Free Republic

A federal judge agreed to appoint the same special master from the government's case against Michael Cohen in 2018 to review whether materials seized from the homes and offices of Rudy Giuliani and Victoria Toensing are subject to attorney-client privilege....

WASHINGTON—Whatever or whoever they are, they’re still out there. U.S. intelligence is after them, but its upcoming report won’t deliver any full or final truth about UFOs. The tantalizing prospect of top government intel finally weighing in—after decades of conspiracy theories, TV shows, movies and winking jokes by presidents—will instead yield a more mundane reality that’s not likely to change many minds on any side of the issue.

Facebook announced Friday that former President Donald Trump is suspended from its platform for two years. “We are suspending his accounts for two years, effective from the date of the initial suspension on January 7 this year,” Nick Clegg, vice president of global affairs for Facebook, said in a blog post.

China is often described as the next superpower to top America within the next few decades. At first glance, such an assertion makes sense. The country’s vast geography, natural resources, rich history, and tech-savvy populace puts it in a position to thrive in the 21st century. However, China’s rise as a superpower is not one of an overnight success, nor is it filled with pretty rainbows. Indeed, China is one of the world’s longest lasting civilizations, with cultural and political traditions that have been passed down to succeeding generations effortlessly. With such a vast history, China had gone through its...

Those of us who watch the world of politics, the media, and pop-culture have noticed a shocking change in the past five years. It is tempting to assume that the main change is in the outright acceptance of Marxism. By the end of the Obama administration, the Left became comfortable advocating blatantly socialist positions, to the point that the current Democratic party platform now advocates positions as authoritarian as any Marxist country. But even that should not be such a shock, because the Democratic Party has been trending that way for a century. The massive growth in government, the disregard...

Hoping to cut through a crowded field and capture supporters of former President Donald Trump, Republican Mike Carey this week is campaigning with former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. *** Carey is running in the Republican primary for the party nomination in a special election to fill the U.S. House seat vacated by Steve Stivers. Stivers, a Republican, stepped down early to become chief executive of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce. A dozen Republicans and two Democrats are running for the seat.***

California, with its relatively large tax burden compared to other states, has seen a taxpayer exodus in recent years and, along with it, billions in taxable gross income.State-to-state migration data recently released by the Internal Revenue Service shows that California lost an estimated net 70,534 households—or 165,355 taxpayers and their dependents—in years 2017-2018, with those fleeing taking around $8.8 billion in net adjusted gross income with them.Interstate migration flows are influenced by a number of factors, including retirement, job opportunities, and housing costs. Brandon Ristoff, a policy analyst with the California Policy Center, told Center Square that the flight of...

A cache of the email correspondence of Dr. Anthony Fauci released this past week confirms virtually every criticism of the man uttered during the COVID pandemic. Almost every statement he made regarding the virus was either misleading or outright false. While publicly pooh-poohing the idea that the coronavirus originated in China's Wuhan Lab, Fauci's emails reveal that he was engaged in a deliberate disinformation campaign to discredit this possibility "because it could reflect poorly on the Chinese government" and "could endanger the crucial 'gain of function' work they were conducting to upgrade the virus' ability to infect humans." Fauci's attempt...

If you’re among those of us who aren’t tribally invested in Covid politics but would like good information about when life will resume as normal, chances are you’re interested in herd immunity. You’re likely not interested in having to rely on the Internet Archive for good information on herd immunity. Alas, it’s become a go-to place for retrieving, as it were, previously published information on herd immunity that became inconvenient post-vaccine and then virtually Memory-Holed.Over the past 15 months, the litany of Experts’ True Facts and Science regarding various aspects of SARS-CoV-2 has changed more often than the starting lineup...

Are you ready for a new Cleveland Indians?That is to say, are you ready for a new name?As I covered in December, the ball club decided to ax the Indians for something less…ax-worthy.Over the summer, the organization released a statement about responsibility:We are committed to making a positive impact in our community and embrace our responsibility to advance social justice and equality. Our organization fully recognizes our team name is among the most visible ways in which we connect with the community.We have had ongoing discussions organizationally on these issues. The recent unrest in our community and our country has...

...We are able to sell smartphones, sodas and cars at high prices to almost every American. But we are struggling to give life-saving shots away for free to the same people. That’s a marketing failure that must be corrected.The federal government is spending nearly $2 billion to encourage vaccine uptake. That’s more than double Coca-Cola’s U.S. marketing budget. But Coca-Cola has been building a brand for more than a century. COVID-19 vaccines are new and need more, and better, marketing.... We wouldn’t all buy an iPhone if the Vice President told us to, and vaccines are no different. The American...

SAN DIEGO, CA (June 4, 2021) — Today, Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) announced that Judge Roger T. Benitez of the Southern District of California has issued an opinion in Miller v. Bonta (previously Miller v. Becerra), holding that California’s tyrannical ban on so-called “assault weapons” is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. The opinion, along with other filings in this case, can be viewed at AssaultWeaponLawsuit.com. In 2019, FPC developed and filed Miller v. Becerra, a federal Second Amendment challenge to California’s Assault Weapons Control Act (AWCA) ban on common semiautomatic arms with certain characteristics, including those with ammunition magazines that...

Microsoft blocked its search engine, Bing, from returning image and video results for the phrase “tank man” – a reference to the iconic image of a lone protester facing down tanks during the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square – on Friday, the 32nd anniversary of the military crackdown. Users reported that no results were shown for the search query in countries including the US, Germany, Singapore, France and Switzerland, according to Reuters and Vice News. References to the pro-democracy protest movement have long been censored in the People’s Republic of China (PCR), where the government maintains strict control over the...

Wait for it.....

A-list Hollywood celebrities, including John Legend, Julia Roberts, and Lin-Manuel Miranda, a former President turned Netflix film producer in Barack Obama, Democrat politicians, left-wing groups, and entire multimedia networks and studios from MTV and VH1 to WarnerMeida are pushing gun control with the #WearOrange campaign this weekend.

The Nigerian government says it has "indefinitely suspended" Twitter's operations in the country, the Ministry of Information and Culture announced in a statement on Friday. "The Federal Government has suspended, indefinitely, the operations of the microblogging and social networking service, Twitter, in Nigeria," it read. The statement, which was posted on the ministry's official Twitter handle on Friday evening, accused the American social media company of allowing its platform to be used "for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria's corporate existence." The suspension comes two days after Twitter deleted a tweet by President Muhammadu Buhari that was widely perceived...

On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show,” White House Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci stated that the recent criticisms of him are “really very much an attack on science,” and “the thread going through what’s happening now is very much an anti-science approach.” Host Rachel Maddow asked, “Am I building you up to be thicker-skinned about this than you are? Are you actually worried about this new sort of re-upping of attacks on you?” Fauci responded, “Well, I’m concerned about that, more because it’s really very much an attack on science, I think, Rachel.” He then discussed his...

Annette shows the spider she found in her garage that she trapped inside a glass jar. Her friend has her phone camera out and pointed at the spider. They find out that every time Annette's friend taps the phone screen to focus, the spider inside the jar moves and flinches like she is directly touching it in this creepy clip from Riverside, California on May 27. https://youtu.be/rheEifSjmOY

Continuing on from last time, Greek drama rooted itself in the same acceptance of human limitation as did Greek myth and history. I don't have space for a proper survey here, but we can at least examine a representative sample or two. Let's start with the most famous Greek tragedy of all—Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. It's been big for 2400 years. No less a theatre critic than Aristotle rated it the best tragedy of all time (as of the 4th century BC). Let's see what it suggests about the worldview conveyed by the Greek playwrights. When the play opens, the...