Free Republic

(Text from e-mail, Source Link to status video) After driving all night and half of the next day, I sat in the car, looking out at the scene of the People’s Convoy; dirt parking lots, lots of wind in excess of 45 mph, making whatever efforts I made to record or evaluate the crowd meaningless. When people can’t hear each other talk for the whistling of the wind, it’s difficult to do an interview and if I were like the others, who were only going to be there that day, I would have gotten the interviews anyway, but I’m with...

Several Ukrainian government websites were offline Wednesday as a result of a mass distributed denial of service attack, Mykhailo Fedorov, head of Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation said in his Telegram channel. The attack, which also impacted some banks, began around 4 p.m. local time, according to Fedorov. He didn’t say which banks were attacked or what the extent of the damage was. Websites for the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Cabinet of Ministers and Rada, the country’s parliament, were among those down as of Wednesday morning Eastern time. The government sites were offline as officials attempted to switch traffic...

Has eating meat become unfairly demonized as bad for your health? Study author, Dr. Wenpeng You, says humans have evolved and thrived over millions of years because of their significant consumption of meat. "Looking only at correlations of meat consumption with people's health or life expectancy within a particular group, and or, a particular region or country, can lead to complex and misleading conclusions. The researchers found that the consumption of energy from carbohydrate crops (grains and tubers) does not lead to greater life expectancy, and that total meat consumption correlates to greater life expectancy, independent of the competing effects...

1:11 BERLIN (AP) – Climate activists on Wednesday blocked roads leading to Germany’s three biggest airports, gluing themselves to the ground before police arrived. Members of the group Uprising of the Last Generation said they wanted to disrupt cargo and passenger traffic at the airports in Frankfurt, Munich and Berlin. The group has demanded that the government take measures to end food waste. It argues that throwing away vast amounts of usable food contributes to hunger and climate change. Past protests involving the blocking of roads and ports have drawn criticism from officials across the political spectrum. “Blocking highways or...

Twitter has suspended or locked the accounts of at least 15 users who were tracking Russian military movements on the platform. The accounts are part of a relatively new form of journalism that uses the internet to gather images and video (also known as open-source intelligence, or OSINT) in an effort to track and report on violent conflicts. Many of these accounts have been tracking Russian military movements — information that the Russian military might have found problematic if they launched an attack.

A study published in the highly respected journal Lancet compared vaccinated and unvaccinated people in Sweden. With a sample size of over a million test subjects, it found that the vaccines' protection against symptomatic COVID-19 declined with time, such that by six months, some of the vaccinated groups were at greater risk than their unvaccinated peers. Some doctors are calling this condition in the repeatedly vaccinated "immune erosion" or "acquired immune deficiency." The mRNA covid vaccines instruct the recipient's body to manufacture "spike proteins" that mimic those found in the coronavirus. This strategy provokes a narrow immunity to covid whose...

As Americans, there is little that is more important to us than freedom — but we must never forget that our democracy, and the freedoms it protects, relies on responsibility. Perhaps nowhere is this ideological collaboration more evident than with guns and the Second Amendment. But this all-important balance has been stretched to the breaking point in state after state, most recently in Texas. Last week in Houston, an armed robbery turned into a tragedy of the worst kind. The victim of an armed robbery turned around and became the perpetrator, accidentally killing a 9-year-old girl as he fired at...

Less than two years after the price of oil briefly plummeted to roughly negative $37 a barrel, an oil boom is underway in America—even in places where drilling was all but abandoned two years ago. “Private oil producers are leading an industry return to places like the Anadarko Basin of Oklahoma and the DJ Basin in Colorado, where drilling had almost completely stopped in mid-2020,” reports The Wall Street Journal. The Anadarko Basin, for example, has surged from just seven active drilling rigs to 46, according to energy analytics firm Enverus, while the DJ Basin in Colorado saw its number...

Even Biden admitted that energy prices are about to go up Since the day that Donald Trump became president, Democrats in Washington have told you it's your patriotic duty to hate Vladimir Putin. It's not a suggestion. It's a mandate. Anything less than hatred for Putin is treason. Many Americans have obeyed this directive. They now dutifully hate Vladimir Putin. Maybe you're one of them. Hating Putin has become the central purpose of America's foreign policy. It's the main thing that we talk about. Entire cable channels are now devoted to it. Very soon, that hatred of Vladimir Putin could...

Drill music is exactly what I’ve been fighting against for the last 22 years, Pastor Corey Brooks says CHICAGO – On the 95th day of his 100-day rooftop vigil to build a community center designed to provide opportunities to his community, Pastor Corey Brooks wished to share his thoughts on drill music and the culture vultures that promote it. What follows has been lightly edited. We strongly encourage you to watch the accompanying video so you may hear the pastor in his own words. Drill music has been making the news lately. The New York City mayor recently blamed drill...

