Free Republic

It’s been said that “peace is that brief, glorious moment in history when everybody stands around reloading.” For the brief moment between the two global wars of the 20th century, everybody who could afford it stood around gloriously drinking champagne. The sorrows of the Great War weren’t only personal — they launched a generation into the indulgence and excess that have become trademarks of their era. Perceiving the fragility of life, the partiers of the 1920s and ’30s took the eat-drink-and-take-pleasure advice of Ecclesiastes to heart, often in a less than biblical manner. A century later, the glamor still fascinates...

Follow the Data, They Said, and Then Hid ItNever before has the public had access to so much data on a virus and its effects. For two years, data festooned the daily papers. Dozens of websites assembled it. We were all invited to follow the data, follow the science, and observe as scientists became our new overlords, instructing us how to feel, think, and behave in order to “flatten the curve,” “drive down cases,” “preserve capacity,” “stay safe,” and otherwise deploy all the powers of human will to respond to and manipulate disease outcomes. We could watch it all in...

If you're looking for a true recipe for disaster, look no further than "homemade" and "rocket fuel". Unfortunately, one student at the Brigham Young University, Utah, thought making his own DIY version of rocket fuel would be a good idea, and it ended about as well as you might expect – large fireball, sprinklers flooding the entire dorm, 22 upset students out of living for a while. Police and fire crews arrived at the scene on Sunday afternoon after a fire alarm was heard at the student dorms of Heritage Halls. Upon inspection, the building was flooded with water and...

Update(11:28am): The influential former editor and current commentator for China’s state-run English daily Global Times issued a shocking comment hours into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Hu Xijin weighed in on Thursday’s PLA fighter jet breach of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone by saying “Get used to it. There may be more PLA aircraft fly[ing] there tomorrow.” Get used to it. There may be more PLA aircraft fly there tomorrow. https://t.co/viU4vlEye5 — Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) February 24, 2022 While the prominent state-linked English language pundit is known for trolling the West and denouncing Washington policy in Taiwan and the South...

Freedom Convoy, Golden Valley, AZ 2-23-22

The Biden dministration is sending U.S. taxpayer dollars to northern Mexico as part of the reinstated Migrant Protection Protocols, or MPP, a Trump-era program requiring asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases are adjudicated. The problem is, the administration won’t say how much, or what these funds are being spent on, or who is receiving them. Republican lawmakers have been asking the State Department for answers to these questions since December, but so far heard nothing in response. On Tuesday night, a dozen Republican members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee sent a letter to Secretary of State Anthony...

Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube, praised "the informal cooperation that has enabled the government and our company to censor unacceptable ideas from being posted on our platform. However, the lack of a specific law specifying that it is legal for us to do this leaves our company liable to being sued. Knowing how big CYA is in government circles, they could always weasel out on the informal agreement and disavow any knowledge of our actions. Following former President Reagan's advice 'to trust, but verify,' we'd appreciate it if Congress could formalize the relationship by passing a law that legitimizes it."...

I have a feeling of déjà vu today. It's 1968 again. From the day he took office Joe Biden has sought to weaken the United States of America. Biden began his Presidency bowing to Russia when he lifted sanctions on Nordstream 2. He said would tolerate a "minor incursion" by Russia into Ukraine. Biden has done nothing but signal lack of strength and determination and appease our adversaries. He has replenished the coffers of Iran so that it may continue funding terrorism and making weapons. He continues to boost China at the expense of jobs in the US when he...

Two Manhattan District Attorneys who have been investigating Donald Trump’s business practices for several years abruptly resigned on Tuesday, leaving the case against the former president in limbo. Carey R. Dunne and Mark F. Pomerantz submitted their resignations after the new Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, indicated that he had doubts about moving forward with the case. The issue is whether Trump inflated his net worth to get favorable rates on real estate loans. After a flurry of activity in January at the Lower Manhattan courthouse where the grand jury was sitting, no witnesses have been called in about a...

We yielded to irrational pandemic restrictions to get the next credential. Future leaders we aren’t. .... Harvard has required students to get vaccinated and boosted and test for Covid twice a week, hectored us to wear masks nearly everywhere, and banned students from several communal spaces, including dining halls ... More concerning than the administration’s heavy-handedness has been the zombielike response of the student body. I ask my friends, “Why do young, fully vaccinated students continue to tolerate these irrational Covid restrictions?” While many of my peers acknowledge the excess, they shrug it off. The prevailing mood on campus is...

As Europe descends into war, chaos and death, CNN and MSNBC thought the appropriate, reserved way to handle the situation would be to blend live coverage with beer and chicken commercials. It went about as badly as you might imagine. Anchor Bianna Golodryga on Thursday related heartbreaking details: “It should be packed with commuters but subway stations in Ukrainian cities under fire and turned into makeshift bomb shelters. Families having to protect their little children.” Going to commercial break, she added, “Air raid sirens are ringing out this morning.” Then, with half the screen showing the spiraling situation in Kyiv,...

