Free Republic

A man who engaged in non-violent protest at the Capitol on January 6 was sentenced to eight months in prison for obstructing an official proceeding, while hundreds charged in violent riots last summer have seen their cases dropped. Paul Allard Hodgkins, 38, of Tampa, Florida, was sentenced Monday after he pleaded guilty to a single felony count of obstructing an official proceeding, after he was identified in videos and photos inside the Senate chamber carrying a Trump 2020 flag. While the count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, and prosecutors asked for 18 months, Hodgkins — who...

Humans are terrible at finding bats and birds killed by wind turbines. Dogs are great at it. Kayla Fratt began preparing for her summer job in March, when a package of frozen bat carcasses arrived for her in the mail. Well, actually, the bats were for her border collies, Barley and Niffler, and it is really their summer job too. They needed to learn the scent of a dead bat, because they would be spending three months on wind farms, looking for bats killed by spinning turbines. To teach them, Fratt, who worked as a dog trainer before getting into...

Deer are the deadliest animal in America, causing about 200 human deaths per year — as well as 30,000 injuries — when they collide with cars. That's a tragedy; it's also a market failure. Why it matters: Rather than having deer running around and killing people, it would be much better — and much more delicious — were we to be killing the deer and eating them. The big picture: Deer populations are exploding, causing enormous human and environmental damage. They eat saplings that would otherwise become carbon-absorbing trees; they destroy native plants that would otherwise house birds' nests; and,...

This picture shows a brown bear on the loose in Sapporo, Hokkaido prefecture, Japan, on June 18, 2021 Olympic COVID-19 rules mean spectators are banned, but one furry fan still tried to sneak into the Fukushima softball venue hosting the first sports event of the Tokyo Games: a bear. The animals are common across Japan and regularly spark frantic hunts when they venture into towns, where they have been known to attack and even kill local residents. A Fukushima police spokesman confirmed the intruder was spotted last night and then again Wednesday morning, just hours before the opening pitch in...

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It is now reasonable to draw a number of conclusions from the Wuhan or CCP virus. Conclusions which could also assist in relation not only to this but also future pandemics.Any such conclusions should ideally emerge from reliable sources, seen through the prism of traditional principles and values, and buttressed by a good dose of common sense.Reliable sources are those media sources that are seen to adhere to the first duty of the press, as was well explained by Robert Lowe, the Viscount Sherbrooke, in The Times in 1851. This, he wrote, is to obtain the earliest and most correct...

Bette Midler will receive one of the country’s highest cultural distinctions when The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., hands out its annual awards, elevating the anti-conservative singer-actress into the national pantheon of the country’s top performing artists. Midler has been active as an anti-conservative activist, using her massive social media following to launch attacks on Republicans, conservative figures, and the United States itself. She has even championed physical violence against certain conservative politicians, including Donald Trump and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). Midler’s attacks on conservatives have been nasty and profane in nature. Last year, she told then-White House press secretary...

The jobs market’s progress appeared to stall last week. New claims for unemployment benefits soared by 51,000 to 419,000 for the week ended July 17, the Department of Labor said Thursday. Economists had forecast 350,000 new claims, a decline of 10,000 from the previous week’s initial estimate of 360,000. That estimate was revised up to 368,000. The four-week moving average, which smoothes out week-to-week volatility and is considered by many to be a more reliable gauge of the health of the labor market, rose by 750 to 385,250. Continuing claims, which are reported with a week’s delay, fell 29,999 to...

Justice, Almost Get Butt-Kebabbed A black man who tried to rob an Asian lady of her purse was surrounded by locals in Brooklyn Chinatown. He was pushed and smacked and eventually, his pants fall down, exposing his bare backside. An Asian local actually tries to ram-rod a broomstick in his derrière. The video later shows that many Chinese people immediately surrounded the man. Once that happened, they attacked the man with a broomstick and pushed him across the street. Video below: (video uploaded on the site) This incident comes after 58-year-old Than Htwe was placed in a coma and underwent...

A federal judge blocked a law in West Virginia this week that banned transgender girls from participating in female teams. The judge ruled on Wednesday that the Mountain State cannot block transgender girls from playing on female sports teams. Gov. Jim Justice signed the bill in law on April 28, which initially banned transgender girls and women from participating in public school sports consistent with their gender identity. The ruling marks the third federal court decision in the past 30 days to block anti-transgender laws from going into effect. "At this point, I have been provided with scant evidence that...

