Free Republic

News Thursday morning that the outspoken serial tech entrepreneur Elon Musk has offered to buy Twitter and take it private has surfaced widespread anxieties within the knowledge-class industries that free speech and even societal peace will be jeopardized if the Tesla CEO lifts content restrictions from journalists' favorite social media platform. "I am frightened by the impact on society and politics if Elon Musk acquires Twitter," wrote Max Boot, columnist for The (Jeff Bezos–owned) Washington Post, on Twitter. "He seems to believe that on social media anything goes. For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less." Boot...

Despite historic inflation numbers and low marks, resident Joe Biden is doubling down on gun control. On Monday, he announced a final rule to ban so-called “ghost guns” and used the occasion to nominate Steve Dettelbach, a failed Democratic Ohio Attorney General candidate, to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (BATFE). Unfortunately for Biden and Democrats, pushing sweeping policies that target law-abiding gun owners will hurt their midterm election prospects. Banning “Ghost Guns” Won’t Deter CrimeGun control advocates and their media backers have a new target in their crosshairs: “ghost guns.” The White House announced their final...

Conceivably, you also could cram all of your exercise into long Saturday and Sunday workouts. In a 2017 study by Dr. Stamatakis and colleagues, people who reported exercising almost entirely on weekends were less likely to die prematurely than those who said they rarely exercised at all. But being a weekend warrior has drawbacks. “It is certainly not ideal to spend the workweek totally sedentary and then try to compensate” over the weekend, Dr. Stamatakis said. You miss many of the health benefits of regular exercise, such as improved blood-sugar control and better moods, on the days you do not...

How the FBI deployed dummy companies, inside informers, and fake legislation to target California politicians. The intrepid Julie Kelly wants an investigation of the aptly named “FBI-concocted Whitmer operation.” That operation and the ongoing proceedings over January 6 resulted from long FBI experience as a political strike force. Consider, for example, a bureau operation in California back in 1988. “California Capitol shaken by FBI sting,” headlined a UPI story on September 4, 1988. “More than 30 federal agents carrying search warrants conducted an unprecedented raid on the Capitol offices of four leading lawmakers, seeking evidence of wrongdoing until the wee...

A former Clinton pollster is calling Joe Biden's re-election 'virtually impossible' as the president faces a historic low approval rating of 33 percent that is even worse among Independents and Republicans. Biden's approval with Independents is 26 percent and just a paltry three percent of Republicans say he is doing a good job. 'These are spectacularly low numbers,' said Mark Penn, the founder of PSB Insights and a former Hillary Clinton campaign pollster. 'To really get down to it, only a third being favorable and in the 20s on independents, of course makes [Biden's] reelection a virtual impossibility.

I used to be pro-choice. That was before I had an abortion, experienced serious trauma, and then sat in on a veterinary abortion a few years later. Most abortionists have been taught that the procedure is safe, helpful to women, and that if it’s not legal, women will die in back-alley abortions. Many claim that thousands of lives are saved every year thanks to legal abortion care. In truth, back-alley abortion deaths were rare before Roe v. Wade, and legalizing abortion didn’t prevent Dr. Kermit Gosnell from murdering living babies and endangering the lives of countless women until he was...

Video has emerged of clashes between police and people being forced out of their homes in Shanghai, as the city enters a third week of Covid lockdown. Some residential compounds are being turned into quarantine centres. Millions are confined to their homes as Shanghai battles a fresh outbreak of the virus. Anyone who tests positive is placed in quarantine. But with more than 20,000 new cases a day, authorities are struggling to find enough space.

This recent video from Tucker Carlson Tonight features true liberal Naomi Wolf saying what we've all suspected: that the anti-liberty left is going to use a crisis to cheat in the midterm elections. You have to wonder: why they are making it all too obvious now? Those of us on the pro-freedom right logically expected the Biden administration to finally give up on the pandemic panic plan for electoral success. The waning of the crisis made it plain that the emergency was long gone. A clear majority of Americans say COVID is over: just 9% think the pandemic is a...

A majority of the world’s wealth is concentrated in just a few countries. In fact, as Visual Capitalist’s Carmen Ang details below, almost a third of household wealth is held by Americans, while China’s population accounts for nearly a fifth. Using data from Credit Suisse, this graphic by Eleonora Nazander shows the distribution of household wealth worldwide, highlighting the wealth gap that exists across regions. Top 10 Wealthiest CountriesTo help simplify things, this graphic shows how much household wealth each country would have if the world only had $100. As the graphic illustrates, the top 10 wealthiest countries would hold...

