Free Republic

The reparations movement has gained tremendous ground in recent years by offering promises of compensation to the descendants of slavery’s victims in the United States. The proposal forms the centerpiece of the New York Times 1619 Project, which is now a multi-million-dollar docuseries on the Hulu streaming service. A reparations task force in San Francisco recently recommended $5 million payments to African-American residents, and several Democratic members of Congress have pressed the Biden administration to prioritize the same cause at the federal level. Reparations have even made their way into children’s programming, with a recent episode of the Disney cartoon...

Time Reflections Visualization Illustration of the experimental platform used to realize time reflections. (Andrea Alu) Walk through a maze of mirrors, you'll soon come face to face with yourself. Your nose meets your nose, your fingertips touch at their phantom twins, stopped abruptly by a boundary of glass. Most of the time, a reflection needs no explanation. The collision of light with the mirror's surface is almost intuitive, its rays set on a new path through space with the same ease as a ball bouncing off a wall. For over sixty years, however, physicists have considered a subtly different kind...

Lake Audubon a man-made lake in Reston may soon chart new waters with a new name. Reston Association’s Board of Directors has begun preliminary conversations to consider launching a community dialogue on potentially renaming the lake, which is named after 19th century artist and known enslaver John James Audubon. The move, pitched by director John Farrell, would kickstart a community dialogue on the possibility of a name change. Early next year, Farrell will host an exploratory meeting with area stakeholders to discuss whether or not there is interest in changing the name of the lake. “It seems to me that...

AIER’s Phil Magness joins AIER Senior Editor James Harrigan and Antony Davies on the Words & Numbers podcast to discuss how the 1619 Project gets the history of, and the relationship between, slavery and capitalism wrong. This is the second of a two-part episode. Find part one here (at https://wordsandnumbers.libsyn.com/episode-316-slavery-capitalism-and-the-1619-project-pt-1) [the link to the podcast is there in the body of the report]

The Treasury Department will allow members of the House Oversight and Government Accountability Committee to review Suspicious Activities Reports (SARs) detailing Hunter Biden’s bank records, committee chairman James Comer of Kentucky said Tuesday. The Oversight Committee initially requested in January that Treasury officials provide Biden’s SARs, which are taken by banks in accordance with federal law when deposits or withdrawals exceed $10,000 or may indicate criminal activity. Assistant Treasury Secretary for Legislative Affairs Jonathan Davidson responded that the Oversight Committee did not identify a purpose for the request. Comer believes that Treasury holds more than 150 reports on Biden. “After...

Tucker Carlson went there tonight — Tucker told his audience if people don’t start making lots of noise we’re going to see a government controlled digital currency. Tucker Carlson opened his show on Monday by discussing the banking crisis in the country today. On Monday morning trading was halted on 20 banks as the markets opened. The New York Stock Exchange halted trading at Charles Schwab. Tonight Tucker Carlson went there – pointing out that the federal government gained power after bailing out the Silicon Valley Bank. Tucker also warned that this banking crisis could lead to a national digital...

Garfield Avenue will be closed to all traffic periodically throughout the day. Newmark Avenue between Grandridge Avenue and Graves Avenue Ramona Avenue between Garvey Avenue and Garfield Avenue Harding Avenue between Ramona Avenue and Ynez Avenue McPherrin Avenue between Garvey Avenue and Graves Avenue Roselyn Place between Ramona Avenue and Roselyn Way Huntington Avenue between Harding Avenue and Grandridge Avenue Park Avenue between McPherrin Avenue and Ynez Avenue The president, who was in the San Diego area Monday, is expected to arrive at LAX around 11:40 a.m. He will travel to El Monte around 12:05 p.m. and will speak at...

The end of The Canadian Record’s print edition — even if temporary — is another indication of how perilous the news business is for local publishers and the communities they’re a part of. CANADIAN — Thursday arrived as usual in the Texas Panhandle. But a new edition of The Canadian Record, this gritty town’s definitive source of local news for more than 130 years, did not come with it. The green flag that told the townspeople that there was a new edition of the newspaper, usually 28 pages long and full of the words and photos of their neighbors and...

Moody's Investors Services, a credit rating system, put several banks on review for a potential downgrade following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) announced the closure of Silicon Valley Bank on Friday amid a run on the bank, a move that raised concerns about the potential of future bank collapses. Following that collapse, Moody's placed First Republic Bank (FRC), Zions (ZION), Western Alliance (WAL), Comerica (CMA), UMB Financial (UMBF) and Intrust Financial on review, meaning the banks are now perceived as more risky investments by lenders.

he acronym ESG (representing environmental, social, and governance criteria for investment and business metrics) gained mainstream attention in 2020, and has since been political fodder for those wishing to weigh in on wokewashing matters. The backlash over ESG has been strong, evidenced by the fact that anti-ESG regulatory developments have outpaced those that are pro-ESG over the past few years, largely due financial concerns over taxpayer dollars. The ESG industry, however, shows no signs of slowing down, and initiatives seem to be ramping up on a global scale. As such, it is worth considering how we got here, who is...

