Free Republic

One factor could be that just as law-abiding citizens went through legal channels to acquire firearms last year and into 2021, so too have criminals. It could be that criminals fear an armed law-abiding population and are responding in kind. It is also important to note that year-over-year crime rates have been on the decline in recent decades even if 2020 reversed those numbers. At the same time, firearms sales have steadily increased. As a result, it is simply unlikely that the record number of legal firearms sales attributed to the increase in crime. Rather it just seemed criminals kept...

No other president has been more "missing from the beginning" than President Joe Biden has been in the first months of his presidency, and Democrats will likely end up invoking the 25th Amendment against him to remove him from office within the next couple of years, former presidential political adviser Dick Morris said on Newsmax TV Saturday.

The CDC recommends wearing masks after their study showed that related to COVID, the results of wearing masks were statistically the same as the results when not wearing masks. The results of a CDC study at first appear to show that wearing masks help reduce the spread of COVID. The results were inside the statistical margin of error.

The Human Highlight. GOAT. His sheer vertical style of play was legendary, but that's not the story. He transformed himself from dominant athlete to one of the fiercest mental competitors of all time, with only one enemy, mediocrity. And while his brand flew high, to think, I never knew his politics? If not outspoken on politics, why such a vast appeal? Keep reading. North Carolina to Chicago, Michael arrived in 1984 in an era that belonged to Larry Bird's Celtics and Magic Johnson’s Lakers of showtime fame. They were Gemini stars of legendary dynasties, and always on the top 10...

Here’s a question that I do not know the answer to: Is the current insanity of “cancel culture” cresting or just getting started? Last week in this space, I told you about how Amazon suddenly and without any explanation decided to delist Ryan Anderson’s book When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment from all its emporia—audible.com and abebooks.com as well as Amazon itself. (The link I provide goes directly to the publisher). We published that book at Encounter some three years ago. Why did Amazon, the self-described “world’s largest book store,” finally get around to placing it on...

Three months ago in December I published an article titled ‘Is The Globalist Reset Failing? The Elites May Have Overplayed Their Hand’. I was specifically interested in the development of the pandemic “crisis”, the lockdown mandates of governments worldwide, the bizarre vaccination campaign for the new and under-tested mRNA cocktail which was rushed out to the public in the span of six months, the World Economic Forum’s open statements that they hoped to exploit the pandemic as a springboard for their globalist agenda, and the public’s reaction to it all. I have to say, I continue to see a divergence...

There are many accounts of Christian martyrs in the annals of Christianity, but none quite like that of Perpetua, thrown to the beasts and put to the sword on March 7, 203, in Carthage. There is no doing justice to the Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity in a brief essay such as this; the fifteen minutes or so it takes to read the original document, which includes the earliest writing we have from a Christian woman (Perpetua herself), will be well spent. In short, the twenty-two-year-old Perpetua, her slave girl Felicity, their friend Saturninus (whose first-person account is included...

DanielDaniel Griffin wasn’t sure what to expect when his patients with chronic COVID-19 symptoms started getting vaccinated. There was some concern that the shots might make things worse by triggering the immune system. Luckily, the opposite seemed to be true. “I started getting texts and calls from some of my colleagues saying hey, are your patients with long COVID reporting that they’re feeling better after the vaccine?” says Griffin, an infectious diseases clinician and researcher at Columbia University. When he started talking with patients, he saw that they were. “It’s not 100 percent, but it does seem like to be...

“In recognition of their service as part of the security mission at the U.S. Capitol and other facilities in Washington, D.C., before, during and after the 59th Presidential Inauguration, the District of Columbia National Guard plans to present all Soldiers and Airmen who took part in the mission one or both of the following decorations: the District of Columbia National Guard Presidential Inauguration Support Ribbon and/or the District of Columbia Emergency Service Ribbon,” Carver said in a statement. “Both ribbons are District-level decorations. Plans for their presentation are not yet final. Other federal decorations are also being considered.”

Boulder Police: CU partygoers assault officers, damage property by: Colleen Flynn Mar 7, 2021 Updated: BOULDER, Colo. (KDVR) — Boulder police said partiers at a massive CU street party Saturday night assaulted three officers with bricks and rocks and caused significant property damage. Police spokesperson Dionne Waugh said detectives are reviewing a large amount of video evidence of the incidents with the goal “to charge and identify” individuals involved in the destruction. One armored police vehicle sustained “heavy damage,” as did a fire truck, Waugh said. In a statement released on Twitter, Boulder Police Chief Maris said detectives will “identify...

