Free Republic

Julian Assange has had a stroke in Belmarsh Prison, his fiancee Stella Moris revealed last night. The WikiLeaks publisher, 50, who is being held on remand in the maximum-security jail while fighting extradition to America, was left with a drooping right eyelid, memory problems and signs of neurological damage. He believes the mini-stroke was triggered by the stress of the ongoing US court action against him, and an overall decline in his health as he faces his third Christmas behind bars.

President Joe Biden will not attend the annual Army vs. Navy football game on Saturday according to his weekend schedule. The president’s public schedule for Saturday is empty after Biden and his wife, first lady Jill Biden, traveled to their home in Wilmington, Delaware, on Friday night for the weekend.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, in his last few weeks in office, is attempting to silence parents critical of public education policies, according to two parent leaders. Proposed Chancellor’s Regulation D-210 would give the Department of Education (DOE) the authority to “discipline and remove” elected parents from Community Education Councils (CEC) — the city’s version of a school board — if they criticize the school district they are charged with holding accountable, write former District 2 CEC president Maud Maron and current District 2 CEC vice president Danyela Souza Egorov in the New York Post.

A Fordham University professor was fired after mixing up the names of two black students in class, according to a report. Hours after what he called an “innocent mistake,” lecturer Christopher Trogan, 46, sent a rambling, nine-page email to students in his Composition II classes explaining the faux pas — and defending, without being asked, his “entire life” of working on “issues of justice, equality, and inclusion,” the campus newspaper reported. “The offended student assumed my mistake was because I confused that student with another Black student,” Trogan wrote, according to a Nov. 29 article in the Fordham Observer. “I...

Explanation: From this vantage point about three quarters of a mile from planet Earth's geographic South Pole, the December 4 eclipse of the Sun was seen as a partial eclipse. At maximum the New Moon blocked 90 percent of the solar disk. Of course, crews at the South Pole Telescope (left) and BICEP telescope (right) climbed to the roof of Amundsen-Scott station's Dark Sector Laboratory to watch. Centered near the local eclipse maximum, the composite timelapse view features an image of the Sun traversing cold antarctic skies taken every four minutes. Left to right along the roof line it also...

President Joe Biden lamented the world’s failure to stop global warming on Saturday after addressing the deadly tornadoes that swept through several states. “We all know that everything is more intense when the climate is warming. Everything,” he said. “And obviously it has some impact here" At least 30 tornadoes were reported across six different states causing widespread devastation, and over 100 people are expected killed from the storm. The president said he did not know the full extent of global warming’s contribution to the deadly storms, which he described as one of the “largest tornado outbreaks in history.” He...

The prevalence of obesity has doubled in Australia in the last two decades. As a result, overweight and obesity will be associated with 10,000 thyroid cancers in the next decade. Avoiding excess weight, especially obesity, should be a priority for thyroid cancer prevention, the first study to evaluate future thyroid cancer burden in Australia has found. The world-first study found that 1 in 5 future thyroid cancers in Australia is attributable to current levels of overweight and obesity. Dr. Laaksonen, a senior lecturer in Data Science, says this is concerning as the prevalence of obesity in Australia has doubled during...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused congressional Republicans of hanging up their spines when it comes to dealing with former President Donald Trump. In an interview with MSNBC's Willie Geist, part of which aired on Friday, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee described Republicans as having been completely taken over by the influence of Trump.

Here are two questions pertinent to our times: (1) How would you reduce the greatest free republic in history to despotism in a short time? and (2) How would you stop that from happening? The answer to the first question has been provided in these last two disastrous years. The answer to the second has begun to emerge in recent months. Both are worthy of study. Reducing a Great Republic to Despotism To establish despotism in a nation like ours, you might begin, if you were smart, by building a bureaucracy of great complexity that commands a large percentage of...

Kathleen Landerkin, the current Correctional Training Facility (CTF) Deputy Warden at the Department of Corrections in the District of Columbia, assists in overseeing day to day operations, inmate transportation, and case management.Though she holds a position of power of January 6 inmates, Landerkin continued to spout anti-Trump and anti-Republican rhetoric on her Twitter until she deleted her account earlier today.Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted at Landerkin, “You are responsible for human rights violations in the DC Jail and torture and abuse of pre-trial defendants.”She included a screenshot of one of Landerkin’s tweets that read “F**k everyone who supports Trump.”Good morning...

