Free Republic

Oct. 1 marks the 80th anniversary of the opening of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. For most people today, this is no cause for celebration. Today, when people hear the words “Pennsylvania Turnpike,” the thoughts that come to mind are: antiquated, too many trucks and, more than anything, ever-rising tolls. But it wasn’t always this way.

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who spoke at the Republican National Convention, declined to bring murder charges against the three white officers involved in the tragic shooting of Louisville's Breonna Taylor, a black woman. Contrary to the public assertion made by a Taylor family lawyer, Cameron, who is black, said the Louisville police did not go to the wrong address when executing a search warrant. Nor was Taylor shot and killed in her bed, as also publicly asserted by the family lawyer. Ben Crump, a spokesman and attorney for the Taylor family, falsely claimed the police went to the wrong...

In April 2018, President Trump issued an order to the National Archives to continue keeping thousands of CIA records relating to the John Kennedy assassination secret from the American people. The new deadline, which could be extended again by either Trump or a President Biden, was set for October 2021. Since the order was issued early in the Trump regime, no doubt he felt confident that there would be no adverse political consequences flowing from his order. But now that Trump is engaged in a heated race with Joe Biden, he ought to be called upon to explain and justify...

Australian scientists have vowed to continue investigating whether taking hydroxychloroquine can stop people becoming infected with coronavirus. Researchers from the Walter & Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne believe the drug could prevent people catching SARS-CoV-2 - the virus that causes COVID-19. Hundreds of health workers in NSW and Victoria have been given the drug in the Institute's COVID SHIELD trial in an effort to try and determine its effectiveness as a prophylactic. Hydroxychloroquine was brought to public attention when US President Donald Trump said he was using the malaria drug to 'protect' himself from coronavirus. Prescriptions for the drug subsequently...

A blue moon, which will occur Oct. 31, will be the second full moon in the same calendar month — which is the reason behind its name. “Is it going to be a blue moon up in the sky? Sorry, everybody, no,” Gonyea said. According to Gonya, there is a seasonal blue moon and there is a monthly blue moon. “In olden times, they referred to the blue moon as the third full moon out of four in a season, so this autumn, September, October, and November is the autumn season,” he said. “September, we had a full moon. October,...

"The Marching Morons" is a science fiction story by Cyril M. Kornbluth that was published in 1951. It involves a man who is accidentally put into suspended animation and awakens hundreds of years later to a society in which the average IQ is around 45. I'm not sure whether the writers for the 2006 film "Idiocracy" had this in mind when they penned their screenplay, but the two themes are quite similar, save that the film was a comedy, and the 1951 novella definitely was not. I imagine it was the "marching" part of the title that led to my...

Today’s post is in honor of Air Force 1st Lt. Gary P. Offutt, who was shot down over the Republic of Vietnam’s Kien Giang province on this date in 1965. Offutt’s F-100 Super Sabre had just pulled up after a strafing run when the aircraft nose-dived into the ground, likely brought down by hostile fire. The 25-year-old Stewartsville, Mo. native’s remains were repatriated in 1995 and identified in 1997. 1918: When German soldiers attack the lines of the 110th Infantry Regiment, Irish immigrant and U.S. Army Maj. Joseph H. Thompson courageously defies enemy machinegun and artillery fire to encourage his...

eptember 30, 2020 Press Release WASHINGTON, D.C. — Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and his colleagues on the China Task Force today released their final report with more than 400 recommendations to counter threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Task Force, which launched in May of this year, was comprised of 15 members representing 11 different Committees, and spent the past few months examining topics including ideological competition, national security, supply chains, technology, economics, and competitiveness. Click HERE to read the final report. “We’re at the beginning of a New Cold War that will define American politics for...

The Commission on Presidential Debates may allow moderators for the next two debates to cut off the microphones of President Trump or Joe Biden if they break the rules, according to sources who spoke to CBS News. This followed the first of the Presidential debates, hosted by Fox News’s Chris Wallace. The second debate will be hosted by Steve Scully of C-SPAN, and the third debate will be hosted by Kristen Welker of NBC News. Via CBS The commission that oversees the general election presidential debates said Wednesday it will be making changes to the format of the remaining two...

