Free Republic

A consulting architect on UCSB’s Design Review Committee has quit his post in protest over the university’s proposed Munger Hall project, calling the massive, mostly-windowless dormitory plan “unsupportable from my perspective as an architect, a parent, and a human being.” In his October 25 resignation letter to UCSB Campus Architect Julie Hendricks, Dennis McFadden ― a well-respected Southern California architect with 15 years on the committee ― goes scorched earth on the radical new building concept, which calls for an 11-story, 1.68-million-square-foot structure that would house up to 4,500 students, 94 percent of whom would not have windows in their...

Joe Biden has chosen a former clerk of the late pro-abortion Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to challenge a Texas law that is saving thousands of unborn babies from abortion. Bloomberg Law reports the U.S. Senate confirmed Elizabeth Prelogar as solicitor general on Thursday, and her first case before the Supreme Court will be the Texas heartbeat law on Monday. Prelogar, an Idaho native, previously served as a clerk for Supreme Court Justices Ginsburg and Elena Kagan, as well as U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland when he was a federal judge, according to USA Today. The 41-year-old is a...

DEL RIO, TX—After weeks of being placed on leave, Texas border patrol agents are finally returning to the border on their horses. This time, however, they will be carrying giant sacks of money instead of their leather reins. "This is our way of showing who we are as Americans," said the newly appointed Border Patrol Chief Zamby Fiddlepoot. "Our agents have all been given 320 hours of anti-racist and sensitivity training. We also chemically castrated them. They will just hand out hugs and money now." The newly trained agents will patrol the border day and night, giving $420,000 to every...

I had thought we were over the whole "stay safe" thing, finally, now that we are over 15 months past the whole "15 Days to Flatten the Curve" thing. But apparently not. It appears to have made a resurgence. Perhaps this is because the vaxxed are worried their vaxxes are wearing off and it hasn't been their turn yet at the boosters. Today I was asked by a client if I was "staying safe" and told by another at the end of our call to "stay safe." I can't tell you how much this phrase grates me, but I can't...

ADAMS COUNTY, Colo. — Adams County filed a lawsuit Thursday against its elected county treasurer, claiming that “tens of millions of dollars” managed by the official has not been reconciled with the treasurer’s banking software system. Treasurer Lisa Culpepper is named in the 12-page complaint filed Thursday in Adams County District Court. The county seeks to gain access to the treasurer’s accounts and “ultimately ensure the statutory obligations” of the office are being met. “The Treasurer’s Office serves as the bank of Adams County, and by law the accounts must be open to inspection,” the county said in a news...

Ice Cube has lost out on a $9million payday as he departed comedy film Oh Hell No after refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine. The 52-year-old West Coast hip-hop legend - real name O'Shea Jackson Sr. - exited Sony's comedy after declining a request from producers to get vaccinated according to a Friday report from The Hollywood Reporter. The Friday actor would have starred opposite comedy legend Jack Black in the project which was announced back in June. Sony, Cube's rep, and his agency WME all declined comment to the publication. The film - which is being produced by Matt...

On this date in 1618, schemer, explorer, and lover Walter Raleigh fell permanently out of favor. One of the biggest wheels of Elizabethan England, Raleigh (who also rendered his name Rawleigh, Rawley, and most commonly, Ralegh) charmed his way into the Queen’s inner circle, and possibly her pants, and was even thought to be a contender for her hand. In between gorging on royal monopolies, scribbling poetry, popularizing tobacco, and introducing the potato to Ireland [allegedly], Raleigh got his New World on by attempting to colonize Virginia,* helping fund it with privateering operations against England’s rivals in the land-grab game....

QAnon promoter David Trent has spent the last four years telling his tens of thousands of followers that the Democrats are pedophiles working as part of a global child sex trafficking ring run by the world’s elite. What he didn’t tell them was that he was the real pedophile: In 1999, he was found guilty of coercing an 8-year-old boy into sexual acts three years earlier, and spent almost five years in prison. Trent’s followers remained oblivious, because he was convicted under his real name, David Todeschini.

A popular biography of the legendary jazz pianist, composer and arranger gives a glimpse of how art can serve the pursuit of holiness.Among the popular biographies of notable Catholics in Liturgical Press’ series “People of God” are many household names: Dorothy Day, Flannery O’Connor, Oscar Romero, Thomas Merton, Sister Helen Prejean and, of course, Pope Francis. Its latest subject, Mary Lou Williams, is far lesser known — both as a legendary jazz pianist-composer and a devout Catholic. Williams, who died in 1981, believed jazz was “healing to the soul” and found a welcome home among churchmen and religious sisters who...

