Free Republic

An appeals court upheld the disorderly conduct convictions Friday of actor Jussie Smollett, who was accused of staging a racist, homophobic attack against himself in 2019 and then lying about it to Chicago police. Smollett, who appeared in the TV show “Empire,” challenged the role of a special prosecutor, jury selection, evidence and many other aspects of the case. But all were turned aside in a 2-1 opinion from the Illinois Appellate Court. Smollett had reported to police that he was the victim of a racist and homophobic attack by two men wearing ski masks. The manhunt for the attackers...

VIDEOCassidy Hutchinson was the STAR WITNESS of the bogus J6 Committee during the summer of 2022. Her upcoming performance was hyped over and over again by the Democrats and the media. So what happened? It turned out that the testimony of the STAR WITNESS was only laughable second hand hearsay that was immediately contradicted by the first hand sources she cited. After that, the STATE WITNESS faded away until recently when she returned to the public eye to shamelessly grift for her book. Unfortunately for her, it has now come to light, as revealed by Congressman Barry Loudermilk, that the...

House Speaker Mike Johnson is releasing 40,000 of the 44,000 hours of video from Capitol Hill taken on January 6. Tens of thousands of private individuals will be devoting a good part of their time analyzing these videos. There are several problems confronted by analysts. The Department of Justice has had almost three years to edit these videos. The faces of private citizens will be blurred “to protect them from retaliation.” How does the DOJ distinguish private citizens from DOJ planted agitators? The answer is they do not. Private analysts will not be able to make that distinction due to...

The US middle class has the Down Payment Blues! Or a case of housing being simply unaffordable. Median home prices are up a whopping 20% under Biden and his signature Bidenomics, growing the economy from the inside-out (?) instead of top-down. Excuse me Joe, Bidenomics is pure top-down Soviet-style economic planning. Markets be damned! The end result? Housing is far more expensive under Biden as are down payments. If we look at year-over-year (YoY), we can see the burst of Covid-related spending and M2 Money growth (green line) that surged in 2020/2021. And rising home prices followed shortly thereafter. But...

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) was the guest on Friday’s episode of ABC’s The View, which was live as the news broke that the House of Representatives voted to expel now-former Rep. George Santos (R-NY). It was predictable that the hosts would ask Fetterman about Santos, but he was more interested in seeing someone else expelled: fellow Senate Democrat Bob Menendez of New Jersey. Fetterman sat for three segments on Friday’s show, and he discussed a variety of topics with the hosts, including his health improving since his near-fatal stroke and bout of depression — “Fox News is devastated to know...

In 2014, then-Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) rose to the floor of the U.S. Senate to give a 24-minute speech denouncing Antony Blinken, nominated by President Barack Obama to be Deputy Secretary of State, as “dangerous to America.” The speech is gaining attention again in conservative media circles in the wake of Blinken’s trip to the Middle East, in which he reportedly told Israel that it lacked “credit” to remove Hamas from the Gaza Strip, a goal the U.S. had supported in public. McCain, known (and criticized) as a foreign policy hawk, said that he usually did not oppose presidential nominees,...

Influencer and mother Carla Bellucci made headlines when she told the media that she would be charging family members to serve them dinner and a single glass of champagne at Christmas. Bellucci has previously been dubbed the "Britain's most hated woman" after she admitted on television that she exaggerated her feelings of depression and flirted in order to get a nose job provided by the publicly funded and overburdened British health care system. Since then, she has also gained infamy for other behavior, such as hiring male strippers for her 18-year-old daughter’s birthday and crowdfunding a butt lift procedure. But...

Newsom’s malevolent, self-serving nature came through loud and clear. As any resident of California can tell you, just about every word out of Newsom’s mouth in this debate was a lie. Under his terms of office, the quality of life in California has declined tragically. As the charts showed, crime is up, far worse than Florida. Hundreds of thousands of locals who used to love downtown for music, theater, museums, no longer go there. It’s too dangerous. San Francisco is in worse shape than LA… as everyone knows. He was far, far worse than DeSantis during the Covid nonsense. Our...

A federal appeals court on Friday ruled that Trump does not have immunity from January 6 civil lawsuits. Earlier this year, Joe Biden’s Justice Department said in a court filing in the DC US Court of Appeals that Donald Trump can be sued by police officers over January 6. The DOJ lawyers argued that Trump does not have immunity from civil lawsuits by police officers. US District Judge Amit Mehta, an Obama appointee earlier this year rejected Trump’s immunity claim.

The recent announcement by the USAir Force that it will equip its aircrews with 42,000 sets of anti-laser glasses comes in the wake of a worrying increase in laser attacks against American aviators and others by Chinese military forces. Documented instances of Chinese aggression underscore the urgency of the not-so-insignificant purchase, as recently declassified documents reveal approximately 180 dangerous encounters with Chinese military aircraft over the South and East China Seas in the last two years. These incidents, many involving the use of high-spec military-grade lasers rather than the laser pointers we’re all familiar with, are putting the vision and...

