Free Republic

Sort of a proverb: If you look for something hard enough, you'll eventually find it — even if it's not really there. During our current moment, public discourse is obsessed with racism. In a population in excess of 300 million, there have to be some particularly hateful people. But racism is not the reason for the lower standard of living endured by the descendants of slaves who were freed by the Civil War. One of the smartest of the 300 million is a descendant of those slaves, Thomas Sowell. Dr. Sowell has written several books, one of which is titled...

It’s not clear what drove Belarusian strongman Aleksandr Lukashenko to force down a Ryanair passenger jet transiting through his national airspace last month and to kidnap dissident journalist Roman Protasevich from it. But it’s clear who’s on his side in the resultant outcry: his ambivalent patron Russian President Vladimir Putin. Even as Europe has suspended flights to Belarus, Putin has kept airspace open on the eastern side of the border and threatened retaliatory action against the European Union. The codependent, if unequal, relationship between Minsk and Moscow is now set to deepen, especially after the European Union and United States...

BERLIN - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Germany as the Biden administration presses ahead with a diplomatic charm offensive designed to woo back wary Western European allies after four years of turbulent relations under former President Donald Trump. That’s despite some lingering differences with key allies over energy and defense priorities. Biden is determined to assure Europe that Trump’s transactional approach to transatlantic ties is a thing of the past despite some significant lingering differences with core NATO allies. Those include a major dispute with Germany over the impending completion of a Russian gas pipeline and defense...

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The Supreme Court's recent decision, Fulton v. Philadelphia, is justifiably getting mixed reviews. Catholic Social Services sued the city of Philadelphia, through the Philadelphia Archdiocese, for canceling its 50-year contract with the Catholic social services agency because it refuses to certify same-sex couples as foster families for the purpose of foster care. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of CSS, finding that Philadelphia violated its First Amendment protections. The criticism is that the decision was narrow and technical, skirting the core question of how we understand religious liberty today, when it is under assault almost everywhere. According to existing precedent,...

As we learn more about CRT in public schools, parents are fighting back – but some school districts think they’re the masters, not the servants. This post wanders from the Midwest to a D.C. suburb, but the locations really have no geographic relevance because we’re witnessing the same thing playing out in public schools across America. It’s also got a lot of tweets, because they tell the story in real-time, with important videos. Stick with it, though because the bottom line is important: Parents are beginning to realize that the institutions that they fund and to which they’ve entrusted their...

Paris (AFP) - Climate change threats to life on Earth are systemic, interconnected and on a scale unprecedented in human history, the UN's climate science advisors have warned in a draft report seen exclusively by AFP. Here are some of the report's findings on impacts on nature: The report warns that after previous drastic climate shocks like the one currently facing the planet, the recovery of ecosystems, food webs and biodiversity took millions of years and involved the emergence of entirely new species. The outlook for the world's living creatures is looking perilous, the report makes clear. A dangerous mix...

No other “vaccine” in history has shown such a horrific level of serious side effects. Even though state leaders across the country have been offering massive incentives to drum up business (“Get a shot, win the lottery!”) the CDC has been reporting a continuing drop in injections since March 31st. The nonstop campaign to encourage those with “vaccine hesitancy” to roll up their sleeves is turning out to be a dismal failure. Shots have declined from 4,304,851 on April 1st, to 673,280 on June 19thst, an 84% drop from the peak. There’s even a website that lists hundreds of incentives...

More people around the world are—at least nominally—free than at any other time in history. Free from monarchs, dictators, communism, fascism. Free from serfdom, servitude, slavery, deprivation and extreme oppression. This has ironically led many to take their freedom for granted. Especially in the West. Perhaps the longer you have had something the less you cherish it. Because never before in human history have so many people willingly ceded control of their minds, souls and bodies to others. Examples of this are legion, perhaps none more illustrative and chilling than the reaction to government mandates and restrictions put in place...

The powers that control life in America had ulterior motives for insisting that a vaccine was the only defense against COVID. The fundamental question about the current Covid-19 vaccinations is not whether they are safe and effective. This, however, is the wrong question. The more telling question is why those with power are forcing vaccines on us as the only permissible solution to SARS-COV-2. A partial answer to this question comes from insights that Dr. Peter McCullough offered in his recent testimony before the Texas State HHS Committee – and what he says has to do with things other than...

