Free Republic

Small, snug, and unyoked from laptop or phone, AirPods are easy to wear for hours at a time, without a second thought. This, BuzzFeed News recently declared, is “Making Things Awkward for Everyone Else.” All-day AirPod wear can make social interactions clumsy and uncomfortable: Has the AirPod wearer hung up the call or turned off their music? The person on the other end of the interaction doesn’t know. Particularly in situations that require some sustained face-to-face communication—ordering coffee or crossing paths with a co-worker—wearing AirPods and ignoring others, intentionally or not, can be a jerk move, BuzzFeed News concludes. But...

Tensions between House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and ranking member Rep. Patrick McHenry, R.-N.C., reportedly overflowed Thursday during a hearing with bank regulators. Waters abruptly ended the nearly three-and-a-half hour session with little warning, Republicans complained, while McHenry and at least one Democrat still wanted to ask questions, Politico reported. Waters rebuffed McHenry’s request for more time, saying she wanted to keep her time commitment to the bank regulators, the Washington Examiner reported. "If a mistake was made and you were not notified, we will deal with that later,” she said.

Opposition to tolling the future Interstate 10 Mobile River Bridge and the Wallace Tunnel dominated the public comments during Tuesday’s hearing into the massive $2.1 billion project. From local politicians to business owners, the message to the Alabama Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration was clear: A $3 to $6 toll will place enormous burdens on drivers and workers in Mobile and Baldwin counties, and it won’t fly with the rest of the public either. “It’s a huge expense,” said Roger Nelson of Daphne, who commutes daily to work to downtown Mobile. “It will be passed on.” Said...

“You did what?!” Parents across Santa Ana couldn’t believe it. In one house after another, the answer to “How was school today?” was nothing like they expected. Moms and dads listened in disbelief as their middle schoolers talked about going to an “LGBT Fair” that no one bothered to ask their permission for. There were even people in drag, their 11-year-olds said, giving makeup lessons—right there in school. Townhall’s Kira Davis listened as one mom fumed about not knowing about the fair until after it happened. There wasn’t even an opportunity to opt out, she complained at last Tuesday’s school...

Congressional Democrats are planning to hold hearings about President Trump’s criticisms of establishment news outlets, according to a new report. Bloomberg News reports that the House Judiciary Committee, which is currently led by Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), will seek to investigate Trump calling the media “fake news” and “enemies of the people.” “The committee will study whether such actions either reflect or blur the Constitution’s separation of powers,” the report states. The president’s repeated declarations that the “fake news” media is the “enemy of the people” has indeed upset many Democrats and media figures.Possible 2020 hopeful and media darling Beto O’Rourke used...

PORTLAND, Ore., Feb. 26, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Otoharmonics Corporation, a U.S. veteran-owned company offering sound therapy for tinnitus management, has been awarded a five-year Federal Supply Schedule Medical Equipment and Supply contract, making Levo available immediately to patients receiving care within the Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Defense, Bureau of Prisons, Indian Heads Services, and Public Health Services. Compatible with the Clinical Practice Guidelines for Tinnitus published by the American Academy of Otolaryngologists and the VA's Progressive Tinnitus Management Program, the Levo System's sleep therapy has been shown to reduce the level of tinnitus intensity and improve the quality...

Hollywood exploded with unhinged hot takes Wednesday as President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen spoke at a congressional hearing about his work for Trump. During the hearing, Michael Cohen produced copies of checks from the president to him, purported to be reimbursement for hush money payment to Stormy Daniels. Cohen also admitted that he has no actual evidence of the 2016 campaign colluding with Russia, but that he has “suspicions” about it. Nonetheless, Hollywood treated Cohen’s hearing like a blockbuster event. “It’s good for America to see how gop is complete deathkkkult” actor John Cusack exclaimed.

At a packed town hall meeting in Brooklyn Thursday evening to discuss options for saving a crumbling section of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, city officials from the Department of Transportation came up against some not-unexpected pushback against a proposal that would involve closing the Brooklyn Heights promenade for six years. This was the first public meeting since the city unveiled two separate proposals for the project last week. The meeting opened with a presentation of both options—each projected to cost between $3 billion and $4 billion—while Polly Trottenberg, the city’s transportation commissioner, braced herself for the inevitable backlash. “I understand a...

The average wait time for children to see an audiologist in the Northwest Territories is 70 weeks, a number Frame Lake MLA Kevin O'Reilly says is unacceptable. "A wait time over 70 weeks? That's over a year," he said. "Kids, they could be in school over a year, miss a grade, without their proper hearing or being assessed, and that doesn't seem right." O'Reilly first started looking for this information for a constituent and raised the issue in the N.W.T. Legislative Assembly Tuesday, asking questions about government data he'd been provided by the territory's health department.

