Free Republic

The military’s standards for committed members and new recruits have dropped in 2022 as the services struggle to overcome challenges in filling the ranks. Army recruiting plummeted in 2022, while the remaining services just made their recruiting goals for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, according to Department of Defense (DOD) data shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. The military is scrambling to adjust policies in a way that attracts more recruits, prompting some lowering of physical fitness and academic standards that could negatively impact military readiness, a military expert told the DCNF. “The military and the administration are...

Wipeout! More tech tantrums. China’s Covid surge. And above all, no central banks riding to the rescue if things go wrong. Reeling from a record $18 trillion wipeout, global stocks must surmount all these hurdles and more if they are to escape a second straight year in the red. With a drop of more than 20% in 2022, the MSCI All-Country World Index is on track for its worst performance since the 2008 crisis, as jumbo interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve more than doubled 10-year Treasury yields — the rate underpinning global capital costs. And in the US,...

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Friday (30) acknowledged defeat to the Brazilian Socialist Lula da Silva. He said he had no support for a military reaction to October’s election result, under suspicion of fraud. “Certain measures have to have support from other parties, support from parliament, support from some of the Supreme, from other institutions. Some people think it’s just take the Santa and solve it. It’s not like that. It is not easy. I have always done my part,” the president said. He ruled out any measure of force to revoke Lula’s election. Jair Bolsonaro will leave Brazil soon...

Catturd™, who is probably most famous for being threatened by January 6 select committee member and tough guy Rep. Adam Kinzinger, seems to stand with Rep. Thomas Massie, who noted that the committee’s final report had zero mentions of one-time Oath Keeper Ray Epps. Kinzinger earlier had tried to calm down the “crazies” by saying that he’d interviewed Epps, who is seen on several videos inciting people to rush the Capitol Building, and found that “Ray” was “just another misled man.” Epps disappeared from the FBI’s suspect database as well, apparently not having broken the law. Meanwhile, grandmothers who took...

New Title IX rules barring gender discrimination could put more responsibility on colleges to protect transgender and nonbinary students. But those students say creating welcoming campuses will require more than just policy.

Some $1.7 million in cryptocurrency vanished from a trading firm linked to FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried just days after he was released on bail, according to reports. Thirty cryptocurrency wallets linked to Alameda Research, the bankrupt firm run by Bankman-Fried’s ex-paramour, suddenly became active on Dec. 28 following four weeks of inactivity, according to cryptocurrency site Cointelegraph. The money was moved using “mixing services” which make it more difficult to track, the site reported. “Currently, our compliance team is working closely with investigators to detect the flow of the illegal funds, while also keeping a close eye on alerts from...

The 22-year-old trans daughter charged with killing her father inside the family’s Brooklyn apartment grinned for the cameras Thursday night as she was led out of an NYPD stationhouse. Nikki Secondino was hit with the murder charge and other offenses after police initially believed that her dad, Carlo Secondino, was stabbed to death during an early morning home invasion at their Bensonhurst home. Sources told The Post earlier Thursday that Nikki was suspected of concocting the fake story about the break-in to cover up her own brutal crime. But the tale quickly fell apart and the alleged killer was additionally...

KTE EXVQ JXKCSF EYTQ RY LCGGYU HCNP KTFCJ TSU UQYTKZ TSU FXXU KTUSYZZ. —SYCG FTCKTS

It was senior recognition night at Jeanette Finicum’s daughter’s high school basketball game on Jan. 26, 2016, when Jeanette started hearing that something had happened to her husband, Robert “LaVoy” Finicum. A Mohave County, Arizona, cattle rancher, father of 12, and foster parent, LaVoy Finicum was among a group of people who participated in a 41-day occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, 700 miles from his home. It started on Jan. 2, 2016. They were protesting federal land use policies—something LaVoy Finicum had been speaking about a lot on his YouTube channel, “One Cowboy’s Stand for Freedom.” Jeanette...

Twitter CEO Elon Musk said employees for the platform had a Slack channel called “Fauci Fan Club” for those who supported Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and President Biden’s chief medical adviser. Musk made the comment in a Twitter post on Wednesday as part of a thread in which he accused Fauci of backing gain-of-function research, in which an organism is genetically modified to enhance some biological function. It can strengthen a pathogen’s ability to cause disease to allow scientists to understand its potential for starting a pandemic and inform public health...

