Free Republic

THE ETERNAL MEANING OF INDEPENDENCE DAY (2) President Calvin Coolidge celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1926, with a speech providing a magisterial review of the history and thought underlying the Declaration. His speech on the occasion deserves to be read and studied in its entirety. The following paragraph, however, is particularly relevant to the challenge that confronts us in the variants of the progressive dogma that pass themselves off today as the higher wisdom: "About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has...

Another billionaire has added a media company to his wishlist: John Catsimatidis, the chairman and CEO of grocery chains Gristedes Foods and D'Agostino Supermarkets. He’s telling news outlets he’d be willing to purchase CNN from Warner Bros. Discovery. “I’d go run the place tomorrow morning, and all I’d want is $1 per year and a piece of the upside,” the grocery mogul, told the New York Post. Catsimatidis’ comments follow a difficult year for the media outlet, which has faced declining viewership and turnover in the C-suite. Chief executive Chris Licht was let go after a brief one-year stint as...

President Biden issued a demand for tougher firearm restrictions Tuesday after a string of deadly shootings unfolded across the country over the Fourth of July holiday weekend. Biden, 80, called for action while also marking the anniversary of last year’s July 4th parade massacre in Highland Park, Ill., in which seven people were slaughtered.

Experts have today warned that biological males breastfeeding babies can be 'self-indulgent' and 'selfish' — with powerful medication used to produce the milk itself carrying a potential health risk. It follows the case of a British transwoman sharing a photo of her breastfeeding her child on a bus, sparking criticism from gender critical campaigners. Mika Minio-Paluello, a former Labour special adviser, came to public attention after discussing on the news how the soaring water bills were 'tough if you're a mum'. Trans women, people who are biologically male but identify as a woman, must take powerful medication cocktails to be...

But we still have much to celebrate this Fourth of July. This year’s Fourth of July arrives at a time of doubt and even disdain for our nation’s birth and foundational principles. For most of our history this day has celebrated the bold, epochal Declaration of Independence that staked a claim to self-government and freedom from the world’s most powerful empire. The nation that followed after eight years of war went on to become, and still is, the freest, most prosperous, and, for all its all-too-human betrayals of those principles, the most generous great power in all of history. The...

I'm bound to the recliner, i had surgeey last week. Been watching all kinds of history. I'm going with Teddy Roosevelt as #2. George Washington as #1. What is your #1#2and #3? Just curious and bored. Happy Independence Day, thanks. God Bless

A spokesman at Afghanistan's Vice and Virtue Ministry says the Taliban are banning women's beauty salons ... It's the latest curb on the rights and freedoms of Afghan women and girls, following edicts barring them from education, public spaces and most forms of employment. A spokesman for the Taliban-run Virtue and Vice Ministry, Mohammad Sidik Akif Mahajar, didn't give details of the ban. He only confirmed the contents of a letter circulating on social media. ... from the supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada. The ban targets the capital, Kabul, and all provinces, and gives salons throughout the country a month's notice...

One asked how anyone can celebrate when the Court's abortion ruling allegedly removed 'fundamental freedoms for women' Leftists on Twitter don’t seem too inclined to celebrate Independence Day this year. Ahead of the July 4th holiday, several prominent liberals on Twitter expressed their disgust for America and indicated they will not be celebrating our independence as a nation. For most of them, the recent Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade, has sullied the celebration. Left-wing members of news and entertainment media claimed that women in the country are no longer free...

Today we celebrate the 13 original states seceding from the Union and forming a confederacy. (Articles of Confederation.)

Native American leaders are furious with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass after she abruptly replaced the first-ever Native American commissioner of the Department of Water and Power (DWP) with a “queer” white male. Mayor Bass removed Cynthia Ruiz, who had only been in office a year, and is well-liked by stakeholders, with George McGraw, a “a leading queer voice in social entrepreneurship, environmental justice, and water.”