Police in Spokane, located in eastern Washington state, will soon have all 181 rifles equipped with suppressors, something the department says will protect officers and civilians from hearing damage. The move is said to protect the department from workers compensation claims and civilian lawsuits. “It’s nothing more than like the muffler you put on your car,” Lt. Rob Boothe, the range master and lead firearms instructor for the department, told the Spokesman-Review. According to City Council President Ben Stuckart, residents wanted to know why the police department needed suppressors. “I had a couple citizens contact me about why the police...

This is the dramatic moment that two female protesters, and alleged rape victims, trapped Sen. Jeff Flake in an elevator and berated him after he announced he was voting to confirm Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanugh. Flake gave Kavanaugh's nomination a major boost from the Judiciary Committee after the holdout Republican senator announced his support Friday morning following a day of harrowing testimony from Christine Blasey Ford who claims he sexually assaulted her. Shortly after the announcement, Flake was walking into an elevator when two women ran up to him and stood blocking the doors. Both woman revealed that they...

The only thing missing so far is the live ammo. Herewith a few terrifying thoughts about the left’s attacks on Brett Kavanaugh. First, we have entered a genuinely Stalinist world in which all it takes is an accusation from the favored clique, in this case, “progressive” women, to wreck an honest man’s career. There is no trial on facts or law any longer. As others have pointed out, we now have “guilt by accusation.” If you are a member of the elite class and simply make the accusation against a member of the disfavored class, his life is over. He’s...

Judge Brett Kavanaugh & Professor Christine Blasey Ford Testify The Senate Judiciary Committee hears testimony from Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh and Professor Christine Blasey Ford about her allegations that Judge Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her while the two were teenagers.

Democrats failed in their desperate attempt to use Deborah Ramirez’s lawyer-induced “memory” of claimed sexual misconduct from Brett Kavanaugh to force Republicans to scuttle Thursday’s hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, at which accuser Christine Blasey Ford is scheduled to testify. But since Monday, Ford’s attorneys have been complaining about the agreed-upon process, making it look more and more likely that Kavanaugh’s accuser will be a no-show when the 10 a.m. hearing begins.Just yesterday, ranking Senate committee member Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said she had no way of knowing whether Ford would appear if a sex-crimes prosecutor led questioning, as Committee...

Dr. Christine Blasey Ford‘s legal team has sent a letter (which can be seen below via NBC’s Frank Thorp) to the Senate Judiciary Committee amid continuous negotiations ahead of Thursday’s scheduled hearing. In the letter addressed to Sen. Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Ford’s legal team cited Sen. Majority Leader’s Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) speech on the Senate floor on Monday afternoon as “flatly inconsistent” to Grassley’s promise of a “fair and credible process.” “In our view, the hiring of an unnamed ‘experienced sex crimes prosecutor’ as Mr. Davis described in his email, is contrary to the Majority’s repeated emphasis on...

Fox News was told that the Republican senators want an answer “by the end of the day.” In a statement released Friday evening, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley extended the deadline for a response to 10 p.m. If there's no response, or a rejection of the offer, Grassley said in a statement, the committe may set a vote on Kavanaugh's nomination for Monday. “I’m extending the deadline for response yet again to 10 o’clock this evening," Grassley said. "I’m providing a notice of a vote to occur Monday in the event that Dr. Ford’s attorneys don’t respond or Dr....

The Senate Judiciary Committee is postponing a high-stakes hearing set for early next week on the sexual assault allegation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The committee announced on Friday that the Monday hearing — where both Kavanaugh and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, had been invited to speak — was being called off. Instead, Grassley said in a statement Friday that he is giving Ford’s lawyers until 10 p.m. on Friday to respond to the GOP request for her to testify on Wednesday. If they do not, or if Ford declines to testify, Grassley said the Judiciary Committee will...

Hollywood actresses and women from around the U.S., some being key members of the #MeToo and Time's Up movements, have shown their support for Christine Blasey Ford.... Now, the likes of Julianne Moore, America Ferrera, Gabrielle Union, Amber Tamblyn, Eva Longoria, Jamia Wilson, and Marisa Tomei, along with many other women from different situations, all read the same supportive letter to Ford, in a video posted to Twitter and Facebook on Wednesday with the hashtag #DearProfessorFord. It's signed collectively from "your sisters."

Much has been made of Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford’s invitation to testify before an open hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee next week -- but it’s not yet set in stone she will actually show. Fox News is told that the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday night reached out to Ford’s lawyers to invite her to next Monday’s open hearing to discuss her allegation of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, but she has not responded yet.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, delivers an opening statement during the beginning of confirmation proceedings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. (9/4/18)