Free Republic

The Great Scenic Railway, at Luna Park in Melbourne, Australia, is the second oldest rollercoaster in the world: and it's one of only a few which still uses a manual brake. Here's how it works.

Journalist Paul Sperry is not going quietly into the night — as we reported, he’s been calling out the effort by Rep. Adam Schiff’s office to silence him, to get him suspended from Twitter as well as to shut down his reporting about things that Schiff didn’t want to be exposed. In articles for RealClearInvestigations, I outed his anonymous “whistleblower” from the first impeachment of President Trump. It was Eric Ciaramella, a Democrat who had worked in the Trump White House as an Obama holdover. I also exposed Ciaramella’s prior relationship with one of Schiff’s top staffers on the impeachment...

Patti Davis, actress and youngest daughter of the late President Reagan, gave Prince Harry some sage yet unsolicited advice ahead of the release of his memoir, "Spare." In an op-ed written for the New York Times, Davis, 70, cautioned the Duke of Sussex to be judicious with his candor. "My justification in writing a book I now wish I hadn’t written… was very similar to what I understand to be Harry’s reasoning. I wanted to tell the truth, I wanted to set the record straight. Naïvely, I thought if I put my own feelings and my own truth out there...

That's why they call it gambling. In the morning on our Sports Radio station, they air VSIN the Sport Betting Network that broadcasts from Las Vegas, weekly they have been following the Circa Survivor contest that started with 6,133 entrants at $1000/each. You pick one team each week to win straight up, once you pick a team you can't pick that team the rest of the year. Yesterday it came down to 3 people, the 3 people picked the Jaguars, Colts, and Seahawks, 2 picks won meaning they will divide up a $6.133-million-dollar payout versus 3 people dividing it.

Yes, the America middle class is disappearing. At least as defined by the above WSJ chart. 38% of US families were middle class in 1979 vs. 32% in 2014. But where did that 7% (6.8 percentage points to be exact) go? Well, of the five income groups (poor, lower middle class, middle class, upper middle class, and rich) displayed, the bottom three got smaller, the top two bigger. The poor shrank by 4.5 percentage points, the lower middle class by 6.8, the middle class also by 6.8% But the upper middle class got a lot bigger, expanding by 16.4 points,...

ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos predicted two years of chaos during Kevin McCarthy’s House speakership, but his Republican guests weren’t having it. In his opening segment on “This Week” Sunday, Stephanopoulos said that McCarthy’s concessions to 20 conservative members who opposed his bid would put the country on edge. He extended his alarmist rhetoric to interviews with two Republican congressmen, but both lawmakers rebuked him for it. “On the second anniversary of the January 6th insurrection, Kevin McCarthy clinched his decade-long quest to be speaker of the House,” Stephanopoulos said. “It came with concessions to the most extreme members of his...

The fact that American living standards have broadly stagnated, and for some segments of the population have declined, should be cause for real concern to the ruling class. America ran out of frontier when we hit the Pacific Ocean. And that changed things. Alaska and Hawaii were too far away to figure in most people’s aspirations, so for decades, it was the West Coast states and especially California that represented dreams and possibilities in the national imagination. The American dream reached its apotheosis in California. After World War II, the state became our collective tomorrow. But today, it looks more...

President Biden, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau jointly condemned the riots that broke out in Brazil on Sunday. “Canada, Mexico, and the United States condemn the January 8 attacks on Brazil’s democracy and on the peaceful transfer of power. We stand with Brazil as it safeguards its democratic institutions,” the leaders said in a statement on Monday. The three leaders are together in Mexico City for the North American Leaders’ Summit over the next two days. They added in the statement that their governments “support the free will of the people of Brazil”...

The Wise Men brought gifts to God incarnate. Do I give the best of the time, talents, and treasure entrusted to me... or just what is left over after sacrificing at the altars of the world?The Epiphany is the manifestation of Jesus as Messiah of Israel, Son of God and Savior of the world (CCC 528). Who were the wise men who came to find the “new king of the Jews”? They were men of the East (Matt 2:1), learned in reading the stars and ancient prophecy. They were not among God’s chosen people. They were gentiles. They came to...

Over the last two weeks, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has been sounding more and more like an establishment Republican. During the House Speaker voting sessions, MTG emphatically called Rep. Gaetz and Rep. Lauren Boebert along with 18 other Republican lawmakers “destructionist” for voting against McCarthy. Here’s the video for context: Now when a reporter asked MTG if Biden is the legitimately elected President of the United States, she responded “Of course Joe Biden’s the president. That’s always a silly question.” Just watch:

A little-noticed bill passed before Christmas shows that the U.S. Senate knows Nancy Pelosi had more to do with the U.S. Capitol breach on January 6, 2021, than anything President Trump did that day. Indeed, Nancy Pelosi could be crowned Queen of the Mob, since her actions led to the crashing of the perimeter fences, general dysfunction, and deaths of Trump supporters that day. Even after the one-sided January 6 Committee left Pelosi’s role on the cutting room floor, there’s one inescapable conclusion: If she’d done her job, there would have been no riot, no deaths of Trump supporters, no...

