Free Republic

On May 10th, 2023, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Richmond Division, Judge Robert S. Payne published an opinion in the federal statutes and regulations which ban 18-20-Year-old citizens from purchasing handguns from federally licensed dealers is facially unconstitutional.The decision was rendered in the case Fraser v ATF. The case is a lawsuit brought by four young citizens between the ages of 18 and 20. The case was initially filed on June 22, 2022, just as the famous Supreme Court opinion in Bruen was published. Motions to dismiss the case and for summary judgment...

24 May 2023 Wednesday of the 7th week of Eastertide altar in honour of Blessed Hermann Joseph in the Roman Premonstratensian College, Kall, Germany Readings at MassLiturgical Colour: White. Year: A(I).First readingActs 20:28-38 ©I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, and its powerPaul addressed these words to the elders of the church of Ephesus: ‘Be on your guard for yourselves and for all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you the overseers, to feed the Church of God which he bought with his own blood. I know quite well that when I...

The new USS Canberra will be the first American navy warship to be commissioned in an allied country, with the combat vessel set to join the US fleet. Australian navy chief Vice Admiral Mark Hammond said July's historic event would show the deep ties between the United States and Australia, and provide an opportunity to reflect on their shared history. "This is a unique demonstration of respect by the US for the officers and sailors of the Royal Australian Navy," the vice admiral said. Members of the US Navy and USS Canberra crew will be hosted in Sydney to mark...

... A year ago, the US Department of Energy's Frontier supercomputer was the first exaflop system to grace the Top500, unseating Japan's 442 petaflop Fugaku in the process. It was heralded as a major step forward and a return to form for the US, which has long held a leadership position on the international ranking. However, the "first" was purely a paper one. We've known since 2021 that China's Sunway Oceanlite and Tianhe-3 systems had exceeded the exaflop barrier in the Linpack benchmark. Needless to say neither of these systems has ever appeared on the Top500 ranking. There are a...

Between Biden’s push to tax those borrowers with good credit and reward those with bad credit and Rocket Mortgage annoucing 1% down payments in a declining home price economy, Biden’s housing market is looking more like a house of cards. Here is another bit of bad news for the housing market. Mortgage applications decreased 4.6 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending May 19, 2023. The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, decreased 4.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from...

From time to time I like to check in on the latest from the New York City Housing Authority. NYCHA (along with many other municipal housing authorities) is one of the purest examples in the U.S. today of socialist-model economic organization. The state owns the buildings; the residents pay deeply subsidized rents based on income; and the state takes full responsibility for maintenance and upkeep. Is there any reason why this might not work for the long pull? When we last looked back in 2018, NYCHA had just been sued by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New...

Cases of Omicron variant XBB are mounting in China, forming a new wave expected to crest around 65 million cases a week by the end of June.XBB, the “first major highly immune-evasive” group of COVID variants, “will sweep through China,” but the wave will be “largely invisible” due to low rates of testing and reporting, Raj Rajnarayanan, assistant dean of research and associate professor at the New York Institute of Technology campus in Jonesboro, Ark., and a top COVID-variant tracker, tells Fortune.When it comes to XBB variants, “the rest of the world has seen them all.” But up until recently,...

A man identified as Jordan Neely’s uncle was reportedly arrested Monday while allegedly having stolen credit cards in his possession. According to the Daily Mail, the news comes one day after he said there should be no plea deal for the veteran accused of putting his nephew, a mentally ill homeless man, in a deadly chokehold. The Mail report continued: Christopher Neely was arrested late Monday night after running away from a police pickpocket team that confronted him at the Port Authority bus terminal in Manhattan, police sources said. He was wanted for a string of larcenies in Manhattan when...

A divided federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld the constitutionality of a new admissions policy at an elite public high school in Virginia that critics say discriminates against highly qualified Asian Americans. The 2-1 ruling from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond overturns a ruling last year from a federal judge who found that the Fairfax County School Board engaged in impermissible “racial balancing” when it overhauled the admissions policy at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. The school frequently is cited among the best in the nation, and parents jockey and prepare for...

The press said that there was (supposedly) "racism", violence, and hate at the flag march. Lies can kill, but lies do not have legs to stand on. Op-ed. ...Today as well, the haters of Israel allow themselves to brazenly lie and falsely accuse the Jewish people. Newspapers discuss the flag march on Jerusalem Day and say there was racism, hate, and violence. The Haaretz newspaper wrote that the Jews (supposedly) rioted in the Arab streets, damaged, broke, and yelled: "Death to (sic) Arabs." This is a lie like no other. I was there, I walked along the entire route in...

German police on Wednesday carried out raids across seven states targeting climate activists of the "Letzte Generation" (Last Generation) group, which has sparked controversy with protesters glueing themselves to roads to block traffic. The raids were ordered in an investigation targeting seven people aged 22 to 38 over suspicions of "forming or supporting a criminal organisation", said a joint statement by Bavaria's police and prosecutors. Fifteen properties were searched, two accounts seized and an asset freeze ordered. The suspects are accused of "organising a donations campaign to finance further criminal acts" for the group via its website. The authorities did...

