Free Republic

Brands, may we remind you for the umpteenth time, that if you're trying to get #relatable on Twitter, you're opening yourself up to being completely and utterly owned. People have a lot of strong feelings about when and where brands can interject their own witty repartee in online discourse. No matter how seemingly wholesome (woke soap, anyone?) or unbelievably tone deaf (Sunny D's faked mental health crisis), the response is usually a resounding SILENCE BRAND. JPMorgan Chase was the latest brand to get shut down over a failed attempt at reaching the masses with a tweet that has since...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A U.S. veteran of the war in Afghanistan who prosecutors say plotted to detonate a nail bomb at a Los Angeles-area white nationalist rally, hoping to cause mass casualties, was arrested in an FBI online sting operation, federal prosecutors said on Monday. Mark Steven Domingo, 26, a U.S. Army infantryman who fought in Afghanistan and recently converted to Islam, was taken into custody on Friday after being given what he thought was a live bomb to use in the attack by an FBI informant, law enforcement officials said. “Often we are asked what keeps us up...

...These are rumblings of a broader ideological shift taking shape on the right throughout the globe. And nobody embodies this evolution better than Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, the leader of the French far-right National Front. As she took the stage at CPAC last year, Le Pen confronted conservatism’s old guard... Without “the limits of the common good, natural law and collective morality disappear, as the reign of egoism continues,” said Le Pen... Rarely do American Republicans invoke “natural law”—that is not their style...But Le Pen’s challenge to American conservatism was more than semantic. In terms more familiar to the absolutist philosopher...

Last week, after an especially long day and an “epic” tantrum from her 3-year-old, Sarah Buckley Friedberg, a Massachusetts mother of three, posted on Facebook a mock ‘to-do list‘ that society expects of mothers today. The ending was inspired: “I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to lean OUT. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.” Friedberg’s post went viral. But in just a few weeks most people will have forgotten about the article. Don’t be one of those people. Instead, do as Friedberg suggests. Lean out Reading Friedberg’s post took me back in time to the very first...

The last time President Trump met face-to-face with Chuck and Nancy, as he calls the Democratic leaders of the Senate and House, it didn’t go swimmingly. The president asked for a border wall; they refused. He said Nancy was reluctant to negotiate on camera; she bristled on camera. He said he would proudly shut down the government over the wall, and he did. Nancy — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — later said the December meeting with the president was like “a tinkle contest with a skunk.” Mrs. Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer will return to the White...

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein Resigns

UC Davis Professor Bruce Hammock has spent a 50-year career studying insects. He probably wouldn’t be the Ph.D. considered most likely to shake up the multibillion-dollar prescription painkiller market. Nonetheless, he has developed a medication for chronic pain that he said has proved both effective and non-addictive in animal trials. Could his discovery put an end to the devastating death toll caused by opioids such as fentanyl, oxycodone and hydrocodone, drugs that racked up $24.5 billion in sales in 2018? Veteran pharmaceutical researcher William Schmidt told The Bee that he thinks so. He said he found Hammock’s novel drug candidate...

Albert Einstein once wrote that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Were he alive today, he would be repeating the line to anyone who would listen, especially the reporters on cable news channels such as CNBC. He might add that the world’s policymakers always approach oil market disruptions in the same way: predicting there will be no impact on prices. Einstein would then point out that the policymakers are consistently wrong. A hefty price boost has followed every disruption. The world has experienced nineteen oil market disruptions over the...

Child exploitation should not be controversial, yet to the modern LGBT left it seems to be a subjective matter depending on what political or social narrative they want to pursue. Child drag queens appear to be a growing trend after the success of Desmond Napoles, who has been in the public eye since he was nine years old. While many oppose the idea of minors performing drag at all, it shouldn’t be considered a “conservative” position to oppose them performing drag in adult bars. Drag is inherently sexual in nature. The origin and purpose of drag is to indulge adult...

An Oxford University professor Dr. Young-hae Chi has claimed aliens are already breeding with humans to create a new hybrid species that will save the planet. Poor Dr. Chi, he has stumbled across the story of the century, but hasn’t the foggiest idea why his ‘crazy theory’ is actually largely correct. And the funny part is, all it would take to clear things up for the good doctor is a King James bible from his local Five and Dime shop. Aliens interbreeding with humans, eh? Yep, that happened in Genesis 6 3,500 years ago, and Matthew 24 says that in...

