Free Republic

The part of Hawthorne Boulevard where Tiger Woods lost control of his SUV Tuesday and was seriously injured in a rollover crash is a steep, winding road described by locals and officials as a “hotspot” for car crashes. At the intersection where Woods crashed, Hawthorne Boulevard forms the border of Rancho Palos Verdes and Rolling Hills Estates — part of the Palos Verdes Peninsula known for tony gated neighborhoods, cliffside vistas and winding seaside roads. One man who lives in the area told KTLA Tuesday that the stretch of road is dangerous if you’re not careful. “The one thing that...

Some Navy traditions are formal, polished bright with age, such as the two lines of saluting senior officers on the USS Gerald R. Ford who bid farewell to Capt. J.J. Cummings after he handed over command last week. Some are less obvious, but still there — like the way Rear Adm. John Meier, the Ford’s first captain, kept an eye on his former command and spoke at Cummings’ change of command ceremony, or the way retired Capt. Thurraya Kent checked on her former Norfolk-based command of specialist staff officers after she was posted to the Pentagon a few years back....

A public school system in New York has introduced a new curriculum to teach that 'all white people play a part in perpetuating systemic racism', and show kindergarten classes videos of black children shot and killed by police, instructing them about the dangers of police brutality. Buffalo's schools are expected to follow lesson plans devised by Fatima Morrell, the associate superintendent for Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Initiatives. Morrell's lesson plans, obtained by City Journal, teach pupils and their teachers how to be, in her words, more 'woke.' The youngest pupils read a series of texts under the heading 'Woke Kindergarten',...

The Nebraska Legislature will once again look at a bill on the Right to Repair. Introduced by Senator Tom Brandt of the 32nd District on Jan. 19, LB543, entitled the Agricultural Equipment Right-To-Repair Act, will, if passed, offer farmers a way to repair their equipment without having to wait on a dealer. A similar bill had been introduced in 2017. Lydia Brasch of the 16th District introduced LB67, “Adopt the Fair Repair Act,” but the bill was indefinitely postponed in 2018. Brandt said he spoke with other senators and decided the previous bill had been too broad. “The opposition it...

A few years ago, Bill Clinton “wrote” a political thriller called The President Is Missing, by which I mean James Patterson wrote it and Clinton got top billing. I’ve never read the novel and don’t care to consort with anyone who has, but I’d like to imagine it’s about a U.S. president who goes into hiding after his wife catches him with his pants around his ankles and a White House intern working above her pay grade. Plenty of rubes bought the book, though, because there’s a sequel coming out this year. And now, Bill’s furiously vindictive wife is getting...

Former California Sen. Barbara Boxer raised eyebrows this week after first registering as a foreign agent with the Chinese surveillance company Hikvision, then later "deregistering" Tuesday.Hikvision was barred by the Commerce Department in 2019 over its involvement in the Chinese government’s suppression of the Uyghurs -- an ethnic minority population in the Xinjiang province located in northwest China.Boxer, who registered with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act Friday, was expected to serve as a "Strategic consultant," on behalf of the surveillance company for Mercury Public Affairs, a prominent lobbying firm where Boxer was recently named co-chair, the...

What is the purpose of academic freedom? Is it to allow all kinds of ideas to be expressed and explored, protecting even speech that people in the past considered heretical—protecting free expression that some people today would like to “cancel”? Or is it to allow co-workers in the ideological minority to be personally and selectively disparaged with impunity? The answer for some faculty at Stanford University would appear to be the latter. In a recent meeting of the Stanford Faculty Senate, four professors (Joshua Landy, Stephen Monismith, David Palumbo-Liu and David Spiegel) presented and then subsequently published a farrago of...

A lot of politicians and businessmen don’t understand that the press only has so much power as we give them. If people don’t trust corporate media — if people don’t respect them — then they don’t have much power at all. Reporters in particular don’t seem to understand this give and take. By and large, reporters think of themselves as very important, very noble people putting their lives at risk to save American democracy in between brunch dates. Close your eyes and you can almost see chubby little Washington Post journos dramatically whipping their bangs out of their eyes as...

KENOSHA, Wis. — A social media account raising money for accused Kenosha protest shooter Kyle Rittenhouse has been posting his gym workouts, videos of puppies and slamming prosecutors in the double homicide case. The posts could impact the upcoming trial.

The unmasked woman with the strange, smirking, mirthless grin, making that grim message about COVID having no end in sight and calling for everyone to wear a mask is Biden's appointment to the Centers for Disease Control, Dr. Rochelle Walensky. Who the heck delivers news like that with that bizarre kind of extended smile? And worse still, the head bobbing, and that flippant giggly ending? That's the image she wants to project as the calm, knowledgable, trustworthy top doctor? Even Dr. Anthony Fauci was pretty good at putting that act on. Her strange smile suggests that apparently she thinks her...

