Free Republic

Failings by MI5 and the police contributed to the deaths of two graduates who were killed by a convicted terrorist, a jury has found. Cambridge University alumni Saskia Jones and Jack Merritt were stabbed by Usman Khan at a rehabilitation event at Fishmongers' Hall in November 2019. Khan had been released from prison 11 months previously, the inquests at London's Guildhall heard. The jury concluded that both victims had been unlawfully killed. Jurors found there had been unacceptable management and a lack of accountability in the oversight of Khan, who had been allowed to travel on his own to London....

Before Mitt Romney became a thorn in the side of the Republican Party, he was in a similar position as Donald Trump. After the 2012 election, almost everything Romney predicted would happen under a second Obama term—happened. Russia ran amok, Obamacare was a disaster, premiums rose and hurt the middle class, and job growth was anemic. Now, we have gas lines shutting down in the eastern United States, anemic job growth, China going rogue, Russia running amok again, inflation rising, another war in Gaza, and Joe is out getting chocolate chip ice cream. The "I told you so" narrative is...

Gandhi once famously said, “BE the change that you wish to see in the world.” Those words have never held more significance for me than they do now. I believe that people who hold traditional values have made a grave mistake by falling to the temptation to react to the evil we see all around us. Of course, there is a need to defend our values, and to point out lies and hypocrisy where we see it. As an American, it is clear as day that we are under unprecedented and unrelenting attack. This site has made this defense on...

A new study says that black people living in most US cities are subject to double the level of heat stress as their white counterparts. The researchers say the differences were not explained by poverty but by historic racism and segregation. As a result, people of colour more generally, live in areas with fewer green spaces and more buildings and roads. These exacerbate the impacts of rising temperatures and a changing climate. Cities are well known magnifiers of a warmer climate. The surface urban heat island effect is the technical term for the impact that the buildings, roads and infrastructure...

The Attorney General of Montana just issued a ruling that, while technically limited to Montana, could have substantial implications for the way Attorneys General and other officials in others states view Critical Race Theory training, often referred to as “antiracism” training. The ruling addresses many common tactics in such trainings, including segretating people by race, race-shaming, ascribing certain attributes to people based on race, and ” claims that by virtue of race, a person is inherently racist or inclined to oppress others.” There are tactics documented at our CriticalRace.org website. In a 25-page Opinion (pdf.) which says it carries the...

...The theory that COVID-19 may have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology has steadily gained momentum in the media and the scientific community since early January when New York magazine published a lengthy expose detailing the legitimacy of the theory. The straw that broke the camel’s back came Sunday after The Wall Street Journal reported that three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology were hospitalized in November 2019 with COVID-like symptoms, according to a U.S. intelligence report obtained by the outlet. Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler, who said in May 2020 it was “virtually impossible for this virus...

Images taken by Ingenuity's navigation camera during the flight. (NASA/JPL-Caltech) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- During its sixth flight on the red planet, the Ingenuity helicopter experienced a little mishap - but, thanks to planning and built-in failsafes, it survived to fly another day. This is actually great news, because it demonstrates the multiple ways in which the vehicle is robust to errors - as well as giving engineers here at home an opportunity to patch them. The event took place on 22 May 2021 - the 91st Martian day of the Perseverance mission. The sky was clear and bright, perfect for Ingenuity's task:...

A judge has ruled in favor of Alan Dershowitz and ordered the famed civil liberties attorney's $300 million lawsuit against CNN to move forward. Professor Dershowitz won a procedural victory in court that will allow his massive lawsuit to proceed to depositions.

The 1958 book by Cleon Skousen, The Naked Communist , set forth 45 goals communists need to achieve to take over the United States without firing a shot. Some of them are outdated and immaterial. Some are debatable. Let’s see how many commie goals have been achieved. 7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N. DONE. The United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758 made Communist China a member of the U.N. Today, China is one of five permanent members. 15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States. DONE. Communists were...

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said that it was “too early to say” if the end of COVID-19 restrictions will come on June 21st as scheduled. Mr Hancock made the remarks amidst the latest government figures revealing that up to three-quarters of new Chinese coronavirus cases are the Indian variant. Another mutant strain has also been found in the UK, first identified in Thailand, the government says. “It is too early now to say, yet, whether we can take the full step four on June 21. I desperately want us to, but we will only do that if it’s safe.” Mr...