Leonard Leo, a leader of the right-wing Federalist Society, hopes to transform American culture the way he transformed the judiciary. As Donald Trump’s adviser on judicial nominations, he helped put Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court, making him central to the demise of Roe v. Wade. Now he wants to build a new organization helping reactionaries consolidate power in realms like Wall Street, Silicon Valley, journalism, Hollywood and academia. “I spent close to 30 years, if not more, helping to build the conservative legal movement,” Leo said in a video for the organization at...

In a harsh blow to an already-reeling sector, Moody’s Investors Service on Monday cut its view on the entire banking system to negative from stable. The firm, part of the big three rating services, said it was making the move in light of three key failures that prompted regulators to step in Sunday with a dramatic rescue plan for depositors and other institutions impacted by the crisis. “We have changed to negative from stable our outlook on the US banking system to reflect the rapid deterioration in the operating environment following deposit runs at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Silvergate Bank,...

Happy Anniversary, Francis. Can we get our Church back now?Ten years ago, I was standing outside of St. Peter's Basilica when the white smoke rose up over the roof of the Sistine. It was dark and rainy by the time we first heard that weird little voice I've since learned to loathe: "Buona Sera". As I looked up at him on the loggia, a feeling came over me that can only be described as debilitating dread mixed with a faint sense of the demonic. The South American Jesuit then said something about us "blessing him," and the next thing I...

The transformation of once-wholesome American corporations like Disney and Walmart into fulcrums of LGBT power, advancing a wildly destructive sex-and-gender revolution, is not just a tragic story of American moral decline, but also one that offers vital and little-known lessons on the strategies and tactics of the Sexual Left. How did it happen? How did the self-styled "queer" (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) movement gain such a powerful foothold in corporate boardrooms and, specifically, human resources departments? Surely, a host of factors contributed to the present crisis — the nation’s growing secularization and abandonment of biblical ethos, the increasingly slavish devotion...

The Treasury, the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation announced on Sunday that they will guarantee all deposits that were still held at the ill-fated Silicon Valley Bank when it collapsed last Friday. This is probably a good thing. SVB was the sixteenth-largest bank in the United States, with tens of billions in holdings still trapped behind its crumbling walls. Vaporizing that much money might have had dire implications for other parts of the American financial system—and for thousands of innocent customers who believed their money to be safe within SVB’s coffers. The actions these government entities have...

Dick Fosbury, of the United States, clears the bar in the high jump competition at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. Fosbury, the lanky leaper who completely revamped the technical discipline of high jump and won an Olympic gold medal with his “Fosbury Flop,” has died after a recurrence with lymphoma. Fosbury died Sunday, March 12, 2023, according to his publicist, Ray Schulte. He was 76.(AP Photo/File) Dick Fosbury, the lanky leaper who revamped the technical discipline of high jump and won an Olympic gold medal with his “Fosbury Flop,” has died. He was 76. Fosbury died Sunday after a recurrence...

Yesterday, Kremlin information resources showed a meeting of two "absolutely healthy" people, Russian President Vladimir Putin and the head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov. The meeting was supposed to demonstrate the excellent health of the participants and their "strong handshake". It didn't work out very well. Putin, against the background of undergoing urgent therapy, does not feel the best way, and recently he has again increased abdominal pain, which is not always completely stopped. In the footage of the meeting with the head of Chechnya, Putin sat in a chair, in the moment, contorted in pain, frantically grasping his...

This list only includes destroyed vehicles and equipment of which photo or videographic evidence is available. Therefore, the amount of equipment destroyed is significantly higher than recorded here. Small arms, ATGMs, MANPADS, loitering munitions, drones used as unmanned bait, civilian vehicles, trailers and derelict equipment are not included in this list. All possible effort has gone into avoiding duplicate entries and discerning the status of equipment between captured or abandoned. Many of the entries listed as 'abandoned' will likely end up captured or destroyed. Similarly, some of the captured equipment might be destroyed if it can't be recovered. When the...

Those congressional floor challenges, known and anticipated well in advance of the morning of January 6, 2021, would have formed a legal and constitutional basis for ‘standing’ in judicial challenges that would have eventually reached the Supreme Court. The certification during “emergency session” eliminated the problem for Washington DC.

The House Postsecondary Education and Workforce Subcommittee approved a proposed committee substitute for HB 999 Monday, replacing the language of the original bill. Republican lawmakers are proposing to expand legislation that would further limit majors and minors available to Florida university students. The legislation also would further undermine tenure protections for professors. The bill in question is HB 999 and it’s called Public Postsecondary Educational Institutions. Lawmakers will be discussing an updated version at a Monday committee meeting, where they will decide whether to accept or reject new expanded language in the bill. The American Association of University Professors said...