Free Republic

The search for the missing OceanGate Titan submarine, which disappeared Sunday during a dive to the wreckage of the Titanic in the Atlantic Ocean, is now in its fourth day. The Coast Guard estimated Tuesday afternoon that there were about 40 to 41 hours of oxygen remaining on the vessel, which is carrying five people. BOSTON – Three new vessels arrived "on-scene" in the Atlantic Ocean Wednesday morning to join search and rescue efforts for the missing OceanGate Titan sub as the estimated oxygen supply on board continues to dwindle. The U.S. Coast Guard said the new vessels bring additional...

School administrators were not infringing on a student’s constitutional rights when they ordered him to remove a shirt that said “there are only two genders,” a district judge ruled on June 17.A Massachusetts boy in a file image. (Courtesy of Alliance Defending Freedom)Massachusetts middle-schooler Liam Morrison’s lawyers said the order violated his First Amendment rights to free speech and his Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process, but U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani said the violations have not been proven.The school “permissibly concluded that the Shirt invades the rights of others,” Talwani, an Obama appointee, said.Schools can bar speech that is...

NYCHA will announce on Wednesday a $1.5 billion plan to demolish and redevelop two massive and crumbling public housing complexes in Manhattan, City Hall confirmed. The sweeping redevelopment deal calls for the construction of more than 2,000 new public housing apartments at the Fulton Houses and Chelsea-Elliot Houses, enough for every resident currently residing at the existing buildings, officials said late Tuesday. “This is how you create new public housing for the next generation, this is what we need,” said Miguel Avecedo, president of the Fulton Houses Tenant Association. The new units would include amenities rarely seen in public housing,...

When Barack Obama won Florida just over a decade ago, Democratic registrants outnumbered Republicans in the Sunshine State by around 800,000. Republicans remained competitive because of strong turnout and support from independents, but they grappled with this structural disadvantage. During the DeSantis governorship, the red and blue lines crossed, with GOP registrations edging into the lead. By early 2022, Florida Republicans' registration advantage pushed into six figures. By last fall's Election Day, it had swelled even further, setting the table for an epic, dominant GOP sweep.While the national red wave was a dud of historic proportions, with a handful of...

E-bikes and e-scooters have flooded New York City’s streets in recent years, embraced by delivery workers and commuters as an economical and efficient new way to get around. But even as the devices have become nearly ubiquitous, the batteries inside them have made New York City an epicenter for a new kind of ferocious and fast-moving fire. These fires are “uniquely dangerous,” warned Laura Kavanagh, the city’s fire commissioner. With little or no warning, the batteries can ignite, leaving seconds for people to escape. In just three years, lithium battery fires have tied electrical fires and have surpassed blazes started...

Britain’s National Health Service recently made a landmark decision that the United States should copy. True, the country’s system of socialized medicine continues to ration treatments deemed too expensive by government bureaucrats. Importing the NHS to the United States would exacerbate the problems in our health care system. But at least the NHS is listening when it comes to protecting young children from dangerous and experimental treatments. That’s the takeaway from the recent news that the health system has officially recommended limiting access to puberty-suppressing drugs: “outside of a research setting, puberty-suppressing hormones should not be routinely commissioned for children...

A fake AP ‘fact-checker’ is hiding the real threat a California mental health services bill poses to parents and their vulnerable children.On April 4, Karena Phan of the Associated Press wrote an article attempting to debunk “social media distortion” of Assembly Bill 665, which was introduced as, “Minors: consent to mental health services.” This bill, authored by Assemblywoman Wendy Carrillo and state Sen. Scott Wiener, is making its way through the California Legislature. Phan contends that hysterics on social media claim the bill “would allow school mental health professionals to remove minors [12 and older] from the custody of their...

Here are 10 of the most prominent individual women’s competitions men have co-opted.So many men who claim to be women are forcing their way into women’s sporting competitions these days, it’s becoming hard to keep track of all the athletic institutions that sacrifice fairness and the dignity of their female athletes to avoid offending sexually deviant men.Here are 10 of the most prominent individual women’s competitions men have co-opted — not counting team sports like basketball, in which a 50-year-old, 6-foot-8-inch divorced man named Gabrielle Ludwig played on the women’s team at California’s Mission College in 2012, just half a...

Bradford Cohen, Black’s Florida-based attorney, decried Hunter’s apparent slap on the wrist, alluding to “2 tiers of justice” which he claims led his client to be sentenced to 46 months in prison for the same crime that President Biden’s son has been charged with. “2 tiers of justice? Kodak was charged for the same crime. Got over 3 years. Mr. Biden will not serve a day. Feels right? Do FBI agents and federal authorities take cases personally?” Cohen wrote in an Instagram post on Tuesday. Black, a two-time Grammy Award nominee, pleaded guilty in 2019 to providing an incorrect Social...

