Free Republic

Georgia Democratic senator Raphael Warnock has been ordered to attend mediation for a custody dispute with his ex-wife, after she accused him of neglecting visitation with their two young children and failing to pay childcare expenses.Fulton County Superior Court judge Shermela J. Williams said on Friday that there were "numerous unresolved issues" between Warnock and his ex-wife Oulèye Ndoye, and ordered the couple to try to reach a mediated settlement by May 7. A status hearing in the case was also scheduled for May 16, with both Warnock and Ndoye required to attend, according to a notice from the judge...

U.S. special forces on Thursday conducted an unusual helicopter raid near the village of Qamishli, an area controlled by the Syrian central government, in an apparently successful effort to eliminate an Islamic State weapons smuggler. A second United States operation in northern Syria less than 24 hours later reportedly killed two more senior ISIS officials.

The suspect accused of killing two people and injuring six others during a stabbing rampage on the Las Vegas Strip is in the United States illegally, sources told Fox News. Yoni Barrios, 32, is a Guatemalan national in the U.S. illegally with a criminal record in California, a source with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said. The other victims remain hospitalized. He allegedly began his rampage after a group of showgirls refused to take a picture with him. He approached the group of women and said he was a chef, local news station KTNV reported. He used what authorities described...

…. Putin's more than 22 years as a mob boss running a mafia state from Moscow have seen him descend from reformer and uneasy ally to tyrant and global pariah. Once upon a time he was pictured posing outside Downing Street with Tony Blair and riding in a golf cart with US President George W. Bush. But now paranoid and delusional Vlad remains holed up in the bubble-like environment of the Kremlin as he turns 70. Furiously ranting about the West in rambling speeches and wildly swinging his nuclear sabre, Putin's long cultivated image as a cold and calculating strongman...

Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) is leading a push to censure controversial Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) over a tweet likening President Joe Biden to Adolf Hitler. Schneider previously weighed introducing a resolution to condemn her over controversial remarks that were perceived as antisemitic by many within Congress last year but ultimately refrained after the Georgia Republican apologized for her comments. But a video Greene posted to social media that altered Biden's appearance to show him with a mustache and swastikas behind him sparked the Illinois Democrat to move forward with introducing the measure on Thursday, the Washington Post reported. “I...

A conservative Las Vegas-based gun-rights organization successfully convinced the U.S. Supreme Court to put guns in the hands of criminals who were previously convicted of gun crimes. We’ll rephrase that to make sure we’re being clear. Despite decades of rhetoric about responsible gun ownership, making our streets safe, holding criminals accountable for their individual actions and the need to keep guns out of the hands of convicted criminals, conservative gun rights advocates based right here in Las Vegas successfully vacated a decision by a lower court upholding a Massachusetts law that restricted criminals convicted of a gun-related crime from purchasing...

None of the major parties involved in this conflict want nuclear armageddon via WWIII. A continually unhinged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has spent the past year trying to draw NATO powers into direct conflict with Russia, and he has yet to achieve success, despite many attempts to do so. While the rhetoric between D.C., Brussels, and Moscow has certainly become more fiery, the kinetic pieces on the geopolitical chessboard have remained steadily in place, because the major parties to the conflict do not want to witness World War III breaking out. On Thursday, Zelensky ramped up the rhetoric even further,...

Cernovich @Cernovich Joe Biden just made it legal to spy on political dissidents. whitehouse.gov National Security Memorandum on Partial Revocation of Presidential Policy Directive 28 | The White... 5:46 PM · Oct 7, 2022

I've recently been contemplating selling my plasma at one of the various plasma centers in my large city. I need advise from FReepers who have either done this or are familiar with the industry. Good idea? What are the pros and/or cons? Any advice on plasma companies to avoid? What is a good compensation rate? I'm not doing so out of desperation, just would like some more ammo money in my pockets, and for some other savings goals.

A San Antonio police officer has been fired after he shot and injured a 17-year-old multiple times when the boy fled in his car after he startled him in a McDonald's parking lot. Shocking video shows the moment that Erik Cantu was wounded multiple times while eating a cheeseburger inside of his car after being confronted by Officer James Brennand. An unharmed female passenger was seated next to the victim. She has not been identified. Cantu was hospitalized at nearby University Hospital. He listed as being in critical but stable condition. On Wednesday, the San Antonio Police Department acted swiftly...

Hollywood action star and former wrestler Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson now says he will not be running for president, despite earlier teases of a possible run for office, citing “time with his family” for the decision. Johnson has been teasing a run for the White House for years. Indeed, back in 2017, he claimed that being president was “within my skill set.” And last year, he was buoyed by a poll that showed he’d be a popular candidate. Right after the 2021 poll, Johnson claimed he would “humbly and respectfully stand up, listen, and learn” about what it would take...

