Free Republic

~This month marks The Mark Steyn Club's seventh birthday, and I thank profoundly all those First Fortnight Founding Members who've opted to sign on for an eighth year. We hope, as the days proceed, that our First Month Founding Members will want to do the same. ~I don't have anything to say about the death of the President of Iran, except that I was struck by the curious detail that he and his Azerbaijani counterpart had been opening two new dams. American presidents don't do that: Instead, the US demolishes dams at the rate of over fifty a year. If...

“4 years ago today, we reopened Atilis Gym in direct violation of an unconstitutional order by Governor Philip Murphy to close small businesses in New Jersey,” says gym owner Ian Smith. A New Jersey court has dismissed the case against gym owner Ian Smith over 80 citations and violations of Gov. Phil Murphy's (D) order to close small business during the covid pandemic. Smith, owner of Atilis Gym in Bellmawr, made a statement on X Saturday breaking the good news.

President Joe Biden has a new problem cropping up in polling data: more Americans now dismiss even the possibility of voting for him. Among likely voters living in six key swing states, 51% say there’s “not really any chance” they’d vote for Biden, compared to just 46% saying the same thing about former President Donald Trump, according to a May poll conducted by The New York Times and Siena College. The trend of more voters vowing never to vote for Biden than Trump extends beyond just one poll, with three polls stretching between November 2023 and April all finding more...

~As you know, in three weeks' time my suit against the UK media censor Ofcom comes to the High Court of England: The King on the application of Mark Steyn vs The Office of Communications I'll be there. Not sure if the King will. Day on day, Ofcom's enforcement of the Covid-vaccine narrative looks increasingly not only preposterous but blood-soaked. Yet, in the so-called controlled demolition of the entire western world, it's the small things that get you. Just about the only reason I was looking forward to my court date was that, after a month in the dank septic...

~yesterday...I played America's Number One record from exactly three-quarters of a century ago - May 1949: Listeners seemed to enjoy it, and many wanted to know more about it. I don't blame them. It's extremely catchy for a song with no consistent title: "Ghost Riders in the Sky"? "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky"? "Riders in the Sky"? "Riders in the Sky (A Cowboy Legend)"? Or maybe you prefer just plain "Ghost Riders", or "Ghostriders", or half-a-dozen other variations over the years. But, however you label it, it's a song unlike any other. It made its appearance seventy-five years ago, and...

Nuclear power could be a game-changer for energy affordability, grid reliability, and carbon reduction. However, it's been stifled for decades based on one deeply flawed scientific model: the linear no-threshold (LNT) model. The theory underlying this model suggests that any exposure to ionizing radiation, no matter how small, increases cancer risks and that risks rise in a linear way with exposure levels. It's not true. The roots of LNT's dominance are more political than scientific. Its influence traces back to Hermann Muller, a geneticist and 1946 Nobel Prize winner. Muller's research in the 1920s and '30s claimed to show that...

Illegal immigrant crossings at a northern border sector reached a "record-breaking milestone" last month, according to Border Patrol Swanton Sector Chief Patrol Agent Robert Garcia. Garcia wrote in a social media post on Tuesday that the Swanton Sector experienced a significant increase in illegal alien encounters. "Another record-breaking milestone in northern border history! Swanton Sector continues to encounter an unprecedented number of undocumented migrants, with well over 1,400 apprehensions in the month of April, surpassing the total number of apprehensions of FY 21 and FY 22 combined," he stated. The sector witnessed 365 encounters in fiscal year 2021 and 1,065...

NEW YORK — Your wallet may soon be getting thinner. Visa on Wednesday announced major changes to how credit and debit cards will operate in the U.S. in the coming months and years. The new features could mean Americans will be carrying fewer physical cards in their wallets, and will make the 16-digit credit or debit card number printed on every card increasingly irrelevant. They will be some of the biggest changes to how payments operate in the U.S. since the U.S. rolled out chip-embedded cards several years ago. They also come as Americans have many more options to pay...

Montana‘s Jon Tester is running for his fourth term in the U.S. Senate and he’s found himself an interesting political target: his own political record. On key issues from illegal immigration to hunting, Tester is openly campaigning against the political positions he took as a lawmaker. The longtime senator has attempted to distance himself from his own record as he likely faces his most difficult campaign yet. Tester has never been up for reelection with former President Donald Trump, who won Montana by double-digits in both 2016 and 2020, on the other side at the top of the ticket. Montana...

Tech adviser Jacob Helberg, who has donated large sums to Democrats, has joined a wave of big money donors rejecting President Joe Biden and supporting former president Donald Trump in 2024. Helberg has donated $1 million to Trump’s re-election effort, making the tech adviser one of the largest financial backers of Trump’s bid to win back the White House in November. Just four years ago, Helberg was using his money and influence to support Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s doomed campaign for president, according to The Washington Post. Helberg is one of a cadre of high-powered Silicon Valley businessmen who have...

