Free Republic

Since President Donald Trump took office, his administration has secured the release of 17 prisoners foreign governments had detained. “We’ve had 17 released, and we’re very proud of that record. Very proud. And we have others coming,” Trump said Saturday evening as he welcomed home Joshua Holt, an American citizen who had been detained in Venezuela for two years without trial. Unlike his predecessor, the president has managed to bring these prisoners home without freeing terrorists or paying millions of dollars in suspected ransom payments. 1. Sabrina De Sousa: Portuguese-American Sabrina De Sousa, a former CIA agent, was arrested and...

In what some have dubbed "Kanye Derangement Syndrome," we see the death throes of the divide-and-conquer identity politics that has long been the source of Democrat power and residual political success.  Democrats' mantra was that black conservatives could not possibly exist in the natural world.  They had to be some kind of genetically modified organism to which, when someone wandered off the plantation, they would apply that scientific term "Uncle Tom." The problem for Democrats is that blacks are leaving their political plantation in increasing droves.  In a bit of irony, they are pouring across ideologically open borders.  Heeding candidate Trump's call of...

Heidi Heitkamp squeezed dozens of hands and posed for pictures with college students at North Dakota State University recently, bubbling with characteristic exuberance that belied the Democratic senator’s uncertain future. “I want everybody to just do something for me,” Heitkamp said, her voice hoarse. “Everybody stand up! I want you to reach as high as you can. Now, I want you to reach about six inches higher. That’s what we’ve got to do to win! We’ve got to go higher.” An already tenuous bid for a second term has taken on new urgency for Heitkamp since she voted against Brett...

Biden’s the challenger who most worries Trump, for good reason. He’s universally known, has a common touch (in every sense of the word), and might be more formidable in the Rust Belt per his Scranton pedigree than, say, Elizabeth Warren is. He’s also 75, but even that’s not much of a liability in context: The guy running a distant second behind him is 77. The first @CNN numbers for 2020 Democratic presidential nomination just released this morning:Biden 33%Sanders 13%Harris 9%Warren 8%Booker 5%Kerry 5%Bloomberg 4%O’Rourke 4%Holder 3%Garcetti 2%Avenatti 1%Gillibrand 1%Klobuchar 1%Patrick 1%Bullock <1%Delaney <1%— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) October 14, 2018...

In a windowless conference room, Republican Senate candidate Martha McSally was asking executives at a small crane manufacturing company how the GOP tax cut has helped their business when one woman said: “I want to ask you a question about health care.” Marylea Evans recounted how, decades ago, her husband had been unable to get health insurance after developing cancer, forcing the couple to sell some of their Texas ranch to pay for his treatment. Now she was worried about Democratic ads saying McSally, currently a congresswoman, supported legislation removing the requirement that insurers cover people with pre-existing medical conditions....

President Trump sat down for a lengthy interview with Lesley Stahl on CBS' "60 Minutes," discussing a wide variety of topics from climate change to foreign policy to the Mueller investigation. The big picture: Trump was discursive — and often combative — while defending some of his administration's most controversial policies, including family separation at the border. He ended one particularly tense exchange with Stahl by reminding her, "Lesley, it's okay. In the meantime, I'm president — and you're not." Show less Climate change "I think something’s happening. Something’s changing and it’ll change back again. I don't think it's a...

President Trump said he has “no intention” of shutting down special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. “60 Minutes” host Lesley Stahl asked Trump in an interview that aired Sunday if he would pledge not to shut down probe. “Well, I don’t pledge anything,” Trump said. “But I will tell you, I have no intention of doing that. I think it’s a very unfair investigation because there was no collusion of any kind.” When pressed on why he wouldn't make a pledge, Trump said he didn’t want to. “Why should I pledge to you? If...

Mark Zuckerberg must need money because he just robbed a triple-amputee Iraq War vet blind. Brian Kolfage joined the Air Force just before 3000 Americans were killed in the September 11, 2001 terror attacks that also destroyed the Twin Towers in New York City. He wanted to serve. He wanted to keep what had happened to thousands of his fellow Americans from happening again. It was his duty, he believed. During Brian's second tour in the Middle East, he volunteered for a dangerous mission in Iraq. On September 11th, 2004, exactly 3 years to the day since the 9/11/01 attacks,...

They’ve appeared together enough that the jokes about them being running mates in 2020 seem a little less far-fetched and a little more plausible. For his part, Kasich said he’s not ruling anything out at this point — nor is he ruling anything in, for that matter. “It’s great to be here with my running mate,” he joked, generating laughter from the Brookings crowd. “If I was ever going to run with a Republican,” Hickenlooper countered, “He would be the one I’d run with.”

