Free Republic

Nearly 400 law-enforcement officers responded to the scene of the Uvalde school massacre, but their “overall lackadaisical approach” meant the gunman wasn’t confronted for more than an hour — helping him slaughter 19 fourth-graders and two teachers, a scathing new probe says. Responding to the May 24 mass-shooting scene in the Texas town were 376 law-enforcement personnel: 149 Border Patrol officers; 91 members of the state Department of Public Safety; 14 from the Department of Homeland Security; 25 from the Uvalde Police Department; 16 from the San Antonio Police Department and another 16 from the Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office, according...

Dr. Ashish Jha, White House Wuhan Coronavirus Response Coordinator, advocated for the return of state and local mask mandates during a Sunday morning media appearance. With the rise of the BA.5 subvariant, the usual suspects are again peddling the same tired "solutions" they've hawked for more than two years. Among the tiredest are mask mandates, which have consistently been shown to have negligible effects on transmission rates when areas with mandates are compared to those without them. This time around though, with deaths and hospitalizations remaining fairly low and the vast majority of cases being something akin to a common...

SNIP The 78-year-old music legend offered his commentary after The Weeknd’s Toronto concert received more media coverage than his. SNIP “And, by the way, with all due respect to The Weeknd or Drake or any of them. I am far, far, far more important than any of them will ever be, however many billions of streams they’ve got. There is stuff going on here that is fundamentally important to all of our lives,” he said. SNIP “I love Roger Waters, and Pink Floyd is one of my all time favorite bands, but this seems like an ‘old man yells at...

Arizona Republican Gov. Doug Ducey on Sunday warned voters in his state against Kari Lake, the far-right, gubernatorial candidate endorsed by former President Donald Trump. "Kari Lake's misleading voters with no evidence," Ducey, who co-chairs the Republican Governors Association, told CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union" when asked about Lake's embrace of Trump's debunked claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Lake became an early favorite in the August 2 primary by embracing the once-fringe extremism now mainstream within the Republican Party, including promoting election lies, doubling down against mask and vaccine mandates, and calling for the...

“‘. . . as a testimony to them’” (Matthew 8:4). Christ’s miraculous healings were significant in His earthly ministry. They displayed genuine concern for human need and testified that He was God. But several times Jesus stated, “Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (Matt. 9:5–6; cf. Mark 2:9; Luke 5:23). The healing miracles simply illustrated the cleansing of sin, which was Jesus’ primary purpose within God’s redemptive plan. Curing leprosy was an...

In the gospels, Jesus was invited by a certain chief Pharisee to his house. Other Pharisees had been invited as well, men who were leading keepers of the law. When the host called his guests to be seated, there was a sudden scramble for the chief seats at the head table. Scripture tells us that Jesus “noted how they chose the best places” (Luke 14:7, NKJV). It was a brazen display of pride, a need to be seen and recognized. When Christ himself sat down to eat, he gave that roomful of Israel’s top religious leaders this word of rebuke....

Until a few months ago, Mohammed Wahid Haykalyar owned a busy restaurant in the heart of Kabul, where people came from all over the city for steaming plates of saffron rice and braised lamb. His monthly earnings of $3,000 were more than enough to pay for his children’s English-language lessons and after-school soccer practice. These days, he doesn’t even have money to buy food for his family. The government’s ability to manage the economy has largely broken down. The inexperienced Taliban leadership, which overthrew the republic when U.S.-led troops left the country, is isolated and under sanctions, and knows little...

Britain’s Northern School of Contemporary Dance (NSCD) because it is “built around white European ideas” and is too “gendered”. The school has dropped ballet from its auditions process because of its “potentially contentious nature”, according to The Telegraph. “It is essentially an elitist form. Young people need to pay to take ballet classes as a general rule and for a vast number of potential students, they’ve not had access to ballet,” explained the head of undergraduate studies at the dance school, Francesca McCarthy, in comments to the notionally right-leaning newspaper. “It is a very specific form that is built around...

Is Russia worthy of being called a “great power,” let alone a superpower? Not to kick someone when they’re down, but it’s difficult to argue that Vladimir Putin represents anything other than a middling regional state, albeit the largest country in the world and one with nuclear weapons. In the first place, until the Russo-Ukraine War, consider how irrelevant and inconsequential Russia was. For the most part, regarding international relations, Russia scarcely mattered. Moscow has nary a footprint in the Middle East (mainly Syria) and is nonexistent in Asia and other parts of the world. Russia has lost influence in...

