Free Republic

He’s right. I noted, “I’ve seen some are using blockchain for mortgages. I assume they or others will do titles too. So what is that end game?” “Smart contracts on blockchains, particularly Ethereum, is an enormous game changer that every company will use,” he replied. I kept pushing: “I’ve seen complaints about the costs of transactions. Even with Ethereum. Isn’t it still too high, for textbooks certainly, but even for other higher valued items?” Mr. Cuban answered, “It is too expensive. But that’s specific to original Ethereum. There are changes coming with Ethereum 2.0 and immediate options with Layer 2...

The Biden administration has once again alluded to the idea of using budget procedures to get around Republican opposition to the president's infrastructure plan – with Pete Buttigieg referencing another path if negotiators advance by Memorial Day. The Transportation secretary who has been involved in the negotiations spoke Monday, after a group of Republicans roundly rejected the latest offer by the administration – a trimmed down plan that still comes in at $1.7 trillion. That offer, revealed Friday, is still far more than what a group of centrists Republicans have proposed of around $600 billion.

Joe Biden is considering letting federal employees work from home permanently or only come into the office on a part-time basis - despite fears it will lead to more delays for Americans trying to access vital government services. The Biden administration is set to announce in June guidelines that could see more staffers than ever using telework to perform their duties, according to a report released Monday. 'We anticipate this guidance will leave room for decision-making at departments and agencies, to provide maximum flexibility for defining work requirements to meet mission and workforce needs,' a senior administration official told The...

America First Legal (AFL), a group led by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, requested records from the Pentagon as part of efforts to determine whether the department was monitoring and targeting certain service members based on their political ideology. The group on Friday sent a Freedom of Information Act request asking the department to release records relating to “policies or plans to monitor or survey the social media accounts of uniformed service members, contractors, and/or civilian employees.” It also asks for information on any pilot programs, working groups, or steering committees developed or tasked to do the same. In its...

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has vowed to sign a bill into law that would punish the state's largest cities if they decide to follow Austin and 'defund' their local police departments. In a tweet sent out on Sunday, the Republican governor cited a shooting incident in Austin, where it allegedly took police officers 16 minutes to respond to the crime scene and render aid to a person who had been shot in the head. 'This is what defunding the police looks like,' Abbott wrote. 'Austin is incapable of timely responding to a victim shot in the head.'

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has revealed she is in therapy after the Capitol Riot she believes was an 'all-out attempted coup'. The Squad member told the Latino USA podcast that she is learning to 'slow down' and indicated her colleagues in the House are still too scared to talk about what happened on January 6. 'Oh yeah, I'm doing therapy but also I've just slowed down. I think the Trump administration had a lot of us, especially Latino communities, in a very reactive mode,' she said.

Xinxiang, the (Catholic) bishop, seven priests and 10 seminarians arrestedBishop Zhang Weizhu has been imprisoned on other occasions. A large number of policemen broke into the factory that served as a seminary and arrested the students and professors.Rome (AsiaNews) - In the space of just two days, almost all the ecclesiastical personnel of the apostolic prefecture of Xinxiang were wiped out with an operation by the police forces of the province of Hebei. Yesterday 21 May the bishop Msgr. Zhang Weizhu; the day before, seven priests and 10 seminarians were arrested.On the early afternoon of May 20, at least...

Throughout history, many different handgun cartridges have been introduced. And there are many reasons cartridges find the graveyard. Some have lived long lives, others have had short but great runs, and some were doomed from birth to have an unloved existence. On this list, there are handgun loads that were bad ideas from the beginning and those that never lived up to their name. But, somewhere there’s someone, his two uncles, and their mother-in-law, who care about each and every one of them. Still, it doesn’t matter. With these cartridges, a little bit of love isn’t enough. These rounds are,...

The FAA is proposing the highest civil penalty it has ever recommended, $52,500, be levied against a man who belted a Delta flight attendant on two separate altercations on one flight. The passenger got things rolling on the flight from Honolulu to Seattle last December by trying to open the cockpit door. When the flight attendant tried to stop him, he got a fist in the face. Cabin crew and passengers managed to subdue the passenger and put zip tie restraints on him. The violent passenger wasn’t finished yet, however. He managed to get one hand out of the zip...

