Free Republic

The Navy commander of a joint military base in Hawaii where thousands were poisoned by water contaminated during a massive fuel leak was recently awarded the Legion of Merit upon retirement. Capt. Erik Spitzer, formerly the commander of Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, was relieved of command on June 14 by Capt. Mark Sohaney, according to photos released by the Navy. Spitzer was criticized in the midst of the water crisis for providing conflicting guidance that residents’ water was safe in the days after the fuel leak. But during the change of command ceremony, Spitzer was awarded the Legion of Merit...

Secret Service Director Jim Murray is retiring from the service and heading to the popular app Snapchat, where he'll serve as chief security officer, DailyMail.com confirmed. 'Jim embodies the meaning of service over self, and protected the families of U.S. Presidents like they were part of his own,' said a statement Thursday from the president and first lady. 'We are incredibly grateful for his service to our country and our family.' The Secret Service's Chief of Communications Anthony Guglielmi told DailyMail.com that Murray delayed his retirement from the service by several months. 'He had the opportunity back in April but...

A special city committee is poised to recommend putting a dome over Soldier Field to keep the Chicago Bears from bolting to Arlington Heights, according to a published report Mayor Lori Lightfoot would only say was “premature” to publicly discuss. Lightfoot’s special committee, the Museum Campus Working Group, is prepared to release a report that suggests a dome could keep the Bears in Chicago, according to Greg Hinz of Crain’s. Capping the lakefront stadium could cost up to $1.5 billion, Crain’s reported, citing sources. A draft of the report, which could be released Thursday, says the dome “almost certainly” will...

As UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson prepares to resign – but stay on in a caretaker role – the momentous occasion offers the opportunity to reflect on his legacy of half-baked ideas and unfinished projects. The last 24 hours in British politics can be neatly summed up by the reaction of The Economist, which marked Johnson's demise with the Twitter-trending headline Clownfall. Following a multitude of calamitous moments, including Partygate - parties taking place at the Conservative PM's place of work during the pandemic, breaking rules the government put in place - and culminating in Johnson's appointment of an MP...

Consider the Buryats, one of Siberia’s largest Indigenous groups. Closely related to Mongolians, they were subjugated, annexed, and subsequently colonized by Russia in the 1600s. Russian independent news outlets Mediazona and iStories found that by mid-May, Buryatia had the second-highest number of soldiers killed in Ukraine since the start of the invasion—just after Dagestan, another conquest of the Russian Empire. By May 18, Buryatia had lost 117 soldiers (the actual number is likely higher), whereas the city of Moscow, with a population around 15 times Buryatia’s, lost only three. Relative to the population, Buryatia’s rate of battle deaths was the...

Recently, Democrat Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who has faced constant scandal during her tenure as governor, released a campaign ad featuring a Portales woman named “Carla.” The woman, who is now a nurse, credits Lujan Grisham in the ad for helping her get her degree through the Governor’s “free college” Opportunity Scholarship program. The problem is that the legislation was only enacted just days ago on July 1st, making it impossible for “Carla” to have been a beneficiary of the initiative. “I promised my parents I’d become a nurse, but I couldn’t have done it without the Governors Opportunity Scholarship....

Cindy McCain, the widow of the late Senator John McCain, said her husband wouldn't recognize today's Republican Party.

"And saith unto them, Go your way into the village over against you: and as soon as ye be entered into it, ye shall find a colt tied, whereon never man sat; loose him, and bring him. And if any man say unto you, Why do ye this? say ye that the Lord hath need of him; and straightway he will send him hither." "And Jesus answered and said unto them, I will also ask of you one question, and answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, was it...

The White House has removed numerous Norman Rockwell paintings and replaced them with huge photographs of Slow Joe Biden. What the White House Paid Liar has omitted from the announcement of the paintings being replaced is that each photograph has a caption underneath the photograph. Same captions include: "You are Joe Biden, President of the United States", "You are still Joe Biden, President of the United States ... Are your shoes tied?", "You are still Joe Biden, President of the United States ... Did you changer your underwear today?", "You are still Joe Biden, President of the United States ......

A black male by the name of Jerone Davison released an amazing campaign ad for his Congressional run in Arizona. The Second Amendment has become an extremely hot topic

[Catholic Caucus] 07-07-07 Bittersweet Summorum Pontificum 15 years ago today, Pope Benedict XVI issued Summorum Pontificum, which freed up the use the 1962 Missale Romanum. This was one of the most significant acts of his pontificate.His motives for issuing Summorum were to jump start an organic and legitimate liturgical renewal, especially through “mutual enrichment”, to reconcile many and to provide sacred liturgical worship according to the hearts of even more. I will not rule out that Benedict, as a priest himself, keenly understood what priests understand about their priesthood through the use of the Traditional Latin Mass.Summorum could be likened...

