Free Republic

Russian air defenses on Tuesday foiled a Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow that prompted authorities to briefly close one of the city's international airports, officials said, as a Western analysis said Russia has managed to slow Kyiv's recently launched counteroffensive. Ukrainian authorities, which generally avoid comments on attacks inside Russia's proper territory, didn't claim responsibility for the raid. The Russian Defense Ministry said four of five drones were downed by air defenses on Moscow's outskirts and the fifth was jammed by electronic warfare means and forced down. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said that there were no casualties or damage. The...

Paris and other French cities resemble war zones, with burnt homes and streets littered with charred cars, as the nation reels under the sixth night of violence triggered by last week’s police shooting that killed a 17-year-old boy of Algerian descent. “In just six nights, over 5000 vehicles were set on fire, whereas around 3300 persons were arrested, according to a report from the Ministry of Interior on Monday,” French newspaper Le Parisien reported. Rioters damaged more than 1,000 buildings, the daily added. According to the French newspaper Le Figaro, “police and gendarmes are paying a heavy price, with 700...

As artificial intelligence (A.I.) technology takes off, the Biden Administration is allegedly pursuing efforts to make sure that such new technology adopts a left-wing worldview by default. According to Fox News, the report comes from the watchdog group American Accountability Foundation (AAF), which said in a new memo that top officials in the Biden White House are attempting to program “dangerous ideologies” into new A.I. systems. “Under the guise of fighting ‘algorithmic discrimination’ and ‘harmful bias,’ the Biden administration is trying to rig AI to follow the woke left’s rules,” said Tom Jones, the president of AAF. “Biden is being...

Many have raised alarms about the potential for artificial intelligence to displace jobs in the years ahead, but it’s already causing upheaval in one industry where workers once seemed invincible: tech. A small but growing number of tech firms have cited AI as a reason for laying off workers and rethinking new hires in recent months, as Silicon Valley races to adapt to rapid advances in the technology being developed in its own backyard. Chegg, an education technology company, disclosed in a regulatory filing last month that it was cutting 4% of its workforce, or about 80 employees, “to better...

Colorado has a law on the books that says, in simple terms, a business open to the public can’t discriminate against gay people. The radical right-wing majority of the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling last week saying that, yes, it can. The court took the side of a web designer in Colorado who said it was her First Amendment right to refuse to design wedding websites for same-sex couples. Arizona has a law much like Colorado’s. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced in no uncertain terms that her office is determined to enforce it. The Supreme Court be damned.

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush said in an old interview that he preferred not to hire veteran submarine pilots or technicians to keep his team "younger" and "inspirational." Rush, who died in June on board his submersible, the Titan, was speaking with executives from Teledyne Marine, a marine-equipment manufacturer. While the interview was undated, a recording of the video meeting was published by Teledyne in August 2020, according to metadata seen by Insider. The recording has been deleted, but Insider reviewed an archived version. In the video, the Teledyne executive Matt Burdyny told Rush that he accompanied OceanGate on a submersible...

Although I am a believer, not a skeptic, I’m a thinking believer. I’m not impressed with the “discovery” of the face of Jesus in a piece of wood. Or the map of America appearing in a bowl of melting ice cream.

...The man these rude guests hunted with that menacing Bowie knife was Joshua Cotton, an itinerant homeopath expounding the fad launched by Samuel Thomson‘s hit publication New Guide to Health. Thomson had by means of some natural palliatives healed his family of several ailments that confounded legitimate medical practitioners; his emphasis on having patients sweat out toxins by immersion in steam led his followers to be derided as “steam doctors.” Cotton wasn’t the only steam doctor beating the bushes in Madison County: an intimate named William Saunders was also about. Their wandering practice, interacting with free men and slaves alike,...

Red China won Cold War II. As Sun Tzu said 2,500 years ago, “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” Chairman Xi did so by using a bioweapon and bribes to eliminate the leader who opposed him. Xi replaced him with Biden who he bought off a few years earlier for a lousy few million dollars. The Jerusalem Post reported, “China deliberately engineered the coronavirus virus as a bioweapon, a Wuhan Institute of Virology researcher claimed this week in an interview conducted by Chinese-born human rights activist and author Jennifer Zeng. “Researcher Chao Shao asserts...

