Free Republic

A California bail reform group backed by A-list celebrities has shut down after being sued for releasing a serial criminal who less than a week later tried to murder a waiter in Las Vegas. The Bail Project — whose supporters include Danny Glover, John Legend and Richard Branson — announced it discontinued its operations due to restructuring in early December, 8 NewsNow reported. Its closure comes after it posted a $3,000 bond for burglary suspect Rashawn Gaston-Anderson in December 2021. Six days later, Gaston-Anderson shot Chengyan Wang 11 times in Chinatown, 8 NewsNow reported. In a plea deal, the 24-year-old...

... Beijing announced its rules governing “deep synthesis technologies” earlier this year, and finalized them in December. They will come into effect on Jan. 10. Here are some of the key provisions: Users must give consent if their image is to be used in any deep synthesis technology. Deep synthesis services cannot use the technology to disseminate fake news. Deepfake services need to authenticate the real identity of users. Synthetic content must have a notification of some kind to inform users that the image or video has been altered with technology. Content that goes against existing laws is prohibited, as...

DISGRACED Prince Andrew is being thrown out of Buckingham Palace by King Charles. The Duke, 62, will no longer be allowed an office in the building — or to use it as a corresponding address. The skeleton staff retained there after he stepped down from public duty three years ago now face the axe. In February, Andrew paid millions of pounds to settle a US civil sex assault case brought by Virginia Giuffre — while making no admission of liability. He is recruiting a new communications team in a bid to rescue his tattered reputation and is now expected to...

Yesterday, in Indiana, hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers cast their votes on primary election day. The issues Hoosiers consider when casting their votes vary, but one thing is clear – the Biden Economy is on everyone’s mind.

Who watches the watchers? The FBI on Wednesday finally broke its silence and responded to the revelations on Twitter of close ties between the bureau and the social media giant—ties that included efforts to suppress information and censor political speech. “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 bureau said in a statement. “As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to...

Pray For The Peace of JerusalemMatthew 21The Parable of the Two Sons 28 “What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’ 29 “‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went. 30 “Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go. 31 “Which of the two did what his father wanted?” “The first,” they answered. Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you,...

TikTok star Brandon “Boogie B” Montrell was shot and killed by a stray bullet Friday while Christmas shopping in New Orleans with his grandmother, his heartbroken mom revealed — as she railed against the leaders of the Democrat-run city. Montrell’s mother confirmed Saturday that the 43-year-old social media personality and comedian was the man killed while sitting in a car parked in the Rouses grocery store in the Warehouse District around 4:07 p.m. the afternoon before. The devastated mom blasted crime in Louisiana’s most populated city — and the leaders who need to “do their jobs.”

TOKYO, Dec 26 (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) reported on Monday a 1.5% rise in November global vehicle output, reaching a new record of 833,104. Domestic production slid 3.3% to 266,174 vehicles, while overseas output rose 3.8% to an all-time high of 566,930 for the month. Global sales and production in November exceeded last year's levels due to solid demand, particularly in North America, and a recovery in parts supplies that had been impacted by COVID-19 slowdowns, Toyota said. ... held to a reduced goal of 9.2 million in the year through March. Toyota had previously expected to make...

Lenin is reputed to have said, “Give me four years to teach the children, and the seeds I have planted will never be uprooted.” Every parent knows this is true: Children are sponges, learning things incredibly quickly. These things then stick, for they are buried in the very deepest recesses of our brains. Today’s leftists are attempting to reinstitute this specific type of Leninism in America. They want your children, and your efforts to protest will be unavailing. A Massachusetts federal judge confirmed this last week, saying that it didn’t “shock the conscience” that a school secretly indoctrinated two children...

Two and a half thousand Ukrainians who sought help from medical institutions in 2017 reported that their injuries had been caused by police officers. While the number of such cases is on the rise, the number of criminal proceedings initiated by the prosecutor’s office has decreased. Hromadske Radio has spoken with one of the authors of a recent study into police torture and abuse of power based on analysis of court cases and statistics from medical institutions. It was carried out by the Human Rights Expert Centre [HREC], in cooperation with the National Police and Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office.

