Free Republic

California's third most populous city has renamed a section of a prominent street "Barack Obama Boulevard." The boulevard through downtown San Jose is the first street in the Bay Area to be named for the nation's first Black president after four years of planning, FOX 2 of the Bay Area reported. "We always felt like it was going to happen because there was bipartisan support," Alex Shoor, who proposed the idea in 2017, told The Mercury News. "San Jose is a progressive, open-minded city. Most of us want to grow up in a country where any one of our children...

Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe Individually they’re amazing, but together they’re one of the greatest couples in sports. Bird won her fourth WNBA title with the Seattle Storm last month, and while in the Wubble she led the can’t-get-rid-of-her, let’s-help-her-lose movement to boost Georgia Democratic Senate candidate Rev. Raphael Warnock, who is now in a runoff against Republican Senator and Atlanta Dream co-owner Kelly Loeffler. Rapinoe proposed to Bird in late October, and there may or may not have been happy squeals at this laptop when we saw that news. George Hill By all accounts, it was Hill, the Milwaukee...

Viola Davis is thrilled to be playing Michelle Obama in the upcoming Showtime anthology series First Ladies, but says she had some trepidation. The How to Get Away With Murder star dropped by The Graham Norton Show for an episode that will air on Dec. 25, where she opened up about playing the former first lady. "People love Michelle Obama," Davis told Norton. "They feel like they know her, they own her — and they do not want anything that is negative to touch her." As an actress, Davis said she delights in looking for the "mess" when it comes...

Former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign has assigned an out woman to be chief of staff to his running mate, putting a lesbian in one of the campaign’s most senior positions. Shortly before announcing that Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) would be his running mate in the 2020 general election, the Biden campaign announced that senior campaign advisor Karine Jean-Pierre would be the vice-presidential candidate’s chief of staff. Jean-Pierre is the first Black person to serve as chief of staff to a vice-presidential candidate. ...

President Trump has commuted the sentence of Roger Stone. The timing, late on Friday, suggests internal embarrassment over the move, and we wish there were more. The commutation is a move fully within the president’s powers and in keeping with the long-established pattern of presidents’ pardoning or commuting the sentences of associates caught up in special-counsel probes, although usually the associates aren’t as sleazy as Stone. We’re a long way from George H. W. Bush’s pardoning Cap Weinberger, the great Reagan-era defense official, who had been indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice in the Lawrence Walsh investigation. [cut] It...

Nothing unites Democrats more than a deep belief that President Trump must be driven from office. And right now, nothing divides Democrats more than finding the best way to bring this about. Trump’s racist tweets over the weekend against Rep. Elijah E. Cummings and the city of Baltimore that is part of the dignified Democrat’s district only underscored the moral urgency of ending a presidency that, day after day, brings shame upon our nation. Trump is not a political genius. He is president because of our outdated and undemocratic electoral college. What he is skilled at is taking advantage of...

After recruiting thousands of donors for the American Conservative Union — the powerful organization behind the annual CPAC conference — a Republican political operative pushed the same contributors to give millions to a PAC that promised to go after then-President Barack Obama, but then steered much of their donations to himself and his partners. The PAC, called the Conservative Majority Fund, has raised nearly $10 million since mid-2012 and continues to solicit funds to this day, primarily from thousands of steadfast contributors to conservative causes, many of them senior citizens. But it has made just $48,400 in political contributions to...

For the first time since the end of World War I, the president of the United States is not the leader of the free world. When the guns fell silent at the end of the Great War on Nov. 11, 1918, Europe was in ashes after more than four years of fighting. America was newly ascendant, a leader in manufacturing, science, military power and global influence – with a home front untouched by the destruction of war. Our leading role as the most powerful and influential nation on Earth was solidified with our victory in World War II. We never...

Vice President Mike Pence, accompanied by Republican senators including Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), visited two detention facilities near the U.S.-Mexico border where migrants were being held on Friday. Pence visited one center in Donna, Tex. where men were being held in addition to a McAllen facility where children were detained.The account from pool reporter Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post, who accompanied Pence into the facility in Donna, is chilling:After negotiating with the VP’s office, pool was taken into an outdoor portal at the McAllen Border Station around 5pm, where almost 400 men were in caged fences with no cots....

Announcing his second bid for the presidency March 2, Sen. Bernie Sanders drew a massive crowd in Brooklyn, estimated at 13,000 by his campaign. But can he do the same in Peoria?

