Free Republic

The subways of New York City have been in the news even more than usual over the past few years and not for the reasons the Mass Transit Authority might wish. The tunnels have become epicenters for crimes of all types, and we’re not just talking about people hopping over the turnstiles to avoid paying the fare. There have been shootings, stabbings, and people being pushed onto the tracks. Robberies are common. And if the random common criminals and gang bangers aren’t enough, there are still armies of homeless people (though somewhat fewer during the summer months when many go...

At this point the idea of turning hotels into housing for homeless people is not new. San Francisco and other cities adopted this idea during the pandemic to help get people off the streets. But even in San Francisco the hotels the city contracted with tended to be older buildings in decrepit parts of town that were not a major draw for tourists in the first place.But Los Angeles is on the cusp of doing something quite different. A union of hotel workers has helped get a measure on the March ballot called the “Responsible Hotel Ordinance.” If passed, it...

According to CBS News, the DC grand jury investigating Trump may indict the former president as early as Tuesday afternoon. “If there’s going to be an indictment here in DC in the special counsel’s January 6 investigation, it could come as early as tomorrow, 1 pm Eastern time when the grand jury is here in the courthouse. The January 6 grand jury tends to meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” CBS reporter Scott MacFarlane reported. “That’s the soonest it could happen but there is certainly no date on the calendar…there’s no indictment that is certain…” he said.

“Suppose we got it all wrong and the real crazies are the TV people in nice suits and $300 haircuts?” That’s an observation by Richard Fernandez on Twitter, and he has a good point. There’s a lot of craziness in the air these days. But for the most part it seems to be flowing from the top down, not bubbling up from the bottom. It wasn’t farmers and factory workers who came up with the idiotic COVID responses — nor was it they who originated the more or less criminal idea of conducting “gain of function” research on making dangerous...

Most Americans haven’t encountered the unsettling experience of having a federal agent knock on their door unannounced — and most likely hope they never do. That the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was among those agencies that engaged in this practice came as a surprise to me – and I suspect I’m far from alone in that – when I first learned that just such a visit occurred at the residence of independent journalist Matt Taibbi, coincidentally while he was testifying before Congress regarding the Twitter Files.Subsequent revelations regarding the nature of the matter opened regarding Taibbi, including its timing as...

Is Joe Biden finally about to face the first steps of impeachment? That’s what House Speaker Kevin McCarthy signaled on Monday evening.While appearing on Fox News, McCarthy laid out the case that Joe Biden accepted bribes and funneled money through a variety of shell companies. He then said at the end of the segment with Sean Hannity that “this is rising to the level of an impeachment inquiry.”MCCARTHY: "This is rising to the level of impeachment inquiry…" pic.twitter.com/NmXh6ATrEG— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) July 25, 2023MCCARTHY: We would know none of this if Republicans had not taken the majority. We have only followed...

Today I became nostalgic for a smell. You wake up on top of the covers in your underwear, and through the gloaming of your bedroom, through the smug pint of water, through the angst and exhaustion and joy and regret that comes from five hours in a nightclub and two hours on the wrong bus home, there is some bitter relief in the smell of smoke on your hair. That smell! Like barbecued teenagers and pepper and beer, almost lovely, pleasantly vile, a kind of lovebite memory, bruised on the throat in passion. That smell. It all seems quite mad...

On this date in 1735, a truculent indentured servant with a name like a primetime drama was hanged in York, Maine (at that time part of the Massachusetts colony), for killing her master’s grandson. Patience Boston had cut a hard-partying, hard-drinking swath from her teen years to her execution at age 23, leading a succession of masters to dump her contract on whomever would take it. Early American Crime tracks her rowdy career, “mad and furious in my Drink, speaking dreadful Words, and wishing bad Wishes to my self and others” through a succession of fights, adulteries, dead infants (which...

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) has called upon the Republican donor class to start pressuring low-polling GOP candidates into dropping out of the 2024 presidential race to defeat Trump. Romney issued his call in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Monday. He said that the donor class needs to pressure candidates with no path to drop out by February of next year at the very latest. “Despite Donald Trump’s apparent inevitability, a baker’s dozen Republicans are hoping to become the party’s 2024 nominee for president,” he wrote. “That is possible for any of them if the field narrows to a two-person...

In my last post, I talked about an NBC article that discussed how Republicans pounced (eye roll) on Joe Biden’s mistreatment of her granddaughter. I won’t even name the young girl, because last I checked she is not even old enough for kindergarten. In the last few years, I have learned that many students literally google the names of other students to see if they can learn anything about them. Maybe someone else has named her publicly and that will eventually cause the child embarrassment, but it won’t come from me. Because as I just said, ‘[s]he’s frankly the innocent...

