Free Republic

FESTIVUS Each year on December 23rd, Festivus commemorates a holiday episode of the television comedy, Seinfeld. In 1997, the popular television comedy brought Festivus to the masses when Frank Costanza (played by Jerry Stiller) explains he invented the holiday in response to the commercialism of Christmas. Its slogan is “A Festivus for the rest of us.” #Festivus Sitcoms often combine holidays and family discord. However, one only has to look to our own families to find a little humor. This holiday reminds us how easily we take things too seriously at times. Politics, traditions, grudges and more lead us down...

NATIONAL PFEFFERNUSSE DAY December 23rd is reserved for National Pfeffernuse Day, a German spice cookie. Very popular around the holidays, pfeffernüsse are fluffy cookies made with ground nuts and spices and covered in powdered sugar. #NationalPfeffernusseDay The exact origin of the cookie is unknown. However, the Dutch believe that pfeffernüsse (or pepernoten in Dutch) are linked to the feast of Sinterklaas, which is celebrated on December 5 in the Netherlands and December 6 in Germany and Belgium. This holiday is when children receive gifts from St. Nicholas, who is partially the inspiration for the Santa Claus tradition. Over time, many...

Major-Gen H.W. Halleck, General-in-Chief, United States Army, Washington: GENERAL: I have the honor to offer the following reasons for moving the Army of the Potomac across the Rappahannock sooner than was anticipated by the President, the Secretary of War, or yourself, and for crossing at a point different from the one indicated to you at our last meeting at the President's. During my preparations for crowing at the place I had first selected, I discovered that the enemy had thrown a large portion of his force down the river and elsewhere, thus weakening his defences in front, and I also...

Lawmakers have said over and over that they want to prevent another Jan. 6-style attack on the U.S. Capitol from ever happening again. It took almost two years, but on Thursday, as part of a government spending package, the Senate passed the first federal elections legislation to that aim. The omnibus spending bill includes a section that would reform the Electoral Count Act, a 1887 law that governs the counting of Electoral College votes in Congress. For years, legal scholars have worried the law was poorly written and in need of clarification, and former President Donald Trump and his allies...

President Biden and the Democrat-led Congress have appropriated about $48 billion for Ukraine since the Russian invasion began in February not counting the $45 billion in the spending bill passed by the Senate on Thursday. Congress will have allocated nearly $100 billion in total to the Ukraine war once the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill is signed into law. President Biden and the Democrat-led Congress have appropriated about $48 billion for Ukraine since the Russian invasion began in February. That figure does not count the $45 billion in the massive spending bill that the Senate passed Thursday ahead of a...

Cmdr. Robert Ramirez III, commanding officer of SEAL Team 1, was found dead in his San Diego County residence Monday. Naval Special Warfare Command officials said in a statement Wednesday that foul play is not suspected to have played a role in the decorated officer’s death. Navy officials said the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department’s investigation remains ongoing. “Bobby was an outstanding leader, devoted husband and father, and a good friend to us all,” Capt. David Abernathy, commanding officer of Naval Special Warfare Group 1, which manages all San Diego-based SEAL teams, said in a statement. “This is a devastating...

Of course. Of course! “Unpatriotic Conservatives!” as David Frum said of the anti-Iraq War right in 2003. These people are shameless. I’m old enough to remember when Kristol predicted that the coming Iraq War would be “a two-month war”: My friend David Brooks — whose friendship I always state because I am loyal to my […]

The Bank of Japan’s surprise policy tweak sent US government bonds down sharply, but US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen probably hasn’t seen anything yet. As the BOJ allows the yen to appreciate at long last, Yellen’s team may soon find itself short of buyers for US Treasuries in Asia and beyond. As Japanese government bond yields rise, it will spark more selling of US Treasuries by Japanese institutional investors. As the dollar-to-yen trade gains momentum, more and more Japanese investors will redeploy their cash into the domestic bond market. Yet Washington’s demand troubles could be far bigger than that. Japan,...

Realist international relations scholars predicted that after the Cold War Japan would revert to its “normal” position in the global hierarchy of great powers. In a seminal 1993 article, Kenneth Waltz asserted that “much in Japan’s institutions and behavior supports the proposition that it will once again take its place among the great powers.” According to most realist theorists, this entailed the reacquisition of archetypical great power military capabilities and an independent nuclear deterrent. But after decades passed and this prediction failed to eventuate, Japan specialists searched for explanations. They settled on Japan’s national identity as a “global civilian power”...

