Free Republic

Cornell University President Martha Pollack is ending her 7-year tenure as the head of the Ivy League school in upstate Ithaca — following months of turmoil including demonstrations and threats to Jewish students. The 65-year-old insisted that her departure — effective June 30 — is unrelated to the anti-Israel protests and brazen displays of antisemitism, insisting that she considered announcing her retirement in the fall and winter. “I had to pause because of events on our and/or on other campuses,” Pollack said in her resignation statement released Thursday.

President Javier Milei has flawless timing. Argentina’s shale boom has reached industrial take-off just as he embarks on his extreme libertarian experiment: a Hayekian free market assault on the delinquent Peronist state and all its works. The long-suffering nation is swinging very fast from a costly dependence on energy imports, and a chronic leakage of hard currency, to the happier condition of net hydrocarbon exports. The prolific shale basin of Vaca Muerta is finally delivering. After years of talk and many dropped balls, this arid expanse of northern Patagonia is suddenly starting to look like the next Texas, promising to...

When the Daily Beast revealed in January that "Squad" member Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) used to promote 9/11 conspiracy theories while serving as principal of Cornerstone Academy for Social Action, I had no idea that the Beast was just getting started.This week, the Beast's William Bredderman revealed that, despite Bowman's protests that the 9/11 stuff was all in his past, his current YouTube account — “Inner Peace” — "subscribes to dozens of bewildering and bizarre accounts—including known Russian and Chinese disinfo peddlers, flat earthers, musings about UFOs and 'signs you’re being prepared to cross to the new earth.'"Bowman's personal YouTube...

The City Council of Long Beach, California has authorized a public health emergency in response to a local outbreak of tuberculosis. The city's health officer, Dr. Anissa Davis, declared the emergency last week, after its health department detected 14 tuberculosis cases at a single-room occupancy hotel. The City Council vote on Tuesday night served as the final approval for the declaration. Nine tuberculosis patients have been hospitalized and one has died, according to the health department. As of Monday, about 175 people had been exposed to tuberculosis as a result of the outbreak. In a news release last week, the...

Less than a day before the Biden administration announced its intent to cut off U.S. arms sales to Israel, it issued a sanctions waiver to bypass congressional prohibitions on arms sales to a host of Arab nations that boycott the Jewish state, including Hamas ally Qatar and Iran-controlled Lebanon, the Washington Free Beacon has learned. On Tuesday—just a day before President Joe Biden threatened to withhold key weapons deliveries from Israel if the country moves forward with an incursion in the Gaza Strip's Rafah neighborhood—the State Department informed Congress that it intends to bypass laws that bar the United States...

Prime Minister Netanyahu gave a speech at Yad Vashem at the start of Holocaust Remembrance Day events in Jerusalem yesterday evening. Israel Hayom observes that “[t]he speech took an unusual turn when he shifted language since Netanyahu normally does not use this forum to speak in English.” This is what he had to say to whom it may concern in the English-speaking world:Eighty years ago in the Holocaust the Jewish people were totally defenseless against those who sought our destruction. No nation came to our aid.Today, we again confront enemies bent on our destruction. I say to the leaders of...

At Columbia University this week, the NYPD demonstrated again why it’s the best—and taught protesters something about individual accountability and character, too.This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of CompStat, the technology-enabled innovation that turned the gritty New York City Police Department into a modern, transparent, and strategically intelligent public safety force. Every week, commanders from the city’s roughly 100 precincts come in front of top chiefs for a grilling on what’s happening in their command, what they plan to do about it, and if they’re succeeding. It can be terrifying. But the demand for individual accountability—on a podium, exposed under...

Like every major college protest since the 1960s, the pro-Palestinian—which is to say, the anti-Israel—protests sweeping college campuses today have early and often been compared with the protests of that annus horribilis, 1968. There are plenty of similarities but also plenty of differences. History repeats itself as student and faculty protestors align themselves with the totalitarians. Then it was the Viet Cong, Mao, and the Khmer Rouge. Today it is the Sunni Muslim terrorist group Hamas, the main puppet master of the “pro-Palestinian” agitators. One apparently striking difference is the strong current of anti-Semitism. It is ubiquitous now; it was...

Zein El-Amine has long history of supporting Students for Justice in Palestine, which is leading anti-Israel campus protests Georgetown professor accused an African-American congressman of being a "race traitor" and an "Uncle Tom" over his support for Jewish students as they face a tidal wave of anti-Semitism on campus from pro-Palestinian protesters.Professor Zein El-Amine, a Lebanese writer and adjunct lecturer at Georgetown, lashed out at Rep. Byron Donalds (R., Fla.) on Thursday when the lawmaker arrived on campus to show his support for the embattled Jewish and pro-Israel community. El-Amine was caught at a rally at George Washington University on...

What is it with these people? In the latest instance of these antisemitic, hate-spewing, miseducated twerps treating their intrusive thoughts like honored guests, students (and probably more than a few professional agitators, as we have learned) at George Washington University held a "People's Tribunal" putting many of the school's faculty on symbolic trial and demanding their deaths. Yes, really. X account Stu Stu Studios posted footage of the scene featuring a girl speaking through a megaphone, leading chants calling out GWU Provost Christopher Bracey and accusing him of assault on top of the support for Israel and Zionism accusations, chanting,...