The final votes are being counted from the 2018 election. They confirm that the Democrats crushed Republicans. Let's start in the seat count. Republican Rep. David Valadao of California's 21st District conceded on Thursday to Democrat T.J. Cox. Cox's victory combined with other election results means that Democrats have picked up a net gain of 40 seats. As has oft been repeated, this is the largest Democratic House gain since 1974. It's a larger gain than Democrats had in the wave elections of both 1982 and 2006. We can go back even further and see how unusual it is that...

For the clusters of onlookers, besuited power players and three former presidents who had all traveled to Washington National Cathedral, the muggy day was a historic opportunity to memorialize the life of Senator John McCain, who was remembered as a deeply patriotic war hero, a former Republican presidential candidate and a scrappy, humanly flawed, ultimately idealistic lawmaker. For President Trump, it was Saturday. In the many discussions about how to mark his life that Mr. McCain had with his staff and family before he died, he had made clear he did not want Mr. Trump to participate in anything they...

TEHRAN – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that an international bloc should be formed to press the Zionist regime to end its siege of the Gaza Strip. “We should try to form an international front to break the blockade on the Gaza Strip and condemn this action and support Palestinians,” Ahmadinejad said in a telephone conversation with Hamas leader Ismail Haniya on Tuesday. The telephone conversation came after Israeli forces attacked a civilian flotilla on Monday morning killing 19 civilians. The ships were carrying humanitarian supplies to Gaza. The president emphasized that Iran will firmly support the Palestinian nation and...

Tuesday's unequivocal statement by the Pentagon's top two officials that openly gay men and women shouldn't be barred from serving in the nation's military should be the beginning of the end of an outdated policy. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that repealing the Clinton-era "don't ask, don't tell" policy is "the right thing to do" because the policy forces service members to lie about themselves or abandon their careers. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said ending the prohibition is inevitable, because attitudes toward gays have changed among the public...

Paul Pelosi, an investor in the new United Football League and owner of San Francisco’s team, the California Redwoods, owns his own investment firm and is married to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He tells us about his admiration for his parents, how the Bay Area inspires him, and how he believes the president’s inaugural address is a blueprint for where the country ought to be headed.

Arthur Laffer, the primary architect of Reagan’s debt bomb that we are currently trying to defuse, has now executed a complete 180° turn from his monetary policies that gutted the Midwest industrial base in the 1980s. In a WSJ article on September 22, 2009, he claims the problems of the Great Depression are not caused primarily by tight monetary policy but rather tariffs and taxes. While he gets the facts he mentions right, he ignores the timing of taxes and deficits, tariffs and balance of trade. He’s right that talk of tariffs may have been the trigger that started the...

A class act he is not, but South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson's boorish behavior during President Obama's speech on health reform more than earned him his 15 minutes of infamy. It is understandable that he chose - or as some suggested, was told - to bellow "You lie!" when the President was explaining for the umpteenth time that undocumented immigrants would not be covered under health care legislation. After all, Wilson's extreme anti-immigrant positions are well known. His outburst, for which he has half-heartedly apologized, not only exposed Wilson for the uncouth nativist he is, but made clear that immigration...

Michelle Obama's longtime trainer is breaking his silence, spilling the workout secrets that keep the First Lady fit for her favorite sleeveless outfits. "She's truly committed herself to the importance of health and fitness," Cornell McClellan tells Women's Health magazine. McClellan, who began training Obama in 1997, said her sculpted arms are mostly the result of tricep pushdowns and hammer curls. The trainer, who owns the Naturally Fit fitness center in Chicago, reveals the First Lady usually does an intense calorie-burning cardio workout. Once she gets the blood flowing and the muscles pumping, she tops it off with "arm-shaping supersets"...

Boy the things some people put on Twitter! Senator John McCain's daughter the now famous blogger Meghan McCain (which some people misspell as "Megan McCain")just tweeted this: my hotel has this amazing pool but I've been too paranoid 2 use it cause I don't want any pics of my juicy booty in a bikini on the internet

Like many Americans, I watched as Senator Ted Kennedy was laid to rest over the weekend after his year-long battle with brain cancer. The day marked not only the end of the Camelot era, but seemed to signal the final passing of many things politically. I certainly didn't agree with Senator Kennedy's politics on many issues, but as I listened to his friends, family, and Senate colleagues—including my father—tell stories of the man they knew, what was so evident was that Ted Kennedy always believed you could find compromise on the really important matters. I remember meeting the senator around...