Free Republic

Biden delivered his remarks at the end of a NATO summit in Madrid, Spain, where the big news was Turkey dropping its objection to Sweden and Finland joining the alliance. He described the process by which the two nations made their application after Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. First came a call from the leader Finland, asking to visit the White House. 'We got the telephone ... he suggested we call the leader of Switzerland ... ' he said before realizing his mistake. 'Switzerland, my goodness, I'm getting really anxious here about expanding NATO. 'Sweden.'

‘Mad Money’ host Jim Cramer and the ‘Squawk on the Street’ discuss inflation and markets as the first half of 2022 comes to a close.

George Washington University will not fire Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, an adjunct professor at its law school, amid left-wing cries on the internet for his termination after the overturning of Roe v. Wade. "Because we steadfastly support the robust exchange of ideas and deliberation, and because debate is a central part of our university’s academic and educational mission to train future leaders who are prepared to address the world’s most urgent problems," a letter addressed to its students states, "the university will neither terminate Justice Thomas’s employment nor cancel his class in response to his legal opinions." The move...

ESA’s asteroid team working with experts at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) has officially removed ‘2021 QM1’ from their asteroid risk list, a result of skilled observations and analysis of the faintest asteroid ever observed with one of the most sensitive telescopes ever constructed. 2021 QM1 was first discovered on August 28, 2021, by the Mount Lemmon Observatory, located north of Tucson, Arizona. At the beginning, nothing stood out as unusual about the discovery – about a dozen new near-Earth asteroids are identified every dark night. Routine follow-up observations were subsequently acquired from telescopes around the globe, but these began...

For years, I chased utopian energy. I promoted solar, wind, and energy efficiency because I felt like I was protecting the environment. But I was wrong! Feeling like you’re doing the right thing doesn’t mean you are. I just couldn’t admit it. My sense of identity was tied to my false beliefs about energy—myths that blinded me to what really does—and doesn’t—help the planet. I started to realize that I had accepted as true certain claims about energy and our environment. Now I began to see those claims were false. For example: I used to think solar and wind power...

VIDEODoes anybody out there get a Tracy Flick vibe from Cassidy Hutchinson? Luke Ford certainly does especially after reading a Washington Post story about Hutchinson.

The US economy is slowing as inflation ravages consumers. US Regular Gasoline prices, for example, are up 104% under President Biden which helps to slow the economy. US personal consumption expenditures fell to +0.2% MoM in May as “inflation” or real personal consumption expenditures PRICES rose +6.3% YoY as The Fed’s balance sheet (aka, Master Blaster!) remains. As I mentioned above, US regular gasoline prices are UP 103% under President Biden, diesel prices (the cost of shipping goods to markets like … food is up 119% under Biden while CRB foodstuffs is up 55% under China Joe. Now we have...

Hillary Clinton invokes racist trope to attack Supreme Court's only black justice Journalists and other Democrats are waging another racially charged assault on a prominent black conservative. When Sen. Tim Scott (R., S.C.) delivered the GOP response to President Joe Biden's congressional address in April 2021, liberals denounced the historic black senator, using racist tropes such as "Uncle Tim." One Democratic analyst called Scott a "clown" whose "ancestors are ashamed of him." The Washington Post published an investigation implying that Scott's grandfather—raised on a farm in South Carolina during the Great Depression—was actually a child of privilege. Following the Supreme...

The rising influence of a woke investing movement that pressures companies to adopt left-wing political causes has policymakers and industry experts warning that the U.S. could be on the path to a Chinese model of monitoring the behavior of businesses -- and even individuals. The movement called environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing, which is based on the concept that investors should use these three broad categories when evaluating where to put their money, prioritizing progressive values and "social responsibility" when making financial decisions. According to Utah Treasurer Marlo Oaks, one of the nation's leading voices pushing back against the...

For the first time since the Cold War, the U.S. Army is set to acquire and field a new light tank. The service announced today that General Dynamics Land Systems has won its Mobile Protected Firepower program competition and has been awarded a contract worth up to $1.14 billion. The initial Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) contract award will cover an initial low-rate production order of 96 vehicles. The Army expects to take delivery of the first examples, from an initial lot of 26 MPFs, in December 2023 and have its first unit fully equipped with them by 2025. The service...