Share Tweet ... More As the new year approaches, it is time to consider how 2023 might unfold. Of course, the starting point, the contemporary context, would be the recent history of COVID lockdowns; massive government spending and inflation and constrictive energy policies driving up energy and food prices, as well as most “downstream prices,” and wiping out retirement savings; Fed strategies depressing the market; war in Ukraine threatening nuclear confrontation; China’s rising political aggression; political corruption of government institutions and apparent government-led attacks on the First Amendment, at least according to the “Twitter Files”; rising urban crime; a surge...

President Joe Biden’s White House told Reps. James Comer (R-KY) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) that the administration will not comply with House Republicans’ outstanding oversight requests, according to a letter obtained by Politico. Although the Republican Party will not regain control of the House majority and committees until next month, several top House Republicans have already sent records requests to Biden’s White House in anticipation of the investigations they plan to conduct.

A Riverside County Sheriff’s deputy was shot and killed Thursday afternoon during a traffic stop near the 3900 block of Golden West Avenue. FOX News reports deputy Isaiah Cordero was walking toward a vehicle during the traffic stop when the driver, 54-year-old William Shae McKay, shot and fatally wounded Cordero. A witness saw the shooting occur and ran to Cordero’s side, called 911, and stayed with Cordero until paramedics arrived. Cordero was then taken to a hospital, where he died.

(Daily readings from the USCCB)When they had fulfilled all the prescriptions of the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him. Luke 2:39–40 (Gospel Year B)Today we honor family life in general by pausing to ponder the particular and beautiful hidden life within the home of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. In many ways, their daily life together would have been very similar to other families at that time. But in other ways, their life together is entirely...

Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene on Thursday tweeted out a road map of what the Republican-led House of Representatives might seek to accomplish in the upcoming Congress. Greene, who has publicly advocated for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to become the next speaker of the House, said "many House Republicans have changed and moved to the right, but the base doesn't know yet." She differentiated between her caucus and a group of at least 18 Senate Republicans—which she referred to as the "uniparty"—who voted for the $1.7 trillion "omnimonster" (omnibus spending bill). She said that while 36 percent of the...

Some of Twitter’s remaining employees have reportedly begun bringing their own toilet paper to the office as Elon Musk implements sweeping cost-cutting measures at the company. Musk’s scramble to save money included a move this month to abruptly fire janitors who worked at the company’s San Francisco headquarters. The cuts came after the janitors had gone on strike for more pay. The absence of janitors has “left the office in disarray,” with bathrooms that have “grown dirty” and persistent smells of “leftover takeout food and body odor,” the New York Times reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.

A Chinese fighter jet made “an unsafe maneuver” within 20 feet of a U.S. aircraft while performing an intercept of the plane over the South China Sea on Dec. 21, according to the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. According to a Thursday press release from the command, which is responsible for overseeing U.S. military operations in the region, a Chinese Navy J-11 fighter pilot “flew an unsafe maneuver by flying in front of and within 20 feet of the nose” of a U.S. Air Force RC-135 aircraft, which forced the American aircraft to “take evasive maneuvers to avoid a collision.” The U.S....

We’re warned that Antarctica’s adjoining Southern Ocean is caught in an irreversible descending spiral, where life is scarce and on the verge of collapse. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the choice is clear: Radically reduce fossil fuels over an aggressive timeline or be complicit in the planet’s destruction. This distortion and selective manipulation of data and its use of public shaming are the tools of inquisitions, not rational scientific inquiry. Contrary to the incessant media barrage that predicts Antarctica’s demise, my personal experience during a three-week visit in November to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia Island,...

COVID-19 infection rates are soaring across China, the United States, Japan and many more countries and experts have been cautioning against the rise of further new variants that can risk global communities. One such variant is the XBB15, which is now spreading across the US, especially in New York and the New England region, explained epidemiologist Eric Feigl-Ding. In a series of tweets, the expert has stated that the recombinant XBB15 variant is the “next big one”. The expert states that the variant is more evasive and more infectious than older Omricon subvariants XBB and BQ. Feigl-Ding said that the...

Backed by Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Amendment 1 is a change to the Illinois Constitution that enshrines long-term employment contracts for government workers, multi-year salary increases, lifetime pensions, the power to strike, and much more. It also places no limits on subjects that can be included in the collective bargaining process. Under the amendment, any effort by state lawmakers to change or reform these privileges would be hopeless because they’d be backed by the state’s constitution. So while crime skyrockets in the neighborhoods, test scores plummet in the public schools, and inflation decimates private-sector paychecks, the Illinois public employee class...