Free Republic

OL REIGN LEGEND: KATE STARBIRD – FORMER PROFESSIONAL BASKETBALL PLAYER AND PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON ********************************************************** Kate Starbird left Twitter ostensibly because of Elon Musk. Who is Kate Starbird, you ask? Well, she sits on the Protecting Critical Infrastructure from Misinformation and Disinformation Subcommittee for the CISA Cybersecurity Advisory Committee (CCAC). Her job is to monitor mis-, dis-, and mal-information (MDM) and make recommendations to the CCAC about how to counter the cyber (MDM) threats that “undermine” public trust. Most recently, she advised on how to counter MDM in the 2022 elections. Prior to that, she “peddled the...

"Opposition among the Russian population to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine is at its highest level, according to one survey. "The poll by the private survey agencies Russian Field and Chronicles has given a snapshot of public opinion about what the Kremlin dubs a "special military operation" which is at odds with official Russian government polls... "...The results found that Russian support for the war "continues to fall" and had reached "a historic minimum." It said that the declared support for the war was just over a half, or 51 percent, compared with 55 percent in July and a high...

After 30 months of brutally restricting our city’s children over inflated fears about their susceptibility to COVID-19, the arts community inexplicably won’t stop. Even as city- and state-enforced edicts have slipped into the annals of history, children’s mask and vaccine mandates remain alive in many museums, theaters and other cultural venues. Parents like me often learn about these dictates via a school note about a class trip, when we have little recourse. First, the good news: Your child is being given a beautiful opportunity to see a show at the Alvin Ailey or New Victory Theater — hooray! Oh, but...

President Joe Biden’s border agency expects 9,000 to 14,000 economic migrants per day after officials remove the Title 42 legal barrier in late December, says CNN. The predicted inflow adds up to roughly 4.5 million migrants per year or more than one extra southern migrant for every American birth in the United States. The southern flow of roughly 4.5 million will add to the annual inflow of roughly 2 million legal immigrants, visa workers, and tourists illegally taking jobs. The combined inflow would deliver roughly seven million migrants in 2023, or two migrants for each of the 3.6 million Americans...

Donald Trump might have turned down Joe and Mika's importuning for an invitation, but Joe Biden was a lot more amenable. On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough and Brzezinski revealed that they had attended last night's state dinner, Biden's first as president, in honor of visiting French president Emmanuel Macron. Forget any notion that journalists should maybe avoid going to White House dinners so they can appear as nonpartisan as they can. No no, when you can brag about your important place in the elite, that's most important. Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) issued a report on Wednesday that found democracy in retreat around the world, with twice as many nations moving toward authoritarianism as those which sought to become more democratic. IDEA is an advocacy group based in Stockholm, Sweden, with 34 member nations represented on its board. The United States is not a member but has “official observer” status. The stated mission of the group is “advancing democracy worldwide, as a universal human aspiration and an enabler of sustainable development, through support to the building, strengthening and safeguarding of democratic political...

AULI, India (AP) — Indian and U.S. troops on Tuesday participated in a high-altitude training exercise in a cold, mountainous terrain near India’s disputed border with China, at a time both countries are trying to manage rising tensions with Beijing. During the exercise, Indian soldiers were dropped from helicopters to flush out gunmen from a house in a demonstration of unarmed combat skills. Other drills involved sniffer dogs and unmanned bomb-disposing vehicles, and trained kites were deployed to destroy small enemy drones. “Overall, it has been a great learning experience. There has been sharing of best practices between both the...

The U.S. Department of Transportation is proposing a new rule that would require all commercial trucks used for interstate commerce to install tracking devices that would transmit location data and other personal information to police whenever law enforcement requests it. Roger King, owner of Cowboy State Trucking in Kemmerer, said it’s hard enough to find drivers, and putting federal tracking devices on trucks would be one more reason for people to find other jobs. “Nobody likes Big Brother looking at your every move,” King said in reference to the government surveillance figure in the George Orwell novel “1984.” King said...

They are killing our farmland, raising farm production prices through the roof and promoting the eating of bugs... So did World Economic Forum arch-villain Klaus Schwab mean "peace of the grave" in his masterplan for a global "reset" when he declared: "You will own nothing and be happy"? Sure looks like it, given the facts painstakingly assembled by the Issues & Insights editorial team, hypothesizing that the great resetters like Schwab and all his greenie allies might just have creating a global famine in mind as their actual goal. In a lead editorial titled "The Elites' War on Food," which...

Lincoln Laboratory’s TeraByte InfraRed Delivery system sent data from a satellite to Earth at 100 Gbps — a rate that will transform future science missions. In May 2022, the TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD) payload onboard a small CubeSat satellite was launched into orbit 300 miles above Earth's surface. Since then, TBIRD has delivered terabytes of data at record-breaking rates of up to 100 gigabits per second — 100 times faster than the fastest internet speeds in most cities — via an optical communication link to a ground-based receiver in California. This data rate is more than 1,000 times higher than...

