Free Republic

A Preston, Minn., man who was charged with 12 counts of child pornography last year won’t spend any time in prison. Instead, he will do 10 years of probation and pay a $140 fine, KAAL TV first reported. According to a criminal complaint, 49-year-old Rick James Gavin was charged in September 2021 with two counts of using minors in pornography and 10 counts of possessing child pornography. The complaint says he took videos of two victims, one under the age of 10 and another under the age of seven, and then superimposed images of genitalia over screenshots of the videos....

Frustrated by an unending crisis fueled by drug and human trafficking at the southern border, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday declared his state was under an invasion and invoked special powers granted under the U.S. and Texas constitutions. Abbott said his declaration would begin efforts to: Deploy the National Guard to the border to repel illegal immigrants, and the Texas Department of Public Safety to arrest and return illegal entrants to their home countries; Build a border wall in multiple counties; Deploy gun boats to secure the border; Designate Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations; Enter into a...

Electric vehicles are among the least reliable cars and trucks in the automotive industry today, according to Consumer Reports rankings released Tuesday. Reliability issues with all-electric vehicles were expected, since most automakers, with the exception of early EV-leader Tesla, launched fully electric models in just recent years. Consumer Reports surveyed owners of more than 300,000 vehicles to make predictions about the reliability of 2023 model year vehicles.

A study examining murders in 2021 based on death certificate data projects that one out of 179 Americans will eventually be murdered over the course of their lifetimes if the country’s murder rate remains at 2021 levels. “That means if you’re in the United States, you live here, you’re born and you spend your life here, your odds of your life ending by murder are one in 179 over your life. Not over a year or any other timeframe.” “It’s just somebody’s gonna murder you before you die of natural causes, an accident, suicide, whatever it may be,” Jim Agresti,...

The US is an inflation nation under Beijing Biden. Today, the PPI Final Demand YoY index printed for October was still agonizingly high at 8% YoY (The Fed likes to see 2% for inflation). True, PPI Final Demand YoY is down from its recent peak of 11.7% YoY in March. But notice that M2 Money YoY (liquidity) has collapsed following the Covid surge (green line). Then I have this update on Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX and Alameda Research notoriety. As Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire imploded last week, costing him effectively all of his $15.6 billion fortune, other digital-asset billionaires sought...

On Monday, the White House released a statement about the shooting at the University of Virginia in which three members of the school’s football team were killed. The statement itself isn’t all that unusual, but what really stood out to me was the fact that Biden tried to tie this shooting to his repeated calls for a ban on semi-automatic rifles, with press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declaring that “[w]e need to enact an assault weapons ban to get weapons of war off America’s streets. House Democrats acted, and the Senate should follow.” At the time, police hadn’t said what kind...

The decaying hotel at Miami Beach’s historic Deauville Beach Resort, which once played host to everyone from the Beatles to President John F. Kennedy, was imploded Sunday morning after it was declared an unsafe structure. VIDEO AT LINK...................

As Republicans are now one seat away from capturing a majority of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, there are still 13 races yet to be called that will determine how close the margins could be for the GOP should it ultimately prevail. A party must win 218 seats to win a majority in the 435-seat body, a feat appearing to be within the grasp of the GOP, who have won 217 seats so far to Democrats' 205. Here is where the remaining races stand as votes continue to be counted in states across the country:

Chaos broke out at a Tesco supermarket as desperate shoppers fought for discounted food. Customers grabbed and pushed each other in front of children as they scrambled for cheap yellow sticker items. A Tesco staff member had to move out of the way quickly as the aisle descended into chaos.

Rep. Alex Mooney, R, W.Va., announced Tuesday that he will run for Senate in 2024 in a bid to unseat Sen. Joe Manchin. "West Virginia values are at risk in this country. We’re bankrupting America. I want to be a part of the solution there," Mooney said in a radio interview on MetroNews Talkline on Tuesday morning. "It’s been talked about a lot, but I’m going to announce. I’m announcing it right now that I’m running for the U.S. Senate," Mooney said. "I’m all in.

[Catholic Caucus] Archdiocese of Washington Cancels Youth Rally, Mass for Life Held at March for Life EventsAccording to the statement, the Youth Rally and Mass for Life had been held for over 25 years.The Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., announced that its annual Youth Rally and Mass for Life, which both typically take place in conjunction with the national March for Life in Washington D.C., have been canceled.“After a consultation process that involved dialogue with other dioceses, ministry leaders, and the partners who assist the archdiocese in hosting the annual rally and Mass, The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington has decided...

