Free Republic

A new controversy has broken out in Europe over the use of the so-called "pain grip" by German police. More specifically, it's a restraint technique being used to remove climate change protesters who are blocking roads and otherwise causing chaos in public. A recent viral video showed police using the move on a man who was sitting in front of a bus, ignoring orders to get up. As he's carried onto the sidewalk, you can see his right hand being forced down to put pressure on his wrist. The man can be heard screaming as if he's feeling the worst...

The top two Republican leaders in the Senate remain silent a day after former President Donald Trump, the current GOP 2024 presidential frontrunner, was indicted by the federal government. While the charges have yet to be unsealed, the top two Republicans in the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Minority Whip John Thune have not put out statements, a stark contrast to the swift reaction among House GOP leaders who quickly rushed to Trump’s defense. “Today is indeed a dark day for the United States of America. It is unconscionable for a President to indict the leading candidate opposing him....

Seizures of the illicit party drug ketamine have skyrocketed by 349 percent in the United States over the last five years, new research reveals. This significant increase has sparked alarm over the potential dangers tied to the escalating recreational use of this illegal substance, initially designed for use as a horse tranquilizer. The study by a team in New York indicates that the overall weight of ketamine seized in the U.S. escalated from 127 pounds in 2017 to roughly 1,550 pounds in 2022, marking an increase of over 1,100 percent. The hallucinogenic effects of ketamine have enhanced its popularity among...

"We have a son named Jesus Ernesto. The first name is for Jesus Christ and the second for Ernesto Che Guevara…an exemplary revolutionary who gave his life for his ideals.” (Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador, May 17, 2017.) “For the Chicano Movement …the Cuban Revolution of 1959 stood as a Latino revolutionary influence that told Chicanos that they could also struggle against their own internal colonized status within the U.S. and to achieve their own self-determination. Images of Fidel Castro and especially those of Che Guevara became standard for the Chicano Movement.” “Mexicans are mostly a rabble of illiterate Indians”...

Gigi Sohn — President Joe Biden's nominee for commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission — withdrew her name from consideration on Tuesday, the White House confirmed, after three successive unsuccessful nominating attempts by Biden. Sohn's decision ended some 16 months of attempts to secure enough support, and came just hours after U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) announced that he "cannot support her nomination" and urged Biden "to put forth a nominee who can bring us together, not drive us apart." Biden first nominated Sohn in October 2021, but her initial bid to be FCC commissioner stalled after she testified before...

The Biden administration’s Department of Energy (DOE) announced plans Monday to sell an additional 26 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), and bringing the SPR to its lowest level since 1983, Reuters reported Monday. The Biden administration sold a record-breaking 180 million barrels of crude oil from the SPR last year in a bid to lower gas prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Monday’s sale — fulfilling a congressional mandate from 2015 — is set to bring its level to roughly 372 million barrels, Reuters reported. The administration had previously rejected the initial bids made...

RENO, Nev. (KOLO) - Update on Feb. 8: The Reno City Council has officially settled with an ACLU observer who says she was shot three times with pepper balls during a BLM protest. Councilwoman Brekhus was the only dissenting vote, saying she didn’t feel she had time to review documents related to the case beforehand. Original Article: The City of Reno has announced a negotiated settlement of $250,000 with ACLU legal observer Rebecca Gasca, which Council members will vote on at Wednesday’s meeting. Gasca had sued the city, former police chief Jason Soto and others for alleged civil rights violations...

It turns out the Atlanta terrorists are largely children of immense privilege. Take, for example, the rather evil-looking Francis Carroll (whose name WSB misspelled below), the guy who allegedly lit a police cruiser on fire Saturday night. Carroll hails from Kennebunkport, Maine — yep, the same Kennebunkport that is home to the Bush family compound. And we all know that towns with compounds are always fancy. He’s the scion of a multimillion-dollar family that owns a yacht, and he lived in his parents’ mansion before coming to Atlanta to wreak havoc. Over at the New York Post, Andy Ngo notes...

In the wake of the "Twitter Files," let's revisit former President Barack Obama's warning last April about the spread of misinformation: "You just have to flood a country's public square with enough raw sewage. You just have to raise enough questions, spread enough dirt, plant enough conspiracy theorizing that citizens no longer know what to believe." Does the "raw sewage" include when Obama falsely said, "The Cambridge police acted stupidly"; that "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon"; and that racism in America is "still part of our DNA that's passed on"? Does raw sewage include the part...

Leading activists with climate change protest group Just Stop Oil have admitted that they drive petrol cars, but still claim that this doesn’t make them hypocrites. Erm, okay then. “Dr Larch Maxey, 50, a climate scientist from the eco group, said some members still drive cars and fill up with petrol – but rejected the idea that it was hypocritical,” reports the Telegraph. According to activist leaders, they are “victims” of the “fossil fuel economy.” Maxey says that people who call for the oil industry to be shut down but then drive petrol cars shouldn’t be called out for hypocrisy...

Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) is the latest of the leftist prags to whine that Twitter is no longer a playground for the Marxist rich and heinous. Boo hoo. With no evidence whatsoever, the perennial ass-goblin, mega-liar himself attacked Twitter owner Elon Musk by suggesting—with no evidence —that hate speech on Twitter has risen since Elon brought free speech back to the platform. Actually, he did it twice. Here is the first baseless attack: Tweet See new Tweets Conversation Adam Schiff @RepAdamSchiff On Elon Musk's Twitter: - Slurs against Black people have tripled - Slurs against women are up 33% - Slurs...

Even man’s best friend is not safe from the climate alarmism. Not if you believe a recent CNN column opining that dogs, cats and other domestic pets are causing irreparable harm to the climate. President Harry Truman famously said that if you want a friend in Washington, you should get a dog. The eco-left feels differently. My fellow Gen Xers will remember vividly that there were two existential threats growing up that could annihilate mankind: nuclear war and acid rain. Future decades expanded the circle of bogeymen to include ozone layer degradation, bioweapons, African killer bees, SARS, financial market collapse...

President Joe Biden celebrated Veterans Day on Friday by falsely praising his Climate Envoy John Kerry as one of the most decorated men to fight for America. “I want to thank one proud American veteran, a lifelong public servant, a dear friend, and literally one of the most decorated men to fight, Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry,” Biden said. The president spoke about veterans and John Kerry during his speech at the climate summit in Egypt. Kerry, who served in Vietnam, was awarded a Bronze Star, a Silver Star, and three Purple Hearts, but is not even on the...

Climate change activist Greta Thunberg, who has been propped up by global elites and central planners since she was a child, is finally admitting her activism isn't about saving the environment. Instead, it's about tearing down capitalism and implementing communist, government controlled systems around the world. Michael Shellenberger @ShellenbergerMD Greta Thunberg used to say her goal was to protect the planet from climate change but she now admits it's to overthrow "the whole capitalist system," which she says is responsible for "imperialism, oppression, genocide.. racist, oppressive extractionism"

It’s been primarily a quiet race in Nevada, though it’s about to get more attention for multiple reasons. First, Latinos seemed poised to stay home, putting incumbent Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s re-election chances in danger. It’s a damning indictment of the Left’s race-based politics—the Latino community is eschewing voting for the first Latina candidate elected to the Senate. On the gubernatorial front, Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak failed to clinch the endorsement of the state’s most prominent teachers’ union. The Clark County union remains uncommitted, which even Vanity Fair noted was an “ominous sign” as we enter the final weeks...

It was the summer of 2020. Black Lives Matter riots were terrorizing, destroying, and burning American cities. And the first black deputy commander of Air Force Global Strike Command told everyone in the Air Force that he was terrified that white people could kill him at any moment. “Here I am as a lieutenant general in the United States Air Force,” then Lt. Gen Anthony Cotton whined to Air Force Magazine. “When I see what happened to Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks—and the list goes on and on.” “That could be me,” he claimed. Since Cotton was,...

Even before Queen Elizabeth II was officially confirmed dead, her haters were dancing on her grave. We're not just talking random Twitter users, but a verified professor, Uju Anya of Carnegie Mellon, as our friends at Twitchy highlighted throughout Thursday. While many current and former world leaders, including from the United States, have sent their condolences, those Australian politician Mehreen Faruqi's rang hollow, as she brought up colonization in a tweet, and then restricted replies. Then there's the media. The New York Times even had an op-ed ready to go criticizing the queen after her death, this one by Harvard's...

Twenty-one years ago, Dustin Inman, a sixteen year old boy, lost his life to a Mexican illegal alien. That alien is still a wanted fugitive. Under the Trump administration, the ICE VOICE office was established to help victims of illegal aliens and Dustin’s killer appear on its most wanted list. In one of his numerous acts of calculated cruelty, Biden shut down ICE VOICE. And two decades later Dustin’s killer is still out there. There are tragically a thousand cases like this. But some of them make people step up. That’s how D.A. King founded the Dustin Inman Society. The...

MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan called for media outlets to not cover both sides of what he called “major issues” during a Wednesday forum. “There are two words we need to remove from our media vocabulary right now and that is ‘both sides,’” Hasan told Semafor’s Ben Smith, a former New York Times reporter, in a video posted on Twitter and YouTube. “This fundamental crutch, this reliance on ‘both sides’ as a kind of lazy way of covering our political moment is deeply dangerous.” “There are a bunch of major issues on which there are not both sides,” Hasan continued. “There...

The IRS official chosen to lead the new "centralized office" featuring the nearly 87,000 new employees funded in President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act was involved in the agency's targeting of conservative groups that opposed Barack Obama's reelection in 2012. Nikole Flax served as the chief of staff for then acting IRS Commissioner Stephen Miller, who was fired amid a cover-up of the scandal. When Republican lawmakers sought communications related to the scandal in an investigation, Flax's emails were among those the agency claimed were lost in a computer hard-drive crash. The IRS, the lawmakers charged, was attempting to "cover up...