Free Republic

Our friend Stephen Hunter describes the column below as “one more Alec Baldwin piece, this from a film critic and acknowledged firearms expert.” Steve was the Pulitzer-Prize winning film critic of the Washington Post and is the author of the Bob Lee Swagger novels. His new novel is TARGETED, which will be published in January by Atria/Emily Bestler Books and is available for pre-order now. Steve writes:What did Alec Baldwin know of the firearm with which he killed Halyna Hutchins? The answer, based on his filmography, is not much.Whether intentionally or by chance, he has had a remarkably gun-free career...

A Virginia mother yanked her children out of public school after her 6-year-old asked if she was “born evil” for being white — something the young girl purportedly picked up in her history class. The Loudoun County woman, whose identity wasn’t immediately clear, detailed her concerns against critical race theory during an impassioned plea at a Loudon County Public Schools board meeting on Oct. 26, video shows. “My children are now in private school and are thriving,” the woman told the board, claiming the “swift and uncompromising” political agenda of the district’s former and current administration forced her hand.

The B-1B Lancer bomber flew Saturday over the Strait of Hormuz... the Red Sea, its narrow Bab el-Mandeb Strait and Egypt’s Suez Canal. Bahrain, Egypt and Saudi Arabia also took part. The B-1B came from the 37th Bomb Squadron based at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota.

<p>Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, says he will sell $6 billion worth of Tesla stock and donate the proceeds to the United Nations’ food agency if it could show how the money would solve world hunger.</p><p>His statement came after U.N. World Food Programme Executive Director David Beasley challenged Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and other billionaires in a CNN interview last week, calling on them to step up on “a one-time basis” to help end starvation.</p>

Nine Americans were arrested for no apparent reason at a public Executive Council (EC) meeting that was run by the Governor. Tthe Governor must justify why nine Americans were arrested at his EC meeting. He also needs to explain why he ordered an army of State Troopers to be present, and why he is turning NH into a Police State? There was an excessive number of 32 State Troopers that were visible during the EC meeting. It was a disturbing and unnecessary show of force that borders on paranoia, and something that would be expected in Nazi Germany or Communist...

Virginia’s Democrat gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe abruptly canceled his event in Virginia Beach the day before the election, sparking further speculation on the degree of behind the scenes panic within the McAuliffe campaign less than 24 hours before polls open. McAuliffe, who spent the weekend campaigning in Northern Virginia, and his Republican challenger Glenn Youngkin, who has been surging in the polls in the race’s final stretch, had events scheduled in Virginia Beach on Monday. However, a spokesperson for McAuliffe said the Democrat’s Hampton Roads event has since been canceled.

Already remarkable for being the world’s second Westinghouse AP1000 reactor to be brought online, Shandong Nuclear Power Co.’s Haiyang nuclear power plant is pioneering two significant aspects of nuclear diversification in China: district heating and desalination. In 2009, China only had 11 operational nuclear power reactors—three that used domestic technologies, two were Russian technology, four were French technologies, and the remainder are Canadian-designed. It now operates 50 units—a combined 50 GW. The heating project alone could translate to an “annual savings of about 6.62 million tons of standard coal,” it said. The company projects that by 2030, Haiyang and other...

Key Democratic Senator Joe Manchin is demanding more time to get "clarity" on the economic impact of the social spending package put forward by President Biden and other Democrats. In remarks to reporters on Monday, Manchin blasted House progressives for holding the bipartisan infrastructure bill hostage. "As more of the real details outlined in the basic framework are released, what I see are shell games, budget gimmicks that make the real cost of the so-called $1.75 trillion bill estimated to be almost twice that amount, if the full time is run out, if you extended it permanently," Manchin told reporters...

Kavitha Kasargod-Staub was looking forward to sending her two kids back to elementary school this fall. After a year of remote learning in Washington, D.C., her kids spent the summer attending day camp. “I’m certainly not in the group of people who avoid all Covid risk,” she said, adding that camp activities were outdoors and there was testing for children if someone was exposed to the virus. But by August, Kasargod-Staub and her husband were watching Delta variant cases rise across the region. When her husband went to the school to review its safety protocols, he left alarmed, having learned...