The Justice Department on Monday sued Texas Gov. Greg Abbott over a newly installed floating barrier on the Rio Grande that is the Republican’s latest aggressive tactic to try to stop migrants from crossing into the U.S. from Mexico. The lawsuit asks a federal judge in Austin to force Texas to remove a roughly 1,000-foot (305-meter) line of bright orange, wrecking ball-sized buoys that the Biden administration says raises humanitarian and environmental concerns. The suit claims that Texas unlawfully installed the barrier without permission between the border cities of Eagle Pass and Piedras Negras, Mexico. The buoys are the latest...

On Sunday’s “Life, Liberty & Levin,” New York Times best-selling author, Breitbart News senior contributor and Government Accountability Institute president Peter Schweizer said he was “encouraged” by the progress made on investigating alleged wrongdoing by President Joe Biden and his family. Schweizer predicted if the investigations continue on the same trajectory, it would be the “end of Joe Biden’s political career. “None of this would be possible in the House, but for a five-vote majority, and the speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, who has told these guys, you do whatever you have to do to get to the bottom...

Iraq and other mostly Muslim countries denouncing the latest Quran burning in a Scandanavian country... Air raid warnings in nine different areas of Ukraine tonight... The Russian military in Syria says that US-led coalition forces there... Texas Governor Greg Abbott says there will be a legal fight over buoys in the Rio Grande River... At least 15 dead and 1500 evacuated from raging forest fires in a mountainous region of Algeria... Meanwhile the forest fires on the Greek island of Rhodes being called "like a Biblical catastrophe"... The BBC apologizing to political activist-media host Nigel Farage for inaccurately reporting about...

Hundreds of thousands of Russians who fled their homeland following the country's invasion of Ukraine have resettled in neighboring countries — and are boosting their economies. The exodus of Russians started after many highly educated professionals — such as academics, finance, and tech workers — left Russia in the early days of the war, Insider's Jason Lalljee reported in March 2022. About six months later, there was another wave of departures after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a partial military mobilization for the Ukraine war on September 21.

Remember that long-promised, overhyped Spring counter-offensive that U.S. officials talked about at the beginning of the year? Well, it turns out that pretty much everyone knew Kiev was not remotely prepared for it, and yet they sent Ukrainian soldiers to die anyway.That’s according to a report from the Wall Street Journal, which claims that “Western military officials KNEW Kiev didn’t have all the training or weapons … that it needed to dislodge Russian forces. But they hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day.”Can we just take a minute to talk about how insane that is? Not only is...

"Ukraine has already lost the war. This is not going to won. Ukraine is disintegrating. It's armed forces are falling apart. They aren't bad people. They aren't bad soldiers. They have done all that is humanly possible. But, hundreds of thousands of dead in causalities is simply too much. All the hospitals are full. How many people they have left that they can throw at the advancing Russians is anyone's guess. But, I don't think it's too much. The question is, what do we do now? How many more have to die before we finally say enough is enough." --...

Cops clear protesters off highway, masses remain at interchange. Police have managed to clear all protesters off the Ayalon freeway after pushing them to the side of the road... Police may deploy stun guns to clear highway-report... Police on horseback begin pushing protesters back... Former PM Olmert after passage of overhaul bill: We are entering a "civil war"... Police rush thousands blocking Tel Aviv highway, as chaos over overhaul escalates... Kibbutz security chief fires gun in air during fight with pro-overhaul protesters, 7 detained... PA premier: Israeli society paying price for silence over crimes against Palestinians... US envoy meets with...

The singer Tori Kelly has been rushed to the hospital after shockingly collapsing while out on the town. The 30-year-old Grammy winner was reportedly dining out with friends in Los Angeles on Sunday night when she suffered a medical emergency and lost conscious, sources told TMZ. She was quickly taken to get medical care, and doctors are reportedly treating her for multiple blood clots around vital organs, which could be extremely serious According to the publication, Tori is still hospitalized as doctors work to break up the blood clots, and one source described her condition as 'really serious.'

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said Monday that Democrats and the media were running out of “maneuvering room” over bribery allegations involving President Joe Biden. Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler testified during a Wednesday hearing held by the House Oversight Committee on the criminal probe into Hunter Biden about alleged interference with the investigation by the Justice Department. Republican Sen. Charles Grassley released the FD-1023 form containing allegations that the Bidens received millions of dollars in bribes obtained from a whistleblower Thursday. “I think that there is almost a panic setting in the media....

Ireland will not meet its carbon budget targets for 2021 to 2025 or for 2026 to 2030, unless urgent action is taken. That is the warning from the Climate Change Advisory Council, which published its annual review for 2023 today. It warns that unless emissions begin to fall much more rapidly, the targets set in April last year will be missed. The Council said that the pace of implementation of agreed policy by the Government “was not acceptable, given the existential threat and impact of climate change on society”. It noted that that spring and summer this year had seen...