Arizona Republicans Rep. David Schweikert and Juan Ciscomani have defeated their Democrat challengers and won their respective races, the Associated Press projected on Monday. AP called the race for Schweikert when 99 percent of the ballots were counted, leaving the Republican congressman a narrow lead of roughly 3,000 votes over his Democrat challenger Jevin Hodge, a local activist. BREAKING: Republican David Schweikert wins reelection to U.S. House in Arizona's 1st Congressional District. #APracecall at 7:26 p.m. MST. https://t.co/2nlgpji7ac — AP Politics (@AP_Politics) November 15, 2022 The Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee hoped Hodge would have flipped Schweikert’s seat, as the race...

Student-loan borrowers are at risk of resuming student-loan payments in under two months without the debt relief they were promised. Just over a month after President Joe Biden announced up to $20,000 in student-debt cancellation at the end of August for federal borrowers making under $125,000 a year, he made available an online application for borrowers to apply for the relief. Since then, 26 million borrowers have submitted forms to get the relief — but due to decisions from federal courts, those borrowers are now in legal limbo. On Thursday, a federal judge in Texas sided with two student-loan borrowers...

Why do Democrats condemn hardworking immigrants?What was I — a lifelong Democrat — doing at an election watch party in rural Virginia, surrounded by Republicans? As Ron DeSantis, 800 miles away, filled a huge TV screen with a post-landslide victory speech, he provided part of the answer: “We chose education over indoctrination!” He got a raucous round of applause from the crowd at the Marriott Ranch, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Even I joined...“[T]he Democratic Party, which once valued fairness and justice, has, alas, been torching the American Dream. Democratic politicians, school boards, governors and even US...

The increasing use of “diversity statements” in hiring and faculty evaluation has provoked considerable concern from free-speech advocates and defenders of academic freedom. An American Enterprise Institute study last November found that these statements were required for 19 percent of academic jobs and were especially common at prestigious universities. The danger of the trend is perhaps best illustrated by a University of California, Berkeley, search that filtered applications in the biological sciences for “contributions to diversity, equity and inclusion.” This eliminated 679 of 893 nominally qualified candidates on DEI criteria alone. Organizations like the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression...

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called on “non-MAGA Republicans” to work with Democrats to pass legislation in the next two years as each party is likely to control one house of Congress. Schumer told The New York Times in an interview on Monday that he plans to reach out to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other Republicans to work with Democrats to make accomplishments instead of just remaining in a stalemate. “What gives us the opening is that they know embracing Trump and MAGA is a failure,” he said. “Not all Republicans know it, but a large...

Scientists from the University of Bristol and NHS Blood & Transplant (NHSBT) have discovered a rare new blood group system. The findings, published in Blood, the journal of the American Society of Hematology, also solve a 30-year mystery...In this study, individuals with alloantibodies against a collection of antigens termed Er, that were first observed more than 30-years ago, were investigated by applying a powerful technique allowing simultaneous analysis of all their gene coding DNA sequences. Specific changes were identified in the gene coding for the Piezo1 protein, which would result in the production of an altered protein on the cell...

As an old talk radio guy, I tend to listen to several talk shows, more out of prior professional interest than anything else. I tuned into Glenn Beck today and didn’t last too long. Nothing against Glenn, I just couldn’t listen to another post-election post-mortem and another diagram of who had to do what for the odds to shift for someone to win the House or Senate in one state or another.We have analyzed the 2022 midterms to death. Now it only remains to be seen what we do moving forward, provided we even move forward. For example, as Matt...

“Celebrity Jeopardy!” was harshly criticized for including a clue that referenced Brian Laundrie, the man who allegedly murdered Gabby Petito in the fall of 2021. Laundrie committed suicide weeks after Petito’s body was found, with her strangled in a campground near the Grand Teton mountains. He left a note in which he confessed to killing his longtime girlfriend. “In 2021, fugitive Brian Laundrie ended his days in Fla’s Myakkahatchee Creek area, home to these long & toothy critters,” the “Celebrity Jeopardy!” clue stated, referring to alligators, as actors John Michael Higgins, Wil Wheaton and Joel Kim Booster competed on the...

The Republicans just got a little closer to taking the House of Representatives. Orange County – Republican incumbent Congresswoman Michelle Steel won reelection to the US House in California’s 45th Congressional District. Michelle Steel defeated her Democrat challenger Jay Chen 53.8% to 46.2%.Decision Desk HQ projects Rep. Michelle Steel (R) wins re-election to the U.S. House in California’s 45th Congressional District.#DecisionMade: 8:34pm ESTFollow more results here: https://t.co/erllKAE1oN pic.twitter.com/glXjYlKZU4— Decision Desk HQ (@DecisionDeskHQ) November 15, 2022Michelle Steel flipped Democrat Harley Rouda’s seat red in 2020 after Democrats stole Orange County in 2018 with ballot harvesting. Recall, Orange County, a traditionally conservative...