Free Republic

If you want to know why they are so afraid of Joe Rogan, this is why.

Kankakee County State’s Attorney Jim Rowe wants federal prosecutors to pursue the death penalty against Darius Sullivan and Xandria Harris, who face felony charges in the hotel shooting that killed Bradley Police Sgt. Marlene Rittmanic and critically wounded her partner last week. A Bradley police sergeant was “desperately pleading for her life” moments before a gunman fatally shot her using the officer’s own gun, Kankakee County prosecutors said Monday. Kankakee County State’s Attorney Jim Rowe is seeking life sentences for Darius Sullivan, 25, and Xandria Harris, 26, who face a litany of felony charges in last week’s hotel shooting that...

Ex-mufti Brought Van Leers to Egypt, German Authorities Believe JTA, August 30, 1956. https://www.jta.org/archive/ex-mufti-brought-van-leers-to-egypt-german-authorities-believe Haj Amin el Husseini, the former Mufti of Jersalem, is believed in government circles here to have arranged for the hiring by the Egyptian government of the notorious anti-Semitic propagandist, Dr. Johannes von Leers. Von Leers was revealed this week to be working for Cairo’s Ministry of National Guidance, President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s propaganda department. The ex-Mufti had sent a greeting to Von Leers when the latter was editing “Der Weg,” a German-language monthly dedicated to perpetuation of the Nazi brand of anti-Semitism which Von Leers...

Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) said Monday he will not seek reelection after 15 terms in Congress. Rush told the Chicago Sun-Times he made the decision in the past several weeks and that it was a result of a conversation he had with his grandson. “I don’t want my grandchildren . . . to know me from a television news clip or something they read in a newspaper,” Rush told the Sun-Times. “I want them to know me on an intimate level, know something about me and I want to know something about them. I don’t want to be a historical...

Facebook has "permanently disabled" the ads account of a conservative children's book publisher, claiming that Heroes of Liberty – which has published books about Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, former President Ronald Reagan and author Thomas Sowell – violated the company's rules against "Low Quality or Disruptive Content." Facebook originally locked the ads account on Dec. 23, and after Heroes of Liberty appealed the ruling, the company permanently disabled the account. "The question is: is a children's biography of Ronald Reagan no longer permissible on Facebook? We don’t know. But apparently promoting one may well kill a business," Heroes...

Stacey Abrams was repeatedly praised as a "bold progressive" with an "unapologetically left" agenda during her failed gubernatorial campaign in 2018. Now that she's running again in 2022, Abrams and her media allies would like to revise the record by insisting that she is in fact a pragmatic moderate. Astead Herndon's most recent piece in the New York Times suggests the Stacey Abrams rebranding effort is well underway. Herndon, author of articles such as "Menace Enters the Republican Mainstream," conducted his own "review" of Abrams's political ideology and found "a leader who has carefully calibrated her positions, making a point...

After New York Attorney General Letitia James subpoenaed Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump during her investigation into the Trump Organization, both Trump children have signaled they will not comply. According to ABC News, James and a Trump Organization attorney jointly filed a document Monday explaining, “A dispute has arisen between the OAG and the Individual Trump Parties regarding the Subpoenas.” Neither Donald Trump Jr. nor Ivanka Trump plan to comply with James’ subpoenas, ABC reported. Instead, both plan to file motions to quash them. In a December article, The Washington Post explained the scope of James’ investigation into the...

I have never seen a worse politician in my life than Kamala Harris. And I live in a world where Eric Swalwell exists. Of all the “I can’t believe this is happening” things that have happened over the last two years, the “I can’t believe this is happening”est of all is that the woman who couldn’t break 3% in her own primaries, and couldn’t even hang in the race long enough to make it to Iowa, is now just one airplane staircase accident away from the most powerful office in the world. I have truly never seen a more inept...

The Government decision to introduce minimum unit pricing on alcohol this week has been welcomed by Alcohol Action Ireland. The new law will largely affect alcohol sold in off-licenses, shops and supermarkets. For that past decade, the Government has been seeking to bring in minimum unit pricing as part of a number of measures to help reduce the harm caused by excessive alcohol consumption. The aim is to change dangerous patterns of alcohol behavior particularly amongst young drinkers, who are buying cheap alcohol before they go out in what is known as pre-drinking. This alcohol will now be more expensive...

Rather than seeking to be places of excellence, often red states simply congratulate themselves that they ‘Aren’t Illinois or California.’New census figures show the United States added the fewest citizens in its entire history in 2021, with population growth at just 0.1 percent. The data also showed a continued exodus of Americans from Democrat-run states to Republican-run states, with New York, California, and Illinois losing the most residents and Texas, Florida, and Arizona gaining the most, respectively.The Wall Street Journal posted graphics illustrating these trends on a recent front page, then editorialized about the trend, pointing out the correlation between...

