Free Republic

Washington, D.C. - Social media is ablaze with rumors that Iranian dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has died. Iranian state-media has yet to confirm or deny such rumors. Cairo-based journalist Gamal Sultan wrote on social media that Khamenei died after suffering from a bout with prostate cancer, after surgery failed to alter the course of his demise, according to Rassd News Network. Daniel J. Levy of The Times Of Israel wrote on Twitter late Saturday: “Hearing unconfirmed reports from a usually very reliable source of Ayatollah Khamenei’s death today.” On Friday, Iranian media confirmed that “The commander of the Islamic Revolution,...

BERLIN (Reuters) - The U.S. military estimates around 12,000 Russian soldiers are supporting pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukraine, U.S. Army Europe Commander Ben Hodges said on Tuesday. The Russian forces are made up of military advisers, weapons operators and combat troops, Hodges said in a speech in Berlin, adding that a further 29,000 soldiers were stationed in the Crimea peninsula that Moscow annexed from Ukraine last year. In addition, 50,000 troops are positioned on the Russian side of the border with Ukraine in case the separatists suffer a severe setback and the Ukrainian army gains the upper hand, Hodges said.

Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition. Left: Samsung SmartTV privacy policy, warning users not to discuss personal info in front of their TV Right: 1984

My twelve-year-old recently finished George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. When I asked her whether she had taken any lessons from the book, she airily replied, “The individual is powerless, so there’s really no point in trying.” Alarmed, I tried to explain that the world was an altogether cheerier place than Orwell, writing in 1948, could have imagined. Unrepentant socialist as he was, he never overcame his belief that the free market was doomed. He would have been stunned by the way that seventy years of exchange and specialization have served not only to make us wealthier, but to make us more...

Evidence gleaned from sources like email, social media and GPS trackers has already become common in trials. Newer tech like wearables and smartphone apps exude an even richer exhaust of information concerning our whereabouts, activities and close contacts. Cases like the one heard in Calgary raise questions about what it means to have this data in the courtroom – and how people could use it to protect themselves in the eyes of the law. An Android app called Alibi, released a few weeks ago, is designed to help citizens protect themselves in this way. Like a civilian version of the...

Austin, Texas – In what sounds like something out of the Cold War Soviet Union playbook, Austin Police Chief, Art Acevedo urged the community to turn in neighbors and friends who are “gun enthusiasts” or who have “extreme” views, just days after Larry McQuilliams shot-up buildings in Austin.Acevedo, in a press conference, stated that he is fearful of “homegrown” terrorists like McQuilliams who harbor “hate” and have access to firearms.But what Americans should be fearful about isn’t the likes of McQuilliams, but rather the response by Acevedo on how to go about countering these perceived threats. While obviously no rational...

The Internal Revenue Service, which claims to be so understaffed that it can’t bother to collect unpaid taxes, or search backup tapes for Lois Lerner’s “missing” emails, apparently has plenty of time to read the comment threads on conservative blogs that have been critical of the agency (Hi there, IRS agents!). William Jacobson, one of the best-informed and most effective critics of the agency, writes on Legal Insurrection: Hey, remember the Reader Poll we did about whether it was okay to follow and try to interview Lois Lerner in her neighborhood? Do you approve of media confronting Lois Lerner in...

If only George Orwell could see us today. When he wrote “1984” back in 1948, he probably never imagined that the “totalitarian, bureaucratic world” that he imagined would ever actually become a reality. But that is precisely what is happening. We live at a time when the government monitors billions of our phone calls and emails and hardly anyone gets upset about it. We live at a time when corporations systematically collect our voiceprints and our televisions watch us. We live at a time when reporters that try to dig into the misdeeds of the government have their computers hacked,...

I just bought a new TV. The old one had a good run, but after the volume got stuck on 63, I decided it was time to replace it. I am now the owner of a new “smart” TV, which promises to deliver streaming multimedia content, games, apps, social media, and Internet browsing. Oh, and TV too. The only problem is that I’m now afraid to use it. You would be too — if you read through the 46-page privacy policy. The amount of data this thing collects is staggering. It logs where, when, how, and for how long you...

The federal government has become a vast cornucopia for people who know how to play the system. If you do, you can enjoy showers of money for doing things that few if any Americans would willingly pay for. Just to point to a recent instance that made headlines, after Democrats griped that the Center for Disease Control had been crippled in its ability to deal with Ebola because of budget cuts, quite a few writers scrutinized the research that the CDC had been paying for. As Michael Tanner of Cato Institute showed in this column, CDC bureaucrats have been funding...

