Free Republic

Hamas has been stopping Americans from leaving Gaza through the Rafah crossing to Egypt, even though Cairo has agreed to let US citizens cross into the country, the White House said Sunday.... CNN spoke to several Gaza residents Saturday who said they tried to leave via the Rafah crossing but were eventually turned away.

Theresa May has told BBC Radio 4's Today programme her EU deal delivers on the result of the 2016 referendum.

British Prime Minister Theresa May's government has been found in contempt of Parliament for the first time in history in a 311-293 vote in the House of Commons after a refusal to publish its full legal analysis on Brexit. Andrea Leadsom, leader of the Commons, announced immediately after the vote that the government would publish the complete document.

This Brexit "deal" is anything but good for the nation. This "deal" will cost the British taxpayer £60 billion; require that the British still comply with EU rules without having any say in what those will be, and worst of all, it permits the British to leave the EU only if the EU agrees. It commits the British effectively to subjugation by the EU in perpetuity, with no recourse should the British change their mind. It is a prison. It is also the first step of the EU toward its dream of global governance: unaccountable, untransparent, unelected by the public,...

The Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, says that a case can be made that Theresa May's government has committed contempt of Parliament. A debate and vote will held tomorrow that would refer the matter to the standards committee of Parliament. A previous Parliament vote committed Prime Minister Theresa May's government to release in full all legal advice. MP's from all opposition parties plus the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland, which supports the May government, called for the contempt process to be launched.....

Europe has a neurotic compulsion to repeat the past. This is bad news, because nobody wants to repeat five (count 'em!) East-West wars exploding out of Europe over the last two centuries. But – the E.U. now has a better idea. It wants European nations to surrender to the German-French axis without a shot being fired. "Countries must give up their sovereignty and join the one-world government," German chancellor Angela Merkel remarked generously the other day. The E.U. Times, of all places, remarked that "[n]o, this isn't something Adolf Hitler said many years ago." Everybody in that part of the...

Theresa May has reportedly refused to grant a Pakistani Christian woman being hunted by lynch mobs for “blasphemy” asylum, after bureaucrats advised her it would cause upset in Britain’s Muslim community. Asia Bibi’s ordeal began when Muslim fieldworkers objected to her drinking from the same water supply as them, branding her “unclean” and telling her she should convert to Islam, which she declined to do. Days later, village imam Qari Muhammad Salaam declared she had committed blasphemy over the mosque loudspeakers. A baying mob dragged her before a makeshift sharia court with a leather noose around her neck, again demanded...

EU leaders have wasted little time in gloating over “the worst deal in history” negotiated by Theresa May, with French president Emmanuel Macron gloating he can blackmail Britain into surrendering its fishing waters or force it into the humiliating “backstop”. The European Union controls its member-states territorial fishing waters centrally, sharing them out via a controversial quota system which grants British fishermen less than half the stocks in their own waters, destroying tens of thousands of jobs. Brussels negotiators have been keen to maintain or duplicate this Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) beyond Brexit Day in March 2019, despite Theresa May’s...

If there are any free people in Britain in future generations, they will curse the name of Theresa May, whose misrule is rapidly leading the nation to ruin. She won’t let in Asia Bibi, for fear that Muslims will be angry. So it is clear who is in charge in Britain now. The British government routinely bans foes of jihad terror and critics of Islam, while letting in jihadis. The Home Office recently banned Martin Sellner, Brittany Pettibone, Lauren Southern and Lutz Bachmann from entering, all for the crime of opposing jihad terror and Sharia oppression, and thereby made it...

In yet another shocking failure in a long line of interfaith outreach by Western governments since 9/11, The Daily Telegraph reports today that the American-born Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, has been recently promoting a program associated with the notorious Al-Manaar mosque not far from Kensington Palace. The mosque has produced as many as nineteen terrorists -- including "Jihadi John" and his Islamic State "Beatles" who tortured and beheaded Western captives in Syria. The duchess has helped raise more than $250,000 for the Hubb Community Kitchen operated out of the mosque by promoting a cookbook that royal press agents have...

Ministers have agreed to publish the government's full legal advice on the deal after MPs found them in contempt of Parliament for issuing a summary. And MPs backed calls for the Commons to have a direct say in what happens if her deal is rejected next Tuesday. Mrs May said MPs had a duty to deliver on the 2016 Brexit vote and the deal on offer was an "honourable compromise". Mrs May was addressing the Commons at the start of a five-day debate on her proposed agreement on the terms of the UK's withdrawal and future relations with the EU....

