Free Republic

Four hundred ninety-eight electric vehicles (EVs) and over 3,200 other vehicles, including 350 Mercedes Benzes, were bound for Egypt on the Fremantle Highway when one or more of the EVs caught fire, costing at least one seaman his life and injuring several others. Curiously, the Dutch coast guard had initially reported that only 25 of the vehicles were battery-electric models. At last report, the Dutch coast guard admitted that it has been unable to put out the fire and that the ship has taken on water and is “listing” and on a trajectory toward a capsize. Should the ship sink,...

Long interview, but the best and most in depth interview I've ever seen with Jimmy Webb. I had no idea he worked for Motown writing songs at age 17. The songs (their rights) they let him walk away with (free) when he left is chuckle worthy.

Ten Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, led by chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), implored Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts in a letter Thursday to ensure Justice Samuel Alito will recuse himself from future cases pertaining to legislation regulating the high court. The senators’ request hinged on an interview Alito gave to the Wall Street Journal last week, where he opined that the U.S. Constitution does not give Congress the authority to regulate the Court, “period.” “Congress did not create the Supreme Court,” Alito said of efforts to legislate ethics regulations. “I know this is a controversial view, but I’m...

Barack Obama is “as insecure as Trump,” his biographer said this week — and doubled down on his book’s revelations that the former president “repeatedly fantasizes about making love to men.” David Garrow penned the 1,472-page “Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama” in 2017, which he discussed in a lengthy interview with Tablet Wednesday. The 70-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning historian sat with Obama for eight hours over three days for the massive tome, which received mixed reviews — and obtained letters from three of his former girlfriends. Among them was Alex McNear, Obama’s girlfriend when they both attended Occidental College***...

Special counsel Jack Smith’s team admitted in a Monday court filing that his staff did not turn over all evidence to former President Donald Trump’s legal team, despite previously claiming that they had. Smith has brought a total of 40 counts against Trump, accusing him of unlawfully retaining classified documents after leaving office and lying to the government about handing over all documents. On July 27, Smith’s team filed a “superseding indictment” which further accused Trump of instructing his security staff to delete security tapes from his Mar-a-Lago resort only a couple of months before the FBI raided the Florida...

After discovering that his cousin is in trouble with the law, an inept lawyer travels to rural Alabama to argue his innocence before it is too late. Starring Joe Pesci, Ralph Macchio, Marisa Tomei, Mitchell Whitfield, Fred Gwynne, Bruce McGill

Pope Francis Confirms Vatican Envoy’s Visit to China in Wide-Ranging InterviewIn a newly published interview, Pope Francis described the ongoing Synod on Synodality as fulfilling “the dream of Paul VI” and underscored that the process is about recovering a lost form of ecclesial participation, not changing doctrine.The Holy Father also confirmed rumors that Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, the Vatican’s special envoy for peace in Ukraine, will soon be visiting China. The pope described Zuppi’s “scheduled stopover” in Beijing as part of the Vatican’s “peace offensive,” which has already included visits to Kyiv, Moscow, and Washington, D.C. The Pope said he is...

Biden's former White House press secretary Jen Psaki warned voters against "falling for Republican efforts to distract attention away from their Party's conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election by making false allegations that President Biden accepted bribes in exchange for favors. There is no proof that the actions that he took to get the Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating his son fired was in any way linked to the $5 million dollars he was paid by Burisma. As then-Vice-President Biden said at the time--the firing of that prosecutor had the full approval of President Obama." "Next, they will be demanding...

Russia said on Saturday it would punish Ukraine for using a sea drone to attack a civilian tanker near the Kerch Strait in what it said was a "terrorist act" that threatened the lives of the crew and risked "a large-scale environmental disaster." Both sides said on Saturday that a Ukrainian sea drone full of explosives had struck a Russian fuel tanker overnight near a bridge linking Russia to annexed Crimea, the second such attack in 24 hours. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Moscow would retaliate.

Existing archaeological discoveries indicate that the earliest ceramic tiles in the world appeared in Greece circa late 3,000 BC, but only in simple forms. Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating results show that the absolute age of tiles unearthed from the relic site of Qiaocun date back to 2400–2200 BC, proving these as the earliest composite tiles.In the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046–771 BC), terracotta tile manufacturing was significantly developed in central Shaanxi Province, forming the Longshan Western Zhou culture, which further spread to the rest of Asia including South Korea, Japan, the Russian Far East and Southeast Asia.To avoid the...

