Free Republic

It doesn’t seem possible that we’ve weathered an entire year since that bleak day last Feb. 17 when at 12:06 p.m. Eastern the inevitable-yet-shocking announcement was broadcast to the world: Rush Limbaugh had passed away. The radio titan, having lived his threescore-and-10 to the absolute fullest, returned his borrowed talent to God. It was a devastating gut-punch to us, his "highly overrated" staff, and to his vast listening audience. Our beloved friend would no longer be providing his brilliant, inspiring, often-hilarious daily clarity and reassurance we had all come to cherish over more than three decades.

Justin Trudeau, current Prime Minister of Canada, and heir of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, is angry. There are truckers – lots of them – clogging the streets of Ottawa, honking their horns, and revving their engines. Raised in privilege as a Prime Minister’s son, Mr. Trudeau doesn’t believe that he should have to listen to the people’s voices, let alone their engines. So, he has ordered police to steal the drivers’ fuel and even impound their vehicles. He has ordered banks to confiscate their bank accounts. He has even decreed a national emergency – which he didn’t do for...

Usually, we live our daily lives not having to make immobilizing decisions that sever aspects of who we are in any fundamental way. Typically, we wake up, have something to eat, go to work, handle occupational challenges presented to us and eventually allow some leisure time. But a demand to choose between two or more features that relate to a healthy, fully functioning sense of self is not usually something we come across. Since the Left is well known for avoiding debate, well-established data, and reasoned argument, it comes as no surprise that the weapon of force is one of...

SMETHPORT, Pa. (AP) - Some Democrats here in rural Pennsylvania are afraid to tell you they’re Democrats. The party’s brand is so toxic in the small towns 100 miles northeast of Pittsburgh that some liberals have removed bumper stickers and yard signs and refuse to acknowledge their party affiliation publicly. These Democrats are used to being outnumbered by the local Republican majority, but as their numbers continue to dwindle, the few that remain are feeling increasingly isolated and unwelcome in their own communities. “The hatred for Democrats is just unbelievable,” said Tim Holohan, an accountant based in rural McKean County...

Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for AMERICA: For those in Authority in Government, Family, Military, Business, Healthcare, Education, Churches, and the Media. I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone: for kings and all those in authority that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. ~ 1 Timothy 2:1-2 Religion Forum Threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind. This is what the Lord God says: Look, I am laying a stone in Zion as a foundation, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone...

Photo Maryna Lisnichuk Maryna Lisnichuk The armed formations of Russia in the morning of Thursday, February 17, resorted to artillery shelling of the village of Stanytsia Luhanska in the Luhansk region. One of the shells hit the kindergarten, where at that moment there were children with educators. The two women suffered a concussion, the Come Back Alive Foundation said on its Facebook page. Subsequently, the headquarters of the JFO told the details of the emergency (to view the photo, doskrolte news to the end). It is noted that Russian mercenaries used heavy artillery weapons during the shelling of the village....

Dr. Chandra Ojha, a cardiologist in El Paso, Texas, is used to demanding work. But lately, Ojha, who has waited more than three years for his green card through a since-expired government program, has been “feeling the stress.” It became so intense that a recent bout of chest pain spurred him to have a heart investigation done on himself. Born in India and trained in London and the U.S., the 44-year-old Ojha filed his initial green card petition in 2018 based on a $500,000 investment in a California hotel under the EB-5 visa program. The program allows foreign investors who...

The Biden administration is suing Missouri over its controversial gun-rights bills passed last year, which would allow citizens to sue state or federal agencies for $50,000 if they prove their Second Amendment rights were violated. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland announced the lawsuit Wednesday, saying House Bill 85 violates the “Supremacy Clause, is preempted by federal law and violates the doctrine of intergovernmental immunity.” The Justice Department (DOJ) states in the lawsuit the law hurts cooperation between federal, state and local law enforcement. “The penalties associated with H.B. 85 have prompted state and local agencies and individuals within those entities...

An Israeli farmer earned a Guinness World Record when he harvested a massive strawberry that weighed 10.19 ounces. Guinness said Ariel Chahi, whose family owns the Strawberries in the Field business in Kadima-Zoran, Israel, holds the record for the world's heaviest strawberry after his enormous fruit weighed in at 10.19 ounces, beating the previous record of 8.82 ounces. The strawberry is of the Ilan variety, which was first bred by Nir Dai, a researcher from the Israel's Agricultural Research Organization. Dai, who was among the witnesses at the weighing of Chahi's strawberry, credited the strawberry's size to unusually cold temperatures...

A Florida woman used money from a pandemic relief loan to hire a hitman to murder a rival who had dated her ex-boyfriend, police said. Jasmine Martinez allegedly used the federal Paycheck Protection Program to pay a gunman who fatally shot Le’Shonte Jones and wounded her 3-year-old son in a broad daylight attack outside her Miami apartment on May 3, 2021, NBC 6 reported. Martinez had withdrawn more than $10,000 in the days before the shooting, after she netted $15,000 from the federal government she applied for to help her single-employee beauty salon, according to an arrest warrant cited by...

