Free Republic

Disney’s boasting about indoctrinating kids with LGBTQ propaganda isn’t sitting well with the American public, according to a new Rasmussen Reports survey released Tuesday. According to the poll, only 28% of American adults believe the emphasis on “inclusion” and “diversity” makes children’s entertainment better. However, a plurality — 45% — thinks it will make children’s entertainment worse, while only 18% say it won’t make a difference. This is probably not the news that Disney executives want to hear after a company-wide zoom meeting that was leaked last week showed Karen Burke, the president of Disney’s General Entertainment Content, saying Disney...

Twitter, Facebook and YouTube allow seven dictators, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, unfettered access to post on their platforms, influencing approximately 50 million followers as of March 28. Meanwhile, former leader of the free world President Donald Trump is still banned. MRC Free Speech America found seven dictators that Big Tech allows to post online. Twitter grants verified status to six of the seven dictators on the platform: Putin, Saudi Arabian King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, and Rwandan President Paul Kagame. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah...

A U.S. wind power developer pleaded guilty to multiple violations of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act after its wind turbine blades allegedly killed more than 135 bald and golden eagles across the country. The company, ESI Energy, pleaded guilty Tuesday to three counts of violations in the form of golden eagle deaths. Prosecutors said the birds were documented to have been killed by blunt force trauma after being struck by its wind turbine blades at its facilities in Wyoming or New Mexico, where ESI had not applied for the necessary permits. As part of the settlement, ESI “acknowledged that at...

If Merriam-Webster could embed tweets in its definitions, you’d find this attached to the entry for “hypocrite.” In fact, CNBC thought this exchange between Joe Kernan and House Democrat Jan Schakowsky was so laughably hypocritical that they made sure to highlight it on Twitter. Schakowsky plans to hold a hearing on Big Oil’s supposed price gouging, but Kernan reminds Schakowsky that she and her colleagues spent last year haranguing oil executives to cut back production — including a vote to end fracking in the US. Oddly, Schakowsky doesn’t want to discuss that.... In another measure of how dumb the “gouging”...

The Biden administration recently released a $5.8 trillion-plus budget proposal. The president’s “billionaire tax” proposal and its terrible economics have received the most attention. Yet there’s also a big tax hike on workers slipped into the fine print of President Joe Biden’s new budget. That pesky fact didn’t stop the president from repeating his big lie that only “the rich” will pay more under his plans. But consider the facts. The plan includes a proposal for raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, which Biden said “ensures that corporations pay their fair share.” I know what you’re thinking:...

Resurfaced footage of a Richard Nixon interview from 1992 has shown the former President making a 'prescient' prediction about the future of Russia. It comes after Vladimir Putin declared war on Ukraine and launched a “full-scale invasion” on Wednesday night, with terrifying footage of troops advancing into the country sparking fear across the continent. Putin claimed he was helping with the "denazification" of Ukraine and said his troops were "peacekeeping", while he also cautioned against interference from other countries, warning them “if you do you will face consequences greater than any of you have faced in history”.

In the absence of a legislation to deal with refugees, India continues to treat Rohingya refugees in an arbitrary manner, discriminating against them in relation to refugees from other nations, and inhumanely detains and deports them, in violation of customary international law and its own international treaty obligations.Hasina Begum, a Rohingya refugee staying in India, was deported to Myanmar on March 22 from the Indian border town of Moreh in Manipur’s Tengnoupal district. She had been in detention at the Kathua sub-jail in the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir since March 6 last year. She had UNHCR [United Nations...

The year 2012 called and wants its politics back. Former President Barack Obama and ex-Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney -- two old rivals who waged a tough election campaign that year -- are creating a fleeting vision of what even a marginally functioning Washington might look like. Obama made his first post-presidential trip to the White House Tuesday and showed he'd not lost a political step, telling demoralized Democrats -- worried about a possible midterm election shellacking -- to buck up and remember what political power is for.# Meanwhile, Romney -- now a Utah senator -- is suddenly turning into...

He worked on Broadway opposite Boris Karloff and did lots of television, with turns on 'The Twilight Zone,' 'The Untouchables' and 'Gilligan's Island.'Nehemiah Persoff, a charter member of the Actors Studio who appeared in dozens of notable films and TV shows, from Some Like It Hot and On the Waterfront to The Twilight Zone and The Untouchables, has died. He was 102. Persoff died Tuesday night at a rehabilitation facility in San Luis Obispo, California, his son Dan told The Hollywood Reporter. The prolific character actor also portrayed Henry Fonda’s brother-in-law in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man (1956), Humphrey Bogart’s...

Ed Sheeran has won a copyright lawsuit over his song "Shape of You." Artist Sami Chokri, known as Sami Switch, claimed Sheeran's 2017 hit plagiarized his 2015 song "Oh Why." After an 11-day trial, judge ruled Sheeran had "neither deliberately nor subconsciously copied" Chokri's song and that while there were "similarities between the one-bar phrase" they were "only a starting point for a possible infringement" of copyright, according to BBC News. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Ed Sheeran (@teddysphotos) While Sheeran includes the "oh I" phrase in "Shape of You," the judge said it said it...

