Free Republic

NBA Center Enes Kanter Freedom of the Boston Celtics said the National Basketball Association tried to silence him for using his official uniform attire to criticize communist China’s treatment of Tibet, when he wore the slogan “Free Tibet” on his sneakers.“There [were] two gentlemen came from the NBA [who] said, ‘Take those shoes off.’ I’m like, ‘Excuse me?’ He said, ‘Yep, take those shoes off.’ I was like, ‘I’m not taking the shoes off.’ They’re like, ‘Listen, we are begging you to take those shoes off.’ And I asked him, ‘Am I breaking any rules?’ They said, ‘No.’ … And...

The defense for former "Empire" actor, Jussie Smollett, rested their case on Tuesday after Smollett testified that the brothers involved in what prosecutors argued was a feigned hate crime were "liars." "They're liars," Smollett said of the brothers as he testified on Tuesday, according to NBC News. "They also said I had something to do with it, and I didn't." The prosecution has argued that Smollett staged a “fake hate crime” against himself by hiring two brothers, Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, to stage a fake attack against him in 2019.

The inspector general for the U.S. Capitol Police testified on Tuesday that the department has not made enough improvements since the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, telling lawmakers that more has to be done “to achieve the goal of making the Capitol Complex safe and secure. “Although the Department has addressed some of our recommendations and have made security improvements throughout the Capitol Complex, much work still needs to be addressed in relation to Training, Intelligence, cultural change and Operational Planning,” Michael Bolton told the Senate Rules and Administration Committee in prepared remarks. Bolton said that of the 200...

President Biden will speak on Thursday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to follow up on his video conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the White House confirmed. Biden spoke with Putin for two hours on Tuesday, during which he warned Moscow against invading Ukraine, the White House said in a readout of the conversation. National security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Biden would follow his call with Putin by speaking with European allies and congressional leaders as well as by holding a call with Zelensky.

The Charlottesville, Va. city council on Tuesday unanimously approved for the statue of Confederate leader Robert E. Lee to be melted down to create public artwork "that will "reflect racial justice," The New York Times reported. The city council will give the statue to the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, which plans to melt the monument to create a new piece of public artwork, according to the proposed measure. The city council selected the Jefferson School’s proposal “Swords Into Plowshares,” from other potential bidders for the statue, according to The Times.

On a September afternoon, Allyssia Solorio wondered why her energetic young brother hadn’t emerged from his bedroom in their Sacramento, Calif., home. When she opened his door, she saw 23-year-old Mikael leaning back on his bed with his legs dangling over the side. She rushed to her brother and shook him, but to no avail.He was dead. A counterfeit pharmaceutical pill laced with illicit fentanyl had killed him.Mikael Tirado was one of an estimated 93,331 overdose fatalities in the United States last year – an all-time high. Nearly five times the murder rate, the deadly overdose toll was primarily caused...

The organization which represents the spouses of police officers and security guards has petitioned Justice Minister Gideon S'ar to order the Department of Internal Police Investigations to end its investigation of the officers who shot dead a terrorist who had stabbed a civilian in Jerusalem on Saturday. In a letter sent by Abigail Sharara, the organization's director general, to Minister Sa'ar, she protests the investigation and states that it is an "inappropriate, disproportionate response that conveys a message of abandonment and lack of support towards those who acted with determination and courage, risking their lives and saving lives." "Our feelings...

When I was growing up, rugelach were ever-present in my grandmother's kitchen, under a cake dome on the counter, right where we walked into the kitchen. There, she would stash homemade batches of the flaky nut- and jam-filled cookies, for "the kids." My grandmother's rugelach were legendary—she carried them to bake sales, ladies' lunches, and card parties. Long before I understood their deli-case ubiquity, I loved rugelach unabashedly. As an adult, when I spied these treats in delis and bakeries, I barely recognized them. What were those spiral cookies? Where were the crescents? These were dry and cakey, the jams...

A research abstract that was published on November 8 in the medical journal Circulation has gotten a fair amount of circulation on social media. The abstract made a pretty dramatic claim: “mRNA vacs dramatically increase inflammation” in the heart, which “may account for the observations of increased thrombosis, cardiomyopathy, and other vascular events following vaccination.” However, there has been some drama around this abstract and its being short on a little thing called “evidence” to support such claims. In fact, on November 24, an American Heart Association committee added an “Expression of Concern” warning due to “potential errors in the...

Spurred by a series of robberies, shootings and other crimes in the Melrose Avenue area in recent months, a neighborhood group has raised $30,000 for license plate readers that will be installed beginning this week. Melrose Action, a group that tracks crimes and breaking news in the busy shopping corridor and surrounding neighborhoods between La Cienega and La Brea avenues, spearheaded the fundraiser, which launched in August. City Councilman Paul Koretz, who represents the area, donated $10,000 from his discretionary accounts to the project. As of Nov. 27, total violent and property crimes in the LAPD’s Wilshire Division, which includes...