The U.S. is pulling support for Israeli underground natural gas pipeline that would run from the eastern Mediterranean to Europe. Many predict this will cause more problems in the region. Moreover, this decision from Biden administration undercuts Israel, one of America’s most steadfast allies. The proposed pipeline would give Europe an alternative to heavy dependence on Russian gas. It would have conveyed about 10 billion cubic yards of Israeli and Cypriot natural gas to Europe via Greece and Italy each year. Recently, Europe has been suffering from an energy crisis, which has led to soaring natural gas and electricity prices....

Levchyk the cat went from living on the streets of a western Ukrainian city to winning a spot in the mayor’s office — and rose to internet fame in the process. The city of Lviv welcomed its so-called “cat mayor” in fall 2020 after the stray was rescued from a tree near City Hall. It wasn’t long before Mayor Andriy Sadovyi’s office created a social media presence for the new official. The brown tabby cat, whose name is the diminutive form of “lion” in Ukrainian, now posts TikTok videos that get hundreds of thousands of views. The “cat mayor” enjoys...

People are turning off CNN in droves. The network’s ratings plummeted last week, hitting a historic low for the proclaimed “most trusted name in news.” CNN “averaged only 444,000 viewers” from Feb. 7 – 13, marking its lowest ratings in since November 2015 Fox News, reports. Even during CNN’s primetime broadcasts, the network averaged 491,000 viewers. Fox News trounces CNN’s ratings by 385 percent, with Tucker Carlson garnering an average of 3.5 million viewers in Fox’s primetime slot. The left-wing network has lost 90 percent of its viewers in the past year amid the network’s constant stream of deceptive news...

Rush Limbaugh, the monumentally influential media icon who transformed talk radio and politics in his decades behind the microphone, helping shape the modern-day Republican Party, died Wednesday morning at the age of 70 after a battle with lung cancer, his family announced. Limbaugh's wife, Kathryn, made the announcement on his radio show. "Losing a loved one is terribly difficult, even more so when that loved one is larger than life," she said. "Rush will forever be the greatest of all time."

DARPA has managed to fly ‘smart’ black hawk helicopter without any pilot on board. The ALIAS technology has thus far cost $160 million.During an experimental project led by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Lockheed Martin, the renowned Black Hawk helicopter flew totally unmanned for the very first moment.The initiative is known as ALIAS, which stands for “Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System,” and it was victorious after a UH-60 Alpha-model Black Hawk chopper made its maiden flight without a human operator on board a few days earlier.Image via Lockheed Martin: Sikorsky UH-60A Blackhawk Optionally Piloted Aircraft leaves the...

[H/T Ymani Cricket]According to a retired professor of computer science at Oregon State University today’s large neural network artificial intelligence are already slightly conscious.In a recent Twitter post, the co-founder of a San Francisco-based Artificial Intelligence research lab stated that “today’s largest neural networks” may already be “slightly conscious.”OpenAI’s Ilya Sutskever did not specify which system or systems he was talking about, nor did he define “slightly conscious” in any way.It’s likely that he was talking about OpenAI’s GPT-3, an advanced language processing system designed for translation, question answering, and word replacement.Sutskever’s cryptic tweet soon sparked a debate among specialists...

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sparked anger on Wednesday when he accused a Jewish MP of 'standing with people who wave swastikas' after she criticized his handling of the Freedom Convoy truckers' anti-vaccine protests. Melissa Lantsman, a 37-year-old Conservative MP for the Toronto suburb of Thornhill, confronted the prime minister in Parliament about the draconian Emergency Act, which he invoked on Monday for the first time in 50 years in a bid to end 19 days of chaos. Trudeau responded with scorn to her complaints, saying: 'Conservative Party members can stand with people who wave swastikas, they can stand with...

“A wise servant shall have rule over a son that causeth shame, and shall have part of the inheritance among the brethren. The fining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold: but the LORD trieth the hearts” (Proverbs 17:2-3).

The Pentagon claimed earlier this month that the Kremlin may stage an elaborate false flag operation. The Russian state-sponsored news agency Sputnik has accused Ukraine of violating a ceasefire by firing mortar shells early Thursday morning. "The Ukrainian military fired mortar shells and grenades at four localities in the self-proclaimed Lugansk People's Republic at 2:30 a.m. GMT," Sputnik claimed, citing the Joint Centre for Control and Coordination. The agency stressed that Moscow has denied "accusations" of the "alleged military buildup" and instead warned of the "possibility of provocations by Kiev." The Pentagon claimed earlier this month that the Kremlin may...

The Cincinnati Bengals lost to the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LVI, but their pre-printed championship gear finds a second life elsewhere. Sporting good stores in Southern California and everywhere in the United States have merchandise adorned with “Los Angeles Rams Super Bowl Champions” ready to sell moments after the Super Bowl. On the other hand, merchandise with the words “Cincinnati Bengals Super Bowl Champions” will not see its day in the U.S. The fate of Cincinnati Bengals Super Bowl championship gearThe NFL pre-manufactures Super Bowl gear for good reason, to take advantage of fan emotions when their team...