Free Republic

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) rebuked Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) for their errors in the impeachment proceedings into President Trump during a floor speech on Tuesday. McConnell said it was wrong for Schumer to have his impeachment trial request be leaked through the media instead of having an in-person conversation, especially since he misquoted the Constitution in his letter. "The preferable path would have been an in-person conversation which nonetheless I still hope to pursue. Instead, he chose to begin by writing me an 11-paragraph letter on Sunday evening delivered by...

RIDGE MANOR, Fla. — A popular roadside dining spot is no more after someone stole David Alley's food trailer. "This was a dream," said Alley. "It was my livelihood, it was everything." Alley moved to Florida about two years ago to start Dave's Takeout after his wife passed away from cancer. Hernando County deputies are now on the hunt for his trailer after he reported it stolen Sunday morning. Alley kept it locked up in the parking lot of an antique store located at the intersection of U.S. 301 and Cortez Boulevard in Manor Ridge. HERNANDO NEWS | The latest headlines from...

The despair felt by climate scientists and environmentalists watching helplessly as something precious and irreplaceable is destroyed is sometimes described as “climate grief.” Those who pay close attention to the ecological calamity that civilization is inflicting upon itself frequently describe feelings of rage, anxiety and bottomless loss, all of which are amplified by the right’s willful denial. The young activist Greta Thunberg, Time magazine’s 2019 Person of the Year, has described falling into a deep depression after grasping the ramifications of climate change and the utter refusal of people in power to rise to the occasion: “If burning fossil fuels...

HOMELESSNESS is a “crisis” in America, including at a tent city in California where hundreds of people live among rats and rubbish in a mile-long encampment. One resident, Kat MacKay, says she’s fed up with the stink of decaying food and outbreaks of syphilis and vomiting infections in the Santa Rosa hellhole. There's been a growing call across the US to help such stricken people get into housing, rather than risking their lives, camping in streets and other public spaces.

Former Pakistan President and military ruler Pervez Musharraf has been sentenced to death in absentia for high treason following a six-year legal case. A three-member special court in Islamabad on Tuesday convicted Musharraf of violating the constitution by unlawfully declaring emergency rule while he was in power, in a case that had been pending since 2013. The 76-year-old former leader, who has lived in self-imposed exile in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates for more than three years, has the option to appeal the verdict. Musharraf seized power in a military coup in 1999 and ruled Pakistan as President until...

American racists are reusing some of the ugliest elements of Russia’s election interference operation. Memes published by some of the worst Kremlin-backed trolls of the 2016 campaign are being echoed online by American neo-Confederates. The Russian accounts, overseen by the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA), have since been taken down. But American parrot accounts running some of the same racist crap—and worse—are still live on Instagram, an investigation by The Daily Beast and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab found. At least one of these live accounts claims to belong to a Russian network persona. The accounts—which hail the...

House Democrats are unhappy with border security funding included in a massive government spending package poised to become law in a matter of days. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus confronted Democratic leaders Tuesday in a closed-door meeting about a provision in the fiscal 2020 spending measure that would provide $1.375 billion for the construction of a southern border wall. Democrats are also angry about language maintaining funding levels for detention facilities for illegal immigrants, as well as a provision allowing President Trump to maintain his authority to transfer existing federal funding to border security projects. “I’m not voting for it,” Rep....

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg shut down President Donald Trump's attempts to discredit the ongoing impeachment proceedings against him by saying "the president is not a lawyer" at an event in New York City, CNN reports. Ginsburg made the remarks at a function where she was awarded the Berggruen Institute Prize for Philosophy and Culture.

President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort has been hospitalized for a cardiac event while serving his over seven year sentence for charges related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, according to two sources familiar with his situation. Manafort has been serving out his sentence as of late in a federal correction institute in central Pennsylvania.

Members of New York’s Muslim Patrol recently became embroiled in a near-explosive altercation outside the Masjid Taqwa in Brooklyn with members of the Bloods, a notoriously violent gang. The Muslim Patrol gained international attention in the fall of 2018 after several of its patrol cars — which look like New York Police Department (NYPD) cars –were spotted in Brooklyn and Staten Island. The Bloods are a violent African-American street gang known for trafficking drugs and guns. This criminal organization has made national headlines with targeted assassinations, drive-by shootings and deadly gun battles with law enforcement. On December 10, a verbal...