The unvaccinated in Austria are hurting. Their third Chancellor in two months, Karl Nehammer, confirmed today that he’s moving forward with plans to end their draconian lockdown next week for the “vaccinated” only.JUST IN – Austria's new chancellor Nehammer: "The lockdown for vaccinated ends on Sunday. The lockdown for the unvaccinated continues."— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) December 7, 2021This is sad news for a population that has already seen their freedoms limited as Austria leads the way down the path to full-blown medical tyranny. They will be imposing fines on the unvaccinated starting next February.There is a potential silver lining to all...

More Than 400 Studies on the Failure of Compulsory Covid InterventionsThe great body of evidence (comparative research studies and high-quality pieces of evidence and reporting judged to be relevant to this analysis) shows that COVID-19 lockdowns, shelter-in-place policies, masks, school closures, and mask mandates have failed in their purpose of curbing transmission or reducing deaths. These restrictive policies were ineffective and devastating failures, causing immense harm especially to the poorer and vulnerable within societies. Nearly all governments have attempted compulsory measures to control the virus, but no government can claim success. The research indicates that mask mandates, lockdowns, and school...

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wants people to have more babies. “There are not enough people,” Musk told a Wall Street Journal event Monday. “I can’t emphasize this enough, there are not enough people,” he said. The tech billionaire said low and rapidly declining birth rates are “one of the biggest risks to civilization.” His comments come as a growing number of people are deciding not to have children, citing concerns such as climate change and inequality. Musk added that too many “good, smart people” think there are too many people in the world and that the population is...

A Florida police officer sent explicit text messages to a 15-year-old boy and tried to entice him to a nude beach, federal prosecutors said. Juan Antonio Garcia, a 30-year-old cop for the Sewall’s Point Police Department, appeared Friday in Fort Pierce federal court after allegedly sending the explicit texts discovered by the teen’s father in late November, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida. A federal criminal complaint claims Garcia, of Stuart, also asked the boy to accompany him to a nude beach in Florida’s St. Lucie County and to perform sexual acts. “It is...

I feel like all of this could have been revealed eons ago if the media did their job. They didn't. It's not shocking, but at the same time, it is when it comes to the Biden family. They learned their lesson from 2016. They were going to treat this man with kid gloves. On one hand, they kind of had to since Joe Biden is made of glass. Second, they knew this dirty laundry could sink him. The numbers don't lie. Almost 20 percent of Biden voters would not have backed him if they had known about the family's shady...

President Joe Biden participated in a video call with Russian President Vladimir Putin Tuesday morning as tensions with the Kremlin increase over a possible invasion of Ukraine. The call lasted for two hours. While the White House press pool wasn't allowed into the meeting, reporters for Russian state media were and released footage of the call. Russian state TV shows start of meeting between Biden and Putin pic.twitter.com/pX1GqefSty— Kevin Liptak (@Kevinliptakcnn) December 7, 2021"I hope next time we can meet in person," President Biden can be heard telling Putin on their video call.Russia allowed state media in for a short...

CNN anchor Don Lemon allegedly sent disgraced actor Jussie Smollett texts during the Chicago Police Department’s investigation of his alleged hoax hate crime. Testifying at his own trial on Monday, the former Empire star Jussie Smollett reportedly said under oath that he received a text message from Don Lemon informing him that Chicago police did not believe his account of what happened the night he claimed to have been the victim of a hate crime by two white Trump supporters. According to the Daily Mail, Smollett’s remark “was presented and then struck from the record.” “He said things began to...

Israel has damaged 75 percent of Iran's weapons in Syria, senior security officials said in closed-door talks. They detailed in the same talks that some of the damaged weapons were manufactured in Iran and smuggled to Syria by land, air and sea, and some were for forces in Syrian itself. The sources also said that Israel's level of deterrence against Iran in Syria and the Assad regime had been fully achieved, according to data presented to the political echelon regarding the extent of the attacks in Syria (without referring to the attack attributed to Israel tonight). It was learned that...

Salmon can colonize newly created streams, but face many other challenges from climate change. Credit: Freshwaters Illustrated Retreating glaciers in the Pacific mountains of western North America could produce around 6,150 kilometers (3,820 miles) of new Pacific salmon habitat by the year 2100, according to a new study. Scientists have ‘peeled back the ice’ from 46,000 glaciers between southern British Columbia and south-central Alaska to look at how much potential salmon habitat would be created when underlying bedrock is exposed and new streams flow over the landscape. Modeling glacier retreat under different climate change scenarios, researchers discovered that, under a...

In a sign of their declining popularity, late-night comedians Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and Jimmy Fallon have seen their ratings plummet for more than four months straight, as viewers in the coveted 18-49 year old demographic are tuning out consistently compared to last year, according to data reviewed by Breitbart News. For last week, the three major late-night shows experienced a 19 percent drop from last year in their average weekly viewership in the 18-49 demographic. These declines tend to be between 10 percent and 20 percent every week as far back as mid July, though some weeks saw even...