Fifteen people were shot, two of them fatally, Monday through Tuesday in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s (D) Chicago. NBC Chicago reports that seven people were shot and wounded on Monday and FOX 32 / Chicago Sun-Times notes that eight people were shot Tuesday. Two of Tuesday’s shooting victims succumbed to their wounds. Both deaths occurred shortly after 7 a.m. in a residence “in the 4900 block of South Marshfield Avenue.” Police were called to the residence and arrived to find three people had been shot, and two of them were dead at the scene. Monday and Tuesday’s violence follows a weekend...

When Cecilie Fjellhoy, a 29-year-old Norwegian grad student living in London, swiped right on a 28-year-old supposed billionaire diamond heir on Tinder in 2018, she thought she’d found her Prince Charming. But the supposed dream man, who called himself Simon Leviev, turned out to be a nightmare, an international con man that duped her out of $250,000 and landed her in the psych ward. SNIP Leviev’s profile showed a man who appeared to live a jet-setting life full of stylish suits and designer clothes, sipping cocktails on exotic beaches and attending high-powered business meetings. Fjellhoy had no reason to doubt...

In September 2020, January Littlejohn went to pick up her 13-year-old daughter from middle school. Littlejohn is a stay-at-home mother to three children and a licensed mental health counselor in Florida. So when her daughter informed her that the school administration had begun encouraging her to identify as transgender, Littlejohn was shocked. Littlejohn's daughter told her that school administrators had asked her about changing her name, which restroom she wished to use, and whether she wanted to sleep with boys or girls on school trips. According to the district, parents were to be cut out of the loop unless the...

Under three of the last four presidents, including now Joe Biden, Vladimir Putin has chosen to take military action against Russia’s neighbors. There has been only one exception, namely Donald Trump. A big part of Biden’s pitch to voters in 2020 was that he would bring a return to foreign relation norms. America would be back, the adults would be in charge, etc., etc. Well, here we are, norms and all, and yet Putin is still on the verge of an incursion into a U.S. ally, Ukraine. Another way of saying normal is predictable. Norms are after all a set...

A group of paleontologists discovered a large, well-preserved pterosaur on a rocky beach off the coast of Scotland. Boasting roughly an 8-foot wingspan, the ancient reptile is the largest of its kind to be found from the Jurassic Period. The animal’s existence was a chance find made in 2017, when paleontologist Amelia Penney stumbled across the creature’s head while photographing dinosaur footprints on a rocky beach on the Isle of Skye. The pterosaur was promptly sawed out of the rock (with a couple pauses to deal with the tides, which threatened to wash away the fossil) and exhaustively studied; the...

Crafting a perfect jelly bean takes a week or more. That’s because—at least as far as Jelly Belly is concerned—flavor demands time. Each bite-size gem starts with a slurry of sugar, water, cornstarch, and corn syrup to which candymakers add juices, purees, and other ingredients they want the finished treats to evoke. Watermelon candies start with bright pink juice, coconut ones require fresh flakes, pureed fruit provides the sweet tang of peach, jalapeños deliver the burn of true chilis, and so on for every one of the brand’s 100-plus flavors. As the goodies wend their way through the company’s 250,000-square-foot...

Trucker convoy organizer Bob Bolus reportedly sustained two flat tires on the first day of his journey en route to Washington, DC from Scranton, Pennsylvania. After starting the journey on Wednesday morning to protest pandemic mandates, inflation, and illegal immigration, Bolus got two flat tires, delaying the convoy’s journey to the District, ABC 7 reported.

Portions of this article were adapted from the author’s recently published paper at The Heritage Foundation, “Combating Big Tech’s Totalitarianism: A Road Map.”Last week, our Canadian neighbors mobilized their national security apparatus against working-class citizens protesting government overreach. The Biden administration is no doubt taking notes.In fact, the contours of a similar strategy are already emerging in the United States. First, the FBI reportedly tagged parents opposed to critical race theory with a “terrorism” label under the direction of Biden’s Department of Justice. Then, the DOJ revealed plans to stand up a domestic terror unit fixated on “anti-government or anti-authority”...

Russian president Vladimir Putin has warned that the country's hypersonic missiles are ready to launch. In a chilling video, he warned that "weapons without parallel in the world have been put on combat duty" as Kremlin forces have surged into eastern parts of Ukraine... Speaking for the Defender of the Fatherland Day, originally a Soviet-era holiday for men who served in the Red Army, he said: “We see how difficult the international situation is, what dangers the existing challenges pose. “Our country is always open for direct and honest dialogue, but Russia's interests and the security of our citizens are...

Russian stocks and ETFs continued to sell off on Wednesday as the United States and its European allies have imposed sanctions on the country after Vladimir Putin dispatched Russian troops to act as "peacekeepers" in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions. In a direct reaction to the sanctions executed by the U.S. and its allies, Russian related stocks and ETFs have tumbled. This added to a retreat that has marked the last several days, as tensions in Ukraine have escalated. As an example, state-owned bank Sberbank of Russia (OTCPK:SBRCY) is -14% during Wednesday's intraday action. The slide represented the fifth...