Authorities in Malaysia have seized 164 rainbow-colored Swatch watches that celebrate LGBT pride, the company said on Wednesday. Officials from the Ministry of Interior Affairs raided Swatch outlets in various malls to confiscate merchandise which bore "LGBT elements," according to one summons notice. The watches belong to the watchmaker's "Pride collection" which it says promotes equality and diversity. "We strongly contest that our collection of watches using rainbow colors and having a message of peace and love could be harmful for whomever," Swatch CEO Nick Hayek Jr. said in a statement. "This is nothing political. We wonder how the Regulatory...

I have gotten a flood of emails and text messages asking about what happens if Biden defaults on the US debt. In short, Biden has made a career out of spending money, as has Speaker McCarthy. They both have an incentive to raise the debt ceiling, but whether it is cuts to Biden’s insane budget (higher than Covid-era spending) and wants to raise taxes on the middle class to pay for it. McCarthy wants a trimmed budget (aka, back to pre-Covid spending levels) and NOT raises taxes. They will eventually agree somewhere in the middle (US Congress member Pramila Jayapal...

Berlin (AFP) – German police on Wednesday carried out raids across seven states targeting climate activists of the "Letzte Generation" (Last Generation) group, which has sparked controversy with protesters glueing themselves to roads to block traffic. The raids were ordered in an investigation targeting seven people aged 22 to 38 over suspicions of "forming or supporting a criminal organisation", said a joint statement by Bavaria's police and prosecutors. Fifteen properties were searched, two accounts seized and an asset freeze ordered. The suspects are accused of "organising a donations campaign to finance further criminal acts" for the group via its website....

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on Tuesday night called for US intelligence agencies to be broken up “into a thousand pieces” and scattered “into the winds.”Dorsey posted a portrait of former Democratic President John F Kennedy and wrote, “Splinter the CIA, NSA, and FBI into a thousand pieces and scatter them into the winds.” The news comes after Robert Kennedy Jr., the nephew of the former president who was assassinated on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, went on the Cats Roundtable radio program and told host John Catsimatidis that he believes the CIA was involved in the murder of...

Now that President Biden has agreed that NATO members can train Ukrainian pilots on the F-16, it is likely Ukraine will get old F-16A/B aircraft. Although they’ve been upgraded to a degree, these planes date to the 1970s or 1980s. They are not game-changers. Maybe they will boost morale, but once they arrive (in three to six months or more), they won’t change the war in Ukraine. Ukraine‘s F-16s will likely come from Norwegian, Danish or Dutch inventories, most likely the latter. The Netherlands has reported ongoing negotiations between itself and Ukraine on donation of the jets. These are old...

A two-day incursion from Ukraine into Russia's western borderlands could force the Kremlin to divert troops from front lines as Kyiv prepares a major counteroffensive, and deal Moscow a psychological blow, according to military analysts. Though Kyiv has denied any role, the biggest cross-border raid from Ukraine since Russia invaded 15 months ago was almost certainly coordinated with Ukraine's armed forces as it prepares to attempt to recapture territory, the experts added. "The Ukrainians are trying to pull the Russians in different directions to open up gaps. The Russians are forced to send reinforcements," said Neil Melvin, an analyst at...

Scientists suffering insults and mass-spam are abandoning Twitter for alternative social networks as hostile climate-change denialism surges on the platform following Elon Musk's takeover. Researchers have documented an explosion of hate and misinformation on Twitter since the Tesla billionaire took over in October 2022 -- and now experts say communicating about climate science on the social network on which many of them rely is getting harder. Policies aimed at curbing the deadly effects of climate change are accelerating, prompting a rise in what experts identify as organised resistance by opponents of climate reform. Peter Gleick, a climate and water specialist...

A Stanford professor who has researched unidentified aerial phenomena for the US government says he believes extraterrestrial intelligence has not only visited earth but “it’s been here a long time and it’s still here”. Dr Garry Nolan also claimed that whistleblowers who have worked on “reverse-engineering downed craft” had recently given classified testimony to Congress, creating a “hornet’s nest in Washington”. Dr Nolan, a Professor of Pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine who has published more than 300 research articles and holds 40 US patents, made the bombshell comments during a talk at the Salt iConnections conference in New...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., invited her colleague from across the aisle in Congress, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to educate Twitter users on the history of America's diametrically opposed political parties, and his answer is unlikely what she expected. **SNIP** AOC inserted herself into the dialog by saying, "Why don’t you go ahead and tell people what happened to the parties after that, Ted." Cruz took her up on the offer and responded in a tweet thread, saying, "Sure. – First, the Dem party founded the KKK. – Then the Dem party wrote Jim Crow laws. – Then the Dem party...