Deputies are crediting a smear of red sauce and a pizza box with helping to nab a man accused of breaking into at least two cars in Deltona. SNIP Deputies said they found what appeared to be marinara on the interior of a car door. A few houses down the road, an empty pizza box was found near another car that had been broken into, records show. Investigators said a 9mm handgun and an old concealed weapons permit were taken from this vehicle. As deputies canvased the neighborhood, they said they spoke with a woman who said Smith, an acquaintance...

“Then the king of Assyria sent…Rabshakeh…with a great army against Jerusalem, to King Hezekiah” (2 Kings 18:17, NKJV). The Assyrians represent today’s “guides to prosperity.” The devil will parade his army around your walls, people who are powerful, beautiful and seemingly successful in all they undertake. When you see them, you will feel walled in like a prisoner. The first trick of the man of sin is to question a believer’s commitment to trust the Lord fully. Rabshakeh, whose name means “drunken envoy,” was the king’s ambassador. He mocked the godly, saying, “What confidence is this in which you trust?...

Two complete statues of a woman and a man, along with the head of a child, were found at the site of the old St Mary's Norman church in Stoke Mandeville, Buckinghamshire, south east England, while archeologists were excavating a ditch around the foundations of an Anglo-Saxon tower. As experts working on the High Speed 2 (HS2) project dug down, they found the three "stylistically Roman" busts, Two of the busts were made up of a head and torso which had been split apart, which experts say "is not entirely unusual," because statues were commonly vandalized before being torn down....

As much of eastern Australia was settling in for another Friday night in lockdown earlier this month, an unlikely prescription drug importation ring popped up in a dark corner of the internet. "Hi all!," wrote Gabz, a user on Telegram – the encrypted messaging app that has become a haunt for anti-lockdown protesters and COVID-19 vaccination sceptics during the pandemic. It was 6:10pm on October 1, and Gabz had just created a Telegram channel called "IM Packs" for people in Sydney interested in sourcing the unproven coronavirus treatments Ivermectin and Doxycycline. "Please take note this is a private group and...

A spokesperson for Terry McAuliffe’s campaign is being accused of posting racist tweets in 2012. "#TweetLikeAGuy going out with da nigguhs," a tweet posted in 2012 from Renzo Olivari, a McAuliffe spokesperson, said. Another tweet from 2012 reads, "#ThingsBlackFolksNeverThrowAway broken lamps." "Terry McAuliffe’s comms guy kinda sounds like a racist," GOP operative Arthur Schwartz posted on Twitter Friday unearthing the tweets from Olivari.

Weight-watching tyrant Kim Jong Un has reportedly come up with an unexpected solution to North Korea’s food crisis — getting his hungry citizens to eat ornamental black swans. The Hermit Kingdom has been pushing the ornamental birds as a protein-packed superfood while opening industrial-scale breeding plants. “Black swan meat is delicious and has medicinal value,” the ruling party newspaper Rodong Sinmun said on Monday as it pushed the bird meat, which is rarely eaten anywhere in the world.

According to police, Donna Marino, 63, charged with larceny, told her husband he had Alzheimer's to "prevent him from going to the bank." Police arrested a 63-year-old woman, who they allege, over decades, forged her husband's signature on legal documents to defraud him of $600,000 in pension and Social Security checks and other monies. wife, Donna Marino, began "stealing his money" in 1999, and that she had "controlled all of his finances during their time together and that he had no idea that she was stealing from him," according to Murgo. "Marino would forge her husband's signature on his pension...

Explanation: Spooky shapes seem to haunt this dusty expanse, drifting through the night in the royal constellation Cepheus. Of course, the shapes are cosmic dust clouds visible in dimly reflected starlight. Far from your own neighborhood, they lurk above the plane of the Milky Way at the edge of the Cepheus Flare molecular cloud complex some 1,200 light-years away. Over 2 light-years across and brighter than most of the other ghostly apparitions, vdB 141 or Sh2-136 is also known as the Ghost Nebula, seen at the right of the starry field of view. Inside the nebula are the telltale signs...

State Rep. Becky Nutt is the latest lawmaker to leave the Legislature, with a surprise resignation announcement Thursday. The Clifton Republican, who was first elected in 2016, wrote in a letter to House Speaker Rusty Bowers, R-Mesa, that Nov. 1 would be her last day. She did not say why she was leaving. "It has been my great honor to serve with you, sir, and to be part of your leadership team these last three years," she wrote.

Tom Hanks awkwardly put his foot in his mouth as he questioned 'where's the groom?' while crashing a same-sex wedding on Santa Monica beach over the weekend - before quickly realising his error. The guests burst into laughter as the Oscar winner, 65, asked to take a picture with the bride and groom after accidentally walking into their ceremony, only to realise it was a same-sex union. After realising his mistake, Tom shouted 'Oh get out, my stock just exploded!', before putting his arms around the two brides, Diciembre and Tashia Farries, to pose for a photograph. The newlyweds later...

Sounding board for Covid vaccine opinions.