A pair of technology trade groups are pushing back against Governor Ron DeSantis after he signed a measure (SB 7072) on Monday that aims to block companies like Facebook and Twitter from censoring politicians from their platforms. A top priority for DeSantis during the 2021 Legislative Session, the new law gives the Florida Elections Commission the power to fine media companies up to $250,000 a day for “de-platforming” any candidate for statewide office and $25,000 per day for de-platforming candidates for non-statewide offices. The lawsuit alleges that the new law violates the Constitution, noting that it infringes on the First...

Obviously, I am a Dr. Fauci skeptic. I often agree with his nemesis, Sen. Rand Paul. Fauci recently admitted that Paul was correct in saying that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology. I reported the study that Paul seemed to be referring to on May 13. It not only specifies funding from NIAID, but it also states explicitly in the acknowledgments:Experiments with the full-length and chimeric SHC014 recombinant viruses were initiated and performed before the GOF [Gain-of-function] research funding pause and have since been reviewed and approved for continued study by the NIH. The...

A bid to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana for recreational use moved one step away from the governor’s desk Tuesday, after a Senate committee narrowly agreed to send the proposal to the full Senate for debate. The proposal by Democratic Rep. Cedric Glover, of Shreveport, would make possession of up to 14 grams of marijuana — a half-ounce — a misdemeanor carrying a fine up to $100, even for repeat offenses, and end the possibility of jail time. “Possession of small amounts of marijuana should not lead you to jail, and it should not lead you to becoming...

China was the only major economy to grow during 2020, when the rest of the world—including the United States— suffered economically from the COVID-19 pandemic. China’s perception of the U.S.’s position is summed up by a frequent refrain of Chinese leaders: “the East is rising, and the West is in decline.” Further making their views toward the U.S. clear, China's most senior foreign policy official recently told senior U.S. officials that the U.S. isn't qualified to "speak from a position of strength" when criticizing China. This comes at a time when China has laid out plans to become a global...

American tire manufacturer Goodyear once created tired illuminated car tires that glowed from the inside thanks to multiple lightbulbs. In the early 1960s, Goodyear employees William Larson and Anthony Finelli worked together to create the world’s first neothane automobile tires. Neothane was just a fancier name for urethane, the chemical compound invented three decades earlier by German chemist Otto Bayer. Unlike traditional tires, which required multiple layers of rubber as well as fabric and a laborious process to manufacture, neothane tires were grippy, squishy, responsive and easy to make. But the advantages didn’t end there. Neothane tires were also translucent,...

Florida has no plans to exempt cruise lines from its law that forbids businesses from asking customers for proof of vaccination, and cruise ships in violation of the law could be fined $5,000 per passenger who is asked to provide such proof, according to Gov. Ron DeSantis' office. The statement comes one day after Celebrity Cruises became the first line to get CDC approval to resume big-ship cruising from U.S. waters, with the Celebrity Edge slated to depart from Fort Lauderdale on June 26 on a seven-day Caribbean sailing. In an email, DeSantis press secretary, Christina Pushaw, said that the...

How much trouble are we in when progressives broadcast how to beat them and we still won't do it? There's an interesting article in The New Yorker and this paragraph stands tall above all the rest: This insurgent approach has caused establishment figures from both parties to refer to Justice Democrats and its ilk as the Tea Party of the left. Max Berger, an early employee, said, “If that’s supposed to mean that we’re equivalent to white-supremacist dipshits who want to blow up the government or move toward authoritarianism, then I would consider that both an insult and a really...

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) took several jabs at former President Trump during an address at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Thursday, lamenting that voters "will not be impressed by the sight of yes-men and flatterers flocking to Mar-a-Lago." Ryan also referred to the end of Trump's presidency as "dishonorable and disgraceful" "Even worse, it was horrifying to see a presidency come to such a dishonorable and disgraceful end," Ryan said, adding that the 2020 elections had left Republicans "powerless" in Washington.

A bill with broad bipartisan support that was supposed to sail through the U.S. Senate instead divided the upper chamber severely late Thursday night as Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) forced senators to take long procedural votes late into the evening. The bill, called the Endless Frontier Act, is meant as a U.S. counter to the Chinese Communist Party’s agenda and would fund research institutions in America to the tune of more than $100 billion. Thursday’s late-night voting delay also prolonged the highly anticipated vote on the House-passed January 6 commission bill, which was slated to happen right after the vote...

I've always thought the green energy movement was BS. I read, early on, about birds dying because of solar "farms" and wind turbines. Reading about it again today as I started to write, I learned that the number of birds killed by large solar farms and wind turbines now equals an astronomical 2.9 billion. The process of procuring energy with either of these means seems recklessly cruel to wildlife."Green" power is also inefficient. The need for backup power to use when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow means costly firing up of alternative means of power or...