Free Republic

CBS has closed deals for Clarice, a crime drama series project based on the famous Thomas Harris character Clarice Sterling, which is set after the events in The Silence Of the Lambs. The project, written and executive produced by Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet, has received a big series commitment. The intention for the project, which has a pilot script written, is to go to series. It will film a pilot before a series order decision is made but a writers room has already been set up, and there is a lot of enthusiasm for the title, the premise and...

The Swedish municipality of Bengtsfors has petitioned the national government for aid due to massive costs incurred taking in more migrants than the municipality could afford. Local Moderate Party politician Stig Bertilsson said the multi-page letter was clear in identifying the cause of the budget deficit as being related to the large number of “new Swedes” taken in and requested aid to cover the costs, SVT reports. “Costs in municipalities that have received new arrivals have continued to be substantial even when government revenues have stopped. This creates a large negative hole in the municipal cash register,” Bertilsson said. When...

Kimia Alizadeh, the sole woman to ever have won a medal at the Olympics for the country of Iran, has defected from the country and moved to Europe, she announced on social media. The 21-year-old, who won bronze at the 2016 summer Olympics in Rio in the women's Taekwondo 57-kg competition, wrote on Instagram Saturday that she is "one of the millions of oppressed woman in Iran." "They took me wherever they wanted. Whatever they said I wore. Every sentence they ordered I repeated," Alizadeh said. "Whenever they saw fit, they confiscated me. They put my medals on the obligatory...

Gerold Woodberry, 42, is alleged to have robbed banks in New York's Midtown Manhattan, Harlem, West Village and the Upper West Side, since December 30 He was accused of passing notes to tellers and got away with $1,000 twice before cops on patrol nabbed him on Thursday But he was released under the city's new 'no bail law,' which doesn't require bail to hold a suspect accused of non-violent felonies, including robbery 'I can't believe they let me out,' sources said he boasted as he left the New York Police Department's headquarters. 'What were they thinking? 'Woodberry was then alleged to...

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton appeared on Steve Bannon's "War Room" to discuss the ongoing Deep State coup against President Trump.

From Sam’s prayerful family and friends, over to you, Mr. President Prayer was always more powerful than the deceits of the Robert Mueller III ‘Special’ Counsel, and Sam Clovis, former adviser to President Donald Trump, is living proof. While a ravenous and Russian collusion-obsessed mainstream and social media were still (as recently as October) dragging the good name of Sam Clovis through the Mueller mud, President Trump’s advisor and former election co-chair was fighting for his life from a VA hospital bed. In

- U.S. presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg told Reuters he is ready to spend much of his vast fortune to oust Republican President Donald Trump from the White House in 2020, rejecting criticism from rivals for the Democratic nomination that the billionaire is trying to buy the U.S. Ranked by Forbes as the eighth-richest American, Bloomberg has flooded U.S. airwaves and social media feeds with messages that he stands the best chance to beat Trump, spending more on campaign ads since he launched his campaign in November than his main Democratic rivals have over the last year. “Number one priority is...

Down to 8 pretty good teams. Unfortunately in each game one pretty good team lies down or doesn't show up. Baltimore should be in the Super Bowl and they didn't seem to even try. Minnesota was never in it. Injuries are too big a factor Seattle will have no offensive line going against 2 excellent players on the GB defensive line. Russell Wilson could still pull it out but after16/17 games I think too many teams just give up from exhaustion. It seems to happen year after year.

A volcano in the Philippines has emitted a giant plume of ash, prompting authorities to order the evacuation of some 8,000 people living nearby. The plume coming from the Taal volcano, south of the capital Manila, stretched about 1km (0.6 miles) into the sky. Rumbling sounds and tremors were also reported around Taal - the Philippines' second-most active volcano - on Sunday. Authorities raised the alert level, warning that a "hazardous eruption" was possible within weeks. The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology also warned residents living nearby of a possible "volcanic tsunami".

This is the shocking moment two customers attacked members of staff in a kebab shop - while a man calmly sat among the chaos eating his chips and unwittingly became a meme sensation. The footage, believed to be taken inside Ken's Kebabs in Portsmouth, was posted on Twitter on Friday at around 4.40pm. It begins with a young man wearing a grey top and blue cap hurling abuse at a worker, who retaliates by throwing a pair of tongs at him as another aggressive customer, in a blue jacket, enters the fray. Four men, who appear to also work in...

THOUSANDS of democratic protesters took to the streets of Iran on Sunday for the second day of mass protests.

