Free Republic

In American high schools, the age of the book may be fading. Many teenagers are assigned few full books to read from beginning to end — often just one or two per year, according to researchers and thousands of responses to an informal reader survey by The New York Times. Twelfth-grade reading scores are at historic lows, and college professors, even at elite schools, are increasingly reporting difficulties in getting students to engage with lengthy or complex texts. Perhaps that is to be expected in the era of TikTok and A.I. Some education experts believe that in the near future,...

Children as young as five are being taught "abortion is a superpower" in a new book. "Abortion Is Everything" by Amelia Bonow and Rachel Kessler is billed as a non-fiction book, and will begin shipping to purchasers in January 2026. It is being promoted by pro-abortion group Shout Your Abortion (SYA) - which hails the tome as a way to "empower parents and kids". Elsewhere, children between five and eight years old are taught "about what abortion is, how it might feel, and why people have abortions". "Abortion is a tool that allows human beings to shape our destinies, and...

Somali student in Minnesota threatens to ‘pop’ ICE agents in expletive-ridden, viral rant A Somali Minnesota college student has come under fire for threatening to “pop” ICE agents in an expletive-laden viral social media rant. Hasan Mohamed was blasted after he posted the menacing anti-ICE tirade on social media, where he vowed to shoot immigration agents the next time they show up in his Owatonna neighborhood. “ICE, I actually heard you guys pulled up to Owatonna, the big O, and you pulled up when I was not there? Y’all so p–s-ass s–t, boy. You’re gonna get popped next time I...

In a brazen push to normalise the unthinkable, radical abortion activists are now targeting America’s youngest minds with a colorful children’s book that glorifies killing the unborn as some kind of heroic “superpower.” The extreme left are coming for the kids, framing abortion as destiny-shaping magic in a bid to “rewrite cultural scripts” and stomp out any resistance to their anti-life ideology. The book, titled Abortion Is Everything, is being peddled by the pro-abortion group Shout Your Abortion (SYA), set to ship in January 2026. Aimed squarely at children aged five to eight, it uses vibrant, water-color style illustrations to...

Lacey police have arrested a suspect in connection with the double murder and drive-by shooting that claimed the lives of two teenagers last week. Trequanne Trenelle Wilson-Mason, a 20-year-old from Lacey, was arrested in relation to the Nov. 14 deaths of 16-year-old Alexander Borgen and 17-year-old Deven Borgen. According to court records, the fatal shooting may have been a case of mistaken identity. "My son Deven had all A’s in school, he went to church," Christina Borgen, the boys' mother said in court Wednesday. "My son Alex had changed his life, had all A’s, was doing good." "A good kid,...

Daniel Greenfield's article: The Ghosts of Auschwitz in the Middle East Posted: 04 Feb 2015 08:35 AM PST In exile in Argentina, the world’s most wanted man was writing a defense of the indefensible. He rejected “so-called Western culture” whose bible “expressly established that everything sacred came from the Jews.” Instead he looked to the “large circle of friends, many millions of people” whose good opinion of his crimes he wanted. These millions of people were not in Germany. They weren’t even in Argentina. His fellow Nazis had abandoned him after deciding that the murder of millions of Jews was...

Since the late 19th century, school yearbooks have been a ubiquitous and mostly unchanging element of American school life. Decade after decade, they deliver a predictable mix of class, club, and team photos, cheesy graphics, and cringey comments. But the most consistent feature of yearbooks may be what they don’t include—references to political upheaval or resistance movements. As public schools across the United States face heightened censorship and the threat of funding losses for noncompliance, school yearbooks remind us that there is nothing new about political censorship in schools. A few rare examples also reveal that there some students and...

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird hardly needs an introduction, as I expect everyone in the world has read it, or has seen the film starring Gregory Peck. (If you haven’t read it, perhaps you should.) Lee, incidentally, went to visit the film set, and had this to say about Peck: “an inspired performance. In some mysterious way, Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch transcended illusion.” If that seems a tad clichéd and not especially insightful, then I’m afraid to say that this is the general tenor of the nonfiction pieces in The Land of Sweet Forever , alongside eight previously unseen...

In a photo provided by the then Attorney General’s office, Brian Ognjan straightens the tie of David Tyll at Tyll’s wedding.The two went missing on a hunting trip in 1985 and were last seen at the former Linkers Lodge about 5 miles west of Mio. (Courtesy of Detroit Free Press) ============================================================== * Forty years ago, two metro Detroit friends vanished after heading Up North to hunt * They never returned, launching a decadeslong mystery that focused on a ‘feral crew of hard-drinking brawlers’ * Two brothers were eventually convicted but bodies were never found. Police fear they were fed to...

