Free Republic

State Sen. Nicole Mitchell, DFL-Woodbury, was arrested Monday morning in Detroit Lakes and booked into the Becker County Jail for suspected first-degree burglary. Detroit Lakes Police Chief Steve Todd said at 4:45 a.m. on Monday, a 911 dispatcher received a call from a homeowner on Granger Road who reported that there was a burglar inside their home. Todd said officers arrested the woman inside the home and she was identified as Mitchell. Mitchell, 49, was booked into Becker County Jail and was still listed on the jail’s roster early Monday afternoon. Mitchell was elected to the Senate in 2022 and...

Some House Democrats and Biden administration officials appear to be souring toward Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler over his readiness to increase regulation on certain financial industries. An already frequent target of Republican attacks, Gensler has ended 2023 drawing sharp criticism over what some have called his "outsized influence" when it comes to rulemaking and enforcement. "Gary Gensler is a politician masquerading as a regulator," Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y. said, according to a November report by Fortune. Torres, a supporter of the cryptocurrency industry, has been increasingly critical of Gensler, who has attempted to exercise greater authority...

Authorities arrested three individuals accused of organizing a "high-end brothel network" that had been in operation since 2020 and whose customers included elected officials and military officers, a new indictment alleges. Federal prosecutors announced that Han Lee, 41; James Lee, 68; and Junmyung Lee, 30 were arrested Wednesday morning after allegedly operating an "interstate prostitution network" including multiple brothels in Cambridge and Watertown, Massachusetts, as well as in Fairfax and Tysons, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. The defendants advertised the prostitution network on two websites, which, according to prosecutors, offered appointments with women in either Boston or Eastern Virginia and...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The 2023 National Prayer Breakfast came to an abrupt and premature end today due to severe lightning that kept striking the building where the politicians were gathered. "Well anyway, you know, we're here to pray to, you know... the thing!" said a barely audible Biden as deafening thunder shook the room. "Let's all remember that a woman's right to choose is fundamental to our..." The President was unable to complete his sentence as lightning struck again and killed power to the entire building. "I've never seen anything like it," said Congressman Scalise as he dove out of...

KYIV, Ukraine — The seven-foot-tall bronze statue of Ronald Reagan bursting through the Berlin Wall was supposed to be here by now, standing in one of the Ukrainian capital’s prominent public squares. The monument was the brainchild of Maryan Zablotskyy, who grew up venerating Reagan in Lviv in western Ukraine — as many did in the post-Soviet years. Zablotskyy founded the Ayn Rand Center Ukraine to promote the libertarian author and covered his office walls with posters of Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill, with their quotes translated into Ukrainian. Now a member of his country’s parliament, Zablotskyy, 37, faces...

President Joe Biden, also known as “the Big Guy” to his scandal-plagued son Hunter, stumbled his way through a Tuesday afternoon address to make the incredible claim he doesn’t believe politicians should get rich in office. Watch: "The War in Ukraine is going to continue to take it toll on the world economy,” Biden said. “It’s going to take it his toll on energy, and it’s going to take its toll relative to food.” “When I was running for office, you heard it a thousand times from me, that we’re going build an economy me around you,” he continued. “I’m...

A woman running for railroad commissioner in the Lone Star State has raised eyebrows over her racy campaign video — in which she straddles an oil pump wearing little more than a cowboy hat and boots. “They said I needed money. I have other assets,” GOP lawyer Sarah Stogner, 37, said in a campaign clip posted to TikTok. Stogner, who posted the steamy video on Super Bowl Sunday, said it was shot in November by a documentary crew she hired for her campaign against incumbent Wayne Christian, the Houston Chronicle reported. Some friends suggested that she post the video on...

U.S.—A new study found that politicians cannot be harmed from heart issues due to the COVID-19 vaccines, as they do not have hearts that can be affected by complications such as myocarditis. "Politicians? Oh yeah, they're totally safe from getting any kind of heart inflammation," said the head of the study, Dr. Ree Boyd. "You kinda gotta have a heart to inflame, ya know?" Experts say the study illustrates why politicians have been so quick to get vaccinated, while ordinary humans, who have hearts, are more hesitant. "It seems people who have a heart and non-lizard blood flowing through their...

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who was blamed last year for giving former U.S. President Donald J. Trump COVID-19 appears to have caught a case of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) during his tenure with ABC News. Christie, since hinting he is running for President in 2024 has been fixated on his former boss since being cast off the Trump island. When asked by his ABC co-worker George George Stephanopoulos about the former President, “Is he [Trump] winning this fight?”