What was once a hub for newcomers is leaving a bad taste in the mouths of its former residents as more and more citizens of the San Francisco Bay Area are jumping ship at a record-breaking pace. This is what happens when one Party has been in control for TOO many years. The cost of living in San Francisco is staggering. Renting a two-bedroom apartment costs $4,650 a month on average, which is the highest rate in the country, and if you want to buy a home in the Bay Area, the median price is $825,000. In fact, people are...

Ford Motor Co. is adding 3,000 jobs at two factories in the Detroit area and investing $1.45 billion to build new pickup trucks, SUVs, and electric and autonomous vehicles. The company said Tuesday that about $750 million will go the Michigan Assembly Plant in the Detroit suburb of Wayne, where 2,700 jobs will be added during the next three years. Another $700 million will be invested in the truck plant in Dearborn, Michigan, where 300 new jobs will be added. Hiring will begin next year.

The Democratic House's impeachment verdict is not legitimate. The process was not inclusive to both parties, much of the discussions were held in private, and the result did not follow the Constitutional definition of a high crime or misdemeanor. This illegitimate "impeachment" should not be legitimized by the Senate. This must be returned to the house to correct the methods that were used, omissions, prejudice, and lack of fidelity with the constitution requirements, before it can be adjudicated by the Senate. Don't eat from the fruit of a poison tee, Mitch. Demand that the house start over and create a...

It’s practically a foregone conclusion that everyone uses Google in one way or another. Now the company’s reach has expanded even further, acquiring Fitbit in December for a whopping $2.1 billion. Google products are in our homes, its software is on our phones, and its search engine answers over three billion queries per day. Even the word “google” itself has become a fixture in the American lexicon. The tech giant has become so ubiquitous, its influence so massive, that it’s safe to say Google’s effect on public discourse is unparalleled in modern society. Once a mere search engine, the tech...

It's too soon to predict that the Democrats will go the way of the Whigs, but the oldest political party in the world is tripping over its own doctrines; making a public spectacle of its inability to coherently sponsor debates; riven by ideological fissures that seem to be widening; driving away two bedrock constituencies, the white working class and black voters; and hitching itself to a doomed impeachment effort that could cost it dearly next November. It's a great time to be alive if you are a Republican! Consider the forthcoming presidential debates. Next Thursday's scheduled debate is being boycotted...

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) indicated on Tuesday that Democrats will force votes during the Senate impeachment trial on calling witnesses such as acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and former national security adviser John Bolton. Schumer said that he will discuss his initial proposal for a Senate trial with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) but stressed that “every senator will have a choice.” “We will have votes on whether these people should testify, and whether these documents should be made public as part of the trial, and the American people will be watching. They will be...

Representatives Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler set a very dangerous precedent when they refused to conduct impeachment hearings according to constitutional due process standards. Democrats are so desperate for power that they would overturn the election of a President of the United States based on their biased and partisan interpretation of his telephone conversation with a foreign leader. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was initially reluctant to risk the electoral backlash of impeachment. She finally bowed to far-left pressure, ignoring the President's astounding economic and foreign policy successes. Her worst nightmare is coming true -- rising approval for President Trump and...

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, will miss the final procedural step in the impeachment process before the House casts a final vote as he tends to a family emergency. Two Democratic sources told The Hill that Nadler is away from Congress on Tuesday because his wife is ill. Nadler’s absence comes the same day as the House Rules Committee is scheduled to set the terms of the chamber’s floor debate on voting on two articles of impeachment against President Trump. The whole chamber is expected to cast a final vote on the articles Wednesday....

On November 12, young Greta Thunberg set sail from America to Europe. But not in the same way she arrived, and you’ll hear few people mention that. Back in August, much was made of her trip to America. She “doesn’t fly because of the outsize greenhouse gas emissions from aviation,” the New York Times reports. So, she sailed to America on a very environmentally-friendly racing yacht instead. It was reported that the cost of that entire voyage from England to America that she began back in August “has not been calculated.” That’s not true, of course. Somebody has certainly calculated...

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., suggested he doesn’t believe former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter should testify as a witness in a possible impeachment trial in the Senate, saying it would turn the process into a “circus.”