Free Republic

The FBI paid Twitter millions in tax dollars to censor, suspend and harass Twitter users who only wanted to share the truth. Earlier today, Twitter released another traunch of tweets, this one focused on the FBI and Hunter Biden’s laptop. In one of the tweets, Twitter reports that the FBI paid Twitter millions for their work censoring free speech. Here is the tweet from Michael Shellenberger sharing that the FBI paid Twitter $3.4 million:

The legal heirs of a German Jewish banker who was forced to sell his art collection to avoid persecution by the Nazis are suing a Japanese holding company to reclaim ownership of a painting by Vincent van Gogh. Three heirs of Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, based in New York and Germany, filed a lawsuit on December 13 in an Illinois district court against Sompo Holdings, an insurance company based in Japan, to dispute its legal title to the painting Sunflowers (1888). The claim states that Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was a “casualty” of Nazi-era policies and economic sanctions that forced him to sell his...

On the same day that the Netherlands officially apologised for 250 years of slavery, MPs in neighbouring Belgium failed to agree on how to seek atonement for colonial-era abuses. The Belgian parliament set up a commission in 2020 in the wake of protests triggered by the Black Lives Matter movement to examine their country's record in its former central African colonies. But the panel admitted they had failed to reach a consensus on how to formulate an apology for the notoriously bloody excesses of Belgian rule in what is now DR Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. They had been due to...

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday temporarily blocked an order that would lift Title 42, the pandemic-era health policy that has been used to deter migrants more than 2.5 million times. The order Monday by Chief Justice John Roberts comes as cities along the U.S.-Mexico border have been scrambling to prepare for an expected influx of migrants in anticipation of Title 42’s end. Earlier Monday, 19 states had asked the high court for an emergency stay that would keep Title 42 in place.

WETUMPKA, Ala. (AP) — Two women are scheduled to stand trial in an Alabama city court where they’re accused of committing misdemeanors in their efforts to feed and trap stray cats. Mary Alston, 60, and Beverly Roberts, 84, were arrested and taken to jail by police in Wetumpka over the summer. The police chief said the women had previously been warned not to feed stray animals. A trial was set for Tuesday morning in Wetumpka Municipal Court. Both women, who were arrested on public property, face misdemeanor counts of criminal trespassing, the Montgomery Advertiser reported. Roberts was also charged with...

Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff (CA) on Sunday threatened social media companies after Elon Musk allowed conservatives back on Twitter.Adam Schiff is not happy that Democrats can no longer control the narrative on Twitter.Schiff on Sunday told social media companies that Congress will take away their Section 230 immunity if they don’t ‘moderate’ content (code word for banning conservatives).“We’ve got a big problem right now with social media companies and their failure to moderate content and the explosion of hate on Twitter, the banning of journalists on Twitter. We can’t tell them what to say or not say, but we gave...

Pope Francis’s heresy concerning reception of the Eucharist? — Response by John Lamont to Harrison and FastiggiOn November 17 and 24, 2022, the American Catholic newspaper The Wanderer published articles by Fr. Brian Harrison about the statement ‘The Teaching of the Catholic Faith on the Reception of the Holy Eucharist,’ concerning Pope Francis’s Apostolic Letter Desiderio Desideravi (DD). The statement in question was signed by 56 Catholic clerics and scholars, and was issued on September 16, 2022. It accused Pope Francis of teaching heresy in the Apostolic Letter, as follows:The recent Apostolic Letter Desiderio desideravi, given June 29th 2022,...

A recent study has found that adults who initially visit a chiropractor to receive spinal manipulation for low back pain caused by disc herniation or radiculopathy (i.e., sciatica) are less likely to undergo discectomy (i.e., disc surgery) over the subsequent two years. Chiropractic is a health care profession that focuses on treatment of musculoskeletal conditions such as low back and neck pain. The most common therapy that chiropractors use is spinal manipulation, which includes a range of hands-on treatments directed to the joints of the spine. While chiropractic spinal manipulation has been found to be effective for treating low back...

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Monday (Dec 19) officially apologised for 250 years of the Netherlands' involvement in slavery, calling it a "crime against humanity". The apology comes almost 150 years after the end of slavery in the European country's overseas colonies, which included Suriname and islands like Curacao and Aruba in the Caribbean and Indonesia in the East. In the first of the former Dutch colonies to react, Aruba's Prime Minister Evelyn Wever-Croes accepted the apology, but others like the island of Sint Maarten said it would not.

"And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst." "For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day." "Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever...

