Free Republic

You’ve no doubt heard the expression, “That’s an idea so ridiculous only an academic could believe it.” It kept coming to mind as I read Professor John Staddon’s new book Inevitable Differences: An Inquiry into Human Variation. That individuals vary enormously in their talents and desires is an obvious fact, and yet many academics have become famous by declaring that individuals and especially groups must be treated as though they were equal. Staddon, an emeritus professor of biology at Duke University, takes a critical look at the obsession among “progressives” for engineering equality, particularly with regard to race. Why, he...

The Islamic School of Irving is being sued for over $1 million by a female claiming she was brutally raped by a 14-year-old male and school officials failed to call police. According to the Dallas County petition, Doe and her mother were working for a contractor hired to clean the school on the evening of Sept. 27, 2024. The school shares a campus with a mosque and is connected to it by doors that the lawsuit says should have been locked after hours. Doe said she saw a 14-year-old boy, identified only as OEA, loitering in a school hallway during...

Explanation: A new telescope has been launched into space to study the universe. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (RST) has the same size main mirror as the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) but sees 100 times more sky during each snapshot. This is possible because when compared to HST, RST's main mirror is more curved, its secondary mirror is closer, and its main camera is larger. The result is that RST can inspect more of the sky more quickly, likely allowing, among other capabilities, the discovery of many more supernovas which tell us more about the expansion rate and composition...

The Abraham Lincoln is due to dock on Wednesday at nearby Laem Chabang, with two accompanying Navy vessels, to allow nearly 5,000 sailors and Marines aboard to rest and recuperate after over 200 days at sea, Shore leave is typically staggered, meaning not all personnel will step off the vessels at the same time. In Pattaya, a fishing village partly transformed into a tourism center on the back of U.S. service members seeking succour during the Vietnam War, some are hoping for a financial boost. The overall commercial impact on Pattaya, which has over 300,000 rooms...

Governor Ron DeSantis: We’ve designated CAIR, named an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terror financing trial in history, as a foreign terrorist organization. All states should follow suit. We’ve also removed Soros-backed DAs who refuse to honor their oaths to enforce the law. Amazing!

A multi-agency operation in Arizona’s Yuma Sector led to the arrest of 95 illegal alien truck drivers earlier this month, striking at the heart of human and drug smuggling operations at the U.S. southern border. All 95 drivers had acquired state-issued commercial driver’s licenses; 76 from California, six from New York and the rest from a handful of other states, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The apprehensions continue to demonstrate the high volume of narcotics and human trafficking smuggling operations that are alive and well at the border — even as immigration numbers have plummeted in recent months.

FIRST ON FOX: A federal grand jury issued a subpoena to former FBI Director James Comey's longtime friend and advisor on Monday as part of a new investigation into Comey allegedly leaking classified information to the media, multiple law enforcement sources told Fox News Digital.The subpoena targets former Comey adviser Daniel Richman and indicates that the Justice Department has launched a fresh investigation into the leak of classified information to the New York Times. The issue was also investigated under President Donald Trump's first term, but was cut off when former President Joe Biden entered office.The new investigation is in...

Live (now not) updates on Iran

The Federal Trade Commission on Monday sued Amazon, alleging the e-commerce giant "misled advertisers" about its sponsored ads pricing and auction systems, the company confirmed.

SpaceX's plan to build the world's largest facility -- 100 million square feet in Grimes County, Texas, near Houston -- to do advanced computing and also manufacture, test and package silicon chips for its own use and by other Elon Musk-owned companies, will be self-powered using a gigawatt-scale natural gas power plant and battery storage, according to the company.The operations "are not expected to use electricity from the grid," the company said in a tax abatement agreement it entered into with the county in June.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla) announced that the state's use of federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program will be modified, saying "taxpayer-funded assistance should help families put food on the table, keep the lights on, purchase clothing, provide for their children and overcome barriers on the path toward independence. Tattoos and body piercings, theme park tickets, video games, vaping products, nicotine products, pornography, and psychic and fortune-telling services will no longer be funded, These new prohibitions will be added to our state's prior prohibitions of purchases of alcohol, adult entertainment businesses, casinos, and commercial bingo establishments and any other...

