Free Republic

ANKARA, Turkey -- A court in Istanbul on Wednesday handed Turkish pop singer Gulsen a 10-month suspended sentence after convicting her of “inciting hatred and enmity” over a joke about Turkey’s religious schools, the country's state-run news agency reported. The singer-songwriter was briefly jailed last year for the joke she made during a concert, when she quipped that the “perversion” of one of her musicians came from attending a religious school.

Republicans Sen. Chuck Grassley and Rep. James Comer subpoenaed the FBI on Wednesday for an unclassified document they say alleges a criminal scheme between now-President Joe Biden and a “foreign national” during his years in the Obama White House. The record reportedly details the former vice president’s arrangement to receive money in exchange for pushing certain policy positions. The Republicans were only made aware of Biden’s potential criminal enterprise because of an unnamed whistleblower. “The information provided by a whistleblower raises concerns that then-Vice President Biden allegedly engaged in a bribery scheme with a foreign national,” Comer announced in a...

It has often been said that you are not only judged by your own actions but also by the company you keep. This can be said of Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson who was not a household name to most, making his rise to mayorship unlikely. He had no past leadership skills on his resume, no past budgetary skills, and his vision for Chicago’s future was based on rhetoric lacking any substance. But you must give credit where credit is due. Johnson’s Chicago Teachers Union connections certainly helped his rise to the Cook County commissionership, and both promoted his election. Meanwhile, Johnson...

The long era of the dominance of the SAT in college admissions is coming to an end. The test is increasingly being shelved not because it failed but because it succeeded in all the wrong ways. According to a survey from an anti-testing outfit, more than 80% of four-year colleges won’t require standardized tests for admissions this coming fall. Many have made the tests optional, and some won’t consider them at all. In a swath of academia, the pandemic expedient of dropping the tests has seamlessly transitioned to a permanent change. If this isn’t a leap forward for fairness or...

New training documents from the U.S. Marshals Service show law enforcement agents were discouraged from arresting leftist protestors outside of the homes of Supreme Court Justices last year. The raucous protestors, who showed up in the aftermath of the Dobbs leak -- which revealed Roe v. Wade would be overturned -- repeatedly broke the law. -snip In a letter to U.S. Marshals Service Director Ronald Davis, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan is revealing the details. "In in May 2022, some Supreme Court justices faced relentless protests at their homes, seemingly intended to influence the Court’s decision. Although federal law...

House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer issued a subpoena on Wednesday requiring the FBI to turn over an unclassified record that reportedly details allegations of a criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden and a foreign national.The subpoena comes after Republican Senator Chuck Grassley’s office was made aware of the FBI-generated whistleblower form. The FD-1023 form allegedly outlines a scheme involving the exchange of money for policy decisions.“It has been alleged that the document includes a precise description of how the alleged criminal scheme was employed as well as its purpose,” Grassley and Comer wrote in a letter to FBI...

California Rep. Nancy Pelosi has continued her jet-setting ways despite relinquishing her leadership post and pushing for aggressive climate policies, according to a Fox News Digital review of campaign finance records. The former Democratic leader's campaign disbursed $43,663.80 on private jet travel with Advanced Aviation in March and appears to be the biggest private jet spender during the first quarter of the year, her filings show. Pelosi has now spent nearly $700,000 on charter aircraft in recent years, primarily with Advanced Aviation, her longtime preferred company. Based just outside of Washington D.C., in Northern Virginia, Advanced Aviation offers aircraft ranging...

Former Fox News prime time host Tucker Carlson is expected to make his first public appearance at a charity event Thursday since abruptly parting ways with the network. Carlson is slated to attend Rainbow Omega’s annual fundraising event at the Oxford Performing Arts Center in Oxford, Alabama, on Thursday. The May 4 event advertises Tucker Carlson as the featured guest, making it his first public appearance since his sudden exit from Fox News last week. It appears many sections are sold out for the 7 p.m. event, but as of the writing of this post, $65 balcony seats were still...

A Louisiana woman claimed during a Tuesday hearing that an unusual affinity for “raw green vegetables” was one of the clues that led her to believe her daughter would identify as transgender. The woman appeared before the Louisiana State House’s Health and Welfare Committee to speak ahead of a vote on HB 463, which would ban so-called “gender-affirming” surgical procedures for minors, and she laid out some of the signs that had stood out to her prior to her daughter’s eventual announcement that she identified as male. “We couldn’t figure out what the problem was. We took him to specialists,...