(President Trump's Operation Warp Speed Update) (Lowest Daily Deaths (220) since March 2020 - Case numbers and New Hospitalizations continue down strongly - 15-20% per week, for the last five weeks) Total Vaccine Doses Delivered: 357,250,475 (20,694,700 J&J) Administered: 286,890,900 (10,323,402 J&J) People Vaccinated, At Least One Dose: 163,907,827 Fully Vaccinated: 130,615,797

Apple refused a request from Facebook to remove negative reviews in the App store after pro-Palestinian protesters coordinated an effort to tank ratings because of censorship of Palestinian content, NBC News reported. On Saturday, the Facebook app had a 2.3 out of five-star rating in the App store compared to a more than four-star rating last week. The largest category of ratings is one-star reviews, with many comments saying their rating is due to Facebook censoring hashtags like #FreePalestine or #GazaUnderAttack. An internal message reviewed by NBC showed that the company was very concerned about the coordinated effort to tank...

A Stanford professor explains the importance of why “Murder at Full Moon” should be on bookshelves.Long before he became one of America's most-well known novelists, Monterey County icon John Steinbeck wrote three books that were never published. Two of them he destroyed, but the other has remained in the archives, relatively unknown, until recently. The unpublished novel is titled Murder at Full Moon. It’s a murder mystery involving werewolves. “I was really surprised to discover that it wasn't some unfinished draft or some sort of just just wacky experiment. It was a complete novel,” said Stanford profession Gavin Jones....

Conservative radio host John Fredericks made waves on Monday morning while speaking about the election audits taking place across the country. While speaking with Steve Bannon on The War Room podcast, Fredericks spoke specifically about the audit taking place in Georgia. Fredericks told Bannon that there are now six election witnesses who allege 30,000 Georgia ballots were fake and should not have been counted.

Liz Cheney doesn’t get to decide what is true for the rest of us; neither, as hard as it is for some of them to believe, do the media pundits and philosopher-kings whom our society breeds like rats in a junkyard. But they sure do try, and for the most part they have gotten away with it for decades. Cheney has become the darling of the oligarchs the last several months because she first voted to impeach Donald Trump and because she then elected to condemn the Republican Party for disagreeing with her. Cheney, the lone Wyoming representative in Congress,...

KEY POINTS • Peloton will invest $400 million to build its first U.S. factory in Troy Township, Ohio. • It will break ground later this summer and hopes to be producing equipment by 2023. • Peloton expects it will bring more than 2,000 jobs to the area. • The company has seen heightened demand, and overseas shipments have been delayed.

PRINCE GEORGE COUNTY, Va. -- A mother is warning motorists against distracted driving after her son's father was killed along a construction site on I-95. Dustin Warden, 25, was hit and killed by a car in a worksite on Interstate 95 in Prince George County on February 3, 2018. The VDOT contractor was working to provide for his young family when he was killed by a distracted driver. Virginia State Police said a driver looked down, took her eyes off the road and fatally struck Warden. Each year, Warden's girlfriend Jaimie Ray wears orange in honor of him. "Pay attention...

John Fredericks reported today that Judge Amero is going to start DECERTIFYING the election in Georgia if it is determined that there are ballots that were counted twice. John Fredericks: If Judge Amero makes a declaratory judgment that counterfeit ballots were there and some of them were counted twice, that’s the possibility here. He’s going to demand that Governor Kemp hold a special session and they are going to start decertifying elections. Trump-Biden, Senate race… Knowing the amount of fraud that occurred in Georgia, this is massive!

Authorities in Belarus scrambled a fighter jet and flagged what turned out to be a false bomb alert to force a Ryanair plane to land on Sunday and then detained an opposition-minded journalist who was on board, drawing criticism from across Europe. In the dramatic incident, a Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jet escorted Ryanair-operated passenger plane flying from Athens to Lithuania. The plane was suddenly diverted to Minsk, the capital of Belarus, where authorities detained journalist Roman Protasevich. Data from the flightradar24.com website showed the plane was diverted just two minutes before it was due to cross into Lithuanian airspace. After...

The FBI has joined the hunt for the operator of some kind of high-performance drone that flew “dangerously close” to a Customs and Border Protection helicopter over southern Arizona last Feb. 9. According to report from KOLD News, the Tucson CBS affiliate, the drone buzzed the CBP helicopter near Davis Monthan Air Force Base and then followed it for an hour, going as high as 14,000 feet. That’s well beyond the capabilities of commercially available drones and it clearly has the feds concerned.

DENVER — A plan to help homeless people during the pandemic by letting them set up camp in a church parking lot has forced residents in an affluent neighborhood to question their progressive values and commitment to helping ease social ills. Advocates said unsheltered people were being left behind in Covid-19 mitigation efforts, so they devised a plan to provide safe outdoor spaces where homeless people could access meals, medical care and other services. But when Pastor Nathan Adams of Park Hill United Methodist Church announced on Easter Sunday that it would put faith into action and create a camp...