The suspect wanted in connection with a shooting in Southwest Philadelphia on Monday night has been identified as 40-year-old Kimbrady Watson Carriker. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Carriker was arrested on Monday evening after allegedly shooting and killing five people and injuring two children in the Kingsessing neighborhood. Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said law enforcement responded to gunfire in the area of South 56th Street and Chester Avenue shortly before 8:30 pm. Around 10 minutes later, police followed and cornered the suspect in an alleyway on the 1600 block of South Frazier Street. On Facebook, Carriker was seen posting in...

"But things got different later. When I was a grad student in linguistics going on the market for jobs, I was told that I needn’t worry whether I would get bids for tenure track positions because I was Black and would therefore be in great demand. Deep down, to me, it felt I was on my way to being tokenized, which I was, especially given that my academic chops at the time did not justify my being hired for a top job at all I was hired straight out of my doctoral program for a tenure-track job at an Ivy...

Can't copy and paste from the article so here's the link. It's pretty intriguing. Sadly this may be the closest we get to having The Winds of Winter, it's been twelve years since the last Game of Thrones/Song of Ice and Fire book. And Martin isn't getting any younger.

I've added new descriptions now to our movie genre pages for our 10 movie genres and their 62 movie sub-genres.These descriptions will help you find the genre you're looking for and what to expect in the movies that are categorized there. In this blog post,I'll just list our 10 main movie genre descriptions, and you can click them to further explore the sub-genres and their descriptions. You can start browsing all of (con...)

Sharks have been spotted swimming in shallow waters at several Florida beaches this Fourth of July weekend, sending frantic swimmers fleeing to safety as beachgoers took videos of the startling incidents. A hammerhead shark appeared zipping in and out of shallow waters in Perdido Key Sunday afternoon — at one point swimming five to 10 yards offshore, WEAR TV reported. The massive creature can be seen aggressively thrashing about in the ocean as concerned onlookers yell out: “Shark!” Swimmers sprint out of the water, peering over their shoulders, as onlookers cry out about the danger.

ChatGPT and other intelligent language tools are bad at picking stocks – but that doesn't mean there's not a role for AI in the world of investing, according to Bridgewater's co-CIO. Greg Jensen said Monday that while large language models like OpenAI's chatbot are "awful" at reading the market, the world's largest hedge fund is using them to produce hypotheses that are then tested through rigorous statistical analysis. "If somebody's going to use large language models to pick stocks, I think that's hopeless – that is a hopeless path," he told Bloomberg's "Odd Lots" podcast. Bridgewater is instead "combining large...

Years for US/nato to catch up even to current Ukrainian artillery ammo usage, starting from now...

Bethany Mandel has gotten a lot of traction for an interesting story: A small Lithuanian clothing company that sells “traditional” dresses decided to “partner” with a bearded male influencer to help market its clothing. Real women, many of whom were stalwart customers, were not happy. However, if those same women had carefully perused the website in advance, they wouldn’t have been surprised. The woke clues were all there. Son de Flor’s motto is “Timeless Linen Dresses with a Story.” If you scan the company’s Instagram page, you’ll see picture after picture of women in traditional dresses that provide full coverage...

Anti-woke businessman Vivek Ramaswamy broke into double digits in the Republican primary race, the latest Echelon Insights survey found. Similar to other national surveys, the poll finds former President Donald Trump with a strong lead in the primary race at 49 percent support. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis falls 33 points behind with 16 percent support. Ramaswamy comes in a close third place at ten percent support, just six points behind DeSantis, making him the only other candidate to break into double-digit territory.

Federal Judge Terry A. Doughty issued a temporary injunction on Independence Day blocking members of the Biden administration from having further contact with social media companies during a censorship trial. The judge, an appointee of President Donald Trump, is presiding over a case brought by Missouri and Louisiana challenging federal efforts to block alleged misinformation about the coronavirus and elections on social media.