...the Democrats are also trying to drive independent voices off the more traditional broadcast and cable platforms. Dan Gainor of the Media Research Center sent out an email today that included this:The war against conservatives on social media has turned into a war against conservative broadcast media, as well. The House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology will hold a hearing tomorrow at 12:30 p.m. entitled “Fanning the Flames: Disinformation and Extremism in the Media.” But will the Democrats in this hearing talk about the lies from CNN or MSNBC? Probably not, since the memorandum for the hearing specifically cited articles...

The last thing New York City needs is another shutdown. But the worst mayor in America just tried to kick kids off a couple of Central Park ice rinks. The rinks, you see, are run by the Trump Organization, and because Orange Man Bad, they had to go — and to hell with the kids. To hell with the city. Sure, Mayor de Blasio changed his mind, and so there are kids on the ice again. Anyway, given the weight bearing down on New York right now, maybe the Wollman and Lasker rinks don’t count for much. Right? But hold...

Today SpaceX locked down the area and breathed life into SN10. The static fire completed at 5:03 PM local time although, we are not sure if it was successful. We're awaiting results from Elon and future TFR's in place. Go SpaceX!

Activists gathered Tuesday night on Jefferson Avenue, where Daniel Prude encountered Rochester police in March, 2020. They marched toward West Main Street to the RPD Special Operations Section on Child Street before moving onto I-490 via the Child Street ramp. From there, they moved to the Public Safety BUilding in downtown Rochester. This comes after New York State Attorney General Letitia James announced a grand jury’s decision not to charge any police officers in connection with Prude’s death.

Since its creation more than 12 years ago, Bitcoin is undefeated. Its price has leaped from $5 to $50 to $500 to $5,000 to now past $50,000. The number of global users has eclipsed 100 million. The system’s network security, number of developers, and new applications are at all-time highs. Dozens of companies including Tesla and Square have started to add Bitcoin to their corporate treasuries. This worldwide success doesn’t mean that people haven’t tried to stop Bitcoin. The digital money project has in fact survived a variety of attacks which in some cases threatened its existence. There are two...

Former President Donald Trump has responded to the Supreme Court’s decision on his taxes. The court ruled to allow a New York prosecutor to obtain his tax returns from up to 10 years ago. Trump’s calling the move just another political attack against him. The U.S. Supreme Court has dismissed a number of 2020 election lawsuits that still remain, including challenges to election processes and election results in several states.

Republican lawmakers in West Virginia have introduced a bill modeled after a revoked Trump-era order to purge elements of critical race theory from the state’s workforce and schools. Currently known as House Bill 2595, the proposed legislation seeks to ban “race or sex stereotyping or scapegoating” in the workforce, defined as “assigning fault, blame, or bias to a race or sex, or to members of a race or sex because of their race or sex,” as well as “any claim that, consciously or unconsciously, and by virtue of his or her race or sex, members of any race are inherently...

Germany is in the third wave of the pandemic, Angela Merkel warned last night, even as the country prepared to reopen schools by prioritising teachers and nursery staff for vaccination. The closure of all non-essential businesses and border controls with Austria and the Czech Republic, where there have been outbreaks linked to the more infectious British variant, have helped Germany to reduce new daily cases. But a slow vaccination campaign and the risk of outbreaks could make any easing of restrictions more difficult.

After the Chinese regime recently revealed the number of casualties from the Sino-Indian border clash that occurred last year, several Chinese netizens were detained for questioning and criticizing the official data. On Feb. 19, the CCP for the first time disclosed information on Chinese soldier deaths from the border conflict with India which took place in the Galwan Valley, in the eastern Ladakh border region in June 2020. Four deaths were mentioned, including battalion commander Chen Hongjun, and three soldiers named Chen Xiangrong, Xiao Siyuan, and Wang Zhuoran. The information also disclosed one substantial injury sustained by regimental commander Qi...

Chinese foreign affairs minister Wang Yi urged the United States to meet four requirements from Xi Jinping’s regime at the Lanting Forum, a video conference organized by the Chinese foreign affairs ministry on Feb. 22. The requests include: ending support for Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Tibet; resuming the U.S.-China dialogue; ending the tariffs on Chinese products and sanctions on Chinese enterprises; and removing all restrictions on China’s news agencies and cultural entities such as the Confucius Institutes. After President Joe Biden announced that he won the presidential election, Chinese leader Xi Jinping and his senior diplomats urged the United...