We live in a topsy-turvy world, where true reality is often altered and replaced with a new surreal Democrat reality. This new pseudo-reality is then forced upon society and reinforced until those who imposed it eventually claim that this newly created reality is indeed fact. Hence, Democrats want to force a paradigm shift in what is considered reality. The problem with this approach is that the new pseudo-realities are almost always totally implausible. People using old-fashioned common sense, and powers of observation, can easily see through these new false realities. However, those who refuse to accept the new pseudo-realities are...

Of the eighteen hundred and sixty-two Christmas celebrations of which we have record, the one of this year of our Lord 1862 was, so far as we have the means of knowing, the dampest, warmest, muggiest, and most burdened with mingled feelings of joy and grief. As a Nation, we are not in a particularly jolly mood; as individuals, some are joyful, and others are, on the contrary, quite the reverse. The inhabitants of this and the adjacent cities gave every public indication yesterday, of health, happiness and prosperity. The streets were filled in the earlier part of the day...

We are careening directly into an abyss of war, pain and misery, and our leaders are thunderously applauding as it happens. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy came to Washington this week because he wanted more money, and our politicians in Washington definitely did not disappoint him. Even though we had already given Ukraine far more money than the rest of the world combined, our politicians agreed to give him another colossal mountain of cash. On some level, we all have to respect Zelenskyy’s skills as a con man. Even though he has banned the main opposition party in Ukraine, and even...

The wisdom of the past is precious because it stands as a bulwark against the rule of the mob today. Michael Grant, the well known interpreter of classical Greece and Rome, begins his classic book The Ancient Mediterranean by stating that "we cannot understand our past, and cannot therefore understand ourselves, unless we know something of the Mediterranean sea and coasts that made us what we are." University studies, now dominated by the destructive teachings of woke thinking and critical theory, would not just reject Grant's thinking but would ridicule and condemn anyone who holds such views. A key goal...

As the cracks in Russia's war on Ukraine deepen, Russian oligarchs sanctioned by the West are now saying Russian President Vladimir Putin tricked them into appearing to support his invasion of Ukraine, according to an extensive investigation published Saturday by The New York Times. Many of Putin's top advisors didn't know the full extent of his plans to invade Ukraine on February 24 until they were already underway, according to The Times. Senior aides at the Kremlin were trying to read his body language, telling some that Putin had "this warlike twinkle in his eyes," the paper reported. "If everyone...

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An American weapon first dropped by stealth bombers over Kosovo in 1999 and then during combat in the post-9/11 wars will soon be used by Ukrainian pilots flying Russian-made jets to kill Russian soldiers. The weapon, called the Joint Direct Attack Munition, consists of a kit that turns a cheap unguided bomb into a highly accurate, GPS-guided weapon. It is usually referred to as JDAM (pronounced JAY-dam). The Biden administration announced this week that the weapons would be part of a new $1.85 billion military aid package, giving Kyiv a precision-guided bombing capability it has never had. When dropped from...

When Volodymyr Zelenskyy became the president of Ukraine in 2019, it made headlines around the world. That wasn’t because he was a political heavyweight deemed ready to resolve Ukraine’s deep-seated challenges —ranging from an economic crisis to corruption and an entrenched, powerful oligarchy — not to mention the conflict between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country. It was just the opposite. Zelenskyy was a political novice whose closest brush with politics was playing the role of Ukrainian president in a well-known domestic TV series, before life imitated art and he decided to launch his own...

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Gillum and a colleague were indicted earlier this year on federal charges including conspiracy, wire fraud and making false statements to FBI agents. Prosecutors said Gillum funneled donations through third parties back to himself for personal use....According to prosecutors, Gillum met with undercover FBI agents posing as developers while he was mayor of Tallahassee and during his campaign for governor.