SINGAPORE: President Halimah Yacob on Monday (Dec 19) suggested that rapists aged 50 or older should not be spared caning, in a Facebook post expressing her dismay at recent cases of children being raped in their own homes. Under Singapore's Penal Code, a convicted rapist can be jailed up to 20 years and fined or caned. Those 50 years old and above cannot be sentenced to caning, but can be imprisoned longer in lieu of corporal punishment.

"The most courageous newscast in 60 years. The CIA’s murder of my uncle was a successful coup d'état from which our democracy has never recovered." Robert Kennedy Jr Twitter

Stephanie Bissonnette, who starred in and choreographed the Broadway adaptation of “Mean Girls,” died Sunday at the age of 32. Bissonnette, who was in the ensemble of the show, had been a part of “Mean Girls” from 2018 till the show’s closing in 2020 as well as being a part of Keith Urban’s “Never Comin’ Down” music video, reports E! News. “Our hearts are broken as the ‘Mean Girls’ community mourns the loss of Stephanie Bissonnette,” wrote the show on Twitter. “Our original Dawn Sweitzer, Stephanie was part of our Broadway company from our first performance to our last.” SNIP...

The recent crude price slump may not be indicative for what is to come in oil markets according to several investment bank analysts. OPEC has not consistently produced more than 30 million bpd since 2015-2018. Structural underinvestment in new oil supply may lead to structurally higher prices. ... In its latest monthly report, OPEC revealed it had yet again failed to produce as much oil as it agreed to produce the last time it discussed output. And it wasn’t by a few thousand barrels per day, either. The shortfall was some 1.8 million barrels daily, but more importantly, that sort...

While North Carolina is often considered a “purple state,” the composition of UNC-System campaign contributions is anything but bipartisan. OpenSecrets data indicate that campaign contributions to Democrats among UNC-System employees outweighed those to Republicans by more than 20 to 1 in the 2020 and 2022 election cycles. The total dollar amount of UNC-System political contributions per election cycle has generally increased since 1990. However, the 2020 election cycle stands out, as more than three times as much money was contributed to campaigns during that election season than in any other cycle on record. Perhaps attributable to the divisive nature of...

In a recent speech, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo suggested an incremental shift in how the United States approaches “competitiveness and the China challenge.” She recognized the serious threat from China, explaining that the United States “will continue to press China to address its nonmarket economic practices that result in an uneven playing field.” She noted, though, that “we are not seeking the decoupling of our economy from that of China’s.” America’s China policy does need to change. The ruthless repression of its Covid-policy protesters is the latest proof of that, but the greater urgency is that the status quo has...

As the Taliban were taking over Afghanistan, I predicted that Biden would fund the Taliban using “humanitarian aid” as a pretext. Since then, Biden has provided $1.1 billion in Afghan aid.Despite assurances that the money would not go to the terrorists, the Biden administration issued global licenses authorizing financial transactions with the Taliban and the Al Qaeda allied Haqqani Network that include the “delivery and provision of humanitarian aid”.Biden looted $3.5 billion from money awarded to the families of 9/11 victims in a lawsuit against the Taliban and put in a “trust fund” to provide “humanitarian aid”. His DOJ then...

We tend not to think of Tucker Carlson as the laid-back, anything-goes Cheech Marin type — after all, he used to wear a bow tie on a daily basis. So we were somewhat surprised to hear that the Fox News anchor is quite happy for his house guests to smoke up a storm cloud of weed at his place. We’re told Carlson invited heavyweight legend Mike Tyson to stay at his home before the champ appeared on his Fox Nation streaming show “Tucker Carlson Today.” But insiders say that Tyson thought he’d have to turn down the hospitable offer because...

The woke war on the military has been overseen by the Biden administration and by disloyal military brass who have sought to advance their careers at the expense of national security.But the latest attack is coming in the form of a bipartisan Senate bill for the NDAA.The National Defense Authorization Act is a massive annual omnibus defense spending bill that currently hovers around $850 billion. It’s been the subject of detailed negotiations and the only real win that Republicans have come away with is dumping Biden’s military vaccine mandate, but without actually assuring a return for those servicemembers forced to...

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican weighing a 2024 White House bid, said Monday he believes former President Donald Trump is “at his lowest point ever,” as the House Jan. 6 committee wrapped up its investigation into what Hogan described as “one of the darkest days in American history.”In an interview with The Associated Press shortly before the committee released its recommendations, Hogan said he believes the former president should be held accountable, after he “inflamed kind of a riotous mob to go attack the seat of our democracy.” However, the outgoing, term-limited governor was not specific...