Free Republic

What's the current price tag on winning in college football? That all depends on the program and the situation, but the latest piece from The Athletic puts the topic into perspective. There are eleven teams that fall within the $40 million range for roster spending. All the ones many people would expect to be there. The Ohio State Buckeyes lead the nation and are approaching $50 million. They're right at the mark along with the Oregon Ducks and Texas Longhorns, who round out the top three. They are all believed to be spending roughly $50 million.

A bull elk in Estes Park, Colorado, has been strutting around town with an antler stuck in its neck after a fight during rutting season. Elk sometimes get their antler racks entangled in a fight, but one ecologist said he's "never seen anything like that." A bull elk in Estes Park, Colorado, is strutting proudly around town with a broken-off piece of a rival's antler jabbed into his upper neck. “He seems to be doing just fine. He’s kind of wearing it (the antler chunk) like a prize,” wildlife photographer Kristy Williams told Cowboy State Daily. Retired U.S. Fish and...

A would-be thief got more than he bargained for recently, when an alert gas station customer in Chicago with a concealed carry permit pulled out a gun and shot him. After the shooting, the thief hobbled away from the scene as quickly as possible. There would probably be a lot less crime if aspiring criminals were made to watch incidents like this one.

After winning the Michigan Senate Democrat primary by falsely accusing his opponent of working for Israel, Abdul El-Sayed headed for a Pakistan Independence Day celebration. At the Pakistan Association of America, El-Sayed spoke out for ousted Pakistani dictator Imran ‘Taliban’ Khan notorious for his persecution of Christians and for harboring Osama bin Laden.The PAA had formerly been headed by Asad Malik who appears to have met in person with Khan and who also served as a board member at the Pakistani American Public Affairs Committee (PAKPAC): not to be confused with the American-Pakistani Political Action Committee (APPAC) which was later...

NEW YORK CITY (WABC) -- Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Wednesday announced plans to install 17 additional modular public bathrooms across New York City as part of a one-year pilot program with Throne Labs. The new bathrooms will be placed in high-traffic areas across the city, with installation beginning this week. Officials showcased two of the modular units as part of the announcement. New Yorkers will be able to access the bathrooms by text message, QR code, through the Throne Bathroom Network app or with a tap card distributed by local community partners. The tap cards are intended to ensure people...

An Israeli-owned restaurant in New York City has found itself at the center of an online controversy after adding arayes to its menu, prompting accusations from pro-Palestinian activists that it was appropriating Arab and Palestinian cuisine. Shifka, a Mediterranean pita restaurant located at 324 Bowery in Manhattan, recently added an “Arayes Burger" to its menu, consisting of beef, caramelized onions and tahini-yogurt. According to a report by Al Araby TV, a video published by the restaurant promoting the dish sparked criticism on social media, with users accusing the Israeli-owned establishment of “stealing" another Arab dish. Al Araby presented the controversy...

Hollywood and Los Angeles were once so inextricably intertwined that you could hardly mention one without picturing the other. So much more than just a neighborhood in central Los Angeles, Hollywood simply was the entertainment industry — a name that conjured all the glamour, glitz, beauty, wealth, thrills, and tabloid debauchery of a magical place that could only exist in America. Out of all of America, Hollywood could only happen in California. And out of all of California, it had to be Los Angeles. Hollywood wasn't just where they made the movies. Hollywood was the movies. Just now I caught...

Today, the Justice Department filed suit against the City of San Jose, California, and the San Jose Police Department for charging private individuals unreasonable fees to exercise their Second Amendment right to lawfully carry a firearm. At nearly $1,600 per license, the City’s application fee to carry a firearm is the highest in the nation. Indeed, San Jose’s fee towers over those imposed by the country’s biggest cities. New York, Washington, D.C., Boston, and Chicago all charge a small fraction of San Jose’s fee. The Supreme Court has held that “exorbitant fees” such as San Jose’s violate the Second Amendment...

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is cracking down on immigration attorneys who file what the agency calls “meritless” and fraudulent asylum claims, according to a letter obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller. A letter from DHS General Counsel James Percival to the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) argues that the immigration court system is facing a massive backlog, with nearly 3.5 million cases and 2.3 million asylum claims pending as of July 2026. DHS attributes much of the backlog to what it calls “meritless asylum claims,” arguing that such claims can delay deportation and allow migrants to remain in...