As the 50th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s unprecedented resignation approaches, Americans would do well to re-examine the Watergate scandal before the Washington Post’sjournalistic fraud becomes inalterably ossified as historical fact. Watergate involved a massive cover-up, to be sure, but it was a campaign of concealment by Washington’s paper of record, not by the Nixon administration, the true victim of Watergate. We should recall that what had originally appeared in the aftermath of the arrests to have been a “rogue” burglary caper, bungled by bit players, eventually morphed, per sensational Post reporting, into a deliberately planned campaign scheme to influence an...

This powerful conversation with Bill Federer will expose the silence of the church through the history of Marxism - and convince you that even your silence is actually consent!

Even if you love the genre, it's hard to say whether the world of the screwball comedy is a kind of paradise or simply a circle of hell. It is, to be sure, its own world – a parallel universe where stereotypes exist to be mocked, inhibitions are quickly overcome, and the usual laws of action and reaction take a circuitous, often improbable route. The fact is that screwball started in the wake of the Production Code, when there were things that could no longer be shown, so they were talked about instead, by the kinds of people who knew...

In an April 16th interview with Polly Tommey, Dr. Paul Thomas, explained how the American medical establishment incentivizes pediatricians to fully vaccinate their young patients, and fines them if they don’t. Vaccinations that have been proven to cause more death and harm than the diseases they are said to be preventing. “Well, as other practices started kicking people out of their practices if they weren't following the CDC schedule, I was getting more and more families who didn't want to do any vaccines. Which was fine with me. So we took an entire month of every single billing sheet. And...

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said on Thursday that his office is “demanding accountability” after Kansas City doxxed Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker on social media following a commencement speech he gave over the weekend. “My office is demanding accountability after @KansasCity doxxed @buttkicker7 last night for daring to express his religious beliefs,” Bailey posted on X. “I will enforce the Missouri Human Rights Act to ensure Missourians are not targeted for their free exercise of religion. Stay tuned.” The official Kansas City X account, which stated what town Butker resides in, later deleted the post and issued an apology: “We...

NBC plans to promote “LGBTQI+ tolerance” with a television special highlighting same-sex relations in the animal kingdom. According to an article published Thursday by IndieWire, “Queer Planet” will be available to stream via NBCUniversal’s Peacock on June 6th as part of the network’s celebration of PRIDE month. “We’ve all heard of gay penguins, but this film really opened my eyes to the full spectrum of LGBTQ+ behaviors across the natural world,” narrator Andrew Rannells said in a press statement. “And what could be more natural than being who you are? I’m excited to be part of ‘Queer Planet,’ especially during...

House staffers are going to gather on Capitol Hill Thursday afternoon to protest the chamber’s override vote of President Joe Biden’s halting of a shipment of arms to Israel. They’re also being told to cover their faces with masks and to “remove identifiable clothing” in fear they will be identified. Staff are being encouraged to hide their staff IDs as well. An anonymous organizer with the “M” moniker told the Washington Examiner why protesters were protecting their identities. “We understand there is an inherent risk in speaking out, which is why we are encouraging staff to remove identifiable clothing and...

GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and more than a dozen other House Republicans are pushing a measure that targets the Federal Reserve System. The measure includes text that declares, "The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and each Federal reserve bank are hereby abolished" and "the Federal Reserve Act is hereby repealed." Massie announced the introduction of the measure on Thursday, the same day that the Dow Jones Industrial Average stock index surpassed 40,000 for the first time before ultimately giving up its gains and closing slightly down for the day. 'If we really want to reduce...

A new poll revealed young registered voters trust former President Donald Trump over President Joe Biden when it comes to reducing prices and securing the border, two defining issues of the 2024 general election. The polling released on Thursday by Democratic-aligned public opinion research group Blueprint found most young voters trust Biden over Trump to handle most things, except for two concerns that “may be the defining issues of the 2024 election.” The poll found 52% trust Trump more when it comes to lowering prices and that 53% trust Trump more to secure the border, statistics that gave pollsters pause....

President Joe Biden issued an executive order early in his presidency that effectively compels federal agencies to mobilize historically Democratic groups to vote. After investigating Executive Order 14019, its origins, and its application, the Heritage Foundation's government watchdog Oversight Project concluded it constitutes "election interference" and could be greatly consequential in November. "The last election was decided by less than 40K votes in the determinative swings," Mike Howell, executive director of the Oversight Project, told Blaze News. Howell highlighted further how Demos — a leftist think tank whose 2020 recommendations to the Biden administration appear to have helped inspire EO...