Fresh off winning back the House of Representatives, Republican leaders have a great idea on how to capitalize on the power voters have given them: Give Democrats exactly what they want. We’ve already seen that play out with the passage of the Orwellian-named “Respect for Marriage Act,” which enshrined gay marriage at the federal level. A dozen Republican senators chose to not stand up and force the passage of Sen. Mike Lee’s amendment that would have protected religious liberty, and naturally, the next betrayal is already being prepared. Sen. Mitch McConnell has been meeting with the White House and is...

More than 1,000 members of the New York Times union, which includes hundreds of newsroom staffers, plan to walk out on the job if the company's management doesn't agree to the terms of a new contract by Dec. 8, the union announced Friday. Why it matters: The two parties have been at odds for more than a year and a half over a slew of issues, most notably wage increases. Those tensions have hit a boiling point heading into the holiday season. Driving the news: In a letter sent to management Friday, the NewsGuild of New York reiterated its demands...

Queens woman charged with driving through a Manhattan Black Lives Matter protest won’t plead guilty in the case — risking jail time to prove she slammed on the gas because she feared for her daughter’s life as an angry mob attacked her car, she said Thursday. Kathleen Casillo, 52, had been Christmas shopping on Dec. 11 last year when she was caught in shocking video footage driving her black BMW sedan through the protest against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detentions in Midtown. The video shows Casillo stopped at East 39th Street and Third Avenue with protesters in front of...

n the wake of the Colorado Springs mass shooting that left five patrons of an LGBTQ nightclub dead, numerous liberal journalists and pundits blamed Republican rhetoric for the killing spree—but have since gone quiet on the motive as new information trickles out, including his claim to be "non-binary." While early reporting on the massacre was filled with headlines tying Christian conservatives, right-wing media outlets, and members of the Republican Party to the attack, recent reports instead focus primarily on victims of the attack, the patrons that intervened to stop the shooter, as well as concerns about gun laws. In the...

Antonio Brown's legal issues appear to be reaching the point of no return. https://nesn.com/2022/12/antonio-brown-reportedly-involved-in-police-standoff-over-arrest-warrant/

Alyssa Farah Griffin told her co-hosts Friday on ABC’s “The View” that the Holocaust “could happen again” if rapper Kanye West, white supremacist Nick Fuentes, and InfoWars host Alex Jones had platforms. Co-host Joy Behar said, “So yesterday Kanye West found a safe space for his antisemitism when he was interviewed by conspiracy theorist and all-around awful person Alex Jones. West showed up in some kind of bondage hood and proclaimed his love for Hitler and the Nazis.” Griffin said, “I watched clips of the live stream, and I hate that these people even have a platform. And I kept...

China’s military is rapidly building a large force of space weapons, including sophisticated anti-satellite missiles, lasers, jammers, orbiting killer robots and cyber tools, designed to “blind and deafen” the American military in a future war, the U.S. military is warning. New details of Beijing’s growing space arms arsenal were revealed the Pentagon’s latest annual report to Congress on the Chinese military, released publicly on Tuesday. “The [People’s Liberation Army] continues to acquire and develop a range of counter-space capabilities and related technologies, including kinetic-kill missiles, ground-based lasers, and orbiting space robots, as well as expanding space surveillance capabilities, which can...

Xcel Energy-Colorado has filed a request for a new electric rate increase, which follows a recently approved natural gas rate hike and a $182.2 million jump in revenue for electric service that took effect in April. The request submitted to regulators Wednesday proposed a $312.2 million revenue increase. ... Critics of Xcel’s recent rate cases have accused the utility of “a pancaking” of increases. The PUC approved a $64.2 million rise in the utility’s natural gas rates in October. Regulators slashed the utility’s original proposal by $138 million. ... If the increase is approved, the typical residential bill would rise...

The Lockheed JetStar was the executive aircraft of choice in the '60s and '70s. The King owned two, one with the call sign Hound Dog 2. A piece of rock ‘n’ roll history, waiting to be dusted off in the New Mexico desert, could be yours next month. Elvis Presley’s 1962 Lockheed 1329 JetStar is going up for auction in early January. Presley bought the red-and-silver-liveried JetStar—then considered the jet of choice for celebrities and CEOs—in 1976 for $840,000, or about $4.4 million in today’s dollars. The jet, with room for nine passengers and three crew, had four engines mounted...

At the bottom of today's front page is a piece mentioning that Lt. Col. Boyd D. "Buzz" Wagner has gone missing. Wagner, once the youngest lieutenant colonel in the service, became the Army Air Force's first ace on Dec. 16, 1941 over the Philippines. He was sent home to become an instructor pilot after notching eight victories in the Pacific... On the second page, New York Shipbuilding Corp. is preparing to launch the light carrier USS Belleau Wood, their third flattop since August. Belleau Wood was laid down in August 1941 and began construction as a Cleveland-class light cruiser. Sister...