I mowed the lawn today, and after doing so I sat down and had a cold beer. The day was really quite beautiful, and the drink facilitated some deep thinking. My wife walked by and asked me what I was doing, and I said, "Nothing." She then said, "That's what you did yesterday!" I replied, "I WASN'T DONE , SO I'M IN THE MIDDLE OF FINISHING RIGHT NOW." The reason I said "nothing" instead of saying "just thinking" is because she then would have asked, "About what?" At that point I would have had to explain that men are deep...

Dr. Kelly Ann Machovec It is with profound sadness that we inform you of the passing of a beloved member of the Duke Anesthesiology family and an esteemed pediatric cardiac anesthesiologist, Kelly Ann Machovec, MD, MPH. She passed away on March 30 at the age of 43. She will be remembered as an exceptional academician and physician who dedicated her career to improving the lives of children undergoing cardiothoracic or vascular surgery, and for her special impact that was palpable to her colleagues and patients throughout the Duke Children's Heart Center. Dr. Machovec was originally from Baltimore, Maryland. She received...

The United States on Wednesday announced sanctions targeting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s two adult daughters and said it was toughening penalties against Russian banks in retaliation for “war crimes” in Ukraine....In addition to sanctions aimed at Putin’s adult daughters, Mariya Putina and Katerina Tikhonova, the U.S. is targeting Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin; the wife and children of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov; and members of Russia’s Security Council, including Dmitry Medvedev, a former president and prime minister.The penalties cut of all of Putin’s close family members off from the U.S. financial system and freeze any assets they hold in the...

The Minneapolis police officer who fatally shot Amir Locke, a 22 year-old Black man, while executing a no-knock warrant in February won’t face criminal charges, prosecutors said.Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman said in a joint statement Wednesday there was insufficient admissible evidence to file charges against Officer Mark Hanneman. “The State would be unable to disprove beyond a reasonable doubt any of the elements of Minnesota’s use-of-deadly-force statute that authorizes the use of force by Officer Hanneman,” the statement said. “Nor would the State be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt a criminal...

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian nationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a senior lawmaker whose sulphurous rhetoric and antics alarmed the West but appealed to Russians’ aggrievement and wounded pride, has died at age 75, the speaker of the lower house of Russia’s parliament said Wednesday. State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said Zhirinovsky died after “a serious and prolonged illness.” The lawmaker was hospitalized with COVID-19 on Feb. 2; in late March, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Zhirinovsky was “in serious condition.” As the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party for three decades, Zhirinovsky was infamous for making vehement statements that were neither...

Symptoms from the new omicron variant’s subvariant — named the BA.2 variant— might be mistaken for spring allergies, experts recently told CBS News. Why it matters: The coronavirus pandemic has hit a lull period in the United States. As spring emerges, the new coronavirus variant symptoms might be mistaken for simple spring allergies.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned a House panel Wednesday that Russia’s aggression in Eastern Europe will have "enormous economic repercussions in Ukraine and beyond.”“Globally, spillovers from the crisis are heightening economic vulnerabilities in many countries that are already facing higher debt burdens and limited policy options as they recover from COVID-19," Yellen said in remarks to the House Financial Services Committee. They were part of her annual testimony on the state of the international financial system.Yellen said Russia's invasion “including the atrocities committed against innocent Ukrainians in Bucha, are reprehensible, represent an unacceptable affront to the rules-based...

The escalating civilian toll of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine has fuelled calls for a reappraisal of more than a decade of French and German efforts to engage with a leader whose forces stand accused of committing horrific war crimes in Ukraine. Ukraine’s embattled President Volodymyr Zelensky did not mince his words as he addressed Western leaders in a video message late on Sunday, just hours after witnessing the trail of death and destruction that Russian forces left in their wake as they retreated from Kyiv’s northern suburb of Bucha. He had a special message for the former leaders of...

From the revolution’s first engagement in the small Danubian port of Galati, the Greeks made a habit of massacring not just enemy combatants but also Muslim civilians. “There was a widespread sense that it was time for their former masters to learn their place,” Mazower writes. When they took the stronghold of Tripolitsa, “the robbery, butchery and looting went on for three days.” Similar fates awaited Kalavryta, Navarino, Corinth, and Athens. “I became disgusted with the Greek cause,” one of its own leaders wrote, “because we were a lot of cannibals.” The Ottomans were no better. “The furious sultan …...

When Republicans who oppose federal marijuana prohibition vote against your legalization bill, you probably are doing something wrong. That is what happened last week, when the House of Representatives approved the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act by a vote of 220 to 204. The ayes included 217 Democrats but only three Republicans, two fewer than voted for the MORE Act when the House passed it in 2020. The meager and waning GOP support for the bill suggests that Democrats want credit for trying to legalize marijuana but are not really interested in building the bipartisan coalition that would...