Free Republic

Coming soon to a Texas town near you: a roving cannabis dispensary. The CannaBus has returned on its "Ride For Your Rights" tour, with a mission to let residents know how they can qualify for medical marijuana.

Military’s top brass once embodied self-sacrifice and patriotism, but now they’re just virtue-signaling bureaucrats. In September, the United States Air Force Academy class of 1972 met for its 50th year reunion. Compared to our experience, the Academy of today is virtually unrecognizable. America’s foundational institutions are under assault. For decades the siege progressed incrementally, imperceptible to most observers. But recently the pace has accelerated, avoiding all pretense of subtlety. In the case of USAFA, activist generals serve as a vivid example of how a few influential individuals are able to implement President Obama’s call to fundamentally change American society. Nowadays,...

Censorship of wrongthink by Big Tech at the behest of the government is government censorship, which violates the First Amendment. One warm weekend in October of 2020, three impeccably credentialed epidemiologists—Jayanta Bhattacharya, Sunetra Gupta, and Martin Kulldorff, of Stanford, Oxford, and Harvard Universities respectively—gathered with a few journalists, writers, and economists at an estate in the Berkshires where the American Institute for Economic Research had brought together critics of lockdowns and other COVID-related government restrictions. On Sunday morning shortly before the guests departed, the scientists encapsulated their views—that lockdowns do more harm than good, and that resources should be devoted...

On October 12, 2022, in the US District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, Judge Joseph R. Gordon granted a motion to dismiss the charge of possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(k) as being facially unconstitutional. Judge Gordon was appointed by President Bill Clinton. From the decision:Assume, for example, that a law-abiding citizen purchases a firearm from a sporting goods store. At the time of the sale, that firearm complies with the commercial regulation that it bear a serial number. The law-abiding citizen takes the firearm home and...

A Texas man accused of beating his girlfriend to the point where their unborn child died, will serve no jail time after taking a plea deal with the Travis County District Attorney's office Monday, according to reports. Johnny Charles Ebbs V’s plea deal comes with eight years of deferred adjudication on a third-degree continuous family violence assault charge, meaning that he has not been found guilty at the time of sentencing and will have his offense dismissed if he doesn’t violate his probation. Police said Ebbs beat and hospitalized his pregnant girlfriend, LaShonda Lemons, in Austin in 2019. Three days...

. @VW told us that they supported our right to protest, but they refused our request to provide us with a bowl to urinate and defecate in a decent manner while we are glued, and have turned off the heating. People in support can't get out of the building. 2/

Kele Inc., a building products supply company in Memphis, Tenn., has apparently fired an employee for condoning Alabama receiver Jermaine Burton striking a female Tennessee fan on the field Saturday after Tennessee’s 52-49 win over Alabama at Neyland Stadium. "I am glad he did it," the employee said on Twitter Tuesday in reference to Burton’s alleged swat of the female fan. "Should have knocked her head off. Not supposed to be on the field anyway."'

London (AFP) – Embattled British Prime Minister Liz Truss on Thursday faced more calls from her own party to step down after a key minister quit and lawmakers rebelled during "a day of extraordinary mayhem". Truss is being urged to resign just six weeks into office after a forced U-turn on disastrous tax cuts that caused a market meltdown during an already severe cost-of-living crisis. Right-wing broadsheet The Times reported the prime minister was "clinging to power", and cited a Truss supporter in her cabinet as saying: "It's terminal." Its tabloid sister paper The Sun ran the front page headline...

America’s top aerospace engineers and scientists are joining forces to protect us from UFOs. *snip* The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, which includes among its members the country’s largest defense and NASA contractors, has established three committees to study the technology, how incursions affect pilot and passenger safety, and to coordinate with government agencies and international researchers also focused on the topic. *snip* [H]aving an established group such as AIAA, founded in 1963 as the principal professional organization for aerospace scientists and engineers, enter the debate is seen by longtime UFO researchers as a turning point. “We were wallowing...

Nevada Businessman Robert Beadles claimed he had found evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. He went on the attack, targeting a 48-year-old woman who runs elections in Nevada’s Washoe County “Now, let’s talk about treason. That’s right, treason,” Beadles told a Feb. 22 county commissioners’ meeting in Washoe, the second-largest county in this election battleground state. The Republican activist falsely accused the registrar of voters, Deanna Spikula, of counting fraudulent votes and told commissioners to “either fire her or lock her up.” After the meeting, Spikula’s office was flooded with hostile and harassing calls from people convinced...

