Free Republic

Ultra-progressive California Governor Gavin Newsom is in Las Vegas ahead of Super Bowl and is spending his time in Sin City hobnobbing with billionaires and Tom Brady, as speculation mounts that Joe Biden will stand down. On Friday, Newsom, 56, was a surprise guest at Fanatics billionaire Michael Rubin’s hot 100 luncheon at LAVO – a swanky restaurant at the upscale Palazzo hotel. The restaurant, which bills itself as offering ‘authentic Italian flavors and unforgettable experiences’, specializes in seafood – including a lavish $225 ‘plateau grande’ that comes with an entire lobster and kaluga caviar.

Early in the pandemic, I had been furiously writing articles about lockdowns. My phone rang with a call from a man named Dr. Rajeev Venkayya. He is the head of a vaccine company but introduced himself as former head of pandemic policy for the Gates Foundation. Now I was listening. I did not know it then, but I’ve since learned from Michael Lewis’s (mostly terrible) book The Premonition that Venkayya was, in fact, the founding father of lockdowns. While working for George W. Bush’s White House in 2005, he headed a bioterrorism study group. From his perch of influence –...

It’s nothing new for political religions to produce radicals that develop their own sects or cults. This time around, rigid devotion to enforcing mask compliance has produced runaway fanaticism based on nothing but blind faith that more mask-wearing is always better. Even the public health experts, whom these followers all promoted as great prophets just months ago, can’t tame their fervor. That’s a problem, because a return to normalcy will require subduing radical factions that agitate for oppression. Restrictions such as mask mandates are like oxygen to followers of radical fundamentalist Covidianism — the abiding belief that only lockdowns, social...

The data speaks for itself. A new survey of more than 8,000 people has found that those who identify with left-wing political beliefs are more likely to have been diagnosed with a mental illness. Ann Coulter’s “liberalism is a mental disorder” catchphrase has become something of a clichéd meme, but the data appears to support it. Carried out by Slate Star Codex, the online survey collected a wealth of data from respondents about their education, demographic, lifestyle and political views. The results show that people who occupy the farther left end of the political spectrum are more likely to have...

Below are excerpts from Pope Francis' Homily at Casa Santa Marta on Friday, May 19, 2017, on the same day as the speeches of the dubia signatories, Cardinal Burke and Cardinal Caffarra, at the Rome Life Forum. Is this Pope Francis' answer to the 'dubia' of the four cardinals?:  “So we are faced with two groups of people. The group of the apostles who want to discuss the problem, and the others who go and create problems. They divide, they divide the Church, they say that what the Apostles preached is not what Jesus said, that it is not the truth.” "There were...

It is “the big mistake” that is likely to be made at all levels of the Church. Pope Francis reiterated today, May 19, 2017, in the homily at Casa Santa Marta: true doctrine unites, but if instead it becomes ideology, it divides.   The Pontiff – as reported by Vatican Radio - meditates on the First Reading of the Acts of the Apostles, in which the so-called Jerusalem Council , around the year 49, establishes that pagans converted to Christianity should not circumcise according to what the Mosaic Law requires. The Pope notes that even in the first Christian community there...

Yesterday, on national TV, Reince Priebus the RNC Chairman openly attacked Donald J. Trump on his failure to stand by Trump's "Party Loyalty" oath to commit to supporting the GOP POTUS nominee. But, Priebus failed to mention that both Ted Cruz & John Kasich have openly backed away from exactly the same pledge weeks before Trump joined them. IMHO....Priebus should be forced to resign for his direct of unfairness towards a fellow Republican candidate....that being Donald J. Trump, and openly giving a pass to both Ted Cruz & John Kasich. IMHO.....Reince Priebus is just another loyal, active member of the...

It is tempting to dismiss the latest anti-choice salvo from Ohio lawmakers, which would criminalize abortions based on a fetal diagnosis of Down syndrome, as a blatantly unconstitutional ploy that would never be enforced. That would be a mistake. The bill stands a disturbingly good chance of approval this fall by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature A similar bill passed in North Dakota in 2013 bans abortions on the grounds of fetal genetic anomalies, including Down syndrome. The law has not yet been enforced — under existing Supreme Court precedent it is hard to see how it could be — but...

London (AFP) - Two Muslim extremists were on Thursday found guilty of the gruesome murder of a British soldier in broad daylight on a London street. Michael Adebolajo, 29, and Michael Adebowale, 22, hacked to death soldier Lee Rigby as he walked back to his barracks in Woolwich, southeast London, in May.