Caitlin Foster fell in love with San Francisco’s people and beauty and moved to the city a dozen years ago. But after repeatedly clearing away used needles, other drug paraphernalia and human feces outside the bar she manages, and too many encounters with armed people in crisis, her affection for the city has soured. “It was a goal to live here, but now I’m here and I’m like, ‘Where am I going to move to now?’ I’m over it,’” said Foster, who manages Noir Lounge in the trendy Hayes Valley neighborhood. A series of headline-grabbing crime stories — mobs of...

Second Week of Advent Matthew 17:9a, 10-13 Friends, today’s Gospel passage identifies the appearance of John the Baptist with the expected return of the prophet Elijah. John, the herald of Christ, appears in the desert. Here he stands for all of us in the desert of sin, the lifeless place. It is as though John purposely went there to remind us of our need for grace. What is he proclaiming? A baptism of repentance. This is the great message. Turn your life over to a higher power. People are coming to him from all sides, because in our heart of...

The owner of a wine and beer bar who openly flouted Gov. Tim Walz's executive orders to shut down last winter during the COVID-19 pandemic was found guilty of six criminal misdemeanor counts Thursday by a Freeborn County jury. A jury of three women and three men took only an hour of deliberation to convict Lisa Hanson, the 57-year-old bar owner, after a three-day trial punctuated by Hanson's repeated attempts to argue that Walz's orders were unconstitutional. Judge Joseph Bueltel followed the reading of the verdict with a scathing denunciation of Hanson's behavior, explaining why the governor's orders were legal....

Comment thread for the 2021 Army-Navy game. Live updates at the link.

CHICAGO, IL—People are protesting in the streets today after human rights groups revealed Jussie Smollett will be forced to share a jail cell with his racist attackers. "This is an outrage!" said Reverend Jesse Jackson. "Not only was Mr. Smollett attacked by hateful racist bigots who want to tear our country apart, but now he has to share a jail cell with them? This is cruel and unusual punishment. This is the kind of thing that happens in our white supremacist country. Send me money!" Criminal justice watchdogs also revealed that in addition to sharing a cell with his attackers,...

Tensions that flared between Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) during the debt ceiling standoff revealed the two leaders’ differing styles and personalities and raised questions about their relationship going forward. The main source of division between the two top Republicans in Congress is their contrasting relationships with former President Trump, whose day-to-day comments on events in Washington have a major influence over the GOP. Trump called on Republican lawmakers to pull out all the stops to oppose raising the nation’s debt limit — even though it would have risked a federal credit...

VIDEO: Muslim Brotherhood Turkish TV Channel: The time has come to annihilate the Jews, Purify Palestine of All Jewish Filth MEMRI - Middle East Research Institute 16:00 7 hours ago Zaghloul Al-Naggar: "Today's Jews are not really Jews. This was acknowledged by the reasonable people among the Jews themselves. They have nothing to do with Judaism. These people are a polytheist nation. The label 'Jews' was imposed upon them. These Poles, Czechs, Russians, Americans, and people from other ethnicities — what right do they have to Palestine? "The existence of a foreign entity in this region is like a cancer...

The Center For Disease Control and the federal government is adamant that pregnant women get a COVID-19 injection. But data doesn’t support its safety and health practitioners around the world are sounding the alarm. A Canadian doctor, who has effectively treated COVID patients with Ivermectin throughout, urges pregnant women to abstain from getting the COVID injections. Speaking to a reporter in November, Dr. Daniel Nagase argues COVID vaccines are directly attributed to an alarming increase in stillbirths across Canada. Doulas who work in women and children’s hospitals in one of the birthing centers for Vancouver “had 13 stillbirths in a...

MSNBC host Brian Williams delivered a somber sign off during his final show for the network, stating that his biggest worry is “for my country.” “After 28 years of peacock logos on much of what I own, it is my choice now to jump without a net into the great unknown. As I do for the first time in my 62 years, my biggest worry is for my country,” Williams said during his 11 p.m. show, “The 11th Hour with Brian Williams.” “The truth is I'm not a liberal or a conservative. I'm an institutionalist. I believe in this place...

The Washington Free Beacon reported: A solar energy company owned by a Biden megadonor received a $500 million government loan to build a manufacturing facility in India, the Biden administration announced this week, raising questions about whether the company’s political clout played any role in the financing decision. The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation granted the loan to First Solar, which is owned by billionaire Walmart heir Lukas Walton, to build a solar module plant in India. Walton contributed over $300,000 to President Joe Biden’s campaign last year, and over $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee, according to campaign finance...