Free Republic

Dorrance Dance promotes controversial policies on its website, including 'prison abolition' The New York City tap dancing troupe enlisted by first lady Jill Biden for a Christmas video promotes controversial far-left ideologies, including abolishing prisons and defunding the police. The first lady got lit up on Twitter over her Wednesday video featuring Dorrance Dance performing a "playful interpretation of The Nutcracker Suite" in the White House. However, outside the candy-coating, Dorrance Dance promotes controversial policies, including "prison abolition." Dorrance Dance's "take action for justice [and] change" website page pushes readers to join their local Black Lives Matter or Showing Up...

German authorities say they have made four arrests of suspected Hamas members linked to an alleged plot to attack Jewish sites. Prosecutors said the suspects intended to store weapons in Berlin for possible use in an attack. Danish authorities also said they had arrested three people accused of preparing an attack. Denmark's intelligence agency said the Danish and German investigations were not directly linked. German prosecutors said in a statement that three suspects linked to Hamas were arrested in Berlin and one in the Netherlands. Hamas, which runs Gaza, is banned across Europe as a terrorist group. The arrests came...

At the beginning of last week, several bus services in Oslo were cancelled. The reason was that the new electric buses could not cope with the cold. On Monday, about 50 city buses were cancelled and taken out of service. The bus company Ruter reported that the range of the electric buses was not as good as usual because of the cold weather. It was about 12 degrees below zero. – The buses run out of power more quickly. We are now registering what happens day by day, and then we will see how we can improve this in the...

The Republican party of Long Island, New York, has nominated Mazi Melesa Philip, an Orthodox Jewish, Ethiopian-Israeli mother of seven who currently serves in the New York state legislature, to run for the seat in Congress recently vacated by George Santos, according the New York Times on Thursday. The seat's former occupant was ejected from the House on December 1, dogged by two federal indictments for fraud and revelations that most of the life story on which he had campaigned was a lie. He was only the sixth representative in history to be expelled from Congress. Philip, 44, served as...

Israel’s war in Gaza needs to “transition to the next lower intensity phase in a matter of weeks, not months,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of the war cabinet in a meeting on Thursday, according to two U.S. and Israeli officials. So Barak Ravid reports at Axios. I don’t think Israel can live with the Biden way of war and therefore that it won’t, but we shall see. Via David Friedman/X (below).David M Friedman@DavidM_Friedman Why is the American National Security Advisor telling Israel how to fight its existential war against Hamas?...

While the world’s attention is focused on the war in Gaza, Ukrainian officials are full steam ahead trying to convince their US and NATO partners to remain steadfast in bankrolling Kyiv’s war effort against Russia.Unlike Zelensky’s shop, the Biden administration’s messaging on the war has been all over the place. On one day, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is beaming with confidence that Washington and its European allies will best Russian President Vladimir Putin “in a contest of wills.” Yet on others, a nervous Biden is taking to the White House podium to shame congressional Republicans into writing and passing another...

If there was ever a year that called for bold global action on climate change, 2023 was it. In what will likely go down as the warmest year on record — one rife with catastrophic floods, scorching heat waves, devastating wildfires and enduring drought — leaders from nearly 200 countries gathered to chart a path forward in the fight against climate change. After more than two weeks of tense negotiations representatives from 198 countries agreed Wednesday to “transition away” from fossil fuels. It was a historic deal but one that once again fell short for many climate activists, who saw...

A poll released Thursday showed former president Donald Trump leading President Joe Biden in seven swing states, in the latest alarm bell for the incumbent president in polling. Respondents in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin told pollsters in a survey from Morning Consult and Bloomberg that they would choose Trump over Biden on a ballot where the two appear, along with expected third-party candidates such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West. On that ballot, Trump's smallest lead was in Pennsylvania, where the gap between him and Biden was 1 point, and his largest lead...

Congress has approved legislation that would prevent any president from withdrawing the United States from NATO without approval from the Senate or an Act of Congress. The measure, spearheaded by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), was included in the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which passed out of the House on Thursday and is expected to be signed by President Biden. The provision underscores Congress’s commitment to the NATO alliance that was a target of former President Trump’s ire during his term in office. The alliance has taken on revitalized importance under Biden, especially since Russia’s full-scale...

Biden, Slurring, Says Admin Is Securing "Contracts For New Covid Vaccines, Three New Covid Vaccines"

Matthew 11:11-15 Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus says to the crowds, “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the Kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent are taking it by force.” The title for Flannery O’Connor’s irresistibly powerful second and final novel, The Violent Bear It Away, is taken from the Douay-Rheims translation of this last phrase.This famously ambiguous passage has given rise to a variety of interpretations over the centuries. Many have taken it to mean that the kingdom of God is attacked by violent people (such as those who killed John the Baptist) and that...

