Free Republic

Maybe as a vaguely religious Jew, I’ve got the wrong end of the stick when I look at Christianity, but I’ve long understood Christianity to be a faith that gives comfort and relief to the afflicted. SNIP. . . The Archdiocese of Berlin will effectively segregate vaccinated and unvaccinated faithful during Advent and Christmastime. The archdiocese issued the harsh restrictions in a communiqué published Friday on its official website, announcing that from November 27 onward, the so-called 2G rule will apply to most Masses and church services of the diocese throughout Advent and Christmastime. The 2G rule allows only people...

A recent release this one hour presentation blends past with present around the story of the Memphis Bell.

After trying to make sense of all the BS going on since January 6th, I finally put on my tin-foil-hat (while sitting on the thunder throne) and had the following epiphany: Normally, for a coup the military/rebels seize the means of communication; seat of government and marginalize their opponents. They then declare a state of emergency and proceed to crush the corrupt supporter of the regime they seek to displace. Let’s turn that around. . . Here, we have the lefties already in control of the media and they have set a narrative that allows the lefties to bring in...

In his memoir, Banana Sunday, the late British newspaperman Christopher Munnion described his first encounter with what was then called New Journalism. . . snip Modern narrative journalism has now advanced to the point where the narrative no longer has to have any connection with reality. In fact, it is probably better that it doesn’t, as the facts are most troublesome for narratives that claim some connection to reality. Instead it is best to come up with a good script that satisfies some desire in the audience. That way, they are not going to be too interested in looking for...

The Republicans have now forced the Democrats to change course and tactics, shed their narcissistic complacency, and recognize that they are in the fight of their lives. snip. . . Without the election of Lincoln in 1860 the country would have broken up, and without the reelection of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940, Britain and Canada would have had to make peace with Germany and leave Hitler in control of most of Europe.

"Here’s where our politicians find themselves, unable to admit their response to the virus — the ultimate blunt instrument of lockdown, brutally enforced — hasn’t worked, and will never work. They can’t do so because it would mean all they have done up to this point has been in vain. How could anyone who had wreaked damage on this cataclysmic scale ever admit to themselves, let alone to the nation, that it was all for nothing? Instead, like the pokie addict, they have doubled down to unleash a runaway epidemic of stupidity. They’ve destroyed our economy and put thousands out...

The northeastern United States was badly ravaged by the Covid-19 pandemic. The five states with the highest Covid-19 deaths per capita to date are New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island; if the District of Columbia were a state, it would place sixth. snip. . . Why did these areas, these national centers of government power (Washington), financial might (New York City), and academic prestige (Boston) do so poorly? It is a truism that it’s easier to spot the speck in someone else’s eye than the log in your own; we have seen elite publications from each of...

When was the last time you read the Declaration of Independence? REALLY READ IT. Have you tried to understand what our founders thought about how a government should be empowered? It’s an incredible document when talking about freedom. It’s a nasty letter when talking about the King of England. It starts off by saying that the government serves at the will of the people not the other way around: When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of...

With a rousing Independence Day speech at Mount Rushmore, President Trump certainly laid down the principles on which he will now go to the hustings. His choice of a setting put him before the famed monument to four presidents — each of which is a target of the movement that has been seeking to besmirch or destroy statues of our national leaders. Mr. Trump left no doubt in respect of which side he is on. Snip . . .

We can mourn the deaths of those who died in the Wuhan Flu pandemic, and we can celebrate the coming death of the global warming scam. The scientists’ models failed, utterly and completely, to adequately predict the course of the virus, and our leaders wrecked our economies based on those predictions. After this fiasco, who is going to trust the accuracy of apocalyptic models guessing at the average temperature a century hence? The whole climate scam was always ridiculous. In the 1970s, we were assured that the only way to prevent a frosty Armageddon was to cede our power and...

The Democrats are clinging to the inevitable pious fraud that Donald Trump is a compromised president because he was impeached. After a spurious investigation in which the president had none of the constitutionally guaranteed rights of a defendant or the defenses available by precedent to presidents who are the subjects of such investigations, the Democrats charged Mr. Trump with acts that are not impeachable. Then they failed to adduce any evidence that the president had committed the acts with which they charged him.