For decades belt-it-out popular singer Kate Smith (shown on right) was considered the embodiment of the uniquely American cultural phenomenon that combines wholesome entertainment with patriotism and love of country. Smith’s rendition of Irving Berlin’s classic “God Bless America,” which she first recorded in 1939, turned the song into a patriotic anthem that has inspired generations of Americans. But Smith, who enjoyed a 50-year career and the esteem of fans all over the world before her death in 1986, has become the latest target of PC gumshoes ever on the lookout for evidence that individuals either past and present have...

Woo hoo!! And we now have less than $400 to reach 34%!! Would be great if we can do this today. And tomorrow should be a great day. We should have the last batch of monthlies and the last batch of mail-ins for the month. Could be 3 or 4% coming in tomorrow. Go, FReepers, GO!!

Shortened title. Full title: Durbin: ‘People Feel They Have License’ to Engage in Attacks Because of Rhetoric From the White House On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “New Day,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) stated that the Poway, CA synagogue shooting is domestic terrorism, and people feeling they have license to engage in such attacks “has really been fomented because of the rhetoric that we’re hearing from the White House.” Durbin said, “This is domestic terrorism. Let’s call it for what it is. Had there been someone from the Middle East involved in this, someone with a green card involved...

“‘Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you’” (Matthew 5:42). Secular people also hold tightly to the concept that property rights are sacred. But such self-centered possessiveness is merely another symptom of humanity’s sinfulness. Even believers forget that whatever they have belongs to God and that they are simply stewards of their wealth. We do have certain legal rights in most countries to manage property as we wish. But we must be willing to sacrifice those rights on the altar of Christian obedience and submission (cf. Rom. 12:1–2)....

Bambang Brodjonegoro said President Joko Widodo had chosen to relocate the capital in "an important decision"... Jakarta, home to over 10 million people, is sinking at one of the fastest rates in the world... Researchers say that large parts of the megacity could be entirely submerged by 2050. North Jakarta sunk 2.5m (eight feet) in 10 years and is continuing to sink an average of 1-15cm a year... But President Joko Widodo has achieved ambitious infrastructure building in his five years in office, so he may well be the man that finally does it.

As Avengers: Endgame continues its world-conquering run at the box office, one particular scene is attracting some attention for introducing the franchise’s first openly gay character. And while some fans are pleased to see the MCU finally take this first step in LGBTQ representation, others were left feeling pretty underwhelmed. The character in question features in a scene where Steve Rogers leads a post-snap support group. One of the attendees, played by Endgame co-director Joe Russo, mentions that he went on his first date since the events of Avengers: Infinity War, using the “he” pronoun to refer to his partner....

For the last hour or so, I have been unable to post comments on various conservative websites. At first, I was getting error messages pertaining to servers, and now I don't even get that far - just the spinning "Disqus is taking longer than expected" message. Has anyone else experienced this problem?

Four Northern Virginia school systems are declaring in court their support for the rights of transgender students, weighing in on a landmark case involving a teenager embroiled in a years-long legal fight over his attempt to use the boysÂ’ restroom at his high school. The school boards in the cities of Alexandria and Falls Church, and Fairfax and Arlington counties, said last month in court papers that they stand behind Gavin Grimm, a transgender teen who sued the school board in Gloucester County, Va., after he was barred from the boysÂ’ restroom. GrimmÂ’s case, which ascended to the Supreme Court...

President Trump appears set to expose more than forty years of deceptive and misleading information disseminated by the United Nations (UN) in relation to the boundaries of former Palestine. This welcome development comes with President Trump’s Special U.S Envoy Jason D. Greenblatt telling Sky News in Arabic on 19 April: "There is no reason to use the term 'two-state solution,” the reason being that, "every side sees it differently." The UN must take responsibility for creating such confusion by perpetuating intellectual and political fraud originating with its 1978 publication: “The Origins and Evolution of the Palestinian problem“(Study) Part 1 of...

<p>The first openly gay general at the Air Force Academy has been removed as commandant of cadets, but leaders there were mum Monday on the exact cause of the apparent firing.</p> <p>Brig. Gen. Kristin Goodwin, who led military training at the academy since 2017, was removed from her role as commandant amid an investigation, the school confirmed Monday.</p>