Free Republic

Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking trial is scheduled to start in earnest in federal court in Manhattan on Monday with opening statements about the eagerly awaited case. The first arguments will set the stage for a six-week trial in which the British socialite’s alleged involvement in Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes will be aired in grueling detail, outlining how prosecutors and defense attorneys will approach the proceedings. Maxwell, 59, stands accused of recruiting and grooming girls for the late disgraced financier, from 1994 to 2004, some of whom were just 14 years old. Epstein’s sometime girlfriend is also accused of participating in his sexual...

<p>The Dayton Board of Zoning Appeals has approved the city's request to demolish a 129-year-old historic building that once was the site of the Wright brothers' first bike shop.</p><p>The city wants to tear down the site because the building has deteriorated to a point where it can no longer be maintained and redeveloped, the Dayton Daily News has reported. Public safety concerns have also been raised by some who fear the building could collapse.</p>

The Waukesha incident has once again (and again, and again, and…) raised the specter of societal disintegration from the Defund the Police and Criminal Justice Reform movements. While bail is admittedly set too high in some cases, the outrageous and unthinking application of “cash bail is bad” is a slow-motion bomb going off. Double and triple-digit increases in violent crime in Democrat-run cities employing such policies are creating outrage among the law-abiding. Why should their grandparents and children suffer when such fools run the asylum? The suspect in the Waukesha parade massacre was a career criminal. Darrell Brooks’s criminal background...

In hindsight, all those photoshopped images of Donald Trump as Rocky Balboa that were ubiquitous across the globe while he was in office should have been understood as obvious foreshadowing. Of course Trump's journey in politics was always going to take a measure of the man and put meat onto the bones of one of Rocky's most memorable philosophical exhortations: The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It is a very mean and nasty place. ... It will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is going to hit...

VALDOSTA — Four teenagers have been indicted for murder and other charges in the wake of a fatal shooting. Jeremy Tucker, Jushon Ramsey, Zhamari Jacquis Williams and Mickey Stallings, all of Valdosta, were indicted recently by the Lowndes County Grand Jury, court records show. All four were indicted for felony murder in the death of Steven Boothe, said Brad Shealey, district attorney. The four were also indicted for possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony armed robbery, criminal attempt to commit a felony and aggravated assault, records show. Tucker and Ramsey were 17 at the time of...

..... According to a video clip posted by a Twitter account called PatriotTakes, Boebert made the remarks this holiday break. In the clip, she says she and a staffer were taking a Capitol elevator when she saw an alarmed Capitol police officer running toward them. She said she turned to her left and spotted Omar standing beside them. "Well, she doesn’t have a backpack. We should be fine,” Boebert recalled saying, drawing laughs from her audience. “And I said, ‘Oh look, the jihad squad decided to show up for work today.’”

Today I’d like to take a look at a shooting out of Lubbock TX that is suddenly getting a great deal of news and social media coverage—the shooting death of Chad Read by William Carruth. As is so often the case, there is, unfortunately, a lot of confusion about how to understand the use-of-force legal issues in this case, with a great deal of misunderstanding of both the relevant law and how it should reasonably apply to the facts of this case. In addition, there’s a great deal of weight being put on factors that are, really, irrelevant to a...

Welcome to Your Weekend A holiday weekend as we come off Thanksgiving 2021 here in the USA. Last weekend's post led to me being called a "Pervert" and "Jewish" Have we got Anti-Semitism in our midst? For sure we got what we always get in the cyber-world: "Drama" Day 621 Of The Dictatorship of COVID-19, Day 621 Of America And The World Held Hostage To COVID Shots What the drama about a new variant yesterday gave us yesterday appears to be a "Windfall For Brandon"-The price of oil dropped 13 percent Now let's watch the gas pump prices? "Sleepy Joe"...

The US has been twiddling its thumbs while the Chinese and the Russians develop anti-satellite capabilities as well as hypersonic missiles. Over the past several weeks a hard truth has become undeniable: The United States of America is no longer the all-powerful superpower it has been since the end of the Cold War. Far from it. The strategic implications of this state of affairs are epic for both the US and its allies. A nation's position in the global pecking order is based on two things – its capabilities and its credibility. America's capabilities have diminished relative to its superpower...

Four Americans gunned down in a withering, four-hour firefight in the Sahara -- part of a 10-man Green Beret team said to have gone rogue and been ambushed by ISIS while hunting down a top terrorist to "capture or kill" -- were ill-prepared, poorly trained and "not indicative" of their high-performing peers on the continent, U.S. military officials said. And in the strangest twist of all, they had been trying to locate an American aid worker who was being held hostage by the terrorist commander they were trying to kill. That story, as presented by the Pentagon, sounded like an...

