Free Republic

After a series of “Twitter Files” detailed Twitter’s extensive collusion with the FBI and federal agencies to control public discourse before Elon Musk took over the tech giant, the FBI on Wednesday tried to salvage its reputation by spinning the revelations as normal procedure. “The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries,” the FBI said in a statement to Fox News. “As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector...

A woman is being held without bail for the stabbing death of her roommate at a Midtown homeless shelter during an argument over loud music. Charmaine Crossman, 42 — who went on the run after the Dec. 16 slaying of Victoria Goode, 27 — was arrested four days later, NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig said at a press briefing. “They were arguing over loud music and smoking marijuana in the room,” Essig said. The dispute escalated with Crossman allegedly spraying air freshener on the victim — and Goode threw a blanket at her, according to a criminal complaint filed...

A pro-life volunteer has been arrested and charged after silently praying outside an abortion facility in Birmingham, U.K. Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, the director of March for Life UK, was arrested on Dec.6 and charged on Dec. 15 with four counts of breaking a Public Space Protection Order (PSPO). A PSPO is intended to stop antisocial behavior. Police were responding to a complaint from a member of the public who believed that Vaughan-Spruce was praying silently. As part of her bail conditions, restrictions have been placed on her participating in public prayer. Another requirement of her bail, later dropped, banned her from...

Netflix is reportedly poised to cancel the widespread user practice of "password sharing," limiting accounts to one single household in a move to shore up its struggling bottom line. The streaming company several years ago "identified password sharing as a major problem eating into subscriptions," the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, but did not move to address it until this year due to significant gains in subscribers during the COVID-19 pandemic. That boom in subscribers "masked the extent of the password-sharing issue," Co-Chief Executive Reed Hastings reportedly told executives earlier this year, with company sources telling the Journal that...

More Google employees will be at risk for low performance ratings and fewer are expected to reach high marks under a new performance review system that starts next year, according to internal communications obtained by CNBC. In a recent Google all-hands meeting and in a separate presentation last week, executives presented more details of its new performance review process. Under the new system, Google estimates 6% of full-time employees will fall into a low-ranking category that puts them at higher risk for corrective action, versus 2% before. Simultaneously, it will be harder to achieve high marks: Google projects 22% percent...

Arecently published study from the Cleveland Clinic has questioned COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and posited that additional doses may in fact increase one's likeliness of contracting the disease. Conducted between September and December of this year, the clinic examined 51,000 of its employees to test the "bivalent" vaccine, created to protect against the original COVID-19 strain and its Omicron variants. It also sought to determine the effectiveness of subsequent vaccine doses. The study has not yet been peer-reviewed. The survey ultimately discovered an association between higher risk of COVID-19 and those individuals who had previously received a greater number of vaccine...

Stanford University is scrambling to respond to backlash following reports that an internal guide of removing "harmful language" from the school's online materials included the term "American." Seeking to "eliminate many forms of harmful language, including racist, violent, and biased... language in Stanford websites and code," the guide labelled the term "American" as "imprecise" given it "often refers to people from the United States only, thereby insinuating that the US is the most important country in the Americas." The term "American" is a common shorthand for people from the United States and no other country in the Western Hemisphere frequently...

In 2009 the Obama administration decided to abandon a missile defense system initiative that would have protected Eastern Europe. The decision to shift the focus away from defending Eastern Europe was apparently made to get Russia on board regarding discussions of Iran’s nuclear program. """""""""""""" ...in that decision by the Obama administration to shift the focus from defending Eastern Europe to working with Russia on discussions about Iran’s nuclear program, in that decision can be found the origins of today’s tragedy in Ukraine and the Middle East.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — America's government was thrown into turmoil last night after a small band of insurrectionist traitors stormed the Capitol building while waving the flag of a foreign power. "This is a dark day for the country," said Representative Thomas Massie, watching in disbelief as the events unfolded on TV. "Not only did these lunatics make it all the way into the sacred House Chamber — they waved the flag of a hopelessly corrupt foreign nation and made off with $50 billion. How did we let this happen?" Sources say the plot to attack democracy was spearheaded by conspirators...

Earlier today, I posted on the campaign being waged by the left to normalize homosexual and transgender pornography as an intellectual offering to school children, many of whom are below the legal age of consent; see Washington Post Rolls Out the Groomer Strategy for Reaching into Elementary Schools and Winning Elections. More states and localities realize what is going on here and are taking action. For example, Florida, under the leadership of Governor Ron DeSantis, has signed legislation making it much easier for parents to challenge porn in school libraries. Sometimes school districts come to their senses and take action...

U.S. — As a part of the $50 billion aid package being sent to Ukraine, Congress has also offered to throw in one $5 billion wall that's just lying around at the southern border not being used. "We have this wall that we're not using, I dunno, do you guys in Ukraine want it?" asked Senator Mitch McConnell during Zelensky's D.C. trip. "It's a pretty good wall. A little rusty, maybe, but it should help you secure your borders, which are the most important borders on earth. We don't believe in borders around here in Washington." McConnell finished speaking and...