...Ms Bachelet's son, Sebastian Davalos, was accused by the opposition of using his influence to get a $10m (£6.5m) bank loan for his wife. His wife's company used the money to buy plots of land in central Chile which her company then resold for profit. Although Chile's national bank regulator cleared him of any wrongdoing, the issue has become a scandal. Ms Bachelet always maintained she had not been aware of the deal but in a TV interview on Wednesday night she acknowledged she had made "important mistakes" in not returning from holiday or commenting on the case sooner. Correspondents...

Sweden's left-of-centre Prime Minister Stefan Lofven says he will call snap elections after his minority government lost a budget vote less than three months after coming to power. He said a new poll would take place on 22 March. ... The Sweden Democrats became the country's third largest party, with 13% of the vote, and is demanding a reversal in Sweden's liberal immigration laws, which party spokesman Mattias Karlsson has condemned as an "extreme immigration policy". Sweden has offered permanent residence to all Syrians fleeing the conflict and has the highest rate of asylum applications per capita of any EU...

As most divorce cases usually are, the recently filed, already ugly divorce case between Congressman Alan Grayson and his with Lolita, has taken another turn for worse for the self-proclaimed "Congressman with Guts." During an interview with police over the recent incident at couples home in Orlando, Florida, in which Lolita Grayson accused the congressman of assaulting her, Grayson's soon-to-be ex-wife accused him of long-term spousal abuse. Orlando's WFTV Channel 9 obtained the audio of Lolita Grayson's interview with Police. "I'm done. My husband has always been hitting me for years," she told investigators. "He's been hitting me a lot....

State Senate President John Morse became the first Colorado lawmaker to be recalled by his constituents in the state’s 137-year history around 9 p.m. Tuesday night. Less than an hour later, Sen. Angela Giron, also facing a recall due to her support of gun control legislation this year, became the second. [Snip] Morse conceded just after 9 p.m. “It has been an honor to represent the eleventh senate district and to serve as the Colorado state [senate] president,” he told more than 150 supporters at the Wyndham Garden Hotel downtown. “Robert F. Kennedy once said, ‘it is the essence of...

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - State Senate President John Morse and Senator Angela Giron were both removed from office Tuesday by voters upset with their stance on gun control. Unofficial final results updated by the El Paso County Clerk at 10:02 p.m. showed 50.96 percent of voters wanted Morse to be recalled. "The highest rank in a democracy is citizen, not senate president," he said at the conclusion of his concession speech, in which he promised to continue his work. Giron, who was winning in the first preliminary data, has also lost. Unofficial results show 56 percent of voters in favor...

DENVER — Democrats don’t often complain about voter fraud, but the prospect of outside voters taking advantage of an apparent loophole in Colorado’s new election law to participate in the legislative recalls has the bill’s sponsor crying foul. State Rep. Dan Pabon (D-Denver), who sponsored the Voter Access and Modernized Elections Act, said Wednesday that those who say the law allows so-called “gypsy voters” are essentially advocating election fraud. “I think what they’re doing is advertising wholesale voter fraud and asking folks to basically break the law,” Pabon told the Colorado Observer.

Colorado Democrat Senate Majority Leader John Morse concedes. Colorado Democrats need a new senate leader. History was made tonight in Colorado as Democrat Senate Majority Leader John Morse was recalled for abridging Coloradans’s Second Amendment civil liberties. The tally is currently 52%-48%. According to Kelly Maher of Revealing Politics, Morse supporters need to “beat us two to one in remaining ballots.” Impossible. It’s the first wave of legislative battles planned by citizens angry at state lawmakers who denied them a vote on their Second Amendment rights. As it stands now State Senator Angela Giron is narrowly ahead of her...

FLASH: Sen. John Morse of Colorado Springs concedes, falls in historic recall vote dpo.st/1dZjpJS #COrecall http://embed.scribblelive.com/Embed/v5.aspx?Id=202731&ThemeId=9264# I will add more links as we go.

With only a few hours remaining before polls close on the recall elections, 15,285 voters have cast their ballots in the Senate District 11 recall election. Turnout picked up through the lunch hour this afternoon after a slow morning, but Ryan Parsell, spokesman for the county's Clerk and Recorder's Office, said there were no lines at any of the voting centers. Polls close at 7 p.m. Sen. John Morse, D-Colorado Springs, is facing a recall election for his support of gun legislation during the 2013 legislative session. If he is ousted from office, Republican candidate Bernie Herpin will replace him...