Schultz. It’s also the Clinton motto. And Christopher Steele, the Brit whom the Clinton campaign hired to find out things for them, also knows nothing. Or at least that’s the theme of the sprawling New Yorker profile of Steele, his dossier and his associates. Steele, Jane Mayer, its authoress, tells us, is a brilliant researcher and we should take his word about all his allegations involving President Trump. Even the ones that aren’t true and don’t make any sense. But he doesn’t know anything.

A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday in favor of 21 children and young adults suing the U.S. government for not doing enough to protect their constitutional right to a stable climate. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judges refused to grant mandamus relief and block the U.S. District Court in Oregon from hearing the suit, which was originally filed by the environmental group Our Children’s Trust in 2015. A federal judge in Oregon ruled in 2016 the 21 youngsters had standing to sue. President Donald Trump’s administration and oil and gas groups appealed the decision in June 2017. They asked...

3-D Praying Mantis Vision Confounds Evolution BY JEFFREY P. TOMKINS, PH.D. * | THURSDAY, MARCH 08, 2018 In the animal kingdom, many types of creatures use stereo vision to determine the distances between them and visible objects. In humans, each of our eyes records a slightly different version of what is observed. These two different views are then accurately merged in our brains to produce a single image—computationally using the differences between the two images to allow us to visually gauge depth and distance. This process, referred to as stereo vision, isn’t unique to humans. Animals like monkeys, dogs, bats,...

In media interviews and on his social media pages, Wolf said he was a "former FBI agent" and "Iraq Veteran" who had also worked overseas as a "presidential envoy" with the U.S. State Department. He also claimed to be a "Professor of Human Rights" at Roosevelt University. I'm a cannabis supporter, and it was great seeing a former law enforcement guy embrace it so openly. I especially liked that Wolf spoke of the need not just to legalize it but to destigmatize it. I felt like he was someone that could represent my interests in the nation's capital as soon...

America's current mass immigration mess is the result of a change in the laws in 1965. Prior to 1965, despite some changes in the 50's, America was a low-immigration country basically living under immigration laws written in 1924. Thanks to low immigration, the swamp of cheap labor was largely drained during this period, America became a fundamentally middle-class society, and our many European ethnic groups were brought together into a common national culture. In some ways, this achievement was so complete that we started to take for granted what we had achieved and forgot why it happened. So in a...