WASHINGTON - Tom Perez was a guest on a Spanish-language talk radio show in Las Vegas last year when a caller launched into baseless complaints about both parties, urging Latino listeners to not cast votes at all. The effort showed how social media and other technology can be leveraged to spread misinformation so quickly that those trying to stop it cannot keep up. There were signs that it worked as Donald Trump swung large numbers of Latino votes in the 2020 presidential race in some areas that had been Democratic strongholds. Videos and pictures were doctored. Quotes were taken out...

A recently launched effort to recall Los Angeles district attorney George Gascón might represent the first encouraging sign for opponents of the “progressive-prosecutor” movement in American cities—among the most consequential developments in criminal-justice policy in recent years. From Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and Boston to Chicago, St. Louis, and Dallas, cities have handed the job of representing victims and holding criminals accountable to self-styled “reformers” and former defense attorneys who campaigned on promises to restructure our nation’s criminal-justice system. “Progressive” prosecutors around the country have, among other things, adopted non-prosecution policies for certain misdemeanor offenses—particularly quality-of-life crimes; pursued pretrial diversion at higher...

Anybody else keeping track of the score in the Culture War?Probably not as there are no actual rules and therefore no way to tally the results. But there are a lot of keen observations out there:The culture war becomes more infantile by the day. Quite literally. The big talking points of the past few weeks have focused almost exclusively on children’s TV shows, toys and authors.So let’s see:First Disney Plus slapped a warning label on The Muppets Show, due to the ‘negative depictions and / or mistreatment of people or cultures’ it apparently features, acknowledging the ‘harmful impacts’ these puppets...

American liberalism is in a strong position to dominate cultural and political life in the United States for the near future, with Joe Biden in the White House and the Democratic Party in control of both houses of Congress. The cultural and media elites are, for now, united in their conviction that they have saved democracy and that the future is theirs. And yet, a serious challenge to this new liberal ascendancy could be coming, one similar in kind to the circumstances that knocked liberalism back on its heels in the 1960s—its inability to address or mitigate an increase in...

The relentless campaign to demonize supporters of President Trump entered the realm of self-parody this past week, with warnings that the U.S. Capitol and democracy itself were in danger on March 4 because QAnon saw that date as the real inauguration day. It was all balderdash, a PsyOp aimed at delegitimizing support for Trump or questioning the integrity of the presidential election. Even the Washington Post admitted there was nothing to it, calling the reports a "mirage." At the Capitol, a March 4 threat from militant Trump supporters proves a mirage https://t.co/pHUgunuHEN — The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) March 4, 2021...

It’s truly astonishing how much President Biden in his first weeks has opted to side with his party’s left wing and its special interests — and against even moderate Americans’ desires. It’s most obvious in his Mexican-border madness: President Donald Trump worked out perfectly reasonable, humane policies that stemmed the record-breaking, Obama-era surges of migrants at the border. Yet Biden has needlessly moved to kill Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” deal and other agreements with Central American nations that were clearly working. Instead, he set up a temporary freeze on deportations and is talking up plans to offer a path to...

For some reason, Democrats are dead set on making it as easy as possible for criminals to commit acts of violence with firearms. With Democrats in control of Congress and the White House, Americans can expect a series of progressive bills to be introduced. In a budget reconciliation process, the bills can be passed in the U.S. Senate with a simple majority. This is what happened with the $1.9-trillion monstrosity known as the COVID-19 relief bill. Fortunately, most legislation does not qualify for this designation and will require a 60-vote threshold in the U.S. Senate to pass. With such a...

......Breaking up the total cheating efforts into many smaller pieces, using various types of manipulation, with a well-trained damage control team on stand-by to fix any "accidental leaks and/or slip-ups" ...... And, once pulled off, the payoffs would be far greater than their massive, initial investments required. Oh yeah... Even though a "Doubting Thomas" before, now I see at least one LIKELY way how "The Fix" could have been pulled off. (By the way, didn't "they" brag about doing "it" in that Time magazine article in January 2021?) ...As if that wasn't bad enough, I see no reason why --...

Sergey Ivanov, Vladimir Putin's former chief of staff, currently on the Russian Federation Security Council, has weighed in on the "historical scale of the personality and achievements of President Donald Trump" in an op-ed for Eurasia Daily. I have changed not a word of what he has to say. In his national ideology, Putin warns repeatedly of the dangers from the "Transnationalists" (Proekt Rossiya [Project Russia], EKSMO Press, 2014). The Russians are joined by the British with their Brexit and the French with their Front National led by populist Marine Le Pen. Populism actually straddles the Atlantic, and Donald Trump...