Now that the middle east is unraveling under the policies and watch of the most liberal President of the United States; it is time for us to confront what we are witnessing. Their policy of appeasement and make nice, outreach, if you will, does not work. In the typical manner, in the liberal/academic world, the question is being asked, why don't they like us? The answer is simple enough to those who are willing to look at the facts. We are dealing with a largely uneducated people who can be easily whipped into a frenzy on the whim of a...

WASHINGTON — The storming of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and the brutal murders of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, produced chaos this week in the so-called mainstream media. Instead of asking about how the heck this could happen in the aftermath of the Obama administration's Arab Spring euphoria, "reporters" started looking for scapegoats. The potentates of the press first focused their ire on something few of them even had seen — a puerile Internet video titled "Innocence of Muslims" — and then they turned their guns on Republican presidential...

Reports emerged yesterday warning that, "Iran had been working on developing a missile capable of striking the United States." In addition, one source claims that, "Iran's nuclear arms program is complete, its missiles can reach US." The general consensus already assumes that the Islamist regime has missiles, "capable of reaching Israel and Europe." This obvious existential threat to Israel and the West has been confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)'s, "growing concerns of possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear program," bolstered by the fact that the the European Union (EU), U.S., and to some part Japan and South...

KABUL (Reuters) – An angry mob that killed seven foreign UN staff in north Afghanistan ripped out the door of a bunker where several had taken shelter, and slit the throat of one man who survived a bullet, the top UN envoy in the country said on Saturday. Staffan de Mistura promised that the United Nations would stay in Afghanistan after the vicious assault, the deadliest it has faced in Afghanistan, but would have to reconsider security, particularly guarantees from Afghan forces. He also warned that the Afghan government need to do more to prevent attacks like this if it...

(CBS) CAIRO - There are many opposition groups in Egypt. None is as organized or as vilified as the Muslim Brotherhood. On Friday, its leaders said they won't run a candidate for president, but the brotherhood does expect to play a role in Egypt's future, CBS News Correspondent Mark Strassmann reports. Long before the clamor of Tahrir Square, Hosni Mubarak heard one group's dissent and despised them for it. They're the Muslim Brotherhood, religious conservatives, often secretive and poorly understood. What is clear: They want an Egyptian Islamic state. This week, they stepped out of the shadows and joined the...

Speaking of hatred that knows no bounds or party affiliation, the Westboro Baptist Church, famous for picketing the funerals of slain members of the American military, has announced plans to disrupt the funeral of the youngest of yesterday’s shooting victims, 9-year-old Christina Greene. The child was among the six fatalities that resulted from a shooting spree in Tucson by Jared Lee Loughner that left Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords hospitalized with a brain injury. Christina, who was the granddaughter of former Philadelphia Phillies manager Dallas Green, had just been elected to the student council at school. She wanted to attend the event...

Pew Poll: Majority of Muslims supports death for anyone leaving Islam. In a new poll by Pew, a majority of Muslims in many of the world’s Islamic countries says they are very much in favor of killing any person who converts from Islam to any other religion. The new poll also exposed mainstream Muslim attitudes regarding other aspects of their life. For instance, the poll found that a majority in the Muslim world are in favor of cutting off hands for theft, stoning people to death for adultery, and insisting that Islam play a major role in politics. This recent...

Bill Maher says the GOP is full of religious fanatics and that criticism of Barack Obama is based entirely in racism. Appearing on The O’Reilly Factor yesterday, Maher—who bizarrely got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame recently for, I’m guessing, "achievements" in twisting the truth to fit his liberal worldview—opined on how he thought Barack Obama was doing so far as POTUS and also why his poll numbers are so laughably low. It was really disturbing to get a no-holds-barred, unadulterated glimpse of precisely what goes on in the minds of committed liberals (the primary base of the...

Magical thinking goes beyond “belief without evidence” to the point of “belief in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary”. After midnight on a bitterly cold 4th of February, not far from our home, a young Mormon mother named Christine Jonson bundled up her two children, loaded them in the car and drove to the middle of the cable bridge between Pasco and Kennewick Washington. She kissed her children goodbye, lifted them one by one over the bridge railing, and dropped them into the Columbia River. Christine later recollected hearing faint splashes in the icy water 40 feet below....

A Rasmussen poll this month shows that by the definitions of some most Pennsylvanians are right-wing extremists.

I was surprised to read David Gibson's Column today in Politics Daily, it was entitled The Joe Lieberman Debate: Good Jew or Bad Jew? Or Not So Bright?, to be honest it feels a bit creepy when someone is trying to determine whether someone else is following their faith. It becomes much more creepy when the person is asking the question about a follower of my faith, and when the questioner is not, as they say, a member of the tribe. Gibson uses Lieberman's threats to filibuster the Senate health care bill as a bell weather to ascertain whether Lieberman...