Rescuers raced Monday to free hundreds of workers believed to be trapped in tunnels at hydropower sites that were buried in mud by catastrophic flooding on the Nepal-China border, as the death toll climbed and increasingly desperate families searched for missing loved ones. “These tunnels are big enough to drive trucks through,” said Jakob Steiner, a geoscientist at the University of Graz in Austria based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. “And from what we understand, they have managed to get oxygen to some of those stuck inside and are trying to rescue them now. It’s a race for time, though, as people...

I’ve been on a bit of an anti-woman kick in my writing (see here and here)—not because I actually hate women (I am one), but because I’ve been dealing with a lot of awful women in recent weeks. One such exchange comes to mind, and there’s a point in it I’d like to make. Every summer, I buy a pool membership pass at a local country club because it allows me some suntanning time, and my 8-year-old logs lots of swimming hours. But let me be clear: This is not some fancy-schmancy club—snobby people are not my people. The club...

All the shopper wanted was to buy a laptop. Instead, a routine trip to a Best Buy turned into a bizarre confrontation over gender, pronouns and whether a customer should be compelled to address a biological male employee as “ma’am.” Video of the encounter shows the Best Buy employee, who presented with a distinctly masculine appearance, objecting after the customer referred to the employee as “sir.” The employee insisted on being addressed as “ma’am.” The customer wasn't having it. His position was straightforward: the person standing in front of him appeared to be a man, and he wasn't going to...

The New Axis of Evil, Democrats, communists and Muslims who hate God, hate America, hate us, hate democracy, and hate REALITY thinks we will just roll over and let them take over. It is time to bring back the HUAC the House Un-American Activities Committee and make TX Congressman Brandon Gill its Chair.

Hasan Piker, two weeks ago, delivered this message: "Democrats, listen to me, I know we don't always see eye to eye on a lot of stuff, but you have to literally, at some point – I know you don't want to do this – defend me. Not because you love what I have to say, not because I'm part of this coalition, even though I am, whether you like it or not … I'm not this dangerous, toxic radical force." Was that a warning or a threat? Some 10 days later, what did this non-"dangerous, toxic radical force" say? "Because...

When visiting a new place, one should follow local rules and customs. Hence the old axiom, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” Apparently, in modern Britain, that requires a nine-page government instruction manual. The U.K. Home Office recently published “Understanding Behaviours and Expectations in the UK: A Guide for Asylum Seekers.” It begins by acknowledging the obvious: We understand that coming to a new country can be difficult, and that laws and customs here may be different from your home country. Fair enough. Every country has its own laws and customs. But the British government’s instructions go well...

[S]uffragettes argued that women possessed the same intellectual capabilities to exercise political judgement as men, and therefore they should be granted the same political privileges as their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons. Unfortunately for women, Lindsay Clancy truthers are now doing their best to prove those suffragettes wrong. Women’s constitutions and hormonal balances are so precarious, they argue, that women should be exempted from our criminal laws and ruled incapable of making moral judgments. Sounds oddly reminiscent of the “sexist” men they claim to detest. It’s highly unlikely that a majority of women would condone Clancy’s actions, but a nonzero...

We’ve seen neither hide nor (wig) hair of Democrat Maxine Waters in several months. Don’t misinterpret that as a complaint. But she's back and crazy as ever. She recently appeared on political commentator Roland Martin’s podcast. She says the friction between the Democrat Party and its Democratic Socialists of America members is being spurred on by the ‘white media.’

President Trump's order to rename Lake Ontario to "Lake America" is stirring up more controversy, as tech companies decide whether to comply or not. The big picture: Google and other digital map providers — like MapQuest and Apple — have split on whether to accept the name change or keep Lake Ontario on their maps. Driving the news: An Axios review of Google and Apple Maps on Sunday showed Google now says "Lake America" on mobile and desktop, while Apple Maps says Lake Ontario. Google said Saturday that it had changed the maps in accordance with updates from the U.S....