This is what the people of Los Angeles wanted. They put their police force on a short leash, blaming the overworked officers for the least amount of violence against criminals while at the same time absolving the criminals of responsibility. It has led to increasing numbers of officers leaving the force or retiring early. With fewer officers on the street and those that are being hesitant to act, the criminals are taking advantage of the situation. The Los Angeles Police Department recently started warning people not to wear expensive jewelry in public, or they might become the target of thieves....

hina has begun sending its most advanced fighter aircraft, the J-20, to patrol the East and South China Seas, Chinese state media has reported. Early versions of the J-20 stealth jet used Russian engines -- but those have since been replaced with domestically-produced twin engines. The jets were first shown to the public with the new Chinese engines last year at Airshow China. The deployment is intended to "better safeguard China's airspace security and maritime interests," state-run tabloid Global Times reported on Wednesday, citing military experts. Ren Yukun, a spokesperson for the J-20's state-run manufacturer, added that it was a...

Matthew Continetti, writing in Commentary, credits leading neoconservatives, such as Irving Kristol and his son Bill Kristol, with "modernizing" conservatism so that the Republican Party — which neoconservatives reluctantly joined after they lost influence with the Democrat party — could suitably govern a modern democracy. And he laments the fact that since the rise of the Tea Party movement, neoconservatives have gradually lost influence with a populist-nationalist Republican Party. Leading neoconservatives like Bill Kristol and Jonah Goldberg (then at National Review) publicly opposed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. As a result, neoconservatism is now a movement without a political...

Kyiv was hit on Friday by some of the most powerful explosions heard since Russian forces withdrew from the area two weeks ago. Moscow said it had struck a plant in capital that made and repaired Ukrainian missiles, including anti-ship missiles.

In February, Lebanese journalist Mohammed Shoaib was arrested on suspicion of collusion with Israel’s Mossad spy agency. The writer who worked for Al-Jaras, confessed that the notorious spy agency secretly paid him to author “dozens” of anti-Hezbollah articles, receiving a paltry $30 to $70 per article. In particular, Shoaib was tasked with writing hit jobs on the “Iranian occupation” of Lebanon, and falsely linking Hezbollah with the August 2020 Beirut port blast, drug trafficking, and murder of political activists. It is also alleged that Mossad specifically requested his work incite hostility towards Palestinian refugees in the country who number almost...

What happens in France happens in Belgium and vice versa. Our two countries are very close, in good and bad ideas. Here it is not a question of value judgment on the rationing which would be good or bad. In reality it is inevitable because we are entering the era of structural scarcity. War in Ukraine. In Belgium, the time has already come for the first rationing of foodstuffs “In Belgium, several large retailers – including Lidl, Aldi and Carrefour – have decided to ration certain food products, in order to avoid a shortage. For the moment, no store has...

Furious tanker driver appears to yank Just Stop Oil activist down from his fuel truck after eco-mob launch dawn raids on oil plants in Essex and Birmingham Just Stop Oil say they have targeted three oil terminals in Birmingham and Essex They claim to have stopped production at Kingsbury Terminal, Birmingham, after entering site this morning Group have blocked access to Grays Inter Terminals in Essex, by creating a stoppage at the site's access road Video appears to show activist, wearing an orange hi-vis, on top of oil tanker near Navigator Terminal, Essex Tempers have today flared between lorry drivers...

Appearing on Stage in Vancouver earlier today with the head of TED Chris Anderson, Elon Musk discusses why he has made a financial bid to purchase the social media platform Twitter. The video is prompted to 11:40 when Musk takes the stage, the first part of the conversation surrounds the Twitter announcement that had made global headlines only a few hours earlier. WATCH:

The doctor couldn’t understand why Kidus Girma wouldn’t just eat the sandwich. It was October 2021, and Girma, 26, was starving. He hadn’t eaten anything solid in four days. His vision was blurred, his heart rate was elevated, and his blood-glucose levels were becoming potentially deadly. He could barely sit up, much less stand. As he struggled to explain to the befuddled medical professionals surrounding him that he was on a hunger strike to protest the Biden Administration’s lack of action on climate change, he began to realize his cause was failing. “I had felt like, maybe if I really...

Russia paid roubles on dollar bonds Bonds had no provision for rouble payments - Moody's Russia defaulted on foreign bonds after 1917 revolution Russia's economy facing worst year since 1994 LONDON, April 15 (Reuters) - Moody's said Russia may be in default because it tried to service its dollar bonds in roubles, which would be one of the starkest consequences to date of Moscow's exclusion from the Western financial system since President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.....

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