What Now, Pope Francis? The butchers of Beijing tighten the noose on underground Catholics in China. Soon the hanging? “Bitter Winter”, the online journal of Massimo Introvigne on the state of human rights in China, reports the wholly expected news that the butchers of Beijing have decreed the death of religious freedom in China following the Vatican’s sellout of the Underground Church.  Doubling down on the already draconian New Regulation on Religious Affairs enacted in 2017, the Communist Party of China [CCP] has announced new “Administrative Measures for Religious Groups” that “will come into force on February 1, 2020.” “Two years after the 2017...

. By October, 150 of Arp’s hives had been wiped out by mites, 12% of his inventory in just a few months. “My yard is currently filled with stacks of empty bee boxes that used to contain healthy hives,” he says. On top of the threat of pesticides, almond pollination is uniquely demanding for bees because colonies are aroused from winter dormancy about one to two months earlier than is natural. The sheer quantity of hives required far exceeds that of other crops – apples, America’s second-largest pollination crop, use only one-tenth the number of bees. And the bees are...

Waymo’s fully driverless vehicles are doing passenger trips in the suburbs outside Phoenix, Arizona. We got to experience it first hand, and our ride included a close brush with a construction site, a wrong turn, and a flock of pigeons. But more importantly, it got us thinking about what it means when Waymo says the future is driverless, and what we lose when we eliminate human driving. Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__EoOvVkEMo Link to article: https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/9/21000085/waymo-fully-driverless-car-self-driving-ride-hail-service-phoenix-arizona

OK, FREEPERS, LET'S START THIS CONTEST FOR THE GREATEST SONG OF THE '60S. The baseline for the contest is the top 7 hits of each year of the '60s, as compiled by BILLBOARD. This is NOT based on personal preferences, biases, prejudices, or counter-culture fringe-element reactivity. Round 1 is listing candidate songs in order of preference. (The remaining rounds are handled as play-off brackets, starting with 32 pairs of songs to compare.) ROUND 1 We begin by using the #7 songs of each year and paring them from 10 songs to 4 (to set up play-off brackets for the rest...

"No voices calling for peace. No voices critical of empire. Just establishment media and current and former Pentagon officials who feed off the trillion dollar war machine." As President Donald Trump spent the early days of 2020 instigating and then backing down from a potentially catastrophic confrontation with Iran, corporate media in the U.S. turned to the very same people who promoted the country's worst foreign policy disaster in a generation to advocate for repeating the mistakes of two decades ago. The decision of networks and cable news outlets like CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News to bring on a stream of past advocates for...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday warned Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and his GOP colleagues that they would be held accountable by the American people if they dismiss the impeachment trial against President Trump. Pelosi said McConnell “very unusually” signed a resolution last week to toss the case once the Senate takes up the two articles passed by the House in December. “Dismissing is a cover up,” Pelosi said on ABC News’ “This Week.” “If they want to go that route, again, the senators who are now thinking about witnesses or not – they will have to be accountable...

American consumers understand that most forms of popular culture have become nothing more than commercials for the Democrat party. Movies, television, and music focus less on entertainment than on influencing the next election. They have gone beyond mere leftist bias. Artists, writers, and musicians subordinate their craft in order to present one endless Democrat commercial. This trend is equally egregious in the case of books. In modern bookstores, the Democrat commercial spreads far beyond the "politics" shelf. "The gardening books advocate hiring illegal aliens. The sports books reminisce about Vietnam." A telling example of this trend appears in a 2018...

More than 6,000 university professors issued a statement following the testimony of the chief of hearts, Haj Qassim Suleimani. More than 6,000 university professors issued a statement following the testimony of Sardar Dale Hajj Qassim Suleimani, according to the Fars News Agency. The text of this statement is as follows: in the name of God "I am al-Mu'minin al-Rijal Sadiqva, our conscience against my fiancé, my judge, and my sincerity," The testimony of the brave Sardar, proud and courageous Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, Lieutenant-Colonel Martyr Haj Ghassem Suleimani and his tireless companion,...

The more successful Trump's reality-based policies towards Iran and Israel are, the harder it will be for the foreign policy establishment to restore their delusion-based policies when he leaves power. For the past 40-odd years, two narratives have guided American Middle East policy. Both were invented by the Carter administration. One relates to Iran. One relates to Israel. Both narratives reject reality as the basis for foreign policy decision-making in favor of delusion. Over the past two months, President Donald Trump has rejected and disavowed them both. His opponents are apoplectic. As far as Iran is concerned, as journalist Lee...