Upheaval continues to mount for Bill Belichick at North Carolina. His son, Steve Belichick, will resign as the team’s defensive coordinator effective Oct. 27, when his medical leave ends, the school announced Thursday as it said it concluded a probe into the program’s culture. The 39-year-old, a longtime assistant for his dad with the Patriots, has been on medical leave since Aug. 6. He was embroiled in an investigation in which lawyers have been questioning people about whether he used drugs while at work, or gave drugs to at least one player, WRAL reported earlier this month. The investigation also...

naza debacle. Anonymous Video Alleges NAZA Filmmakers Paid for Inflated Casualty Claims. A video posted by an Israeli private investigator features an anonymous man alleging NAZA's makers paid for inflated death tolls. The claims are unverified. Gila Isaacson. Sep. 17, 2026 The video was posted on Facebook by Shmulik Maman, owner of the firm Quentin Investigations. In it, a young man whose face is concealed claims the filmmakers paid 10 shekels for each death an interviewee described. By that rate, he said, someone claiming 500 people were killed in an incident would receive 5,000 shekels. The man also said the...

US officials embraced an algorithm for detecting signals of harm from mRNA covid-19 vaccines that they knew was broken and suppressed efforts to fix it.

Washington state Democrat Krista Perez, who is running for a state House seat, was seen on police video admitting to drinking wine, declining field sobriety tests and begging to go home before praying and crying in the back of a patrol car after her DUI arrest. Perez finished first in last month's primary in the 29th Legislative District, Position 1, and will face incumbent state Rep. Melanie Morgan, also a Democrat, in November, as the top two candidates advance to the general election. Tacoma Police said Perez's 2019 Chevrolet Silverado allegedly struck a parked car on South G Street shortly...

A federal judge with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California issued a preliminary injunction to block the U.S. government from conducting warrantless civil immigration arrests in the district unless the arrestee is deemed likely to escape before a warrant can be procured. "Defendants are enjoined from enforcing their policy and practice of making warrantless civil immigration arrests in this District without a prearrest individualized determination by the arresting agent or officer of probable cause that the person being arrested is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained, as required by 8 U.S.C. 1357(a)(2) and...

Five women appear lifeless in the pictures. Two more are still missing. Investigators have already counted 58 alleged victims in the digital wreckage pulled from a rotting twin house on Chew Avenue in Olney. And the man who built that house of horrors died in his bed last year at 82, never answering for any of it. Raymond “R.C.” Horsch was a pornographer who wrote books about serial killers preying on women, filmed sadomasochistic filth, and spent decades fishing vulnerable addicts out of Kensington with cash and narcotics. His son Eugene, 44, is the one sitting in federal custody. The...

When TMZ DC asked Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) about Lindsay Clancy's murder case this week, she was blunt. In fact, I think she said exactly what a lot of people have been thinking but are generally too polite to say out loud.(snip) When TMZ DC’s Jacob Wasserman mentioned Reddington’s pardon request to Mace, she vented her uninhibited opinion. "Which is how retarded it is," she said. "He knows, as an attorney in the state of Massachusetts, you can't ask for a federal pardon for a state case. I mean, it doesn't take a lawyer — I’m not even a lawyer,...

Modern investment strategy today includes something called "direct indexing". Direct indexing holds a broad range of individual stocks rather than mutual funds or ETFs. This is a method of investing in a broad market - rather than picking a few stocks based on insider information. A computer algorithm automatically balances these accounts based on whatever investment strategy has been programed. I have seen investment accounts from single individuals with literally thousands of trades. Their accounts looks like a day trader on speed. The idea that Trump is making each of these trades himself is stupid. The Democrats are using this...

The popular gay dating and hookup app Grindr agreed to pay £26 million (about $35 million) to settle a lawsuit over allegations that it shared users’ personal information, including their ethnicity, sexual orientation and, in some cases, HIV status, with third parties, reports The Guardian. The settlement ends the class-action lawsuit filed in the High Court of England and Wales in 2024, though Grindr continues to deny liability. ... Launched in 2009 and based in Los Angeles, Grindr bills itself as “the largest social networking app for gay, bi, trans and queer people. We have millions of daily users who...

Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-FL) has taken direct aim at President Donald Trump and his immigration crackdown in a new re-election ad, warning that the Hispanic voters who helped return him to the White House in 2024 now feel “betrayed.” The congresswoman, who endorsed Trump in 2024 and urged Hispanic voters to back him, delivered the unusually direct message to the president as she campaigns for another term in her Miami-area district. “Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far. In July, 50% of the 50,000 people that were detained had no criminal record. Be careful...

We’re told that most Muslims oppose Islamic terrorism and that it’s only a tiny fringe of radicals and extremists who practice “radical Islamic terrorism” (as opposed to‘moderate Islamic terrorism’ in which the moderate participants moderately detonate bombs, moderately stab civilians and moderately ram cars into pedestrians) and that their actions don’t reflect Islam. Even those who correctly identify the roots of Islamic terrorism in the Koran and Islamic teachings still firmly insist that most Muslims oppose terrorism and only a minority support it. Is that really true? The answer is that it depends on which Islamic terrorism we’re talking about....