Free Republic

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un is ah-live! Maybe. He sent a message giving his appreciation to people building a complex at his father’s hometown on the border of China although state radio didn’t say anything about the 36-year-old’s health. South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported no photos of Kim have been published since his vanishing on April 11th amid speculation heart problems either felled or left him comatose. South Korea’s official stance is Kim remains in the realm of the living. South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s foreign policy adviser sent a statement to American media saying Kim is “alive...

The entire notion of a political leader saying “God is on our side,” tends to rub me the wrong way. I grew up at a Southern Baptist high school where the notion of God and politics crossed paths regularly. It sort of made sense, as much as it could to a rather protected teenager who was taught the idea of “separation of church and state” was some godless plot to turn the country into Sodom and Gomorrah. Republicans were the ones saving the country from a dire fate, while Democrats were heathens who wouldn’t know Jesus Christ if He...

Lost in the kerfuffle over Houston Congressman Al Green’s failed attempt to get an impeachment vote on President Donald Trump and the “send her back” chants is a rather interesting piece of news regarding Google’s censored search engine for China.It’s deader than Jacob Marley.Google’s Karan Bhatia told a U.S. Senate committee on Wednesday the company was no longer working on the project using the phrase, “we have terminated that,” when asked by Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley. A Google spokesperson provided a little more context to Buzzfeed. A company spokesperson pointed to its statement in a March 2019 story...

Florida Congressman Carlos Curbelo is getting ready to introduce a bill repealing the gas tax in exchange for a carbon tax. It seems rather odd the Miami Republican wants to chart this path, especially after the House GOP overwhelmingly denounced the notion of a carbon tax last week, but Curbelo isn’t backing down from his proposal. He told Miami Herald his proposal is just a “first step” in the discussion. When you ask this question in a vacuum, is any tax detrimental to economic growth? It’s usually going to be yes…But when you put it in context and you...

There's an interesting piece from Vox's John B. Judis pointing out just how similar Donald Trump's positions are with the ones of Bernie Sanders. There's going to be a fair amount of consternation between both Trump and Sanders' supporters, who really don't want to be associated with each other, on this but Vox thinks there's plenty of crossover between the two. The first is, you guessed it, populism but it goes even deeper than that: Sanders is a left-wing populist. He wants to defend the "collapsing middle class" against the "billionaire class" that controls the economy and politics. He is...