Free Republic

Picture it: A car-free trip to Santa Cruz, for an attractive fare, on a train that took you to the beach in the morning, back home that night, and showed you some great scenery along the way. That describes the Sun Tan Special, operated by the Southern Pacific railroad between San Francisco, San Jose and Santa Cruz on summer weekends and holidays for most of the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. It was more than just a conveyance. “[It’s] a happy train, filled with people in a vacation mood,” says a 1940s Southern Pacific flyer. “It gives you six hours on...

According to new statistics released on Friday, homicide, rape and burglary are all up in liberal-leaning Atlanta in 2022. Homicides are up 43% so far this year compared with the same period in 2021, according to the Atlanta Police Department, and are on track to beat last year's 30-year high of 158 killings. There have been 20 homicides in Georgia's capital city thus far, compared with 14 at the same point last year. With 37 reported so far this year, compared with 11 at the same time in 2021, rapes are up 236%, police said.

It has not been a good few months from the crypto world. After rampaging higher during the middle of last year, cryptocurrencies have broadly speaking dropped around 40-50% since their November highs, and have become more and more correlated with the traditional financial system as long-duration, hyper-growth companies have seen their share prices decimated by the realization that 'this time is serious' from The Fed on their policy-tightening plans.And while 98-year-old curmudgeons are busily saying cryptos are "like some venereal disease ... I just regard it as beneath contempt," the rest of the tech world is beavering away envisioning -...

The big wildcard in today's dramatic escalation in tensions over east Ukraine, is how and when Beijing will react to Putin's announcement recognizing the Donbass region as independent and immediately deploying "peacekeeping" forces to Donetsk and Lugansk. A hint as to what may be coming, came earlier on Monday when China said it would impose new sanctions on U.S. defense contractors Raytheon Technologies and Lockheed Martin due to their arms sales to Taiwan, stepping up a feud with Washington over security and Beijing’s strategic ambitions.Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin announced the move at a daily press briefing, citing a newly...

Anti-Trumpers like Reps. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) will be attending their own “counterprogramming” session to compete with the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) this coming weekend. Dubbed the “Principles First Summit,” the meeting of the anti-Trump minds will go from February 26 to February 27 and plans to build on the success of the summit from 2020.

The choice in North Dakota’s U.S. Senate race, according to one of the candidates, is a simple binary: a bowl of oatmeal, or an egg-avocado breakfast platter. That metaphor was recently posted on Facebook, in meme form, by Rick Becker, a Republican state lawmaker who just launched a primary campaign to unseat Republican incumbent Sen. John Hoeven. Neither of their names are referenced. But the suggestion is clear: Becker—a fire-breathing MAGA conservative popular with the state’s ultra-right—is meant to be the exciting, appetizing choice. And Hoeven—a reserved two-term senator who is as likely to appear on an agriculture policy newscast...

Virginia school principals will have to once again report certain misdemeanors to law enforcement after Democrats in the state Senate voted with Republicans to pass one of Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s legislative priorities. The bill from Del. Scott Wyatt (R-Hanover) that lawmakers passed Monday was one of many backed by Youngkin that proposed to roll back a law giving principals and superintendents discretion on reporting some misdemeanors that occur on school grounds. Under the current law, administrators have to report felonies but have discretion when referring students to law enforcement for conduct that could be a misdemeanor in Virginia. These include...

Anyone watching this show? It was on Sunday but watching it now.

Madonna took to Instagram on Monday with a series of shots with her son David Banda, as well of pics from an art event featuring work from her son Rocco Ritchie. 'Today isn't Monday……..It's Son Day!!!' Madonna, 63, said in the caption of the post to more than 17.6 million followers, with a pair of sun emojis. 'David at his curtain call And Art by Rhed!' The Material Girl donned a long black coat over a white lace dress, accessorizing with multiple necklaces, bracelets and heart-shaped black sunglasses, topping things off with a textured cap over her trademark blonde locks....

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran has returned 820,000 doses of coronavirus vaccines donated by Poland because they were manufactured in the United States, state TV reported Monday. TV quoted Mohammad Hashemi, an official in the country’s Health Ministry, as saying that Poland donated about a million doses of the British-Swedish AstraZeneca vaccine to Iran. “But when the vaccines arrived in Iran, we found out that 820,000 doses of them which were imported from Poland were from the United States,” he said. Hashemi said “after coordination with the Polish ambassador to Iran, it was decided that the vaccines would be returned.”...