Rock Hill SC A former police detective and Rock Hill school resource officer who already faces state child exploitation charges has been indicted on new, federal child pornography charges. Daniel Paul Shealy, 35, faces 18 counts of receiving or sending videos that contained child sexual abuse material, according to an indictment in the U.S. District Court of South Carolina. In a news release from the Department of Justice dated Wednesday, prosecutors said Shealy is indicted for distributing 13 child sex abuse videos and receiving several videos, all between June 2 and Sept. 17, 2023. The videos were between five seconds...

A New Jersey wedding photographer scammed dozens of people, including his own friends and family, out of $1 million in a sham investment scheme — and instead used the money on an Audi, gambling and travel, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday. Vincent Villafane — a photographer and graphic designer from Ford, NJ — allegedly tricked his victims into investing tens of thousands of dollars each into scarce computer graphic cards for gaming laptops, claiming he could sell them for more than double what they were purchased at, federal prosecutors said. His victims included elderly people, public employees like police...

This video was a helpful source of updated information on nutrition.I really appreciate the video's author for providing a transcript and dividing the video into content 'chapters' with separate links, which I'll post below. Click on the chapter link to jump to that part of the video.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhkxidN2M9Q 435,893 views Premiered Nov 9, 2023 InterviewsThis episode features Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D., and was originally recorded for the Institute for Functional Medicine's podcast, 'Pathways to Wellbeing.' This episode outlines a series of fundamental tactics you can start applying immediately to enhance cellular health, protect the nervous system, elevate mood, reduce inflammation, promote muscle...

On the day after Thanksgiving this year, one ChatGPT user received an unusually lazy, human response from the AI chatbot: 'You can fill in the rest of the data.' Since then, ChatGPT's makers at OpenAI have fielded a wave of complaints about their large language model (LLM) AI behaving sluggishly over the past month — leading to jokes and some sincere data analysis on the bot's 'seasonal depression.' 'We've heard all your feedback about GPT4 getting lazier!' OpenAI's ChatGPT team posted to X. 'We haven't updated the model since Nov 11th, and this certainly isn't intentional,' the team said. 'Model...

One of the biggest news stories so far this week is that the House of Representatives has subpoenaed Hunter Biden for a deposition. The House wants Hunter to talk to members behind closed doors about his father's involvement in his business dealings. Instead, Hunter skipped the deposition and called a whiny, self-indulgent press conference in which he repeated the Democrat talking points that Joe Biden is clean as a whistle and never got involved in his business dealings. "They belittled my recovery, and they have tried to dehumanize me, all to embarrass my father, who has devoted his entire life...

I can't believe I watched the whole thing — First Lady DOCTOR Jill Biden's cringeworthy annual Christmas video in which smiling dancers from the Capitol demand tributes from the lesser districts. I also can't believe that the Universe has such a twisted sense of irony that it came out the same day The Hill asked if Jill Biden will save the Democrats. I swear I'm not making any of this up — including the part (hat tip to VIP reader Lyon Gardner Tyler) that the featured Durrance Dance troupe is one of those reliably anti-police/pro-BLM groups. Before we get to...

The military wrapped up a counter-terrorism operation in Jenin Thursday, some 60 hours after launching a major raid in the northern West Bank city and adjacent refugee camp. According to the IDF, troops scanned hundreds of buildings, arrested 60 wanted Palestinians, and seized 50 weapons and hundreds of explosive devices during the 60-hour incursion that began late Monday. The IDF said the troops also found more than 10 tunnel shafts, seven labs used to manufacture explosive devices, and five war rooms used by local terror operatives to monitor IDF operations. Some of the sites were blown up by the troops....

In a heart-wrenching turn of events, Florida police have confiscated a 180kg pet pig named Pork Chop from its owner, Kelly Jacobson. Worries about the animal's welfare prompted the authorities to take action, leaving Jacobson devastated and determined to fight for custody. While she acknowledges the concerns raised, Jacobson is determined to demonstrate that Pork Chop is well cared for and loved.

BOSTON, MA — On Wednesday, a bouncer specially trained to detect variances in skin color and ethnicity was appointed by Boston Mayor Michelle Wu to keep the whites away from a minority-only holiday party. "Whoa, whoa, buddy. Do I detect Scottish ancestry?" the bouncer said as he roughly grabbed white City Council Member Frank Baker. "Look at the sign! No Whites allowed!" To aid in his duties, the bouncer reportedly utilized a flashlight, a skin color card, and a background in anti-racist studies. Though white people weren't formally invited, invitations made their way to them by mistake. To maintain the...