CAMDEN, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina sees the upcoming 250th anniversary of the American Revolution as a chance to remind people that the state played a huge part in winning the nation’s independence, even if it did try later to tear the United States apart in the Civil War. The state has opened a new Revolutionary War center, and released an app for mobile devices that explores some 200 sites of battles and other key events, including remote swamps where patriots and loyalists skirmished in the War of Independence.... ...Congress commissioned the America250 Foundation five years ago to throw the...

Continuing a recent streak, Friday saw the fourth successful orbital launch from China in one week. This time, the Zhongxing-1D (ChinaSat-1D) satellite was inserted into orbit by a Chang Zheng 3B rocket launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center. The ChinaSat (Zhongxing) series of satellites, built by the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), fall under the communications category. The ChinaSat-1 series is specifically designed for military communications, with the first of this type launched in 2011. Two types of military communications satellites are used, with Friday’s launch exhibiting the Feng Huo-2, used for tactical communications providing Chinese...

Russia on Thursday successfully placed into orbit a military satellite believed to be part of the Kremlin's early warning anti-missile system. A Soyuz rocket carrying a classified payload blasted off from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northern Russia in the early hours of Thursday morning, the defence ministry said. At 0109 GMT a rocket was launched that put a "space apparatus into orbit in the interests of the defence ministry", the ministry said in a statement carried by the Interfax news agency. It did not provide further details. According to the Spaceflightnow website, which covers space launches, the launch could be...

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — For decades, the tiny Marshall Islands has been a stalwart American ally. Its location in the middle of the Pacific Ocean has made it a key strategic outpost for the U.S. military. But that loyalty is being tested amid a dispute with Washington over the terms of its “Compact of Free Association” agreement, which expires soon. The U.S. is refusing to engage the Marshallese on claims for environmental and health damage caused by dozens of nuclear tests it carried out in the 1940s and ’50s, including a huge thermonuclear blast on Bikini Atoll.... ... China...

Federal agencies paid out at least $548 million to informants working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), in recent years, according to government audits. A few informants became millionaires, with some Amtrak and “parcel” delivery workers making nearly $1 million or more. Many informants were authorized to commit “crimes” with the permission of their federal handlers. In a four-year period, there were 22,800 crime authorizations (2011-2014). The FBI paid approximately $294 million (FY2012-2018), the DEA paid at least $237 million (FY2011-2015), and ATF paid...

“Happy is the man that feareth alway: but he that hardeneth his heart shall fall into mischief” (Proverbs 28:14).

Tom Cruise may have pulled of his most ambitious feat yet as he was seen hanging upside down from the wing of a World War II biplane while filming scenes his upcoming Mission Impossible 8 movie The actor, 59, was seen filming the death-defying stunt at Duxford Airfield in Cambridge this week, with the 1941 Boeing B75N1 Stearman biplane performing a stomach-churching loop-the-loop and nose-dive with the actor onboard As the plane soared across the Cambridgeshire countryside, Tom - who was attached to the plane by a harness - perilously dangled himself upside down from the wing The plane then...

Over the automotive industry’s 100+ year history, companies such as Ford, Chevrolet, and Mercedes-Benz have produced some truly iconic cars.Whether they’re designed for excitement, luxury, or just simple transportation, Visual Capitalist's Marcus Lu notes that these vehicles offer a set of features that make them highly desirable to consumers. The most successful models will undergo numerous revisions over time, sometimes sticking around for many decades.To learn more, this graphic from Alan’s Factory Outlet lists the 35 vehicles with the longest production runs of all time. Here are the top 10 below.As we can see, successful models come in many shapes...

Yesterday the WHO labelled the sars-cov-2 variant B.1.1.529 as a “variant of concern” and officially named it “Omicron”.This was as entirely predictable as it is completely meaningless. The “variants” are just tools to stretch the story out and keep people on their toes.If you want to know exactly how the Omicron variant is going to affect the narrative, well The Guardian has done a handy “here’s all the bullshit we’re gonna sell you over the next couple of weeks” guide:The Omicron variant is more transmissable, but they don’t know if it’s more dangerous yet (keeping their options open)It originated in...

No cases of the new Omicron virus variant have been identified in the United States as of yet, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus variant was first seen in southern Africa earlier this month and has been designated a variant of concern by the World Health Organization, which says it may be more transmissible than the Delta and Alpha strains.“No cases of this variant have been identified in the U.S. to date,” the CDC said in a statement Friday.“CDC is continuously monitoring variants and the U.S. variant surveillance system has reliably...