An underground nuclear bunker that was the site of a missile launch facility during the Cold War is up for sale in Kansas for $380,000 The property, located in Abilene, Kansas, is the site of a decommissioned Atlas-F intercontinental ballistic missile silo complex. Built in 1961 on 11 acres of land, it includes a Quonset hut with water and electricity, a one-building room for storage The underground complex spreads over two inhabitable levels, which were once used as a a launch control center and living quarts for crew during the Cold war. In its current state, the complex is hardly...

For many in the global North, retirement is a time to wave goodbye to workday stresses and discover an idyllic spot where you can take things easy. For some, it's a deckchair, for other it's a whole other country. For the lucky latter, the only question is…where to live? Everyone has their own take on what makes the perfect retirement location, but International Living’s 2022 Global Retirement Index may make it easier to find it. The annual index features a list of global retirement hotspots, compiled using personal experiences of expats in each location, combined with factors like cost of...

~The FReeper Canteen Presents~ Road Trip: Picatinny Arsenal, New JerseyThe Picatinny Arsenal is an American military research and manufacturing facility located on 6,400 acres of land in Jefferson and Rockaway Township in Morris County, New Jersey, United States, encompassing Picatinny Lake and Lake Denmark. The Arsenal is the headquarters of the US Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Armaments Center. It is known for developing the Picatinny rail, as well as being the Army's center of expertise for small arms cartridge ammunition.Project Manager Soldier Lethality ensures that Soldiers on the battlefield have overmatch capabilities in individual and crew served weapons....

Ah, Alaska, America's 49th state and the Last Frontier. The home of salmon, gold, oil, and many kinds of wildlife. And a potential place of origin for World War III. In 1867, the Russian Tsar sold the territory of Russian America to the United States. The territory wasn't doing the Tsar much good, never really turning a profit, and proving to be an unnecessary thorn in the Empire's already strained relationship with the UK (which owned Canada), so the Russian government was open to any reasonable opportunity to offload it. Russia and the US being rather buddy-buddy in the 1850s...

Kyle Rittenhouse to launch "Media Accountability Project" to conduct research and sue media that lie about people. He made the announcement on Tucker Carlson Tonight. He says he's looking at 'quite a few' people to sue himself, including Whoopi Goldberg.

The situation at the southern border has been so bad that it can’t wait three more years for a new administration to step in, and border states have the constitutional authority to defend themselves, according to Russ Vought, former director of the Office of Management and Budget under the Trump administration. “We have a real crisis along our border: record apprehensions; the drug cartels are basically in operational control of our border; massive amounts of drugs are coming across the southern border,” Vought said in an interview with NTD’s “Capitol Report” program on Feb. 12. “And so from the standpoint...

ATLANTA — Atlanta’s famed rainbow crosswalks were the target of street racers Sunday night. NewsChopper 2 was over the intersection of Piedmont Avenue and 10th Street, where tire marks indicate someone did donuts on the city’s symbol of gay pride. Atlanta police said units did respond to reports of street racing in the area but did not find anyone or issue any citations. It’s unclear if Atlanta police intend to follow up on the reports.

The Lieberals won the vote. The 'Emergencies Act' passed 185-151. The communist NDP voted with the Lieberals. The ONLY chance is that the Senate votes it down. I don't know when that me be. Canada is dead. MARANATHA

Following a string of violent crimes on the New York subway system in recent weeks, including a knife attack on Feb. 17 in broad daylight, freshly minted New York Mayor Eric Adams is making an aggressive push to try to remove homeless people, announcing a plan to start barring people from sleeping on trains or riding the same lines all night. “People tell me about their fear of using the system and we are going to ensure that fear is not New York’s reality,” Adams said. “The system is not made to be housing,” Adams said Friday at a press...

Salt Lake County Sheriff Rosie Rivera has never seen anything like it before in her career. On Monday, a 4-year-old boy tried to shoot two Unified police officers who were taking his father into custody, allegedly because the father had told him to. Fortunately, an officer who saw the gun not only was able to push the barrel away from the direction of officers just as the gun was fired, but also recognized that the person holding it was a child and did not return fire.