Joe Biden’s transition team named Jessica Hertz, until recently a Facebook executive focused on government regulations, as its general counsel and charged her with navigating conflicts of interest and other ethical issues for the Biden admin-in-waiting

President Trump has agreed to speak remotely Thursday at the New York Archdiocese’s first ever virtual Al Smith fundraising event amid the coronavirus pandemic, church officials said Monday evening. The Archdiocese has also extended an invitation to former Vice President Joe Biden, who is Catholic, and is hopeful he will also agree to speak at the 75th annual fundraiser, the first being held remotely and not taking place at a location with speakers and hundreds of guests.

The coronavirus has affected people from all walks of life--including those worth more than $1 billion. As global markets are in flux, the net worth of the world’s richest people has fluctuated to the point where many of them have lost the title of “billionaire.” Our new visualization takes the most recent data from Forbes to illustrate how many billionaires are in the world, as well as the size of their cumulative net worth. According to Forbes, as of March 18, 2020 there were 2,095 billionaires worldwide. The total net worth of the world’s billionaires is $8 trillion, $700 billion...

VIDEO The big criteria for Jon Karl and most of the rest of the mainstream media in judging a debate performance is WHO the debater is, not what his performance was like. A perfect example of this can be seen in this video.

An American cyclist has been suspended for a tweet he sent out regarding President Donald Trump. It is the latest example of the chokehold politics seems to have on sports these days. This past week, Quinn Simmons of the Trek-Segafredo cycling team was suspended for tweets described as “divisive, incendiary, and detrimental.”

The rocket was set to blast off from Cape Canaveral with a U.S. government spy satellite at 11:54 p.m. EDT Wednesday (0354 GMT Thursday), but the countdown stopped at T-minus 7 seconds. ULA said the automated countdown sequencer controlling the rocket in the final moments before liftoff detected an “unexpected condition prior to the engine start sequence.” “The team is currently reviewing all data and will determine the path forward,” ULA said in a statement It was the second abort for the Delta 4-Heavy rocket in the final 10 seconds of a countdown. A launch attempt Aug. 29 was halted...

America is definitely not Europe, but we can find a number of parallels between European history and contemporary America. For example, we’ve previously written about the Italian Years of Lead as a possible template for urban unrest and low-level inter-tribal warfare in the United States. Another example of how things might play out in the United States is the Spanish Civil War. The Spanish Civil War is known to historians, amateur and professional alike, as the “dress rehearsal for the Second World War.” It is so termed because it pitted one side – which was equipped, armed and funded by...

For months, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Senate Democrats have talked about eliminating the filibuster. And with Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, the discussion by the Democrats has become even more extreme, with some Senators saying that they must get rid of the filibuster so that they can pack the Supreme Court. Even if not used to pack the Supreme Court, eliminating the filibuster would radically transform the Senate and our country.

IOWA Trump 47% (+3) Biden 44% Jorgensen 1% Hawkins 1% . Head-2-Head: Trump 50% (+5) Biden 45% @DataProgress/@IndivisibleTeam (D), LV, 9/23-28

Fully informed consent of any abortion event, whether surgical or chemical, should include the long-term implications for women's health and fertility. poiler Alert: For fans of Amazon Prime, trending now is season one of a show called “Utopia,” in which John Cusack plays a billionaire madman who wants to “solve” overpopulation by tricking the world into believing in a global pandemic so he can sell a vaccine that actually sterilizes people. For most of humanity, a medical event ends a person’s ability to have a family.With abortion, the parallels between fact and this fiction are uncomfortably close.Why women have abortions...

U.S.—Trump is polling high among an unexpected group: libertarians, who were energized and drawn to Trump's cause after the New York Times revealed that he paid as little as $750 in federal taxes some years. "Only paying a few hundred in federal theft? This guy is my hero!" said libertarian man Murray Mickelson of New Hampshire. "If only all of us could be that smart with our taxes." "The less theft, the better!"