The National Education Association passed a resolution during their annual Representative Assembly in Chicago that would allocate thousands of dollars to conduct opposition research on 25 organizations that are supposedly attacking gender identity and sexual orientation freedoms in public schools. "NEA shall compile research to create fact sheets about the largest 25 organizations that are actively working to diminish a students' right to honesty in education, freedom of sexual and gender identify, and teacher autonomy," the resolution said. NEA's resolutions are called new business items (NBI) and represent the teachers' union's opinions and beliefs. They also open the door to...

An Army training slide obtained by Breitbart News instructs soldiers to shower with transgender members of the opposite sex even if they have not undergone a surgical transition. The training slide offers a “vignette” instructing soldiers on what to do if they encounter a female soldier who identifies as male according to the Department of Defense’s personnel tracking system known as Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS), but has not surgically transitioned and still has “female genitalia."

The number of children and adolescents with a diagnosis somewhere along the autism spectrum continues to rise. According to the latest research out of Guangdong Pharmaceutical University in China, as of 2020, one out of every 30 kids is now considered autistic, a 52% jump from 2017. Though data from the CDC puts the number closer to one in 44, the numbers are still rising, prompting many medical professionals, teachers, and parents to try to discover the cause. Thursday on Twitter, BlazeTV host Steve Deace posited the question, "What’s the benign, innocent explanation for this [rise in autism]?" The answer...

In what he called an “unprecedented action” made necessary because “President Biden refuses to do his job,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has issued an executive order authorizing his state’s National Guard and the Texas Department of Public Safety to arrest immigrants who illegally cross the border between ports of entry and return them to Mexico. “While President Biden refuses to do his job and enforce the immigration laws enacted by Congress, the State of Texas is once again stepping up and taking unprecedented action to protect Americans and secure our southern border,” Abbott said in a press release Thursday announcing...

A Manhattan judge on Thursday lowered the sky-high bail on a bodega worker who was charged with murder after fending off a violent ex-con inside his store.Jose Alba was being held on Rikers Island on $250,000 bail in the Friday night caught-on-video attack. The amount was reduced to $50,000, with Alba’s family and his boss coming up with the $5,000 needed to spring him on a bond.

It's a lengthy commentary but this one shreds the endless stream of nonsense the Biden administration has manufactured in a pathetic attempt to cover for their serial failure on gas prices, inflation, and the supply chain fiasco. Fox News’ Tucker Carlson went on a near 20-minute tear into this administration. Carlson knows the Left hates him. His segment served as another reminder of why they hate him—and it’s something he wears with pride. He eviscerates all their narratives with ease. Carlson explained what we all know which is that Biden’s energy policy is grounded in intentional harm. The Green Left...

o protect and swerve. A Florida police officer was hit with drunk driving raps this week after driving his police cruiser in full uniform with an open beer in the center console, authorities said. Oscar Mayorga, 25, of the Apopka Police Department was pulled over after driving erratically in his official vehicle by a member of the Eustis Police Department, Local 10 reported. A local resident called 911 after spotting the police car running stop signs and careening across the road. Slurring his speech, Mayorga, a five-year veteran, told his colleagues that he was on his way to work and...

Every day seems to bring a new Liberal attack on our freedom. The Trudeau Liberals have launched yet another front in their assault on freedom: Going after your private communications. As reported by Blacklock’s, Liberal-appointed censorship advisors are now talking about putting “misleading political communications” under government regulation: “Misleading political communications” should be federally regulated, say censorship advisors appointed by Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez. Unregulated political discussion and disinformation was a kind of pollution that “erodes the foundations of democracy,” said the group: “By polluting the information environment with false, deceptive or misleading information, disinformation undermines citizens’ rights to form...

Explanation: With roots in a rotating planet, an old tree is centered in this sequence of 137 exposures each 20 seconds long, recorded one night in northern Sicily. Digital camera and fisheye lens were fixed to a tripod to capture the dramatic timelapse, so the stars trailed through the region's dark sky. Of course that makes it easy to spot the planet's north celestial pole. The extension of Earth's axis of rotation into space is toward the upper left, at the center of the concentric star trail arcs. The Milky Way is there too. The plane of our galaxy stretches...