20 October 2022Thursday of week 29 in Ordinary Time St. Iria chapel, Tomar, Portugal Readings at MassLiturgical Colour: Green. Year: C(II).First readingEphesians 3:14-21 ©A prayer that faithful may know the love of ChristThis is what I pray, kneeling before the Father, from whom every family, whether spiritual or natural, takes its name: Out of his infinite glory, may he give you the power through his Spirit for your hidden self to grow strong, so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith, and then, planted in love and built on love, you will with all the saints have strength...

Australia's defence minister said its military was investigating reports former pilots were accepting training roles in China, as Britain said it could take legal action on national security grounds to stop its pilots being similarly recruited. Reporting by Kirsty Needham and Jamie Freed in Sydney and Lucy Craymer in Wellington; Editing by Robert Birsel and Peter Graff

Liz Truss’s premiership was in freefall last night. In an astonishing few hours, she sacked Suella Braverman after a 90-minute ‘shouting match’ – and then saw her Chief Whip ‘resign’. The ousted Home Secretary launched an outspoken attack on the PM, accusing her of breaking key pledges and wobbling over manifesto commitments such as reduced migration.

San Francisco politicians will gather at the Noe Valley Town Square Wednesday afternoon to congratulate themselves for securing state money for a long-desired toilet in the northeast corner of the charming plaza. Another public toilet in a city with far too few of them is excellent. But the details of this particular commode? They’re mind-boggling, maddening and encapsulate so much of what’s wrong with our city government. The toilet — just one loo in 150 square feet of space — is projected to cost $1.7 million, about the same as a single-family home in this wildly overpriced city. And it...

President Joe Biden said Wednesday that he has not implemented policies to halt domestic oil production; however, the Biden administration has enacted policies that are hampering the nation’s energy output. “Biden’s green policies have created a hostile environment for investment in oil and gas, which has hurt production,” Phil Flynn, an energy market analyst with the PRICE Futures Group, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “If the president wants to debunk some myths, let’s start with the fact that he’s leased fewer acres of federal and offshore land than any other president since the end of WWII,” Republican Rep. Bruce...

A recent interview on Israeli radio featured prominent rabbis explaining that the Messiah is just about to reveal himself. Rabbi Yaakov Zisholtz told religious broadcaster Radio 2000 that Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky (who passed away earlier this year) had told him that he (Kanievsky) was already in direct contact with the Messiah. To understand why religious Jews are taking this seriously, it’s important to know that Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky was considered one of the two or three top rabbis of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Israel. And Rabbi Zisholtz says that Kanievsky and others of the mystical “concealed” rabbis had tasked...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said that central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) could potentially allow a government to control what people spend their hard-earned cash on. Speaking at the IMF-World Bank annual meeting on Oct. 15, Deputy Managing Director Bo Li said that a CBDC could improve “financial inclusion” through programmability. “A CBDC can allow government agencies and private sector players to program, to create smart contracts, to allow targeted policy functions,” Li explained. “For example, welfare payments, for example, consumption coupons, for example, food stamps.” “By programming CBDC, that money can be precisely targeted for what kind of...

"More than half of all registered voters see the mainstream media as a threat to American democracy, according to a new poll. A New York Times-Siena College poll published Tuesday found 59 percent of voters view the media as a “major threat to democracy,” while 25 percent said the press is a “minor threat” and only 15 percent said it poses no threat....."

The long-simmering idea that the US government should stand ready to buy back Treasury securities from investors to improve market functioning is moving closer to reality. While the Treasury Department has carried out buybacks in the past -- most recently between 2000 and 2002 -- and while its industry advisers since then have urged it to consider establishing a program, steps taken in that direction last week were more than experts anticipated. Liquidity metrics for the US government debt market are approaching crisis levels after a year of steep losses for bonds caused by rising inflation and Federal Reserve interest-rate...

TOKYO -- Once submerged, a nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine typically remains under water for 70 days. Virtually undetectable, the Ohio-class SSBN is the stealthiest submarine in the U.S. Navy fleet. Unlike the Los Angeles-class or Virginia-class nuclear-powered fast attack submarines that carry conventional weapons and can make port visits around the world, nuclear-missile equipped SSBNs typically do not make public appearances. In the rare case that they do, it is either in U.S. waters or in the ports of America's top ally, the U.K. But on Thursday morning, Asia time, the U.S. Central Command tweeted that its commander, Gen. Michael...