There's a gator problem in Disney World and it has nothing to do with Captain Hook. To clear Disney's properties of roaming reptiles, Florida's gator trappers are coming to the rescue, and are being paid $30 for every reptile they catch. The zealous drive to rid Disney of wandering gators started after Lane Thomas Graves, 2, was attacked and killed by one of the creatures on a beach at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort in June 2016. The Washington Post reported in 2017 that Disney World was crawling with gators even before the tragic incident, noting that more than 220 alligators...

(CNN) Senate Democrats, stymied in their push to mandate a major revamp of election laws, are beginning to map out their next steps to draw attention to the issue and to put the focus on a critical battleground state: Georgia. The Democratic-led Senate Rules Committee plans to move ahead with a series of hearings, including in Georgia, calling for passage of new legislation -- as well as to spotlight Republican-led efforts at the state level to enact restrictive measures in the wake of the growth of mail-in voting during the 2020 election season. At the center of the list: Georgia,...

Vice President Kamala Harris, who was tapped in March by President Biden to lead his administration’s efforts to address a record surge in migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border has gone 91 days without visiting the region and is beginning to feel more bipartisan pressure to make a trip.

More people around the world are—at least nominally—free than at any other time in history. Free from monarchs, dictators, communism, fascism. Free from serfdom, servitude, slavery, deprivation and extreme oppression. This has ironically led many to take their freedom for granted. Especially in the West. Perhaps the longer you have had something the less you cherish it. Because never before in human history have so many people willingly ceded control of their minds, souls and bodies to others. Examples of this are legion, perhaps none more illustrative and chilling than the reaction to government mandates and restrictions put in place...

The embattled school board of Virginia’s Loudoun County cut off public comments during a fiery meeting Tuesday as residents traded barbs over new transgender policy proposals. The meeting followed weeks of protests from district parents who oppose some of the measures, which they have criticized as potential left-wing indoctrination and a violation of parental rights. The policies affect transgender student rights, privacy and restroom accommodations and would require Loudoun County Public Schools employees to use students’ preferred names or pronouns. [snip] The board meeting comes days after the district confined a Christian student to a small room during schoolwide periods...

A professional American basketball player lost 40 pounds and was forced to eat bug-infested rice during a horrifying eight-month stint in Chinese solitary confinement last year, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. Preview Fearless with Jason Whitlock, talking about the biggest names in sports media. Colin Cowherd, Dan Le Batard, Jemele Hill, and more. The player, 33-year-old Jeff Harper, had reportedly been in Shenzen for a basketball tournament in January 2020 when he got into an altercation with a Chinese resident. Harper allegedly came upon a couple fighting and stepped in to protect the woman by shoving the man —...

Dong Jingwei is a Chinese defector working with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). He served as Vice Minister of State Security in the Chinese Ministry of Defense. Before defecting, he was responsible for the counterintelligence efforts in China. He was in a position to know about all things “espionage” in China and is perhaps the highest-level Chinese defector the U.S. has ever had. Even though the legacy media is playing it down, this is a big deal. It speaks volumes that the man who knows the identity of all the Chinese spies in our country chose to defect to the...

The defection of Dong Jingwei may mark a turning point in the new cold war against China. Dong Jingwei is a Chinese defector working with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). He served as Vice Minister of State Security in the Chinese Ministry of Defense. Before defecting, he was responsible for the counterintelligence efforts in China. He was in a position to know about all things “espionage” in China and is perhaps the highest-level Chinese defector the U.S. has ever had. Even though the legacy media is playing it down, this is a big deal. It speaks volumes that the man...

One of the most curious things about America is how many of our most celebrated billionaires sound like socialists. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett love talking about how more and more of their wealth should be taxed. Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post, enabling it to wage relentless war on the Republicans. That's why it seemed a little funny for the socialists at National Public Radio to report some public hatred of Bezos as news. The headline was "Tens Of Thousands Sign Petition To Stop Jeff Bezos From Returning To Earth." On July 20, Amazon's founder and his brother Mark...

Leftists are celebrating the Supreme Court’s latest ruling, in California v Texas, to uphold the constitutionality of Obamacare. And why wouldn’t they? Sure, Obama’s flagship legislation may be little more than a leaking and rotting hull in the D.C. harbor nowadays, but progressives are clinging to it nonetheless. And in spite of 18 red states’ most recent broadsides to sink her once and for all, this latest ruling ensures that she remains afloat for a little while longer. The 7-2 decision was pretty lopsided, too, with a concurring opinion that was written by none other than arguably the leftists’ most...