Almost two years ago, the Texas energy grid came within minutes of total system failure, leaving 4.5 million Texas homes and businesses without power at its peak. After the storm, it was painfully clear that the makeup of the Texas energy grid must be rebalanced, with an emphasis on electricity generated from cheap, plentiful and reliable natural gas and ensuring the natural gas energy supply chain was better weatherized to ensure operation during extreme weather conditions.

President Joe Biden has quietly continued his predecessor’s America-first tariffs.Free traders on the left and the right routinely excoriated Donald Trump for his willingness to implement tariffs on foreign imports. With the election of Joe Biden in 2020, many hoped the incoming president would reverse the former president’s “protectionist” trade policies and return to free trade orthodoxy. This, however, never happened. In fact, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, just two weeks ago, pushed back against claims made by the World Trade Organization that the Trump-era tariffs violated international trade rules: The WTO is on “very, very thin ice.”President Biden has,...

DENVER (AP) — Javier Guillen just wanted to get to the United States as he endured a three-month trek from Venezuela, hiking through Central American jungles and spending four days clinging to the roof of a Mexican train known as “the beast” to avoid police and kidnappers. But when he finally arrived in El Paso, Texas, last week, the 32-year-old settled on a new destination, only one relatively cheap bus ride away — Denver, an additional 680 miles (1,094 kilometers) north from the border. Over the past month, nearly 4,000 immigrants, almost all Venezuelans, have arrived unannounced in icy Denver,...

The Brunson Brothers election integrity lawsuit was dismissed by the US Supreme Court on Monday.

After last week’s scary moments when Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field during the Bills-Bengals Monday Night Football game, I’ve seen and heard a lot more people talk about prayer. I’ve never heard so much talk on ESPN about God and prayer, and it’s such a refreshing thing to see.For starters, witness ESPN football analyst Dan Orlovsky’s heartfelt Tuesday prayer for Hamlin.This isn’t some boilerplate, half-hearted prayer. Orlovsky, a devout Christian, prayed earnestly for comfort, healing, and peace in a way that viewers could tell that he meant it.“It was on my heart,” Orlovsky told the Associated Press after his...

There is nothing so unnerving as government-initiated election fraud, perpetrated by both political parties, hiding in plain sight. This is the world we live in — the one Republicans are about to encounter. The most basic ingredient for industrial-scale voter fraud is the voter roll, fat with phantom names and addresses. ;Someone may be able to transport 250,000 paper ballots from New York to Pennsylvania, leave the truck in the parking lot, and find it gone when he returns.Those ballots are useless paper if not tied to an identity at a real address.The hard part is creating people and addresses...

This isn’t Kristi Noem’s first rodeo, and if the powerful Sanford Health has a say, it won’t be her last.It’s curious that in one of the reddest states in the nation, which boasts both a Republican governor and a whopping 90 percent GOP majority legislature, the child-mutilation business would be allowed not only to exist but to flourish. But thanks to Gov. Kristi Noem’s repeated failures to cut ties with radical gender ideology and its proponents, next week two of South Dakota’s government contractors will host a “Midwest Gender Identity Summit” in the Mount Rushmore State.The event — hosted by...

The UK is considering supplying Ukraine with British tanks for the first time to fight Russia's invading forces, Sky News understands. Discussions have been taking place "for a few weeks" about delivering a number of the British Army's Challenger 2 main battle tank to the Ukrainian armed forces, a Western source with knowledge of the conversations said. Such a move would mark a significant step-up in Western support to Ukraine and could help prompt other NATO allies, in particular Germany, to follow suit. ...One source suggested Britain might offer around 10 Challenger 2 tanks, enough to equip a squadron....

As Victoria's Secret goes woke, so goes the bad fortune of its shareholders. This is the story: Victoria's Secret brand CEO Amy Hauk announced that she will be leaving the lingerie giant after a brief stint at the company. "Amy Hauk will be stepping down as CEO of Victoria’s Secret and PINK in order to spend more time with her family in Florida," the company said in a statement to Fox News Digital. The once-loved brand has had a tumultuous few years with an attempted rebranding that implemented "woke" policies like removing the iconic "Angels" models as well as the...