A Washington County priest is facing hundreds of felony charges after being accused of stealing more than $117,000 from his parish. Father George Athanasiou, 37, is an assistant priest at All Saints Greek Orthodox Church in North Strabane Township. Through an investigation, authorities said they discovered that between April 2022 and mid-November 2023, Athanasiou made 219 unauthorized ATM withdrawals from the church account. Last month, church members notified police about missing donation checks to the church. The investigation led authorities to a PNC Bank on Washington Road where church donation checks were deposited into a personal account. Additionally, Athanasiou was...

Lawsuits against Donald Trump brought by Capitol Police officers and Democratic lawmakers over the U.S. Capitol riot, can move forward, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied Trump’s request to dismiss the civil lawsuits that accuse him of inciting the violent mob on Jan. 6, 2021. But the court said it’s ruling was not the final word on whether presidential immunity shields the Republican from liability in the case and said the judges express “no view on the ultimate merits of the claims” against the former president. Trump had...

June 12, 2024, will mark 100 years since the birth of the late President George H.W. Bush. The day before, Random House will publish a commemorative volume by Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Jon Meacham, "A Call to Serve." Zoom in: Drawn in part from Meacham's New York Times bestseller, "Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush," the book features 450+ photos — some never published. Others are classics by David Hume Kennerly, David Valdez and others. The book also draws on decades of scrapbooks kept by the late Barbara Bush, the former first lady. Her scrapbooks are...

Henry Kissinger, who died on Wednesday night at the age of 100, was the most enduringly influential secretary of state in the history of the United States. He was also the most controversial. But the influence matters far more than the controversy. His critics have wasted no time in ignoring the old injunction that no ill should be spoken of the recently deceased. The scurrilous magazine Rolling Stone led with the repulsive headline 'Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America's Ruling Class, Finally Dies'. At a time when anti-Semitism has again reared its ugly head in the wake of the...

The accident and pachyderm reprisal occurred Sunday night in Gerik, a region about 300 kilometres north of Kuala Lumpur... Police said the car was “negotiating a left bend on the highway” in drizzle and fog when it hit the baby elephant. “The car slammed into the young elephant that was walking on the road with the herd,” said Zulkifli Mahmood, Chief Superintendent at Gerik District Police. The calf then fell to the ground, he added. “Seeing this, the other (five) elephants rushed towards the car and started trampling it.” No (human) injuries were reported in the incident, but police photos...

Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 @julie_kelly2 J6 committee, DOJ/Special Counsel Jack Smith, and Judge Tanya Chutkan are covering up the destruction/concealment of videotaped interviews with roughly 1,000 witnesses to J6 committee. Chutkan just denied Trump's discovery request for videotapes--she actually thinks a witness's demeanor can be gleaned from a written record. She clearly knows the videos are missing and will concoct any farfetched excuse to protect J6 committee and DOJ:

New York’s Near Zombie Apocalypse The city came close to an electric grid shutdown last winter. ...While gas supply fell, demand for electricity and heating surged, causing the pressure in interstate pipelines that supply downstate New York to plunge. Allowing shale fracking in upstate New York might have mitigated the gas supply shortage at the margin, but former Gov. Andrew Cuomo blocked that. The climate lobby’s antidote is electric heat pumps, but that would have increased strain on an already stressed grid. If New York City relied mostly on electricity for heat, millions could have lost both power and heat...

Wall Street is gearing up for rate cuts. Twenty months after the Federal Reserve began a historic campaign against inflation, investors now believe there is a much greater chance that the central bank will cut rates in just four months than raise them again in the foreseeable future.Interest-rate futures indicated Monday a 52% chance the Fed will lower rates by at least a quarter-of-a-percentage point by its May 2024 policy meeting, up from 29% at the end of October, according to CME Group data. The same data pointed to four cuts by the end of the year. Investors, battered by...

"I’m sad we’ve lost trail blazer, Dr. Mary Cleave, shuttle astronaut, veteran of two spaceflights," said NASA Associate Administrator Bob Cabana in a statement. NASA astronaut Mary Cleave as pictured on April 8, 1985. Mary Cleave, the NASA astronaut who in 1989 became the first woman to fly on a space shuttle mission after the Challenger disaster, has died at the age of 76, the space agency announced on November 29. (NASA) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mary Cleave, the NASA astronaut who in 1989 became the first woman to fly on a space shuttle mission after the Challenger disaster, has died at the...

President Biden is facing a humiliating foreign policy setback as $6 billion he used to leverage the release of five imprisoned Americans from Iran could be frozen. Lawmakers including members of Biden's own party voted on Thursday to approve a bill that would permanently freeze the funds, which were unfrozen by the White House in September as part of a controversial deal. The bill, named the No Funds for Iranian Terrorism Act, passed in a 307 to 119 vote - which was approved by almost every Republican and 90 Democrats. The legislation would prevent the Islamic Republic of Iran from...