HANOVER, Germany — How do you pronounce a word with an asterisk or a colon in the middle? And what's the German word for inclusivity? These are just two questions businesses and organizations in Europe's largest economy have been asking themselves as the country tries to advance gender equality. In Germany, the debate about gender-neutral and inclusive language is complicated by grammar. Just as in many other languages, gender in German isn't denoted by personal pronouns alone. German nouns that refer to people have traditionally been masculine or feminine. So, a male citizen is a Bürger and a female citizen...

Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration’s COVID-19 vaccine incentive program launched on Monday has drawn mixed reactions across state government. While the 72,000 commonwealth employees who work under the governor’s jurisdiction now eligible for up to five paid days off or a lump sum equivalent if they get vaccinated by Dec. 31, many government workers who work outside those agencies will not be given the same enticement to get their shots. Neither the Senate chamber nor the House Republicans plan to offer anything similar at this time, spokesmen said. A spokeswoman for the Office of Attorney General said her agency doesn’t plan...

The Supreme Court on Monday turned down an appeal from a Catholic hospital in California that was sued after refusing to perform a hysterectomy for a transgender man. The court's denial, issued without comment, sends the lawsuit back to state court for further proceedings against the hospital and avoids, for now, the issue of when claims of religious freedom can trump anti-discrimination laws. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch said the court should have taken the case. The dispute arose when Evan Minton arranged with Mercy San Juan Medical Center in Sacramento to schedule a hysterectomy, which he...

Fauci: Proof of vaccination or negative test for domestic travel within the U.S. "is on the table for discussion."

After exploring this area for 1940’s ‘Rebecca,’ the legendary director made a lasting connectionThere are countless Alfred Hitchcock biographies, and many of them mention that he had an estate in the Santa Cruz area. But they never seem very interested in why he chose Scotts Valley as his home away from home—which is curious, since a sense of place was extremely important to the legendary director. He rose up through the ranks of a very regimented film industry in his native Britain, and was stung by accusations that he’d forgotten his roots after moving to the U.S. He found his...

How you say in English … Just shut up and go away? After parading around Vermont all weekend, staging a bizarre, impromptu roadside press conference and then posting happy-family Halloween portraits on Instagram, Alec Baldwin and his insufferable fraud of a wife eee-LAR-ia have lost any public sympathy they once had. Boom. Gone. All in about a week. “Parenting through this has been an intense experience, to say the least,” Hilaria posted on Halloween night. Really? Hilaria may want to talk to Halyna Hutchins’ widower about what it’s been like parenting their young son “through this intense experience,” his mother...

Shanghai Disneyland was temporarily shut down from Sunday after a visitor was found to be Covid-19-positive, underscoring the economic disruption businesses in China face as the country strives to stamp out infections. The world’s most populous nation has committed to maintaining “zero tolerance” for the virus despite criticism from business groups, a close to 80% vaccination rate, and a world which is gradually learning to live with Covid-19. China is taking stringent measures to contain pockets of the coronavirus in the country. It recorded 48 domestic cases on Saturday across several provinces. Though extremely low compared with countries that are...

A strange and dangerous phenomenon has taken hold among a significant segment of the U.S. population in recent years — a profound distrust of scientists and scientific consensus. It is puzzling that a nation responsible for so many remarkable achievements in medicine, technology, you name it, in the past century includes so many people who refuse to give credence to provable scientific facts. Instead, they put full faith and credit in easy-to-disprove “alternate facts” and conspiracy theories they find on amazing scientific devices that could not have been conceived of decades ago. The COVID-19 pandemic is the poster child for...

President Biden on Monday apologized for the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord, saying doing so set the world back in the fight against climate change. “I guess I shouldn’t apologize, but I do apologize for the fact the United States in the last administration pulled out of the Paris accords and put us sort of behind the eight ball a little bit,” Biden said during a session on “action and solidarity” at the United Nations climate conference in Glasgow. Biden, who rejoined the Paris climate deal upon taking office in January, said that...

In a new CNN Special Report hear from Republicans about the final days of the Trump presidency and how close the nation came to losing our democracy. Trumping Democracy – An American Coup begins at 9 p.m. ET on Friday

Disgraced former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Sunday accused Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple and state Attorney General Letitia James of "incompetence" and "abuse of law" after he was charged with a misdemeanor sex crime last week. "In the last 72 hours, Sheriff Apple and Tish James have epitomized the worst combination of politics, incompetence and abuse of the law," the Democrat tweeted.