International airline Swiss will be covering all 12 of its Boeing 777s with a shark-skin-inspired film that can reduce drag and fuel consumption by more than 1 percentSwiss VIEW 2 IMAGES Zero-emissions airliners are still a long way off, but Lufthansa and BASF have developed a way to improve things right now. AeroShark is an adhesive riblet film that immediately reduces fuel consumption, and therefore emissions, from any aircraft. Millions of years of evolution moved the ocean's most feared predators away from perfectly smooth skin. Instead, sharks have very slightly ribbed skin, which reduces drag enough to become an advantage....

In a sensational revelation, Russian soldiers allegedly sent flirty texts and tried to pick up Ukrainian women on dating app Tinder hours ahead of invasion into Kyiv. As per The Sun, Ukrainian women in the second city Kharkiv just 20 miles from were Russian troops were shocked after receiving numerous 'flirty' texts from them on Tinder. The incident occurred hours before Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a 'military operation' in Ukraine's Donbas region. As per the report, a Tinder user named Dasha Synelnikova’s started getting notifications with snaps of dozens of Russians when she set her location to Kharkiv on...

A more infectious type of the Omicron variant has surged to account for more than a third of global Covid-19 cases sequenced recently, adding to the debate about whether countries are ready for full reopening. Health authorities are examining whether the subvariant of Omicron, known as BA.2, could extend the length of Covid-19 waves that have peaked recently in Europe, Japan and some other places. “We’re looking not only at how quickly those peaks go up, but how they come down,” World Health Organization epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove said. “And as the decline in cases occurs…we also need to look...

Donald Trump Jr. exclusively told Breitbart News on Thursday he holds Chris Christie responsible for leading a “totally pathetic” redistricting effort as the co-chair of the National Republican Redistricting Trust (NRRT). “As co-chair of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, Chris Christie was tasked with overseeing the redistricting process for the Republican Party and has been a complete failure in the role,” Donald Trump Jr. told Breitbart News about the GOP’s overall performance.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of the sovereign nation of Ukraine under several pretexts reminds me of Adolf Hitler's rationale for invading and annexing Sudetenland in 1938 and his invasion of Czechoslovakia and Poland a year later. Then, as now, the excuse was that German-speaking people (then) and Russian-speaking people (now) wanted to be part of Germany (then) and Mother Russia (now). In both cases the excuses for invasion, occupation and murder were just that - excuses. Some commentators say there has been nothing like Putin's invasion of Ukraine since World War II. There are dwindling numbers of people alive...

NASCAR Daytona 500 ratings not only came in at a three-year high, but they also beat the NBA’s vaunted All-Star Game and the Olympics closing ceremonies for the number of viewers. Sunday’s NASCAR Daytona 500 netted a 4.7 average rating with 8.87 million viewers on FOX, making it the most-watched Daytona 500 since 2019 (5.3, 9.17M), according to Sports Media Watch. “Ratings jumped 68% and viewership 81% from last year’s all-time lows of 2.8 and 4.91 million and 7% and 21% respectively from two years ago (4.4, 7.33M). Keep in mind both of those races were severely affected by rain,...

The Biden administration is delaying decisions on new oil and gas leases and permits after a Louisiana federal judge blocked officials from using higher cost estimates of climate change when making rules for polluting industries.The leasing pause is an unintended result of the Feb. 11 decision by U.S. District Judge James Cain, who sided with a group GOP-led states and argued that the Biden administration’s attempt to raise the real cost of climate change would hike energy costs and hurt state revenues from energy production.The ruling has prompted delays and uncertainty across at least four federal agencies that were using...

Ahead of a likely Russian invasion of Ukraine, State Department spokesman Ned Price and White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki spent Wednesday afternoon under fire from establishment media reporters and, of course, Fox’s Peter Doocy over the administration’s flip-flop on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the failure to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the impact the war could have on the U.S. economy. Price went first and, from the get-go, the always-tough and persistent Matt Lee of the Associated Press went right to the news that Germany had suspended Nord Stream 2 from Russia and the U.S. would sanction...

Few things in life give us greater pleasure than quenching our hunger with some freshly made fast food. But whether it's a bag of hot, crispy fries, a juicy burger, or a giant slushy, more often than not, you're signing up to indulge. And you can assume that the better something tastes, the more nutritionally devastating secrets it holds. "These four things are contributors to heart disease when consumed in excess," Goodson explained. "And typically when foods are extremely high in these categories, they are likely low in fiber and other nutrients. A good rule of thumb is that if...