Free Republic

More than 2 million Georgians have already voted in the state's twin Jan. 5 Senate runoff elections, where the Republican majority in the Senate is at stake. The latest early voting numbers released Thursday morning by state officials indicate that more than a quarter (26.7%) of all registered voters in Georgia have already cast a ballot in the two contests. More than 1.3 million Georgians have cast a ballot through early in-person voting at polling stations that have been open for a week and a half, with more than 720,000 casting an absentee ballot. With less than two weeks to...

So we made it to Christmas. It isn’t a normal Christmas by any means: no holiday parties with sloshed colleagues, no late Manhattan nights with red and green lights flickering on chilly streets, no large gatherings or intimacy with our elder kin. As one of the proud New Yorkers who has yet to move to Florida, I can pretty much say that all I want for Christmas is a bar that stays open past 10 p.m. Gov. Cuomo for well on 10 months has been doing his best John Lithgow impression, turning the most vibrant place in the world into...

Car bomb exploded 2nd ave Nashville tn

PEABODY, Mass. -- Police in Peabody, Massachusetts, are looking for a couple who slithered away with a snake worth $300 from a city pet store.The couple entered the Petco store around 4:30 p.m. Monday, police told The Salem News on Wednesday. **** Snake for Christmas.......

WASHINGTON, Monday, Dec. 24. Governor ANDREW, Senators DOOLITTLE and TRUMBULL, Representatives BURLINGAME and TAPPAN, and a number of other Senators and members of Congress, held a conference, yesterday, at the rooms of FRANCIS P. BLAIR, Sr., and unanimously agreed that the integrity of the Union should be preserved, though it cost millions of lives. Private information reports Gov. HOUSTON as making a great Union speech, in the face of threats, and eventually carrying with him the largest audience ever assembled in Texas. Prominent Republicans are moving here to secure HOUSTON a seat in the Cabinet, as he has indicated his...

Today is Christmas. It is, though, a very different sort of Christmas. Nine months after the world spun off of its axis and the COVID Internment of America (and much of the world) began, Doctor-In-Chief Anthony Fauci has made his pronouncement as to how Americans are to celebrate this holiday. In a word, they aren’t. Fauci the Infallible, the ever-unimpeachable Fauci, the Good Doctor par excellence has spoken.

Explanation: Orion always seems to come up sideways on northern winter evenings. Those familiar stars of the constellation of the Hunter are caught above the trees in this colorful night skyscape. Not a star at all but still visible to eye, the Great Nebula of Orion shines below the Hunter's belt stars. The camera's exposure reveals the stellar nursery's faint pinkish glow. Betelgeuse, giant star at Orion's shoulder, has the color of warm and cozy terrestrial lighting, but so does another familiar stellar giant, Aldebaran. Alpha star of the constellation Taurus the Bull, Aldebaran anchors the recognizable V-shape traced by...

I made a grave error this year in purchasing a gift for a family member. Since the advent of Covid and the restrictions placed on social contact, I decided to be a good sport and shop online this year for a gift. I made the mistake of ordering some overpriced pears from Harry and David (although the box is nice). But as always, no good deed will go unpunished. Now on every internet page I go to (except FR) there is this ad from H&D that flips and churns catching my eye. Ho, Ho, Ho, long will this last? A...

... Californians will barely notice most of the hundreds of new laws going into effect in 2021. But we've pulled out the most noteworthy, interesting and wide-reaching laws that will take effect in 2021. - Assembly Bill 685 ensures the right of employees to quickly learn if COVID exposure has occurred in the workplace. - After a number of high-profile deaths in police custody around the nation, California passed AB 1196, which prohibits police from using chokeholds and carotid holds. - As part of California’s continued incremental raising of the minimum wage, it will go up to $14 per hour...

Emergency services are responding to a massive explosion in downtown Nashville on Christmas morning. Residents and first responders are being told to leave the area due to possible car bombs. Local media reports that the initial blast came from an RV. There have been reports of gunfire before and after the explosion — as well as live ammo exploding inside of a vehicle that was ablaze.

