Free Republic

Megan Youngren will become the first openly transgender female athlete to compete at the United States Olympic marathon trials. The 29-year-old will make history on February 29 in Atlanta, where she will compete against 63 women for a spot on the Olympic team to compete at the Summer Games in Tokyo later this year. Youngren began her transition from a male to a female when she was a college student in 2011, according to Sports Illustrated. She also started taking hormone medication that year, and in 2012, she came out publicly as transgender. She officially finalized her transition last year,...

USS Normandy (CG 60), in accordance with international law, boarded a stateless dhow in the Arabian Sea and interdicted an illicit shipment of advanced weapons and weapon components intended for the Houthis in Yemen, Feb. 9, 2020. US Navy Photo. Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Normandy (CG-60) seized a cache of Iranian-made anti-tank missiles and other munitions aboard a dhow in the Arabian Sea over the weekend. Normandy stopped the dhow while conducting maritime security operations over the weekend, in accordance with international law, according to a statement released Thursday by U.S. Central Command.

KONKOL COMMENTARY: The Sun-Times didn't just endorse Kim Foxx's reelection bid. Its owners donated $750,000 to her campaign since September. The investigation into whether any individuals within the Cook County State's Attorney's Kim Foxx's office engaged in any wrongdoing in connection with the Smollett investigation continues, according to special prosecutor Dan Webb. (AP Photo/Teresa Crawford File) CHICAGO — It seemed strange enough the Sun-Times editorial board on Monday "strongly" endorsed Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx for a second term, telling voters to spare her the "injustice" of letting a "single high-profile mistake ... overshadow her accomplishments." Foxx's "single" flub,...

I considered naming the Fort after the Ohio city that threw two retired veterans in jail for not painting their home. The heartless city officials were ungrateful for the fact that the veterans were willing to risk all of their tomorrows so the city officials could have their todays. The veterans didn't know they were living in Fort Stepford. The fictional city of Stepford is the home of robotic wives. A Fort Stepford city is a city where government martinets try to force rigid adherence to the city's military like regulations. City codes define the condition a resident owner's house...

‘Y’all should have seen how QUICK the white people packed their bags and left!’ An apparent University of Virginia student urged white people to leave the campus Multicultural Student Center, claiming that it is a “space for people of color” and that there were “too many white people” in the building, according to video that surfaced Wednesday afternoon. The video, tweeted by the Young America’s Foundation, showed a young black woman pacing around a room while making a “public service announcement,” in her words: If ya’ll didn’t know, this is the MSC [Multicultural Student Center], and frankly there’s just too...

The Department of Justice (DOJ) will no longer pursue criminal charges against former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, closing a high-profile case against the former official whose conduct during the 2016 election came under intense scrutiny. "We write to inform you that, after careful consideration, the Government has decided not to pursue criminal charges against your client, Andrew G. McCabe, arising from the referral by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) to our Office of conduct,” wrote two officials from the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office. "Based on the totality of the circumstances and all of the information known to...

FUll Title: BUSTED: New Hampshire Primary Election Day Official “I Think Voting Any Democrat is Wise”; ‘Bernie and Buttigieg Top 2’; Deputy Election Moderator Admits “Not Everyone Attended Training” When it Comes to Poll Station Officials After a series of Project Veritas investigations conducted across the state of New Hampshire yesterday, Project Veritas journalists uncovered an election official, Beth Hunter, at the polling location for Ward 01 and Ward 04 in Derry, NH opening up about her political inclinations and illegally influencing voters on Election Day. According to the state’s law, election officials are prohibited from influencing a citizen’s vote...

The HGTV show House Hunters featured its first “Throuple”, or polyamorous couple, on its show Wednesday night. A “Throuple” is a relationship made up of three people. In this case, two women and a man named Lori, Geli, and Brian. The couple has two children, who are biologically related to Brian and Lori. In the episode, the trio describes their ideal home as one that has a three-car garage, a master bedroom that fits three people, and room for the two children. While looking at a house’s kitchen, Lori remarked on its size as a “couple’s kitchen, not a throuple’s...

The breakout star of the New Hampshire primary was not Amy Klobuchar (horse whinny) who finished third among Democrats. MSNBC afternoon anchor Katy Tur seized the day, said dumb things, and grabbed the spotlight. Tur has drawn a lot of attention -- all of it negative, but there is no such thing as bad publicity. RedState reported, "MSNBC’s Katy Tur is perhaps most famous for proclaiming journalists are like firefighters, because after all, reading from a teleprompter and writing articles is totally like risking one’s life to go into a burning building. It was at that moment that the media’s...

Is there a solution to the human condition? Given that human love is layered over blind forces that react automatically to the slightest sign of danger, is there any chance for redemption, or are we bound to endless cycles of aggression and destruction?

