Free Republic

I hope that everybody had a Happy Thanksgiving this week. My plan for this week had been to go ahead and begin a new collaborative audiobook about Governor William Bradford's chronicle of the early years at Plymouth Plantation. But little did I know, it's been complete since 2010! It just had a different name because someone "translated" it into a more common vernacular. There really are already some great works at Librivox to help contribute to a more educated populace. This work is a solo work, and it's fantastically read. This would be well worth paying for, but the fact...

Salon Magazine’s senior politics writer Chauncey Devega commemorated Thanksgiving with a fearmongering article devoted to hating Donald Trump and debasing Americans who intend to vote for the former president in 2024. “Trump and his allies and acolytes are publicly planning to make him America’s first de facto dictator, which will mean the end of the country’s democracy,” Devega warns in an article titled ‘Democracy’s last Thanksgiving‘ published Thursday. Trump is trouncing Biden in every rigged poll amid skyrocketing inflation, oil and gasoline prices shooting through the roof, manufacturing plants exploding on a regular basis, the Justice Department’s unprecedented prosecution...

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau blamed “MAGA influence” on Friday for falling support for aid to Ukraine among Canadian conservatives. “The real story is the rise of a right-wing, American MAGA-influenced thinking that has made Canadian Conservatives — who used to be among the strongest defenders of Ukraine, I’ll admit it — turn their backs on something Ukraine needs in its hour of need,” Trudeau said Friday, according to the CBC.

Soaring home insurance premiums in Florida are putting residents under unbearable financial pressure, with many telling Newsweek that they are considering leaving the state or moving somewhere cheaper within Florida. The state has currently the most expensive home insurance premiums in the country, according to a recent report by the Insurance Information Institute. Residents are currently paying on average more than $4,200 per year compared to the national average of $1,700, according to data from Triple I. While this is due in part to the increased risk of devastating weather events like hurricanes, other factors—including an excess of litigation and...

A pair of professors from Arizona State University wrote an essay which was published last week by the Chronicle of Higher Education. The gist of the article is that academics are overestimating the value of free speech. In fact, they come to the conclusion that free speech is a right-wing framing which ought to be rejected by colleges who, after all, have lots of experts on hand to determine what is and is not acceptable speech on a given topic. Here’s how they set up the argument:Whether and by whom free speech is under threat on campuses are hotly debated...

A radical teenage political activist who has rubbed shoulders with Congressional Democrats and a former Disney Channel actress are among those facing felony charges for vandalizing an Israeli company’s New Hampshire offices. Calla Walsh, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Bridget Shergalis, of Dayville, Connecticut, were among three demonstrators with the anti-Israel group Palestine Action US arrested after they wrecked a Merrimack, New Hampshire, building housing Haifa-based defense contractor Elbit Systems, according to local reports.

FONT SIZE: The Biden administration is set to back a plan that would crush the coal industry at the upcoming United Nations (UN) climate summit, Reuters reported on Tuesday. The U.S. will reportedly support a French plan to get the countries of the world to ban private financing of coal-fired power plants during the upcoming UN conference, known as COP28, according to Reuters. The plan is likely to drive a rift between countries like the U.S. and France and those like China and India, which are reliant on coal to feed their economies cheap and reliable electricity. The proposed plan...

President Joe Biden on Friday hinted that he was considering conditioning aid to Israel on its military reducing bombing in Gaza in its offensive against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. During a press conference on Friday, a reporter asked him, “Mr. President, there are members of your party who would like to see conditions placed on aid to Israel. What is your view on that? They would like to see, you know, a reduction in the bombing and that sort of thing.”

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. If you have specific question about a plant/problem you are having, please remember to state the Growing Zone where you are located. This thread is a non-political respite. No matter what, you won’t be flamed, and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack...

A judge locked up a TikTok prankster who developed a reputation for posting rude, harassing and even dangerous videos to the social media platform and then refusing to take any responsibility or criticism from the blowback the videos created. The prankster punk who posted under the name “Mizzy” became a pariah in England for his insensitive videos, according to the UK Independent. In one series of videos, for instance, he was seen walking into random homes and parading around inside as shocked and frightened homeowners stood by wondering who he was and why he had invaded their homes. Another video...