Kazinform International News Agency reports that the intact burial of a Saka warrior has been discovered at the Karabie burial site in central Kazakhstan by researchers from the Karaganda Regional History Museum. The burial has been dated to the sixth or seventh century B.C. The deceased was found holding a bronze sword, or akinak, in the right hand. Decorated with images of steppe birds of prey, its blade is about 12 inches long. "This type of akinak, with such design, has not yet been found elsewhere in Kazakhstan. It reflects the high level of metallurgy and artistic taste of the...

The Bible is the most read book ever and the most translated book too. Today, the full bible can be found in 736 languages. This post is focused though on the Bible in English. The Bible in its entirety was not translated into English until the 14th century (middle English), with John Wycliffe’s translation in 1382. And since the 16th century, there have been around 900 versions translated into English (modern English). There are formal or “word for word” translations and also functional equivalent or “meaning for meaning” translations. According to The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association the top 9 best-selling...

In honor of Veterans Day today TCM will play The Best Years of Our Lives this afternoon at 5:00 p.m. (Eastern). I want to draw from my previously posted comments on the movie to recall it briefly with a little background provided by Mark Harris. Harris tells the highly improbable story behind the making of the film in Five Came Back, his excellent account of the prominent directors who volunteered to use their filmmaking skills in the armed forces during the World War II (John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, Frank Capra, and George Stevens). Harris’s account of The Best...

A 48-year-old Davenport woman faces a felony theft charge for library materials overdue for 13 years, according to Scott County Court documents. Stacey Diehn faces a charge of second-degree theft, a Class D felony, court records show. According to a Scott County arrest affidavit, Diehn and a relative checked out library materials from the Davenport Public Library, 3000 Fairmount St., on April 3, 2012, and also on other dates, with April 19, 2012, as the last date of activity.

Fawlty Towers actress Prunella Scales has died aged 93, her family have confirmed. Scales was best known for playing hotel manager Sybil Fawlty, the long-suffering and domineering wife of Basil - played by John Cleese - in the classic British sitcom. The actress died "peacefully at home in London yesterday", her sons Samuel and Joseph said. They added that she was watching Fawlty Towers the day before she died. Cleese paid tribute, describing Scales as "a really wonderful comic actress". He said: "Scene after scene she was absolutely perfect."

367,442 views Oct 26, 2025 #worldwar2 #ww2history #ww2 Why one aircraft mechanic installed unauthorized piano wire in P-38 control systems during WW2 — and saved 80 to 100 American pilots' lives. This World War 2 story reveals how a six-inch piece of wire changed aerial combat in the Pacific. August 17, 1943. Technical Sergeant James McKenna, an aircraft mechanic with the Fifth Air Force at Dobodura airfield, New Guinea, watched another pilot prepare for a mission against Japanese Zeros. The P-38 Lightning was fast and powerful. But it couldn't turn with a Zero. The control cables had slack. A three-eighths...

Long before mass surveillance, social credit systems, and the algorithmic manipulation of truth became part of our daily lives, Russian writers were warning us. Not with data charts or manifestos—but with novels, plays, and poems that seemed to peer through the veil of their own turbulent times and glimpse something terrifyingly familiar: our present. ...They didn’t predict flying cars or space tourism. Instead, they foresaw how totalitarian regimes would manipulate language, how the human spirit could be engineered, and how the very idea of truth could be dismantled and rebuilt at the whim of the state. ...Yet, their work is...

A “very significant” unpublished story by Jack Kerouac described as “a lost chapter of the On the Road saga” has been discovered after languishing in the files of an assassinated Mafia crime boss for at least 40 years.

Molly Lee is talking to me about the tales her aunt Nelle, known to the world as Harper Lee, would weave for her when she was a little girl. "She was just a great storyteller," says the 77-year-old from her home in Alabama. That's an understatement if the success of Harper Lee's Pulitzer-prize winning novel To Kill A Mockingbird is anything to go by. Since its publication in 1960, when it was an instant hit, the book has sold more than 42 million copies worldwide Based around the story of Tom Robinson, a black man falsely accused of rape, it's...

Both attacks on free speech are devastating for academia, but in different ways.Crispin Sartwell retired as a philosophy professor in 2023. His most recent book is “Beauty: A Quick Immersion.”It didn’t take long for professors to point out that the right-wing wave of restrictions on expression, spurred by the Trump administration, is far worse than those characteristic of “the woke era.” After all, the woke restrictions were primarily internal, a matter of academic practice, as students, administrators and professors tried to eliminate any shred of skepticism toward diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. It was annoying — and devastating if you...

Everything appeared to be in slow motion - except the torpedo spearing through the water towards them at 30 knots. Only five minutes earlier, the USS Tang had been in the middle of a feeding frenzy that would secure its position as the most successful American submarine in the Pacific Ocean. But its last torpedo had turned sharply left - and was now coming straight back at the Tang. Of the 87 men on board that early morning in October 1944, as many as 50 were killed instantly when the torpedo hit. Of the survivors, most were injured. One of...