As 1809 is nudged toward the darkness, the Baron of Bork has plans for 1903 and 1909 There are three certainties in life: death, taxes and duff patches from Microsoft. So, yes, some Windows 10 users have found their PC unhappy following Tuesday's patch shenanigans.A helpful forum posting from one of Microsoft's loyal MVPs concerning the arrival of KB4532693 for Windows 10 1903 and 1909, and KB4532691 for 1809, has seen some customers reporting that the updates had left their systems a little distressed.Users have found things reset to a seemingly default state and a temporary user account used for...

The Iron Dog 2020 Race (Pro Class) begins Sunday, February 16th at 11:00 AM AK time. The Recreation Class started yesterday, Thursday the 13th, so they are already on the trail. The Iron Dog is the World’s Longest, Toughest Snowmobile Race and covers more than 2,400 miles as it traverses the Alaskan backcountry. NEW COURSE FOR 2020: Starting in Fairbanks, racers speed down the Yukon River and cut overland toward the Bering Sea coast, then make a roughly 375-mile loop through Kotzebue, before reaching the halfway point in Nome. Racers then turn their sleds south, where the route follows the...

A Florida man is not happy with his dialysis treatment facility after they told him he could not bring a life-size cardboard cutout of President Donald Trump to help ease his anxiety. Nelson Gibson has been going to Fresenius Kidney Care in Port Saint Lucie for the past year, and usually brings an 8x10 picture of Trump to help keep him calm during the procedure, which can last more than three hours. "I just feel that he's done so much for kidneys and dialysis. I just feel very grateful for what he's doing," said Gibson A few months after starting...

An Alabama state representative filed a ridiculous bill Thursday to attack pro-lifers’ efforts to save unborn babies by forcing men to get vasectomies. State Rep. Rolanda Hollis, D-Birmingham, was a vocal opponent of the 2019 Alabama law that protects unborn babies by banning all abortions. The law is not being enforced because of a legal challenge. On Thursday, Hollis lashed out against pro-life lawmakers’ efforts by filing a bill mandating vasectomies for every Alabama man, Yellowhammer News reports. “Under existing law, there are no restrictions on the reproductive rights of men,” the summary of her bill, House Bill 238, reads....

Federal prosecutors have declined to charge former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, closing an investigation into whether he lied to federal officials about his involvement in a news media disclosure, McCabe’s legal team said Friday. The decision resolves a criminal investigation that spanned more than a year and began with a referral from the Justice Department’s inspector general, which said McCabe repeatedly lied about having authorized a subordinate to share information with a newspaper reporter for a 2016 article about an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation. McCabe’s lawyers said in a statement they were told in a phone call...

Fatality Rates The SARS "epidemic" lasted from 1 November 2002 – 31 July 2003 (9 months). During that time there were... 8,096 total cases worldwide (5,327 in China) 774 total fatalities (349 in China) ...which gave us a fatality rate of 9.6% (6.6% in China). Take a good look at those numbers. When you exclude China, the global fatality rate for SARS was 15.3%. This includes a 17.1% fatality rate in the socialized-medicine utopia otherwise known as Canada. Other notable rates - Hong Kong @ 17.0% and Singapore @ 13.9%. Both of the latter countries are well known for excellent...

When he’s not running the state, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice is leading the Greenbrier East High girls basketball team — a post he’s held since 2003. Yet after an incident between the Spartans and rival Woodrow Wilson High School on Tuesday night, in which the game was suspended, Justice called the Wilson players “a bunch of thugs.” Naturally, his comments have sparked immense backlash in the days that followed. “I hate to say it any other way, but honest to God’s truth is the same thing happened over at Woodrow two different times out of the Woodrow players, they’re...

Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Friday, February 14, 2020 A federal grand jury returned an indictment against Hitoshi Hashimoto and Hiroyuki Tamura for their role in a global conspiracy to fix prices for suspension assemblies used in hard disk drives, the Department of Justice announced today. Hashimoto and Tamura, both Japanese citizens, are former top sales executives at NHK Spring Co. Ltd. (NHK Spring), which has pleaded guilty and been sentenced to pay a $28.5 million fine. The indictment, filed yesterday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that, from at...

An American biotech company says it created a coronavirus vaccine three hours after getting access to the virus' genetic sequence in mid-January, and now scientists are racing to get the vaccine on the market in record time. Inovio Pharmaceuticals is based in Pennsylvania, but scientists in its laboratory in San Diego made the discovery. "We were able to rapidly construct our vaccine in a matter of about three hours once we had the DNA sequence from the virus available because of the power of our DNA medicine platform," Dr. J. Joseph Kim, Inovio's president and CEO, told FOX Business. "Our...

The Justice Department will not bring charges against former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe for lying to investigators about a media disclosure, according to people familiar with the matter and McCabe’s legal team, ending a long-running inquiry into a top law enforcement official who authorized the bureau to investigate President Trump and soon became the commander in chief’s political punching bag. The department revealed the decision to McCabe’s team on Friday; it was unclear if there were other plans to make it public. The move will surely infuriate Trump, who has raged publicly and privately in recent months that McCabe...