Words and their definitions are important because the more accurate you are, the better able you will be to discern truth from error. There are leftist words and definitions that liberals want you to use. This helps them in their cause, restricts your freedom to speak, and influence your thinking. The following is a video I released on this along with the text of that video. ————- In the battle for influence and the control of society, words and their meanings are critical. Those on the liberal left believe their morals and thinking are best for everyone. That is why...

What do you do when you have a political crime, but not a legal one? You keep trying to attach laws to what you consider a political crime. As I already noted in my analysis, Clinton ally Jack Smith took random unrelated laws and then waved his arms a lot while talking about democracy. Describing publicly conducted election challenges as an effort to “defraud” the United States government turns 18 U.S. Code § 371 into an open-ended tool for suppressing a wide range of political dissent. Treating lobbying or any kind of advocacy as the equivalent of witness tampering weaponizes...

In a startling development, the city of Reedley in California’s central San Joaquin Valley has discovered an illegal laboratory operated by Wang Zhaolin of Prestige Biotech. This lab was producing COVID-19 and pregnancy tests without authorization.The discovery was made when code enforcement officers observed a garden hose attached to the building, which was supposed to be empty. Upon further investigation, they found that this laboratory had been running since October 2022.As a result of this alarming discovery, multiple government agencies have been called in for assistance including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), FBI, State Department of Toxic...

Former President Donald Trump’s campaign released a blistering ad on Friday slamming prosecutors pursuing cases against him as “the fraud squad” that is doing the political bidding of President Joe Biden. “How far will the most corrupt president in history go to keep Republicans from winning back the White House?” A narrator states at the top of the ad. “Meet the cast of unscrupulous accomplices he’s assembled to get Trump.” The video features Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Special Counsel Jack Smith, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. It will run in television...

New York Times NeverTrumper columnist David Brooks published a rare, self-reflective column this week asserting that he and our America’s political, corporate, and media elite may in fact actually be the “Bad Guys.”Brooks’s column is served up with his usual overbearing degree of pseudo-moralistic handwringing, lamenting the overlooked virtues of the American elite and the dangers of Donald Trump. But buried in its verbosity is a recognition that the U.S. elite have enriched themselves at the expense of Americans middle and working classes:Armed with all kinds of economic, cultural and political power, we support policies that help ourselves. Free trade...

Special Counsel Jack Smith on Friday asked a judge to issue a protective order in the case against former President Donald Trump over his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election after Trump made a post on Truth Social. On Friday, Trump posted the following message to his Truth Social account: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU.” Now, Smith is using that post to argue Trump’s access to the discovery in his criminal case should be restricted. Smith’s proposed order seeks to prevent “improper dissemination or use of discovery materials, including to the public,” according to a...

In an op-ed piece for the New York Times on Wednesday, David Brooks had the headline, “What if We’re the Bad Guys Here?” In it, Brooks struggles with the question of why Trump has a commanding lead over the other GOP hopefuls and why he seems essentially tied with Joe Biden on a national basis. All of this despite the fact that Trump continues to rack up indictments like a grandma on a winning bingo streak at The Villages.To his credit, Brooks does conduct a fairly exhaustive self-examination. In the piece, he enumerates the ways and provides examples of how...

Background The US Department of Energy’s Office of Economic Impact & Diversity is soliciting a third-party organization to lead an external evaluation of DOE’s implementation of the Justice40 Initiative. With the signing of Executive Order 14008, ‘Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home,’ on January 27th, 2021, the White House established the Justice40 Initiative. The executive order aims to address environmental and economic inequalities through the goal of directing 40% of the overall benefits of certain federal investments – including investments in clean energy and energy efficiency; clean transit; affordable and sustainable housing; training and workforce development; the remediation and reduction...

Not only is it hard to run a kangaroo court when the world is watching, but this will also finally allow the nation to hear the evidence for claiming election fraud. I don’t always agree with the strategies that Trump and his lawyers choose to defend the myriad charges being made against him, but one of them is brilliant: Trump is demanding that his trial in Jack Smith’s poorly disguised “insurrection” case be televised. Not only is it hard to run a kangaroo court when the world is watching, but this will finally allow the nation to hear all the...

In the first three or “synoptic” Gospels, the Transfiguration marks a pivotal point in the ministry of Jesus, the point at which he begins his “death march” to Jerusalem to suffer his Passion. It is “the beginning of the end.” In these three Gospels, too, the Baptism and Transfiguration are paired. At these two events, the voice of the Father is heard from heaven, “This is my beloved son.” In this way, the Baptism marks the beginning of Jesus’ earthly ministry, and the Transfiguration the end of it, at least in the sense that, from the Transfiguration on, the focus...