Free Republic

First, the data on what's happening in Iran. Start with the count:Days: 121 Protests: 282 citiesFatalities: 750+ estimated deaths, 627 identified by MEKDetentions: 30,000 Now here's the latest news:Iran’s nationwide uprising entered its fifth month following a day of major rallies and demonstrations against the mullahs’ regime in various cities of what's known as Sistan and Baluchistan province, especially the provincial capital of Zahedan. A large number of locals took to the streets on Friday in the Baluch cities of Zahedan, Rask, and Khash, chanting slogans specifically targeting regime Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), the paramilitary Basij...

The Russian Army is in the process of pushing the Ukrainian military back from their territorial holdings in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. As the winter presses on and the ground continues to freeze, a force of roughly 350,000 Russian conscripts has been assembled across the border in Belarus. Russian lines within Ukraine are being fortified.

There's no thinker more valuable than a good historian and nothing reminds us more of that than the passing of the great historian, Paul Johnson, who did so much to define history as we know it and love it. Oh, that's so grand sounding, though -- Paul Johnson's histories were utterly delicious to read, better than movies or other things billed as entertainment. You read one and just wanted to go buy another. I read nearly all of them, and still want to read them again. I never met him but I never wanted him to die, not ever, I...

Representative James Comer (R-KY) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that because more classified documents have been found in President Joe Biden’s home, there seems to be a “double standard” between how the Department of Justice is handling his case and that of former President Donald Trump.Comer said, “My concern is that special counsel was called for, but yet hours of that we still had the president’s personal attorneys who have no security clearance still rummaging around the president’s residence looking for things. That would essentially be a crime scene, so to speak, after the appointment of a...

Illicit use of cryptocurrencies hit a record $20.1 billion last year as transactions involving companies targeted by U.S. sanctions skyrocketed, data from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis showed on Thursday. Even as overall crypto transaction volumes fell, the value of crypto transactions related to illicit activity rose for the second year running, Chainalysis said. Transactions associated with sanctioned entities increased more than 100,000-fold in 2022 and made up 44% of last year's illicit activity, Chainalysis said.

WASHINGTON — Those last days were a blur of phone calls, meetings, farewell events, and visits to Ukraine and Switzerland. As he wrapped up his tenure as vice president in January 2017, Joe Biden was packing in as much as he could. The question now is: What else was being packed? And by whom? And why? And where was it going? The appointment of a special counsel has focused new attention on Biden’s frenetic final stretch in the White House after eight years as the No. 2 to President Barack Obama. Somehow, a small number of classified documents would go...

A young man was knifed on a NYC subway train by an attacker who made an apparent anti-white comment in a spate of stabbings and a shooting in the Big Apple, cops said Sunday. The 24-year-old victim boarded a southbound N subway with three friends at Chambers Street in lower Manhattan around 10 p.m. Saturday, cops said. While on the train, a man in another group said “Oh, white people,” a police spokeswoman said. The men in the group were black and Hispanic, cops said. A fight broke out when one of the victim’s friends asked the man what he...

This entire scandal is a joke. And now, thanks to the get-Trump franchise, irresponsible Biden will be forever cast as a laughingstock.News broke late yesterday that a search of the president’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, uncovered additional classified documents from Joe Biden’s time as vice president, stored unsecured in the family garage and separately in another room of the house. And I still haven’t stopped laughing.Since August of 2022, when the FBI launched an unprecedented raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, the entirety of the anti-Trump universe insisted — insisted — that the recently departed commander-in-chief’s possession of...

But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.John Quincy Adams (Prescient man – he foresaw that slavery could be ended only by a presidential decree in a war and that destroying monsters abroad would destroy liberty at home.) A lot of the people who comment on this blog seem to me to be patriotic Americans. And, it’s clear, if you read the comments, that many of them – probably the majority – want Russia to win...

While turning a blind eye to the starving Afghan population, on Jan. 4, a Taliban senior leader professed the group has an "obligation" to protect Chinese nationals looking to invest in the country’s mineral and oil wealth. The comment comes on the heels of a December attack that targeted Chinese investors who frequent Kabul’s Longan Hotel. The Islamic State – Khorasan Province, ISIS-K, claimed responsibility for the assault. On Jan. 5, the Taliban announced it had killed eight ISIS-K members, including those responsible for the hotel attack. The following day, China’s Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas signed a significant...

Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) did not say no to a possible presidential run when asked Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Anchor Jonathan Karl asked, “You waited until after your victory in the runoff to endorse President Biden, so you’re on record endorsing him. If he doesn’t run, is there any chance you would make a run for president? I mean, like I said, you have run five times in Georgia, one of the most important swing states in the past year, and won five times, and any chance you’d consider national office?” Warnock said, “You should take a look...

The Justice Department saw the first acquittal of a Jan. 6 rioter on the felony obstruction charge. Joshua Black, of Alabama, was shot in the face by a police projectile while breaching the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Court documents show him with blood on the side of his face while in the Senate chamber. Afterward, he also allegedly recorded YouTube videos with blood still on his cheek, recounting what happened. "I had accomplished my goal. I pled the blood of Jesus on the Senate floor. You know, I praised the name of Jesus on the Senate floor," Black...

Newly-minted US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy faces a daunting task: trying to avoid a US debt default. As I have discussed many times before, nothing has been the same since the US housing bubble and near-collapse of the banking system that produced an expensive bailout of seemingly all financial institutions. After 2008, Federal spending has gone out of control. The budgetary hawks (or pigeons) in the US House of Representatives (with Pelosi, Boehner, Ryan then Pelosi again) went on Federal spending sprees of epic proportions. The Manhattan Institute has a nice chart showing the explosion in the Federal budget since...

Burt Baker III, owner of three pit bulls involved in attack, is out on bond GROVETOWN, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - An 11-year-old was sent to Augusta University Hospital after being attacked by three dogs on Friday night in Grovetown, according to the family. In an incident report from the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office, it says the attack happened on Langston Drive. Deputies arrived at the family home on the same street around 6:30 p.m. Friday and found 11-year-old Justin Gilstrap being treated by fire crews for injuries. Deputies say Justin’s scalp was halfway torn off, had deep puncture wounds on both...

15 January 20232nd Sunday in Ordinary Time The Church of the Assumption of the Mother of God, Buchach, Ukraine Readings at MassLiturgical Colour: Green. Year: A(I).First readingIsaiah 49:3,5-6 ©I will make you the light of the nations so that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earthThe Lord said to me, ‘You are my servant, Israel,in whom I shall be glorified’;I was honoured in the eyes of the Lord,my God was my strength.And now the Lord has spoken,he who formed me in the womb to be his servant,to bring Jacob back to him,to gather Israel to him:‘It is...

The front page mentions an air strike in Burma where a pilot named Grant Mahony busted a Japanese truck. Capt. Gratton Mahony of the 17th Fighter Squadron (Provisional) notched his first victory on the Dec. 8, 1941 and by war’s end will have more combat hours than any other American pilot. He is also about to be assigned to PROJECT 9, which we mentioned yesterday... Eddie Rickenbacker’s copilot continues his story on page four… George Fielding Eliot column on page 12… Sports section begins on page 20, which reports that Chicago Bear halfback Hugh Gallarneau has become an officer in...

Princeton neuroscientist Michael Graziano warns in a new essay published by The Wall Street Journal, artificial intelligence-powered chatbots are doomed to be dangerous sociopaths that could pose a real danger to human beings. With the rise of chatbots like ChatGPT, powerful systems that can imitate the human mind to an impressive degree, AI tools have become more accessible than ever before. But those algorithms will glibly fib about anything that suits their purpose. To make align them with our values, Graziano thinks, they're going to need consciousness. "Consciousness is part of the tool kit that evolution gave us to make...

Neil Oliver: Excess deaths are rising around us. The fact these deaths are happening world-wide means the attempt to blame them on a failing NHS or striking ambulance drivers is for the birds. It is another bid to distract people’s attention from the elephant in the room.

The Democrats’ quest to demonize former President Donald Trump for having classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida was dealt a serious setback when it was disclosed this week that President Biden had stashes of classified documents–some of them marked “Top Secret”–in separate locations. One of the locations was the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, DC. This “think tank” was funded by a grant of $54 million from donors linked to the Chinese Communist Party. A second location was in a garage where he keeps his Corvette at his home in Wilmington, Delaware. Biden...

For nearly two years, former President Donald Trump criticized Republican Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia for not helping him overturn now-President Joe Biden's victory in the Southern swing state in the 2020 election. In advance of the 2022 midterms, Trump even recruited former Sen. David Perdue to run against Kemp in the GOP gubernatorial primary, but the governor defeated him landslide — a reflection of his strength among Peach State conservatives. And in the November general election, Kemp defeated his Democratic archrival Stacey Abrams by nearly eight points, winning by nearly 300,000 votes — a marked improvement over his roughly...