Men, as a class, pose a danger to women, as a class. That is an unequivocal fact. And male offending patterns are not altered by ‘gender identity’. Whenever women protest the inclusion of trans-identified males in our spaces, we’re shouted down and dismissed as transphobes and hysterics. There is no risk, we’re in no danger, this never happens, we’re constantly told. When we produce evidence to the contrary, we’re accused of bigotry and of demonising trans people. We cannot win. Feminists are constantly caught between "that never happens" and "you're using that one example of it happening to spread hate",...

...This slightly rambling epistle is authored by a titan of the world literature, a schizophrenic, a gambler, a true believer, a sufferer, a humanitarian, an epileptic, a Russian, a philosopher, a St. Petersburger, the Writer. Let us forgive him a certain incongruity of thought, since that letter was his first salute to a newly acquired chance to live. On this date in 1849, Dostoevsky, along with some 20 other condemned, was brought out to St. Petersburg’s Semyonovsky platz. They were meant to be shot for affiliation with the Petrashevsky circle, a group of idealistic young intellectuals, apologists of Fourier and...

Outgoing Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has agreed to dismantle a makeshift border wall that triggered a lawsuit by the federal government and rankled environmentalists. In an agreement reached Wednesday with the Biden administration, Ducey said he would stop installing shipping containers on federal land along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to court documents filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix. The agreement comes one week after federal officials filed a lawsuit against Ducey’s administration saying the border project was illegally built on federal land. It requires Arizona to remove containers installed in the Coronado National Forest by Jan. 4. State agencies...

Nearly every adult ICU bed in Oregon is occupied, driven by an uptick in respiratory viruses. Portland-area hospitals are operating at a “crisis” level for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic began. The dire picture has prompted state health officials to implore people to slap their masks on, once again, to protect against a triple threat of covid, flu and RSV as people travel and gather indoors this holiday season. But like nearly every community confronting a third pandemic winter, the entreaty is just that — a plea. Not a mandate. Health officials in a state that was among...

Explanation: Barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 is truly a majestic island universe some 200,000 light-years across. Located a mere 60 million light-years away toward the faint but heated constellation Fornax, NGC 1365 is a dominant member of the well-studied Fornax Cluster of galaxies. This impressively sharp color image shows the intense, reddish star forming regions near the ends of the galaxy's central bar and along its spiral arms. Seen in fine detail, obscuring dust lanes cut across the galaxy's bright core. At the core lies a supermassive black hole. Astronomers think NGC 1365's prominent bar plays a crucial role in...

On Thursday’s “CNN Newsroom,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) stated that she doesn’t think that the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill will make inflation worse because it funds programs that already exist. Co-host Jim Sciutto asked, “[Y]ou guys are going to vote and get this 1.7 trillion spending bill passed. It’s got a lot in there. But I wonder, the topline figure is quite big. And it’s not far off — the most recent COVID relief bill, which was 1.9 trillion, which some have blamed for being inflationary, and I wonder, as folks are watching right now, should they be concerned...

Marines told to stop using ‘sir,’ ‘ma’am’ to avoid ‘misgendering’ superiors No more “Yes, sir!” The US Marines may ban recruits from respectfully addressing senior members as “sir” or “ma’am” to avoid “misgendering” and offending them. The woke recommendation was made in a new $2 million report commissioned by the Corps from the University of Pittsburgh. The exhaustive, 738-page study that the Marines first commissioned in 2020 said traditional ways of addressing superiors were holding back gender integration. “Employing gender-neutral identifiers eliminates the possibility of misgendering drill instructors, which can unintentionally offend or cause discord,” the study said. “By teaching...

A transgender rights bill to be voted on this week has sparked bitter divisions within Spain's ruling left-wing coalition, pitting its powerful feminist lobby against LGBTQ equality campaigners. The draft bill effectively simplifies the procedure for changing gender on a person's national identity card, allowing them to request the change based on a simple statement. ... It would make Spain one of the few countries in the world to allow transgender people to change their status with a simple declaration. ... Activists from the Alliance Against the Erasure of Women fear that the law will be open to abuse and...

[Catholic Caucus] Viganò’s Declaration on the Canonical Sanctions Imposed on Father Frank A. PavoneAgere sequitur esse. So we are taught by scholastic philosophy: the action of every being depends on the nature of that being. It follows that a person’s actions are consistent with who that person is. We find confirmation of this principle of ontology in the canonical sanctions recently imposed by the Holy See on Father Frank A. Pavone, a well-known and appreciated pro-life priest, who for decades has been committed to the battle against the horrible crime of abortion. If a Roman Dicastery decides to electrocute a...