Free Republic

The new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson once attributed the fall of the Roman Empire to homosexuality, resurfaced audio from 2008 has revealed. Johnson suggests historians might consider the decline of Rome as partially related to a societal loss of morals and widespread homosexual behavior condoned during that period. In the past, Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, has frequently disparaged homosexuality. But it was during a radio interview he could be heard advocating for the criminalization of gay sex and went so far as to partially blame it for the fall of the Roman Empire. Some credit to the fall...

Some 61 percent of Germans no longer want any migration from Islamic nations, new polling shows.. Nearly two-thirds of all German citizens want the country’s federal government to impose a ban on migration from predominantly Muslim nations, a damning survey has revealed. Polling conducted by INSA on behalf of the Bild tabloid newspaper showed that 61 percent of respondents now advocate refusing any more migrants from Islamic countries with many explaining they no longer feel safe in their own country and believe an increasing number of new arrivals despise German society. A majority of voters from every political party except...

Utah prosecutors have charged a former county clerk with three felonies and other counts for allegedly shredding and otherwise mishandling ballots from the 2020 and 2022 elections. The alleged misdeeds involved ballots cast by about 5,000 voters in Juab County, a desert area of west-central Utah with about 12,000 residents. Former Juab County Clerk/Auditor Alaina Lofgran is accused of allowing ballots to be shredded soon after the 2022 election in violation of a law requiring their preservation for at least 22 months. The law is for aiding recounts. Lofgran also improperly stored ballots from the 2020 election, keeping them in...

It’s quite an eye-opener. A vote was taken in the House on Thursday to sanction Hamas terrorists and their supporters. 45 Democrats said no to that resolution.Name ’em and shame ’em. I call them the Hamas Caucus.The 45 Democrats are: Blumenauer (OR), Bowman (NY), Bush (MO), Cárdenas (CA), Carson (IN), Casar (TX), Castro (TX), Chu (CA), Clarke (NY), DeSaulnier (CA), Escobar (TX), Foushee (NC), Frost (FL), García (IL), Garcia (TX), Garcia, R. (CA), Grijalva (AZ), Huffman (CA), Ivey (MD), , Jackson (IL), Jacobs (CA), Jayapal (WA), Kamlager-Dove (CA), Kelly (IL), Lee (CA), Lee (PA), Lofgren (CA), McCollum (MN), McGovern (MA),...

Sometimes it takes a punch to the gut or a slap in the face. For many “civilized” people the instinct is to deescalate, to appease an adversary, based on the belief that civilized people do their best to avoid fights. It’s a tactic that is smart when dealing with other civilized people. Generally speaking, fighting is a losing proposition, and if you can resolve a dispute by talking and compromise the chances that the costs of compromise will be lower than the costs of fighting are high. But this instinct is wrong, even stupid when dealing with uncivilized people. Their...

People who received hydroxychloroquine were less likely to die than those who did not, according to a new study.Just 0.8 percent of patients at a facility in France who received hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and an antibiotic died, compared to 4.8 percent of patients who did not receive the drug combination, French researchers reported on Nov. 1."This study represents the largest single-center study evaluating HCQ-AZ in the treatment of COVID-19. Similarly, to other large observational studies, it concludes that HCQ would have saved lives," Dr. Didier Raoult, with Aix-Marseille Universite in Marseille, and his co-authors wrote.The paper was published in the journal...

If you think offering migrants luxury hotel rooms, free meals, laundry service, transportation, health care, and immigration lawyers is excessive, just wait until they can vote.Democrats are pushing to allow noncitizens to vote in local elections in New York City, Boston, and other municipalities, and statewide in Connecticut.The number of migrants pouring across the southern border has hit a record high, according to data released on Oct. 21. Illegal immigrant crossings soared 21 percent over the previous month. On a yearly basis, the figure hit 2.48 million.Democrats may feign shock and distress. Don’t be fooled. Democrats see these newcomers as...

From what can be gathered from the publicly restricted discussions at the Synod on Synodality, delegates talked a great deal about welcoming and inclusion, about some potentially radical changes in Church governance, and specific issues such as women’s ordination, homosexuality and immigration. The focus, therefore, appears to have so far been primarily on the temporal, on matters clearly pertaining to this world and mostly according to merely worldly perspectives, both regarding the Church and society. By contrast, how much has the essence of the faith and the supernatural been discussed? More to the point, when did the delegates speak of...

While 78% of Americans speak only English at home, between 350 and 430 languages can be found in the United States.Spanish is the second most common language, spoken in 62% of non-English-speaking households.In this graphic, Visual Capitalist's Bruno Venditti and WordFinderX used Census data to uncover the most spoken languages (aside from English and Spanish) in American neighborhoods.German is the Most Spoken Language in 13 StatesDuring the mid-18th century, German immigrants played a significant role in early American society. They constituted one-third of the population of American colonies, ranking second in numbers only to the English.As a consequence, German now...