It’s a late-breaking case of electoral bondage. Zack Weiner, 26, a City Council candidate running in Manhattan, has found his campaign tied up after video of him enjoying a sadomasochism session found its way onto Twitter.

A married Argentinian politician was forced to resign last week after he went viral during a livestream session for pulling down the top of his girlfriend and kissing one of her newly-enhanced breasts. Juan Emilio Ameri, a legislator in Argentina’s lower house of Congress “shocked fellow lawmakers” last Thursday as he snuggled up to his girlfriend sitting on his lap during a livestream session, apparently when he thought his internet connection was not working, the New York Post reported. He later pulled down the woman’s vest and kissed her right breast.

A Resurrection All About Politics. Francis’s Easter Message To the “Popular movements” On the evening of April 12, Easter Sunday, the major Catholic media outlets reported on the letter sent that same day by Pope Francis to the “popular movements” all over the world, the same ones he convened and met with for the first time in Rome in 2014, a second in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia in 2015, and a third in Rome again in 2016.The “popular movements,” his definition, represent the mass of those “excluded from the benefits of globalization.” They are “street vendors, recyclers, carnies,...

It is time to name the year’s top member of Congress. For 2019, the winner is a woman who also stars in the political picture of the year. Take a look at Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in a sea of men, literally standing up to President Trump at the White House. On that day, she pointedly reminded him that a majority of House Republicans joined her Democratic caucus in voting to condemn him for pulling troops out of Syria. The picture was so powerful that the White House released it and in act of pure spin described it as proof...

Senate officials say a Pennsylvania state lawmaker who is facing child pornography possession charges has resigned. Sen. Mike Folmer's apparent resignation Wednesday came hours after he was arrested by the state attorney general's office. Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati and Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman said in statement that they received Folmer's resignation letter after they spoke with him to insist on it. The state attorney general's office charged Folmer late Tuesday with possession of child pornography and criminal use of a communication facility, both felonies. Investigators allegedly found two images of child pornography on Folmer's cell phone after...

A few years ago, a politician was attempting to make the case for a mandatory gun storage law. On stage, he tried to show how easy it was to unlock a gun from being locked, with the device of his choice. It was a live broadcast. He fumbled and fumbled. I am sure that video is out there, but I cannot find it. Does anyone else remember this video, and any other details about it? It seems to have been consigned to the memory hole. Maybe it was before YouTube?

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney says he's "sickened" by the level of dishonesty the special counsel found in President Donald Trump's administration. The one-time GOP presidential nominee tweeted that it's "good news" Trump was not charged with wrongdoing in the investigation. But Romney, who's now a senator from Utah, was critical of what he called the "pervasiveness of dishonesty and misdirection" at the highest levels of the administration, "including the president."

If people did not indulge in such abject evasions as the claim that some contemptible liar “means well”—that a mooching bum “can’t help it”—that a juvenile delinquent “needs love”—that a criminal “doesn’t know any better”—that a power-seeking politician is moved by patriotic concern for “the public good”—that communists are merely “agrarian reformers”—the history of the past few decades, or centuries, would have been much different.

While stitching the hand of a 75 year old farmer, whose hand was caught in the squeeze gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually, the topic got around to politicians and their role as our leaders. The old farmer said, "Well, as I see it, most politicians are 'Post Turtles'." Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a 'post turtle was. The old farmer [rancher] said, "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a...

A New Jersey board of education member is facing a call to resign Wednesday after video surfaced purportedly showing her trying to “manipulate” a police officer by exercising “civic privilege” after she was pulled over for speeding. The woman in the April 27 dash-cam video, who identifies herself as Stephanie Lawson-Muhammad, a South Orange and Maplewood Board of Education member, also is heard telling one of the town’s officers that she is “scared of cops because you guys hurt black people,” before calling the cop's boss a “skinhead.”... “Ma’am, do you want me to call an ambulance?” Horst asks her....

If there’s a dark-horse candidate to watch in the ridiculously crowded GOP field to replace outgoing Congressman Lamar Smith, it could be William Negley. Like most of the 18 Republican candidates in the U.S. District 21 race, Negley has never held elective office. Unsurprisingly, he has low name recognition and only two months to spread the word about his candidacy. In an early December poll commissioned by Fight for Tomorrow, a national Super PAC, Negley registered the support of only 0.7 percent of Republican voters in the district, placing him eighth among the candidates who ultimately filed.