Former Barclays boss Jes Staley has been accused of sexually abusing a woman at Jeffrey Epstein’s Virgin Islands retreat, according to a new court ruling. Staley, a former private banking chief at JP Morgan, is alleged to have ‘used aggressive force in his sexual assault of [anonymous victim ‘JPM Jane Doe’] and informed [her] that he had Epstein’s permission to do what he wanted to her,’ the ruling, filed on Monday, states. The explosive revelation – the first direct accusation of sexual assault against Staley at the behest of Epstein – is part of a ruling issued by US District...

Price has been facing criticism for refusing sentencing enhancements to lower jail terms. The DA faced backlash for planning not to pursue jail time for a trio of gang members who were arrested in connection with the death of Oakland toddler Jasper Wu. Wu was driving home to Fremont with his family on Nov. 6, 2021, when a stray bullet pierced their car on Interstate 880. The bullet passed through their front windshield and hit the ​​23-month-old toddler in the forehead. Last week, Price also came under fire for declining to place criminal enhancements in a case involving another murdered...

Model Bri Teresi, who went viral after shooting cans of Bud Light, tampons and lingerie in a video, said the beer company is trying to target children through its promotional partnership with Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender influencer and activist. Appearing on the Factz podcast this week, Teresi spoke about the ongoing controversy surrounding Bud Light and its parent company, Anheuser-Busch. "So with the Dylan Mulvaney thing, with him being put on a Bud Light can or whatever, that was literally because his target audience is children," she said. "So they're trying to get that next generation of beer drinkers...

[Catholic Caucus] “Why Should Pope Francis and the FBI Care about the Latin Mass?” — Kwasniewski’s Charleston Lecture with Q&AIn a memo subsequently officially disowned, the Federal Bureau of Investigation identified Traditional Latin Mass-going Catholics as potential domestic terrorists. Curiously, Pope Francis seems to agree to some extent with the FBI, for he has targeted Latin Mass Catholics — a minority of the faithful who worship in a sacred form handed down for centuries — as ecclesiastical terrorists, so to speak: they are upsetting the peace and order of the post-Vatican II Church.Why should the FBI care? What, especially, is...

"Little children, yet a little while I am with you. Ye shall seek me: and as I said unto the Jews, Whither I go, ye cannot come; so now I say to you. A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another." "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and...

SNIP ‘The real price of water’ One of the biggest issues that may have to be tackled is how much Utahns pay for water. Israel, for example, charges a tariff for water use. For the average Israeli household, it’s about $150 per household each month. Utah’s water rates vary, depending on where you live and how much you use. That doesn’t even cover the true cost of water which is absorbed by property taxes (and some nonprofits, like churches and schools, don’t pay any property taxes and therefore pay next to nothing for water). “It's the conversation we need to...

Let's get 'er done! Thank you all very much! God bless.

House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo) warned IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel not to retaliate against a whistleblower who has offered to provide evidence of IRS political interference in the Hunter Biden investigation being undertaken by the House Ways and Means Committee. Werfel replied to Smith saying "if you tell me who he is I'll see what I can do. Every public employee owes loyalty to the President. I hope that you realize that since the target of your investigation is the President's son you could be entering dangerous territory. Fathers can be expected to take action to protect...

In another sign of changing attitudes to pandemic policy, infectious disease specialists writing in the Annals of Internal Medicine this month argued against the continuation of universal masking policies for doctors, nurses, and other health care workers. In the article, the eight authors, who are infectious disease specialists associated with Harvard and Washington University medical schools among others, offer a timeline of the evolving responses to the pandemic. The timeline leaves out the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) initially confusing advice on masking but acknowledges that factors like the development of immunity, the evolution of the virus, and...

Ian Fleming (James Bond) is among the writers undergoing posthumous editing for content unsuitable for today’s readers. As he is dead, he has no choice in the matter. We are all familiar with book banning and book burning. Can anything be worse? Yes, changing a writer’s intent, dead or alive, through sensitivity editing. Some writers, nowadays, agree to go along to get along. That’s too bad. True writers value each word they write. Hemingway spoke of the search for the “perfect sentence,” and quite often he clicked, if he can be forgiven for his mistreatment of Robert Cohn in “The...

Forecasters expect a hurricane season similar to 2017, one of the worst and most costly on record. After two years of relatively mild hurricane seasons, 2023 will see above-average hurricane activity, researchers predict. The forecasters expect the number of major hurricanes this year to be similar to 2017, which saw the extremely intense hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria. Since 2014, hurricane activity has been accurately predicted by a model created by Xubin Zeng, a professor of hydrology and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona, and his former graduate student Kyle Davis.