Ukraine joins Xi-Xia and Carthage in the dumpster of history...

There have been several recent incidents where China has done its best to bully the Philippines in the South China Sea. Those incidents haven’t gone unnoticed by some of China’s neighbors. Now Japan and the Philippines are teaming up to create a new defense pact. Japan’s PM headed to the Philippines today for two days of talks.Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan said on Friday that his country would start formal talks with the Philippines to allow the deployment of Japanese troops to the Southeast Asian country, further strengthening ties between two countries that have embraced each other as bulwarks...

This is really interesting and I somehow missed it when it started 11 days ago. Chinese state media announced that Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that is China’s number one employer and the builder of a majority of Apple’s iPhones, was being investigated by various Chinese authorities.Chinese mainland tax authorities have conducted tax inspections on key enterprises of Foxconn in Guangdong and Jiangsu provinces, among other places, in accordance with the law, and the natural resources department has also conducted on-site investigations into the land use of key enterprises of Foxconn in Henan and Hubei provinces, the Global Times has learned...

The Hezbollah leader took his time to respond to the past month of bloodletting which has turned the Middle East into a tinder box. And when Hassan Nasrallah spoke, what he did not say was as important as what he said. There was no declaration of all-out war on Israel. At least, not now. ...Hassan Nasrallah insisted that the 7 October attacks by Hamas were a "100% Palestinian operation", carried out in great secrecy, concealed even from Hamas's allies. "It has no relation to any regional or international issues," he said, in effect claiming he did not know and neither...

So I recently retired from the air force and I'm just looking to keep busy and keep my brain learning. I created a mobile game that you can try on itcho.io. I'll soon be releasing it on the app stores (iphone and android). I'd love your feedback on what you think. Is the music for each mode appropriate? Is it fun? Are the modes distinct and interesting enough to try each one? You can try the game here: https://schlista.itch.io/kabocha

Act in haste, repent in leisure, Germany. Back when Angela Merkel was in charge Germany went all-in on open borders, importing a million to a million and a half “refugees” from the third world. At the time, many Germans either felt or feigned a welcoming attitude toward the influx, but as time moved on Germans discovered that those crusty old racistsexisthomophobiccolonialistDEIhatingconservatives actually were 100% right. It was a very very bad idea. And Germans are sick of it.Sources: Politico ➡️ https://t.co/H4WcxP1ghBThe Guardian ➡️ https://t.co/QmVH42X6Cg pic.twitter.com/MWpblqkXxw— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) November 2, 2023So sick of it, in fact, that even the Green(!!)...

Well, here I am minding my own business, working on a boring venture capital post, when here comes the Bureau of Labor Statistics announcement of October jobs data. The BLS has been working toward a Nobel prize for fiction writing all year, but you can only carry that so far. Maybe they figured that everyone is distracted by Ukraine and Israel or just the latest TikTok videos, but their house of cards can only be towered upward so far, and today’s announcement begins the downfall to reality. “Expectations” were for 180,000 new jobs, according to the survey of businesses. Reality...

Yesterday we learned that the leader of Hezbollah, Hasan Nasrallah, would be giving a major speech today to address the conflict in Gaza. This would be his first public speech on the topic and it was generally considered to be a potential turning point. If Nasrallah announced a full scale attack on Israel, that would be a significant second front in the war. Nasrallah spoke this morning and while he did a lot of shouting and made some threats, he stopped short of expanding the war.Although Mr. Nasrallah did not discount the possibility of a wider war that could draw...

When I was looking desperately for a number of years two decades ago for voices that intelligently and courageously spoke up against the militarist excesses of Bush 2, I was astonished and delighted by what I found on The American Right - Congressman Ron Paul and Patrick Joseph Buchanan. IMHO there is nothing short on film from Buchannan to match the magnificence and power of Paul's "what if" speech. But the longer culture wars speech on youtube is for me an almost sacred text which I watch once or twice a year to restore my faith in truth. My own...

A mysterious green slime has been spotted oozing from Gotham’s grates and manholes, causing some New Yorkers to wonder if a superhero comic had suddenly come to life. An X user from Manhattan first sent the phenomenon viral on Thursday, posting photo and video of the bright-hued liquid emerging from below the sidewalk. “So there’s literal green sludge bubbling up from the ground next to World Trade Center right now,” bystander Dan Pantelo wrote, along with a pic of the garish anomaly that has over 14 million views since being posted yesterday. The accidental citizen journalist posted a clip of...

Ben Shapiro recently appeared at Oxford University and gave a masterclass on how to handle the talking points being used to ultimately prop up Hamas, wittingly or not, by those claiming to support the Palestinian position.In one striking exchange, a woman in a hijab stepped up to the podium to read off a list of accusations about what Israel has supposedly done in its attempt to take out Hamas. She quickly found that she had painted herself into a corner, though.This was a pretty epic exchange with @benshapiro at the Oxford Union."If Israel put down its guns tomorrow there would...