The Supreme Court on Thursday curtailed the Environmental Protection Agency’s powers to restrict greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants, in a decision that could limit the authority of government agencies to address major policy questions without congressional approval. Elaborating on earlier decisions, the high court said federal agencies need explicit authorization from Congress to decide issues of major economic and political significance, drawing on a principle known as the “major questions doctrine.” In his decision for the 6-3 majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said Congress never gave the EPA the authority to change the methods a power plant uses—regulations known as...

The Ukrainian Navy announced Thursday it recaptured Snake Island, a critical Black Sea outpost taken by Russia early in the war, which has since galvanized Ukrainian resistance as a symbol of fortified defiance. Russia confirmed its withdrawal Thursday morning, but called the move a “goodwill gesture”... Natalia Humeniuk, a spokeswoman for the Ukrainian military’s southern command, told the New York Times on Tuesday that it destroyed three anti-aircraft missile systems that Russian had stationed on the island, as well as Russia’s radar station.

In a paper published in Wildlife Society Bulletin, researchers collected data for birds causing fires from being electrocuted throughout the contiguous United States from January 2014 through December 2018. There is no central database for this sort of thing, so they got creative. They set up Google Alerts for three keyword searches: bird (and) fire, eagle (and) fire, and hawk (and) fire, and filtered out unrelated results. Next, they manually sorted through the results and discarded wildfires that were not confirmed to have been started by a bird, looking for photographic evidence of a burned carcass at the ignition site...

A George Soros-backed prosecutor in Virginia released on probation a violent repeat offender who went on to kill an elderly homeless woman—the third case of its kind in the jurisdiction this year. Fairfax County commonwealth's attorney Steve Descano (D.) in October charged Chante Antonio Jones with assault and battery before releasing him on recognizance, slapping him with just a $212 fine and one-year period of supervised probation. Police on Monday arrested Jones for beating 63-year-old Michelle Huntley to death at a bus stop where she had taken shelter. The brutal killing last week is just the latest instance in which...

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is preparing to cite the United States’ largest oil field for violating ozone pollution standards, a move that will threaten the end of oil and gas production in the region. According to the Texas Governor’s Office, the proposed regulations will directly affect the Permian Basin, the largest oil field in the United States, accounting for 95,000,000 gallons of gasoline per day or 40% of the oil produced domestically.

(Translation) The number of taxicab drivers on the island is decreasing, which is felt by the tourist who needs a transportation service and passengers who arrive in Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport early in the morning. It is estimated that, in the last years, there has been a 40% decrease in the number of these workers, according to Juan de León, President of the Taxi Drivers Federation, who understands is due to factors that affect the economy in general. According to data collected among cab drivers, it is estimated that there were over 5,000 taxis in Puerto Rico one decade...

Stocks fell sharply Thursday, as the S&P 500 caps off its worst first half in more than 50 years. The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 348 points, or 1.1%. The S&P 500 slid 1.2%, and the Nasdaq Composite pulled back by 1.6%.

From Madison reading Cato and Cicero when framing the Constitution to the outsized impact both Rome and America had on the world around them, the United States has long been associated with historical Rome. There are great similarities, and there can be much to learn. When most of us think of the worst emperors Roman in history we think of names like Commodus, Nero, Caligula and Elagabalus. To a man they were vain, self centered, bloodthirsty hedonists who took what they wanted and tortured and killed many thousands of Romans and provincials. All emperors, including the great ones like Augustus,...

The Supreme Court’s announcement on Thursday that it will hear Moore v. Harper, a case that could concentrate an unprecedented amount of power in gerrymandered state legislatures, should alarm anyone who cares about democracy. The case is perhaps the gravest threat to American democracy since the January 6 attack. It seeks to reinstate gerrymandered congressional maps that were struck down by North Carolina’s highest court because they “subordinated traditional neutral redistricting criteria in favor of extreme partisan advantage” for the Republican Party. The plaintiffs argue that the state supreme court didn’t have the authority to strike these maps down, and...

Russia’s energy giant Gazprom on Thursday lost more than a quarter of its market value after the state-owned company decided not to pay out dividends. “The shareholders have resolved that in the current situation it is not opportune to pay out dividends based on the results of 2021,” Famil Sadygov, deputy chairman of Gazprom, said in a statement. “At the moment, Gazprom prioritizes the implementation of its investment program, including gas infrastructure expansion in the regions of the Russian Federation, and the preparations for the coming winter period. In addition, we undoubtedly must be ready to meet our obligations to...