The legislature is playing “Dems Gone Wild,” and the Republicans, having destroyed their own party, can offer no serious resistance. This is Colorado’s basic political problem. Is there still time to set Colorado back on the path of personal and economic liberty? Yes, a lot of Colorado’s history is decidedly non-libertarian, using that term loosely. Start with the abuse of Native peoples, including the Sand Creek Massacre. Original proposals for statehood did not allow black people to vote, and other racist policies continued into statehood. In 1880 a white mob rioted in Denver’s Chinatown. Colorado once was home to robust...

College campuses escalated their efforts to root out pro-Hamas occupations on Tuesday, with police arresting more than 430 people on nine different college campuses. Police have made more than 1,600 arrests in connection with the disruptive, illegal campus occupations since the first one began at Columbia University on April 19, according to an investigation by The Washington Stand. Disturbingly, some universities are beginning to cave to protestors’ demands to restore order to campus, even as campus protests become increasingly dominated by non-students. The sheer number of campus protests and arrests can be a bit bewildering to keep track of them...

Democrats are in full hand-wringing mode over the anti-Israel protests on campus. The louder the protesters scream about "Free Palestine," the more nervous the Democrats become. They know that there aren't many potential Donald Trump voters yelling antisemitic epithets at Jewish students from "Gaza Liberation Zones." These were Joe Biden voters in 2020 and may yet be again. In fact, as close a race as the 2024 presidential race is going to be. Biden is going to need these antisemites to win. As much as Democrats want to sympathize with the pro-Hamas protesters, they know they have to walk a...

You’ve had this coming for a loooooong timeOne of my favorite all-time films is 1982’s “The Verdict” starring Paul Newman as down-and-out attorney Frank Galvin who takes on a case against the Archdiocese of Boston.After astonishingly turning down a settlement offer from the defendant and opting to go to trial, Galvin soon loses his star witness.Desperate and not knowing what to do, Galvin goes to the home of the trial judge late at night to beg for a continuance.The judge slowly closes the door in his face and says “I have no sympathy for you.” Consider me the judge these...

This isn’t the first time Columbia University president Minouche Shafik has faced questions over how she will discipline an anti-Semitic mob on her campus, and her past performance has critics in Congress concerned that Columbia’s protesters will get off unscathed. In 2021, with Shafik at the helm of the London School of Economics, the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom Tzipi Hotovely was swarmed by a mob of protesters after she was invited to speak at the prestigious university’s Debating Society. Video from the November 9, 2021 incident shows police had to hold back a mob of Palestinian flag-waving protesters...

Several hundred NYPD cops stormed onto Columbia University’s campus on Tuesday night to oust a pro-terror mob that illegally took over an academic building amid ongoing anti-Israel protests on campus. The cops cleared out the group that barged into Hamilton Hall early Tuesday morning in a drastic escalation of the protest at the Ivy League school, according to police sources. Dozens of Emergency Service Unit officers entered the Morningside Heights campus at 9:13 p.m., but were blocked from entering the barricaded building through the front door. Several protesters appeared unbothered as they stood in the doorway with only a glass...

Before testimony resumed in the Hush Trump trial in New York City, the judge ruled on the first bunch of prosecutor-driven complaints about how the former president and current 2024 presidential candidate broke his gag order. The judge found that Donald Trump had indeed broken his gag order and then fined him the maximum amount per violation.Prosecutors filed complaints in three different groupings for a total of 14 charges of breaking what is widely believed by constitutional lawyers to be illegal and unconstitutional gagging of a defendant. This first tranche was from Trump's TruthSocial accounts. See the list of his...

"You don't tug on Superman's cape. You don't spit into the wind. You don't pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger and you don't FA with Florida Man's car." — Jim Croce, possibly. New York Man was visiting his Summerland Key vacation home earlier this month and decided to hit the Winn-Dixie one night "to pick up some coffee and Key lime pie," as he told his arresting officer two days later. Key lime pie is not a controlled substance in Florida — thank goodness — but keying somebody's car for having a "Let's Go Brandon" sticker is. What...

I am warming up to watch the documentary Rather, celebrating the career of the disgraced former CBS News anchor. It is to be aired this coming Wednesday on Netflix. Apparently having access to a screener for media critics, the Star Tribune’s Neal Justin found the documentary to be wanting (“when it comes to the stumbles, like walking off the set when a tennis match went long, the legendary broadcaster goes missing”). Speaking of “stumbles,” we have the matter of Rathergate. However, “stumble” doesn’t quite capture it. “Disgrace,” “disaster,” and “fraud” are more like it. Award-winning CBS News producer Mary Mapes...

I went to federal court in downtown Minneapolis yesterday morning for the opening statements in tbe first Feeding Our Future fraud trial. When it comes to Covid fraud, we’re number 1. The case features a cast of “diverse” defendants without much diversity. They are almost all Somali, I am sorry to say. By the same token, I believe that one of my Somali friends helped expose the fraud and assist in the investigation.All together, 70 defendants have been charged to date. Eighteen have pleaded guilty. One or two have agreed to cooperate with the prosecution. All the cases have been...