Rybar 🇬🇧🇺🇦 Interruptions in work with Starlink in Ukraine may be related to field tests of the Tirada electronic warfare systems , designed to suppress enemy satellite communication lines, conducted this week. RIA News Ukrainian troops are complaining about disruptions in the Starlink satellite communications system owned by American billionaire Musk, the Financial Times writes, citing sources. A senior Ukrainian government official told the publication that some of these outages resulted in "catastrophic" loss of communications and caused panic. Problems with the operation of the devices were serious in the regions of Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, they were also observed...

A truly horrifying story is coming out of Texas, where an 18 year-old was arrested after breaking into a hospital nursery and allegedly choking infants while screaming “die!” Stacey Brown, president of Odessa Regional Medical Center, released a brief statement addressing this horrifying incident: “I want to express my sincere gratitude to those who responded to the incident last evening, especially our nurses, therapists and security team who worked diligently to protect innocent babies and others.” “The staff and physicians, along with the response team from the Odessa Police Department, are incredible heroes and we are all so grateful to...

As Hurricane Ian bore down on Florida, normally reliable computer forecast models couldn’t agree on where the killer storm would land. But government meteorologists are now figuring out what went wrong — and right. Much of the forecasting variation seems to be rooted in cool Canadian air that had weakened a batch of sunny weather over the East Coast. That weakening would allow Ian to turn eastward to Southwest Florida instead of north and west to the Panhandle hundreds of miles away. The major American computer forecast model -- one of several used by forecasters -- missed that and the...

CLIFTON PARK – “Grab a lawn sign,” a campaign staffer for state Senate candidate Michelle Ostrelich, D-Niskayuna, instructed a crowd in Clifton Park as the town hall event they gathered for came to a close. In the event’s remaining minutes, Ostrelich sounded off on reproductive rights and threats to democracy — positions widely championed this year by Democrats up and down the ballot. Her final message: Clifton Park is vital. “If we win Clifton Park, we win the election,” Ostrelich said. “So, we need everybody.” Facing off against state Sen. Jim Tedisco, R-Glenville, for the first time in four years,...

The Biden administration on Friday announced an executive order implementing a "European Union-U.S. Data Privacy Framework" that aims to address privacy and legal due process complaints regarding data sharing. The executive order currently requires European Commission review and confirmations. It stems from an agreement in principle reached between the White House and the European Commission back in March. The executive order an attempt to address complaints that led to the gutting of an earlier U.S. Privacy Shield proposal for ensuring data privacy, when U.S. organizations access the data of EU denizens. The Privacy Shield proposal had been on hold since...

The U.S. Army released its new plan to tackle climate change, which the service claims “poses an immediate and serious threat to U.S. national security and affects how and where the Army trains and operates.” The new “Army Climate Strategy” (ACS) Implementation Plan states that the Army must do more than just “adapt” to climate change because “dangerous levels of greenhouse gases (GHG) have already accumulated in the Earth’s atmosphere.” The service must instead work to mitigate the effects of climate change.

New York University fired Maitland Jones Jr. because his organic chemistry course was “too hard.” The man wrote the textbook on the subject, now in its fifth edition, and had been a star teacher at Princeton. He went out of his way to tape his lectures, at his own cost, to mitigate some of the attendance problems attributed to the pandemic. Yet students revolted because they feared, according to the New York Times, that “they were not given the grades that would allow them to get into medical school.” The professor, meanwhile, saw a different problem: “They weren’t coming to...

Louisiana State Treasurer John Schroder announced his state will divest funds from the multi-trillion dollar investment firm, BlackRock, due to environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies some claim boycott the oil, gas and coal industries. “Your blatantly anti-fossil fuel policies would destroy Louisiana’s economy,” Schroder said in a letter sent Wednesday to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. To avoid losing state money “to the detriment of our citizens,” the Louisiana Treasury will gradually divest funds from the financial firm, Schroder wrote. The Louisiana Treasury divested $560 million from BlackRock as of Wednesday. “Once complete, this divestment will reflect $794 million no...

‘By extending a pardon to these individuals, you would enable them an opportunity to begin a new chapter of their lives.’ Less than a day after President Joe Biden announced his administration was pardoning all Americans convicted of “simple possession” of marijuana, Democratic Miami Gardens Sen. Shervin Jones is asking Florida’s chief executive to do the same. On Friday, Jones called on Gov. Ron DeSantis to extend “a similar policy” for all Florida citizens with prior convictions of simple possession of marijuana — having a small quantity of the drug for personal consumption. “As you may know, the majority of...