The Manhattan district attorney's office is closing its investigation into disgraced former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) for his role in the state's nursing home deaths resulting from policies he implemented early on in the coronavirus pandemic, and the governor will not be charged.Elkan Abramowitz, a former federal prosecutor hired to represent Cuomo while he was still in office, announced the news in a statement released Monday."I was contacted today by the head of the Elder Care Unit from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office who informed me they have closed its investigation involving the Executive Chamber and nursing homes,"...

There has been a “devastating” decline in religious practice among young people in Poland, says one of the country’s most senior church figures, Wojciech Polak, the archbishop of Gniezno and Primate of Poland. He admits that the Catholic hierarchy’s failure to deal with sex abuse by clergy has been a primary cause, and has called for the church to continue the process of “purifying” itself. However, Marek Jędraszewski, the archbishop of Kraków, has questioned his colleague’s interpretation, arguing that in fact the church has been a “victim” of the pandemic and young people’s growing use of technology. Polak pointed to...

China’s anti-corruption watchdog has threatened Walmart Inc. with a consumer boycott, accusing the U.S. retail giant of “stupidity and shorted-sightedness” over its removal of Xinjiang-sourced products from its Sam's Club online app in response to the forced labor of religious minorities and the genocide of Uyghur Muslims. The Chinese Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection accused Walmart and its Sam’s Club chain of boycotting products from the northwestern region of Xinjiang and trying to “muddle through” the controversy by not responding to complaints or releasing a statement, Reuters reported. “To take down all products from a region without a...

When Molly Burhans met with Pope Francis in 2018, she presented him with a map. The Catholic Church is one of the largest non-governmental owners of land in the entire world— by one estimate, the Church owns some 177 million acres. That land includes parish churches, cathedrals, hospitals, monasteries, convents, farms, schools, forests...even a few dubiously-purchased apartment buildings. But a lot of that land isn’t serving the Church’s mission. A lot of it is underutilized, being used for some purpose that’s not ideal, or harming the environment; or, it’s simply gathering dust. Burhans says one of the biggest reasons for...

One of the unresolved debates of the pandemic era is whether the zero-Covid public health strategy is the correct one. This strategy can be loosely defined as driving Covid-19 as close as possible to zero through strict control measures so that community transmissions no longer appear and, should that happen, be quickly re-suppressed. Initially, even Europe and the U.S. tried this (remember two weeks to flatten the curve?) but quickly gave up with the emergence of new variants, although through 2021 a number of small, or easily isolated, countries persisted in the attempt. As 2022 dawned, however, even these were...

The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) in Hefei in the east Chinese province of Anhui reports a new temperature record. At the end of last year, a plasma temperature of 70 million ° C could be maintained in the experimental nuclear fusion reactor for 1056 seconds, i.e. a good 17 minutes, reports the Institute for Plasma Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (ASIPP). That is the longest time in which such a temperature could be kept constant. This creates a solid basis for further research into energy generation from nuclear fusion, writes the ASIPP. Its general director Prof. Yuntao...

A severe winter storm could dump up to 18 inches of snow across the eastern US Monday as some half a million homes are already without power in the southeast — but New York will largely be spared, forecasters said Monday. The heaviest snowfall — likely between 6 and 10 inches — is expected in parts of northern Virginia and Maryland, as well as in Delaware and southern New Jersey, AccuWeather meteorologist Nicole LoBiondo told The Post.

On Saturday, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, tweeted: “Martyr Soleimani is an eternal reality that will live on forever. His assassins – including Trump & the like – will go down in history’s garbage bin, but of course after receiving retribution in this world for the crime they committed .” This is a clear threat, but Twitter has not banned or suspended Khamenei’s account. After all, he was threatening Donald Trump, and as far as Twitter is concerned, what could be wrong with that?Khamenei was referring, of course, to Qasem Soleimani, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force commander...

The Pope is expected to call his 8th consistory in 2022, adding to the 70 cardinals he has already chosen.VATICAN CITY — Predicting the coming year at the Vatican is always tricky, and that’s especially so in light of our current papacy of surprises and COVID-19. But one event that can safely be foreseen is a consistory of new cardinals. Currently the College of Cardinals has 120 cardinals under the age of 80 and therefore eligible to vote in a conclave. An advisory limit of 120 set by Pope St. Paul VI has often been exceeded, including by Pope Francis....