Britain is reclaiming its agency as a self-governing nation. Its example will reverberate throughout Europe. . . It’s easy to point and laugh at such an extravagant statement, but Tusk was verbalizing the incredible challenge Brexit presents to a certain kind of European mind, a mind conditioned to the idea that democracy inheres not in popular sovereignty — democratic peoples governing themselves — but in the elite administration of human rights, insulated from democratic passions and prejudices It is this worldview that has shaped the construction of the European Union. The EU is governed by an unelected Commission and an...

In 2016, Hillary Clinton presidential candidate hired an ex-intelligence officer and foreign national, British subject Christopher Steele, to use Russian sources to find dirt (“opposition research”) on her then political opponent Donald Trump. So much for the worry about “foreign interference” in U.S. elections. The public would take years to learn of the funding sources of Steele, because Clinton camouflaged her role through three firewalls: the Democratic National Committee; the Perkins-Coie legal firm; and Glenn Simpson’s Fusion GPS opposition-research firm. snip . . . The Steele dossier resembles some sort of bacillus. Anyone who put currency into it was infected,...

The report of the I.G.'s findings on the use of FISA in the FBI Crossfire Hurricane investigation is an outrage. As a 22 year FBI Agent, I have personally conducted multiple investigations using both Title III "wiretaps" and FISA authorized intercepts. From this perspective, I can only see two possible interpretations of the actions of the FBI and DOJ. Either scenario should anger and frighten every fair minded citizen who takes the time to read the report and understand its implications. . . snip If the heinous abuses documented in the I.G.s report result in a weakening or loss of...

My research and intuition indicate that we have reached a turning point, and that all but the outright Trump-haters are disconcerted, and in growing numbers disgusted, by the cumulative pettiness, nastiness, and dishonesty of the assault on this president. . . But the instantly confected fraud of an impeachable offense in the president’s relations with Ukraine and its president has now snapped the patience and indulgence of all but the Trump-haters so rabid they should be in straitjackets and padded cells. . . Under any scenario, the wheels are coming off this disgraceful Democratic garbage cart in all directions. Impeachment...

We are living through a phantasmagoric psychodrama generated by the dishonest national political press. . . snip House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff — who is usually lying when his lips aren’t moving and always is when they are — says we will not be hearing from a non-whistleblowing leaker, to give his hearsay evidence of a conversation that any person in the world can read and see has no legal implications whatever. . . snip The Democrats are stuck with this clunker. Maybe Speaker Pelosi wanted to humiliate the young Marxist congresswomen and Mr. Schiff and the porcine Jerry...

Donald Trump is waging a nonstop, all-encompassing war against progressive culture, in magnitude analogous to what 19th-century Germans once called a Kulturkampf. . . Yet the real source of Trump derangement syndrome is his desire to wage a multi-front pushback — politically, socially, economically, and culturally — against what might be called the elite postmodern progressive world.

The media has been so quiet on the Yellow Jackets in France that you could be excused for thinking my title refers to some kind of invasion by weird wasps. Well, for the record, it doesn’t. It refers to the ongoing revolt in France by various groups, but mostly, honest, middle-aged, middle-class people who are setting fires to things and making life hell in the ritzy districts of Paris (and elsewhere). snip . . . They don’t want us to know that resistance is possible, even in Europe, where they’re far more advanced than we are. In fact, I believe...

One of the attorneys for Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, Judge Brett Kavanaugh's first sexual assault accuser, sent a letter late Monday night to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley expressing concerns about the format of Thursday's hearings. In his letter, attorney Michael Bromwich expressed concern over an experienced sex crimes prosecutor coming in to help with the hearings. More than anything, Bromwich immediately demanded a copy of the prosecutor's resume after arguing that there is no need for him or her to be present. His argument: neither Ford nor Kavanaugh are on trial. Bromwich also said Ford's team is not convinced...

In tonight’s interview with Martha MacCallum, it would have been easy for Brett Kavanaugh to play the legal equivalent of a prevent defense. He’s a smart enough lawyer to understand the state of the evidence. None of his accusers have been able to come forward with a single witness who can offer first-hand corroboration of their stories. Indeed, they can’t even come forward with a single witness placing him at the scene of either alleged crime. In circumstances like that, the safest course is to simply repeat a blanket denial and repeat all the different ways the accusers’ cases are...