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The bulk of her book is a brag fest about how she kept subverting the White House’s push to open up the economy – that is, allow people to exercise their rights and freedoms. Once Trump turned against her, and eventually found other people to provide good advice like the tremendously brave Scott Atlas – five months later he arrived in an attempt to save the country from disaster – Birx turned to rallying around her inner circle (Anthony Fauci, Robert Redfield, Matthew Pottinger, and a few others) plus assembling a realm of protection outside of her that included...

In the Netherlands, dairy farmer Martin Neppelenbroek is near the end of the line. New environmental regulations will require him to slash his livestock numbers by 95 percent. He thinks he will have to sell his family farm. “I can’t run a farm on 5 percent. For me, it’s over and done with,” he said in a July 7 interview with The Epoch Times. “In view of the regulations, I can’t sell it to anybody. Nobody wants to buy it. [But] the government wants to buy it. And that’s why they [have] those regulations, I think.” Neppelenbroek made the remarks...

Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger on Sunday said it would be "quite crazy" if the Secret Service did indeed delete text messages related to the riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. During an interview on the CBS News program "Face the Nation," the Illinois Republican - who along with Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming are the only GOP members of House committee probing the riot - told host Margaret Brennan that the full details of the situation have not yet been uncovered. "We're going to know more Tuesday," he said, adding that the panel has issued a subpoena...

A man in Oklahoma is accused of killing his friend on a fishing trip Saturday after he believed the friend had summoned the legendary Bigfoot monster to eat him. Larry Sanders, 53, was taken into custody this weekend and is facing a first-degree murder charge, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation said. Sanders allegedly killed Jimmy Knighten on Oklahoma's South Canadian River during a bare-handed fishing trip gone wrong, according to a report. The two had a fight that ended with Sanders striking and strangling Knighten, Sanders confessed, according to authorities. The victim's body was found Sunday, the Oklahoma State...

Glorious pictures from the edge of the universe have arrived on Earth just when events here force us to consider the possibility that governments are run by aliens. They are so out of touch with common sense that they must come from other planets. The James Webb Space Telescope, a wonder of human ingenuity, resourcefulness, imagination, and creative curiosity, is revealing the birth of galaxies to a world in which, by contrast, overreaching oligarchs and bossy bureaucrats constrict the actions of ordinary people trying to make their own lives and the lives of others better. Much of the world groans...

wo officials at one of the largest hospital systems in Los Angeles and Southern California dismissed government officials’ statements about another wave of COVID-19 hitting the region and the United States as “media hype.” Los Angeles County health director Barbara Ferrer last week said that her county is now seeing a “high” level of COVID-19 transmission, suggesting that indoor mask mandates might be reimposed. But in a recent news conference on July 13, Brad Spellberg, the chief medical officer of Los Angeles County and University of Southern California Medical Center, and epidemiologist Paul Holtom, said that there have been no...

The Pennsylvania U.S. Senate race is heating up between Democrat candidate John Fetterman and Republican candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz. The open seat is crucial in determining the Senate’s balance of power. Although Fetterman has had a consistent lead in the race, Republicans are hopeful Oz will help keep the Senate seat red, despite key differences between the two candidates. According to political analyst Terry Madonna, senior fellow in residence for political affairs at Millersville University in Pennsylvania, the two candidates greatly differ in personalities, styles and policies. “I mean, it’s rare to find those kinds of huge differences,” Madonna said...

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT DISTRICT OF ARIZONA Kari Lake and Mark Finchem, Plaintiffs. v. Kathleen Hobbs, as Arizona Secretary of State; Bill Gates, Clint Hickman, Jack Sellers, Thomas Galvin, and Steve Gallardo, in their capacity as members of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors; Rex Scott, Matt Heinz, Sharon Bronson, Steve Christy, Adelita Grijalva, in their capacity as members of the Pima County Board of Supervisors, Defendants. COMPLAINT (Jury Trial Demanded) This is a civil rights action for declaratory and injunctive relief to prohibit the use of electronic voting machines in the State of Arizona in the upcoming 2022 Midterm...

Explanation: What are those spots on Jupiter? Largest and furthest, just right of center, is the Great Red Spot -- a huge storm system that has been raging on Jupiter possibly since Giovanni Cassini's likely notation of it 357 years ago. It is not yet known why this Great Spot is red. The spot toward the lower left is one of Jupiter's largest moons: Europa. Images from Voyager in 1979 bolster the modern hypothesis that Europa has an underground ocean and is therefore a good place to look for extraterrestrial life. But what about the dark spot on the upper...

(The Center Square) – Responding to accusations made by California Gov. Gavin Newsom in a campaign ad criticizing him, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Newsom treated Californians “like peasants” during nearly two years of COVID-19 lockdowns. Gov. DeSantis made the remarks Friday at an event in Cape Coral, Florida, announcing the state’s plan to reduce prescription drug costs for Floridians.