As a world-class jazz double bassist, composer and band leader, Charles Mingus is one of the most celebrated figures in American music. He was well-known as a bon vivant and his larger than life physical stature towered over the bandstand and fellow musicians alike. His zeal for parties and drink were just as legendary as his sometimes caustic temperament that led him to occasionally punch fellow musicians and sometimes even lay into patrons. He was the Ron Artest of the jazz world—a brilliant artist that sometimes had trouble at the seams of life. But even The Angry Man of Jazz...

ORLANDO, Fla. -- With unexpectedly cold weather in the forecast and pandemic-related curfews in some places, Florida is about to have a Christmas unlike any other in recent memory, and it may involve falling iguanas. The National Weather Service earlier this week warned that South Florida could experience the coldest Christmas Day in 21 years. Morning lows on Saturday could drop into the low 30s and 40s degrees Fahrenheit, the weather service said. “ Brrr! Much colder temps expected for Christmas," the National Weather Service in Miami tweeted earlier this week. “Falling iguanas are possible." Because they are cold-blooded...

Senate Republicans say Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will reach out to Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville (Ala.) in an attempt to avoid a messy floor fight next month over finalizing the results of the Electoral College vote. Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) said GOP leaders will tell Tuberville that voting to suspend the tally of the Electoral College vote next month will be a futile — and politically damaging — move. “Ultimately every senator will have to make their own decision about that but I think there will be people, yeah, reaching out him just to kind of find out”...

Pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell said Thursday that the president's aides are preventing her from being in contact with President Trump and coordinating his efforts to overturn election results in battleground states around the country. In an interview with Zenger News, Powell said she had heard only radio silence from the White House following her meeting with the president in the Oval Office on Friday, seemingly confirming that she was unable to speak to Trump when she visited the White House on Sunday. "I've been blocked from speaking to or communicating with the president since I left the Oval Office on...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — A large explosion was reported in downtown Nashville early Christmas morning. The explosion happened in the area of Second Avenue and Broadway near Commerce Street

Joe Biden's transition team is complaining that Twitter won't transfer millions of followers from the Trump administration to the Biden administration. "Twitter's reluctance to transfer millions of followers from the Trump administration to the Biden administration unnecessarily politicizes what otherwise should be a routine transfer of communication from one administration to the next," spokesman Cameron French told CNN. The Biden team argued the transfer was made from Obama to Trump. However the Obama account had about 13 million followers while Trump has some 60 million. In addition, President Trump's personal account, @realDonaldTrump, over which he will retain control, has nearly...

An 83-year-old Clackamas County woman suffered significant injuries as a result of a common practice by delivery drivers -- leaving a package on a porch without knocking on the home’s door or ringing the bell, a lawsuit claims. Christa Hoven has filed a personal-injury complaint against Amazon, claiming the online retail giant is responsible for her tripping over a box. After a brief March 14 visit with her son at his Happy Valley house, Hoven stepped out of the front door and tripped on a “shoebox-sized package that had been left just in front of (and below) the doorway,” the...

By popular demand we are rebroadcasting a Steyn program first aired two years ago: In this special audio edition of Steyn's Song of the Week Mark celebrates the bicentennial of a beloved Christmas song first performed exactly two centuries ago - Christmas Eve 1818 - in a small church in Oberndorf, Austria - "Stille Nacht", or "Silent Night". For these birthday observances, Steyn welcomes the man who knows more about "Silent Night" and the men who created it than anybody on the planet - the Austrian actor and producer Hanno Schilf, who tells the story of the song, and the...

Pray For the Peace of JerusalemLambs, Sheep, and Shepherds.Micah 5:14A Promised Ruler From Bethlehem 5 [a]Marshal your troops now, city of troops, for a siege is laid against us. They will strike Israel’s ruler on the cheek with a rod. 2 “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans[b] of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.” 3 Therefore Israel will be abandoned until the time when she who is in labor bears a son, and the rest of his...

At long last, 2020 is about to end. This year, one unlike any other in my lifetime, was uniquely terrible. We faced a once-a-lifetime global pandemic, which brought to heel our entire economy and put an abrupt halt to hundreds of millions of law-abiding Americans' very way of life. We endured a once-a-generation national "dialogue" about race, which was unfortunately characterized, in part, by months of intermittent anarchic mayhem the likes of which no first-world country should ever experience. We had a national reckoning about the maturation and rise of an arch geopolitical foe, the Chinese Communist Party. And in...