Pray For The Peace of JerusalemMatthew 21Jesus at the Temple 12 Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 13 “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’[e] but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’[f]” 14 The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them. 15 But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he...

PITTSBURGH — Target 11 has confirmed that work crews providing assistance to people being asked to leave a homeless encampment on the North Side last week didn’t realize that a homeless woman was still in a tent when they began the operation. According to multiple sources, a front loader operator began scooping up the tents they suspected were already empty and tossing them into dump trucks to haul away. ... According to sources, the homeless woman began screaming and poked her head out of the tent. She then fell to the ground

Being a Republican voter has got to be one of the most frustrating things a person could imagine. Having an easily winnable midterm election be stolen from you via vote fraud is bad enough. But then having the large majority of the elected officials who are supposedly on your side just treat it like it’s no big deal while they try to undermine the one person actually trying to contest the fraud and bring it out into the open is even worse. An increasing number of rank-and-file Republicans are starting to get the impression that their own party isn’t really...

I won't claim that I am the only one to know this but damn it all this has been eating at me for two years. Today John Solomon posted this: A month after the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi deflected any suggestion she or her staff could have influenced the security that failed that day when the Capitol building was breached. "I have no power over the Capitol Police," she declared. This probably won't shock you, but Nancy Pelosi is a f**king liar. Now it's nice to have proof.Two years later, that claim is directly...

On July 20, 1993, near Paulabren, Norway, three people fought off a polar bear using two handguns. Paulabren is part of the Svalbard archipelago, under Norwegian administration, north of the arctic circle, south of Longyearbyen. This story was uncovered as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by AmmoLand. The names of the individuals involved were redacted. The original account is a translation. Names have been added to make the report more understandable. The report has been lightly edited for ease in reading. The attack was by a single sow polar bear, on polar researchers in their camp.From...

Vincent van Gogh, the brilliant but troubled Dutch impressionist painter, severed his left ear after a "blazing row" with fellow artist Paul Gaugin in Arles, France, on this day in history, Dec. 23, 1888.The 35-year-old artist famously presented the bloody ear lobe to a female acquaintance outside a brothel. She passed out from shock.The incident underscored a tragic descent into madness punctuated by stunning displays of productivity and genius in van Gogh's final months on Earth."Although he sold only one painting during his lifetime, Van Gogh is now one of the most popular artists of all time," the Art Story...

“It’s just like owning a condo,” Wells told CNBC of the whopping $300,000 he paid for a 12-year lease for one of the ship’s 237-square-foot studios. “I’m going from this model where you want to go somewhere, you pack a bag, you get on a flight, you rent a room, to now my condo, my gym, my doctors and dentists, all of my grocery stores travel the world with me.”

WASHINGTON — The House Jan. 6 committee on Thursday unveiled its formal report, the final product of its historic 18-month investigation into the deadly attack on the Capitol and former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. "This report will provide greater detail about the multistep effort devised and driven by Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election and block the transfer of power," Jan. 6 Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., wrote in the forward of the report. "Building on the information presented in our hearings earlier this year, we will present new findings about Trump’s pressure campaign...

After nearly 10 months of war, but referring to the brutal invasion of Ukraine instead as “a special military operation,” Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday finally called it a “war” for the first time, setting off an uproar among antiwar Russians who have been prosecuted for merely challenging the Kremlin-approved euphemism. “Our goal is not to spin this flywheel of a military conflict, but, on the contrary, to end this war,” Putin said during a televised news conference following a government meeting on Thursday. “This is what we are striving for.” ...Putin has alternately said that he is seeking...

Journalist Anna Budyńska was among the grassroots army of Polish volunteers who rushed to help Ukrainian refugees as they began crossing the border in February to escape Russia’s invasion. At first, she and her partner donated money and collected food and blankets for refugees arriving in Warsaw. But she wanted to do more to understand those whom she was helping and decided to learn Ukrainian. “I suddenly realised that I had always loved to travel to western Europe, India or Mexico, but I had never visited Ukraine, knew nothing about Ukrainian culture and only a little bit about its history...

Perhaps only senior citizens will recognize his name and a few millennials might know that he was the father of Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher). Other cinephiles might know that he left his wife Debbie Reynolds to marry Elizabeth Taylor, who left him for Richard Burton, but since they’re all dead, who cares? Well, I was ten years old when I heard Eddie Fisher sing “Count Your Blessings” and it’s a lesson that in this crazy world of protests and angst, we should all heed especially in this season of increasing despair. I interviewed a young Marine who had fought in...