Democrats are largely ducking the topic on the campaign trail, but few people in Washington doubt that it will be on the table if they win the House. COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa — President Trump was energized. Fresh from the fight to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, he was firing up thousands of supporters at a rally by complaining about how Democrats had treated his nominee and how they may yet try to remove Justice Kavanaugh from the bench. “They’re saying, ‘We’ll impeach him!’” Mr. Trump practically bellowed into the microphone here last week, his voice brimming with incredulity and righteous outrage. “Impeach...

The angry partisan cannot believe that life is good, because he must then ask himself: If life is good, then why am I not enjoying it? We were not supposed to have made it this far. George Orwell saw night descending on us in 1984. Orwell was, on paper, a radical, but in his heart he was an old-fashioned English liberal. He dreamed of socialism but feared socialists. He feared them because he knew them. I was in the sixth grade in 1984, but I remember the magazine covers and pundit panels, and the insistence that though we had not...

When Russian president Vladimir Putin celebrated the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, he claimed the disputed peninsula was “spiritually” inseparable from Moscow. But Mr Putin’s military intervention is now threatening to undermine the “Russian world” beyond Moscow’s borders that he sought to protect. An arcane canonical dispute has become a geopolitical flashpoint after Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, the Istanbul-based spiritual leader of Orthodox Christianity, said on Thursday that he intended to grant full recognition to a breakaway church in Ukraine that split from the Russian patriarchate in the early 1990s. The Russian church has warned it may...

The Christian Social Union (CSU) is expected to win around 34 percent of the vote and is set to lose the absolute majority for the first time since the end of the war.

When have we ever seen thousands of Muslims rallying against the jihad terrorism that supposedly hijacks their peaceful religion? Several thousand protesters hit the streets of Pakistan calling for the Christian woman accused of insulting Islam be put to death. Asia Bibi would become the first person executed for blasphemy if her appeal fails. According to Bibi’s autobiography ‘Blasphemy: A Memoir: Sentenced to Death Over a Cup of Water’ the incident began when she went to retrieve a cup of water from a well during a hot day of fruit picking. When a Muslim woman nearby saw her doing so...

The pro-mass immigration, GOP megadonor, billionaire Koch brothers are opposing President Trump’s initiative to save American taxpayers from having to subsidize welfare-dependent legal immigrants. Since February, Breitbart News has reported how the Trump administration is set to enforce an existing law whereby foreign nationals seeking to permanently resettle in the U.S. would need to prove that they will not become drains on the American taxpayer. ... Freedom Partners Executive Vice President Nathan Nascimento said in a statement that mass migration welfare-dependent foreign nationals to the U.S. is “morally right,” calling Trump’s reform “the wrong approach.” “We should always welcome people...

For the freedom you enjoyed yesterday... Thank the Veterans who served in The United States Armed Forces. Looking forward to tomorrow's freedom? Support The United States Armed Forces Today! ~ Hall of Heroes ~ Darrell Robins Lindsey Info from here.             Darrell Robins Lindsey (December 30, 1919–August 9, 1944) was a bomber pilot in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II and a posthumous recipient of the Medal of Honor. Lindsey was born in Jefferson, Iowa, to Jesse Lyle and Grace Alice Lindsey. After graduating from high school in Fort Dodge in 1938, he...

Deserae Morin, a Republican running for a seat in the Vermont House of Representatives, allegedly received an ominous death and rape threat letter from someone claiming to be a socialist. "I've received my first official death threat, also rape threat," Morin wrote via Facebook on Saturday along with a picture of an envelope and its contents. "And a threat to all Vermont Republicans. My entire platform consists of protecting individual liberty, ensuring small government, reducing taxes, increasing personal choices and a deep commitment to the Constitution… Apparently these are things that make the Socialists want to kill me… How telling."...

Stacey Abrams, the Democratic candidate for Georgia governor, said Sunday that the state's voter ID law, which has put tens of thousands of voter registration applications on hold, is designed to "scare people out of voting." "This is simply a redux of a failed system that is designed to both scare people out of voting and make it harder for those who are willing to push through, make it harder for them to vote," Abrams said on CNN's "State of the Union." Abrams was asked about the 53,000 voter registration applications, mostly from black voters, that have been put on...

Full title: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Picks And Chooses Which Parts of Her Life to Highlight – But Here's What She Left Out Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic Congressional candidate from New York, hit the scene a few months ago and quickly became the face of the future of the Democratic Party. Her socialist positions made her popular with Bernie Sanders and other of the like. After all, she is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. On Saturday, Ocasio-Cortez celebrated her birthday in an odd way: by bragging about her "accomplishments" and the life she's built over the last seven years....

The power could be turned off as early as Sunday and into Monday morning. The move is an attempt to reduce wildfire danger and may impact several northern California cities. Kevin Dasso, vice president of electric asset management, said that safety was the agency’s top priority. “PG&E has a plan. We want our customers to have plans, too.”