Without any warning, Flickr.com suddenly eliminates entire account, without requested specific explanation, or offer of recovery. Without any prior warning or specific explanation afterward - despite attempts for any - about 3 weeks ago flickr.com (owned by SmugMug and headquartered in San Francisco, California suddenly eliminated my entire account, with no option to recover images.There was nothing even close to porn, or violence, racism, vulgarity, profanity... among my pics, or known violations of copyrighted material (that would not qualify as "fair use"), and I mostly used Flickr for my garden photos. But the purgation occurred after I had uploaded images...

Happy 4th of July! Enjoy those burgers and hot dogs, at least until you consider that food prices have risen a staggering 49% under Biden’s Reign of Economic Error. This is much worse than the quoted story that Fourth of July cookout costs 15% more since Biden took office. The only good news is that The Fed’s monetary stimulus growth is slowing. But don’t worry! Biden and Congress will keep introduce massive spending bills to avert a recession. Which will cause downline inflation. My favorite hot dog place, Chicago’s Wolfy’s!

Our national Fourth of July holiday—currently the nation’s 247th since the first in 1776—marks the birth of the United States. The iconic Declaration of Independence was published on the 4th and largely written by Thomas Jefferson. Its core sentence would become among the most famous words in American history: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Those aspirations at the outset pledged the new American nation to hold to its promises “that...

(Daily readings from the USCCB)As Jesus got into a boat, his disciples followed him. Suddenly a violent storm came up on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by waves; but he was asleep. Matthew 8:23–24This experience had quite an impression upon the disciples, which is evidenced by the fact that it is recorded in all three Synoptic Gospels. We also see this in the concluding words of the story after Jesus calmed the storm: “The men were amazed and said, ‘What sort of man is this, whom even the winds and the sea obey?’”Traditionally, this story has...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Even as it has ushered in sweeping changes to American law and society - on abortion, gun rights and affirmative action - the U.S. Supreme Court has kept tabs on another issue of keen interest to its conservative majority: keeping federal regulatory power in check. The issue will figure prominently during the court's next term, which begins in October, as the justices already have agreed to decide several cases that could curtail the authority of U.S. agencies to issue regulations and enforce laws in areas ranging from finance to fisheries. The cases involve what has come to...

“Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.” Thomas Paine, Common Sense. July 4, 2023, finds the American Founding and its constitutional order under intense and coordinated attack by an assorted mob of radical academics, Marxists, communists, anarchists, anti-capitalists, globalists, and the digital super-elite poised to claim their own superpower status among the world’s powers. The reason these...

The Bible In Paintings ~ Encouragement for Applying and Appreciating God's Word ~ The Best of VASILY POLENOV “VASILY DMITRIEVICH POLENOV (1844–1927) was a Russian landscape painter associated with the Peredvizhniki movement of realist artists. His contemporaries would call him the “Knight of Beauty” as he embodied both European and Russian traditions of painting. His vision of life was summarized as following: “Art should promote happiness and joy”. As a painter and a humanist, he would truly believe in the civilizing mission of Art, Culture and Education.” excerpted from Wikipedia 1 VASILY POLENOV "Christ among the Doctors" 2 VASILY...

Pray For The Peace of JerusalemLuke 19 Zacchaeus the Tax Collector 19 Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. 2 A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. 3 He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way. 5 When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house...

"Coming to [Christ] as to a living stone, rejected by men, but choice and precious in the sight of God" (1 Pet. 2:4). God’s view of Christ is the only accurate standard by which to measure Christ’s worth. I once read about a conversation in the Louvre Museum in Paris. One of the curators of the museum, a man with great appreciation for art, overheard two men discussing a masterpiece. One man said to the other, "I don't think much of that painting." The curator, feeling obliged to reply to the man's statement, said to him, "Dear sir, if I...

Many children of divorce experience a kind of exile. Although you are told your home has not shrunk, but expanded, it rarely feels that way. Not only has the place you used to think of as home changed many of its rituals and rules, but it has altered how you are viewed and treated. At first there is a sense of the newcomers not really knowing you, not knowing all your preferences or aversions and having to explain so many backstories from your past that clarify the present. Then this graduates to not understanding you, your possibilities and limitations, where...

Independence Day no more: America is no longer independent By Ezequiel Doiny Biden has sabotaged the American economy and surrendered decision making power to the IMF. Op-ed.