More than 100,000 Chinese nationals have migrated into the United States since 2021, and the federal government is doing little to block them or to send them home, the New York Times reported on November 24. “When [President Joe] Biden and Mr. Xi met last week during an international summit in San Francisco, for instance, immigration was absent in their discussion,” the newspaper reported:

Let’s face it. Anyone who works in, or just visits, the Wall Street area of Manhattan can’t deny the aura of power and money isn’t what it was 20, 30 or 50 years ago. The vibrancy, the financial dominance, the gusto seems to have gone missing — so have many of the Gordon Gekko high rollers. Today, Wall Street is less crowded. It’s sleepier. There aren’t exactly tumbleweeds blowing down Broad Street past the New York Stock Exchange, but it’s not the bustling place where the financial titans and the world’s money changers hang out anymore. To borrow a line...

The negative impact on the climate from passenger vehicles, which is considerable, could have dropped by more than 30% over the past decade if not for the world’s appetite for large cars, a new report from the Global Fuel Economy Initiative suggests. Sport utility vehicles, or SUVs, now account for more than half of all new car sales across the globe, the group said, and it’s not alone. The International Energy Agency, using a narrower definition of SUV, estimates they make up nearly half. Over the years these cars have gotten bigger and so has their cost to the climate,...

New York’s Finest continue to bolt from the job at an alarming rate, according to new data obtained by The Post — and some cops worry the exodus will only get worse because the city plans to cancel the next five Police Academy classes, shrinking the nation’s largest police force to the smallest its been in decades.

Javier Milei, the libertarian president-elect of Argentina, discusses his philosophy of government in an interview with TV host Alejandro Fantino. English translation via TremendaCarucha on X/Twitter:JAVIER MILEI: We aren't above the ones we represent. In financial terms, "The derivative is never worth more than the underlying asset." The derivative exists because the underlying asset exists. We exist as representatives of the people because the people exist. It is madness, it is delusional, to think that a representative of the people is above the people he represents themselves. It is a delusion in which the political caste exists. In our government,...

SPECIAL DISPATCH TO THE N.Y. TIMES. WASHINGTON, Tuesday, Nov. 24. The latest news, up to 10:40 this evening, from GRANT is of a most satisfactory character. Gens. THOMAS and SHERMAN have got well ahead. The fighting in our immediate front has lasted all day long. At every point along the line we have forced the rebels backward. There is jov in the War Department. CINCINNATI, Tuesday, Nov. 24. The Commercial of this city has a special dispatch dated Chattanooga, the 23d instant, which says: "Deserters last night reported that the rebels were falling back of Chickamauga Station. Their artillery has...

Today's headline may become a regular feature here at SteynOnline - because in the vibrantly multicultural west the stabbing of the native population is becoming a routine event. Following Saturday's pogrom at a village dance in rural France, in Dublin yesterday three schoolgirls and a member of staff were stabbed. Or as the BBC put it, lapsing into the passive voice: Three children and a school care assistant were injured in a knife attack in the city centre. Oh, that's so sad. Did the knife attack them all on its own or was there a human being as its accomplice?...

Earlier this week, we discussed the way that the board of directors at OpenAI attempted to fire CEO Sam Altman and how a revolt at the company led to his reinstatement and the removal of the board. It was a remarkable example of employees overriding the will of the governing board and changing the course of the company’s direction. What wasn’t clear at the time was the reason that the board tried to remove the founding brainchild of ChatGPT in the first place. But now more indications of their reasoning have come to the surface. It wasn’t a case of...

This date in 2010 happens to be Thanksgiving in the United States. Dating to the Civil War in its modern incarnation, its ancestral event is the “first thanksgiving” wherein European colonists* chowed down with the Wampanoags who had saved them from starvation in New England. This moment of apparent amity obviously also presages the near-annihilation of native peoples by those European colonists over the succeeding centuries; even in 1621, the seeds of future conflict were at hand. By the very next year, Wampanoag chief Massasoit would demand the execution of legendary Pilgrim-befriender Tisquantum (Squanto). So it’s also fitting to remember...

A 5-year-old girl was receiving emergency medical treatment What. Where. Why. You won’t find any of those ‘Ws’ in any story that the media is interested in covering up, rather than covering.