If you take to Twitter to express your views on a hot-button issue, does the government have an interest in deciding whether you are spreading "misinformation"? If you tweet your support for a candidate in the November elections, should taxpayer money be used to monitor your speech and evaluate your "partisanship"? My guess is that most Americans would answer those questions with a resounding no. But the federal government seems to disagree. The National Science Foundation, a federal agency whose mission is to "promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity and welfare; and to secure the...

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) came to prominence and notoriety when he famously shouted, ‘You Lie’ at Barack Obama during the president’s speech to a joint session of Congress. If ever there was a prime opportunity for a reprise, it occurred during an exchange between Wilson and Secretary of State John Kerry.Wilson asked Kerry if the U.S. was at war. If Kerry’s response had been a yes or no, the clip below would be no more than five seconds. As it was, Kerry took a more circuitous route to his answer, which was beyond ridiculous. After several seconds of hemming and...

A surge in atmospheric CO2 saw levels of greenhouse gases reach record levels in 2013, according to new figures. Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere between 2012 and 2013 grew at their fastest rate since 1984. The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) says that it highlights the need for a global climate treaty. But the UK's energy secretary Ed Davey said that any such agreement might not contain legally binding emissions cuts, as has been previously envisaged. The WMO's annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin doesn't measure emissions from power station smokestacks but instead records how much of the warming gases remain...

The EU’s justice commissioner has accused internet giant Google of leading a campaign to shoot down data protection reforms. Speaking in Lyon, France on Monday (18 August), the commissioner, Martine Reicherts, said: “Google and other affected companies who complain loudly” about a recent EU court verdict on personal data are “detractors … attempting to throw a new spanner in the works”. The Luxembourg-based EU court in May ruled that Google must remove links to any content that is “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant” or face a fine.The ruling was based on the bloc’s 1995 data protection law, which are...

Tuesday night the Houston Chronicle published a story about the grand jury that indicted Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Those grand jurors who spoke with the Chronicle broke the law to do so, and they knew that they were breaking the law. They claimed that they were speaking to the newspaper to counter Gov. Perry’s “spin” on the case. That’s not the job of a grand jury, by the way. One of them is a woman named Rho Chalmers. Chalmers tried to get around her lawbreaking by attempting to build this wall of implausible deniability. Rho Chalmers, who name matches that...

An in-flight magazine for travelers to Thailand offers some friendly advice on how to win friends and influence people in a country led by military junta. "Despite being under miliary control, Thailand is very safe for tourists," chirps the magazine copy, shared by Twitter user @joe_black317 this week. But for "good measure" you might want to take a few minor precautions, such as avoiding the color red, refraining from taking selfies with soldiers sans their consent, and for godssakes ditching your dystopian novels on the plane. "Don't carry George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984," the Philippine Airlines magazine warns in tip...

Jonathan Alter at the Daily Beast has an idea that will infuse the president’s “economic patriotism” rhetoric with some bite: Compel companies to take “loyalty oaths” to prove their patriotism. You may find this suggestion a little creepy, maybe even a little fascistic; but Alter says that “it’s time for red-blooded Americans to take matters into our own hands.” And by taking the matter into “our” hands, Alter means that President Obama would unilaterally bar any company that practices “inversion” – corporate merging with foreign firms to save on U.S. tax bills – from doing business with the federal government....

<p>Everything we are told about illegal immigration is mostly a lie, and a self-serving one at that. Remember that fact, and the current debate over the border becomes comprehensible.</p> <p>Fleeing to an Oppressive Society?</p> <p>How odd that almost no advocate ever says, “We want amnesty so that our kinsmen have a shot, as we have had a shot, at an independent judiciary, equality under the law, the rule of law, true democracy, free speech, protection of human rights, free-market capitalism, and protection of private property. For all that, millions risk their lives.” But instead there is either nothing, or a continual critique of the U.S. If we were to take a newly arrived illegal alien, and enroll him in a typical Chicano Studies course, he would logically wish to return across the border as soon as possible.</p>

The National Science Foundation has committed $10 million to build robots that will act as “personal trainers” for children, in an effort to influence their behavior and eating habits. The government has spent $2.15 million so far for the five-year project, which is being led by Yale University. The project, “Robots Helping Kids,” will ultimately “deploy” robots into homes and schools to teach English as a second language, and encourage kids to exercise.

A Colorado baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple is appealing a "re-education" order from the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.The order requires cake artist Jack Phillips to create wedding cakes for gay couples and to re-educate his staff that the state's Anti-Discrimination Act means artists must endorse all views.It also requires him to file quarterly compliance reports for two years.According to Phillips' attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom, the reports must include the number of patrons that Phillips declines to serve, along with the reason.The order stems from a 2012 incident in which Phillips refused a...