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has the Leftist political and media elites deeply rattled, and that’s utterly delightful. Imagine this scenario: a wildly unpopular and manifestly incapable president is running, however haltingly, for reelection. Initially he seemed like a lock, but then he encountered an unexpected challenge from a scion of an old American political family, a man who defies all the conventional categorization of political candidates and has set the establishment on its ear by challenging not only the superannuated corruptocrat in the White House but many of that establishment’s most cherished assumptions. It would make a great novel, but...

Estonia’s parliament passed on Tuesday a law legalizing same-sex marriage, becoming the first ex-Soviet country to do so. Two adults will be able to marry “regardless of their gender,” after the parliament approved amendments to the country’s Family Law Act, according to a press statement. The amended act will go into effect from January 1, 2024. The amendments to the Family Law Act also mean that same-sex couples can now adopt children. In Estonia, only a married couple can adopt a child, although single gay, lesbian and bisexual people can also petition to adopt. “Everyone should have the right to...

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was quoted on Wednesday as saying progress in Ukraine's counteroffensive against Russian forces was "slower than desired", but that Kyiv would not be pressured into speeding it up. "Some people believe this is a Hollywood movie and expect results now. It's not," Britain's BBC quoted him as saying in an interview to be broadcast later in the day. "What's at stake is people's lives." His adversary, Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Moscow had observed a "lull" in Ukraine's counteroffensive, which began early this month. Although Ukraine still had some offensive potential, Kyiv understood it had "no chance",...

The saga of the Titan submersible, missing since Monday shortly after it launched to take tourists to see the wreck of the Titanic, is a story that may prove to be as tragic — and maddening — as the tale of the doomed ocean liner itself.In 2018, experts inside and outside the company sounded alarms about the Titan submersible — most notably, that the craft wasn’t properly certified to dive to the depths necessary to reach the Titanic. OceanGate’s director of marine operations, David Lochridge, wrote a report saying the craft needed more testing, stressing “the potential dangers to passengers...

The first thing everyone needs to see is the definition of fascism, since Republicans are frequently referred to as fascists to intentionally mislead the public. One definition via Merriam WebsterFascism: a way of organizing a society in which a government ruled by a dictator controls the lives of the people and in which people are not allowed to disagree with the governmentConservatives don't like pushing young children into making the decision to permanently attemot to change their gender, just like most Americans. They encourage people not to shop at Target because they are pushing gender-altering products to children. They are...

he director of marine operations at OceanGate, the company whose submersible went missing Sunday on an expedition to the Titanic in the North Atlantic, was fired after raising concerns about its first-of-a-kind carbon fiber hull and other systems before its maiden voyage, according to a filing in a 2018 lawsuit first reported by Insider and New Republic. David Lochridge was terminated in January 2018 after presenting a scathing quality control report on the vessel to OceanGate’s senior management, including founder and CEO Stockton Rush, who is on board the missing vessel. According to a court filing by Lochridge, the preamble...

(Daily readings from the USCCB)“When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. They neglect their appearance, so that they may appear to others to be fasting. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you may not appear to others to be fasting, except to your Father who is hidden. And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.” Matthew 6:16–18Many today have abandoned the holy practice of fasting. Fasting is a powerful penitential practice that bestows great benefits upon the...

The decision by the Department of Justice to charge Hunter Biden for two mere misdemeanors for massive tax evasion linked to the foreign payoffs he took, and put him in a "diversion program" with dismissal likely for lying about his drug use and possible drug distribution activies on his gun ownership application drives home to most Americans that we have a two-tier justice system. It's not just in striking contrast to the cascade of charges being leveled at President Trump on questionable matters as he seeks to re-run for office. It's that any one of us, faced with the same...

AFP — African countries are casting a worried eye as the West pumps aid into Ukraine, sensing a retreat in pledges to help their development and fight climate change. According to the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), assistance for Ukraine in 2022 shot up to $16 billion, compared to less than a billion a year earlier, while that for Africa fell by eight percent to $29 billion. Supporters of Ukraine say the help is vital for shoring up a country whose collapse would send shockwaves across Europe and beyond. Ukraine’s economy contracted by almost a third last...

Fox News cable news ratings have collapsed in the key 25-54 age demographic after the network took top-rated host Tucker Carlson off the air in late April. Things have gotten so bad at the network that longtime host Sean Hannity has fallen behind MSNBC’s Joy Reid in the key demo. Liberal reporter Glenn Greenwald tweeted: “The 8 pm slot on Fox with Tucker was not only consistently number 1 in the key demo – 25-54 – but routinely had 400,000 viewers or more. Without Tucker, it’s crashed to worse-than-MSNBC levels: barely 100,000 people. Hannity is in 14th place, behind Joy...