On Tuesday morning, when I went to use my Twitter account, I was greeted by a different screen than normal. It contained one single tweet of mine, beneath which was a large red button labeled “Remove.” I had violated Twitter guidelines, because of which I was blocked from using my account. The two options were to remove the offending tweet or to appeal. I chose to appeal.To give the relevant background, over the weekend, I had posted a comment on both Twitter and Facebook, saying, “To those who are outraged over the fact that many Americans still choose not to...

The Lambda COVID variant has spread across the U.S. with hundreds of cases being recorded by doctors this month. C.37, also known as the Lambda variant, was first detected in Peru in December 2020 and it has since spread to dozens of countries, including the U.S. While it has quickly spread across South America since it was first detected, it's unclear whether it poses more of a threat than other variants, including Delta.

Democrat Texas state Rep. Donna Howard, who appeared in the now infamous photo of maskless Dem lawmakers on a private jet, faced ridicule after she called for “universal mask-wearing.” Howard was one of 60 Texas Democrats who boarded a jet to Washington, D.C., to skip out on a vote on Texas’ election reform bill. A photo of the plane cabin shows Howard and several other passengers not wearing masks. Following the trip, where they met with U.S. officials, Howard along with 5 of her colleagues tested positive for COVID-19. She subsequently tried to deflect criticism by remarking, “TSA exempts private,...

The media company started by LeBron James is blasting the ban on political protests on the medal stand during the Olympics. James’ company, The Uninterrupted, is accusing the International Olympics Committee of “silencing athletes” with its Rule 50. “Rule 50 is a rule in the Olympic Charter that bans any kind of demonstration and prohibits any opinionated political, religious or racial propaganda at the Olympic site in 2021,” a Twitter message from the group says. “The only time an athlete is able to speak freely is at press conferences and to the media, but not on the Olympic podium when...

Apparently, Secretary of State Antony Blinken doesn’t mind playing the chump for Xi Jinping. He humiliated himself by getting slapped by the Chinese delegation in his first high diplomatic meeting in Alaska. Blinken let the government that holds Uighur Muslims in concentrations camps (where they harvest organs, forcibly sterilize women, and force people to work in slave labor situations) make a fool of him. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has destroyed the environment in Tibet and ruined the native culture. The CCP is also diverting water from southeast Asia; this will have horrific impacts on the people living there.The CCP...

Top Georgia Republicans fear infighting stoked by former President Donald Trump is poised to upend party efforts to defend the governor’s mansion and recapture a crucial Senate seat. As Trump ally Herschel Walker moves toward a Senate bid that would pair him with Gov. Brian Kemp, a foe of the former president, at the top of the ticket, Republicans worry that the party is on track to field a divided 2022 slate. Walker has publicly chastised Kemp over his handling of the 2020 election, echoing Trump’s complaints — criticism that the governor rejects. Those differences could make working together near...

On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The ReidOut,” Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) said that “misinformation that is allowing the virus to persist” is “a national security concern” and touted legislation, the BIO Defense Act, that would “put the vice president in charge of that. It would have also a Cabinet-level officer in the National Security Council dealing with this.”

As more information trickles out on the assassination of Haiti President Jovenel Moise, there are details that point to the issue of narcotics trafficking in South Florida and issues surrounding how the cartels use Haiti as a shipping and transportation transfer hub. That old investigative phrase of "follow the money," and who benefits from the death of Moise, will eventually reveal who did this and why. However, there are significant details available today that answer some of these questions while creating additional ones. It is reasonable to believe the United States government knows exactly what happened in Haiti, who is...

"Freedom Day" has come and gone, and yet the small businesses and retail shops flanking London's retail district are still struggling as the number of white-collar workers flocking to the City and other parts of the city remains well below its pre-pandemic level. One reason is that British workers are digging in their heels and demanding a pay raise or some other form of compensation in exchange for returning to the office. According to surveys from YouGov, and Locatee, office workers want pay raises equivalent to the cost of some annual railway season tickets to return to their desks full-time...

Attorney General Merrick Garland is heading to his hometown of Chicago on Thursday to signal the Biden administration’s commitment to reining in the surge of gun violence plaguing many of America’s biggest cities. Garland is set to unveil a set of new gun “strike forces” aimed at shutting down the pipelines of guns being illegally trafficked into urban centers, but his visit is sure to be received with some skepticism as just the latest policy pronouncement from Washington. Shootings in the Windy City have seemed out of control for years, particularly in the summer. Last weekend, 56 people were shot...