Free Republic

It’s that time of year again! Time to celebrate the birth of Jesus, gather with family and friends, make gingerbread houses, go Christmas caroling, play in the snow, and… remind yourself how much your government absolutely hates you. Don’t forget, every holiday season is also time for Rand Paul’s annual Festivus Report, and this year, for the ninth report, Paul highlighted nine hundred billion dollars in waste by the Festivites; from Paul’s opening segment:This year, I am highlighting a whopping ~$900,000,000,000 of waste, including an NIH grant to study Russian cats walking on a treadmill, Barbies used as proof of...

U.S. military forces conducted strikes on facilities used by Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups in Iraq, the U.S. Defense Ministry said in a statement on Monday. These strikes are a response to a series of strikes against U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-sponsored militias, including an attack by Iran-affiliated Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups on Erbil Air Base earlier on Monday, which led to three injuries to U.S. personnel, the statement said.

BERLIN – The shift away from cars with dirty combustion engines is running into a new hurdle: Drivers do not want to buy used electric vehicles (EVs), and that is undermining the market for new ones, too. In the US$1.2 trillion (S$1.6 trillion) second-hand market, prices for battery-powered cars are falling faster than for their combustion-engine cousins. Buyers are shunning them due to a lack of subsidies, a desire to wait for better technology, and continued shortfalls in charging infrastructures. A fierce price war sparked by Tesla and competitive Chinese models are further depressing values of new and used cars...

Since mutilating and disfiguring the genitals of minors, chopping off children’s healthy body parts in Mengele-type experimental surgeries, and injecting human beings with synthetic cross-sex hormones to affirm a debilitating mental delusion apparently weren’t enough to compel the left to drop the “gender”-bending madness, I doubt the findings of a new study from Denmark will be either—although they should. According to a new article out at Slay News by David Lindfield:The risk of heart disease is soaring among the growing number of transgenders being prescribed life-altering hormone drugs.…A new study published in the peer-reviewed European Journal of Endocrinology revealed that...

After all the hullabaloo about the 'love of the Palestinian children' we've had shoved in our faces to demonize Israel and its war on terror these past months, here's what amounts to 'love' from the Hamas terrorists. According to Legal Insurrection, citing news sources:The Israeli ground offensive continues to expose the depths of Hamas’ depravity. The Islamic terrorist group that burnt and beheaded Israeli babies on October 7, is now apparently grooming Gaza’s children to become suicide bombers in its jihad against the advancing Israeli troops.Israeli soldiers found ‘child-sized suicide vests’ during a raid in northern Gaza, the Israeli media...

An American base in Erbil, Iraq attacked today with three Americans wounded... A Ukrainian attack on the port community of Fredosia in southeastern Crimea tonight... Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene "swatted " at her home in Georgia today. Police called to her home with a false emergency call that could have led to the use of force by police...\ The rules for refugees changing in Denmark effective January 1st. Refugees going back to their home countries risk losing residence permits... The plane held in France since last Thursday taking off for India today... A Christmas tradition in the Middle East...

<p>The climate crisis has always and will continue to disproportionately affect people who are already facing the consequences of racial, socioeconomic and geopolitical injustices.</p><p>Below are some of the best climate books published December 2022 – December 2023, as well as the books to look out for in the new year.</p>

Beijing is currently experiencing its coldest December since record-keeping began in 1951, with temperatures plummeting below -10C frequently throughout the month. This extreme cold is part of a year marked by weather contrasts, including the city’s hottest June day on record at just over 40C earlier in the year. Persistent Freeze Affects Daily Life A Beijing weather station reported an unusual occurrence of over 300 hours of sub-zero temperatures in less than two weeks, as noted by China Daily. This harsh weather isn’t isolated to Beijing; it has swept across various Chinese provinces, leading to school closures, transportation disruptions, and...

The New York Times ran an op-ed Sunday by Hamas’ handpicked Gaza City mayor — prompting outrage on social media from Israel supporters who slammed the Gray Lady for amplifying “Jew hate.” The essay by Yahya R. Sarraj published on Christmas Eve comes amid fury over Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s social media post that denounced Israel as a violent occupying force and likened Jesus to Palestinians. Sarraj’s op-ed — titled “I Am Gaza City’s Mayor. Our Lives and Culture Are in Rubble” — condemned Israel for “caus[ing] the deaths of more than 20,000 people” and for destroying or damaging “about half...

Christmas Day meant the same as any other day for thousands of migrants walking through southern Mexico: more trudging under a hot sun. There were no presents, and Christmas Eve dinner was a sandwich, a bottle of water and a banana handed out by the Catholic church to some of the migrants in the town of Álvaro Obregón, in the southern state of Chiapas, which borders Guatemala. Migrants spent Christmas night sleeping on a scrap of cardboard or plastic stretched out under an awning or tent, or the bare ground. Karla Ramírez, a migrant from Honduras who was traveling with...

Loud explosions were heard in early Tuesday hours over the Crimean town of Feodosia on the Black Sea coast, Russian news outlets on the Telegram messaging service reported. Footage posted on several Russian news outlets on Telegram showed powerful explosions and fires over a port area.

An International Committee of the Red Cross representative refused to bring a box of life-saving medicine to Israelis taken hostage in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed in a Monday address to the Knesset plenum. "I met with the Red Cross; I handed them a box of medicine for some of the hostages shown here. Some of them really need it...I told a representative to take this box to Rafah; she said no. It was a difficult conversation," he told a special Knesset session attended by families of hostages, who were heard shouting "Now!" at the prime minister as he...

The year is ending on an upbeat note for the Russian Federation troops that have just conquered the heavily fortified town of Maryinka, in the outskirts of Donetsk city. This is a major development, the biggest since Moscow troops regained the initiative, and also the greatest achievement since they gained control of Avdiivka (Bakhmut) in May. By taking Maryinka, the Russians have significantly pushed back the Ukrainian artillery. For years, Kiev used Maryinka has a key launching pad for drone and artillery strikes against civilians in Donetsk.

In a first for the iconic Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, a cat named Oli has made history as a unique participant. This event, which started as a casual cruise down Australia’s east coast in 1945, has seen various colorful competitors, but 2023 marked the first time a feline has joined the ranks of the sailors. Skipper Robert Williams and his cat Oli participated aboard the yacht ‘Sylph VI’ in the 78th running of the 628 nautical mile race. Oli, approximately 10 years old, has been part of Williams’ life for five years and has adapted well to life at...

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said Saturday on CNN’s “Newsroom” that bribery charges against Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel were possible when reacting to reports that McDaniel participated in a phone call with former President Donald Trump attempting to get state election officials to not certify the 2020 presidential election results. Benson said, “It really underscores the vast conspiracy, for lack of a better word, that was at play. A coordinated effort in all the battleground states to delay certification creates enough confusion about the validity of the election results. Because if you have people block or refuse...

POKROVSK, Ukraine—During a break from fighting the Russians, an avuncular rifleman recalled how he was going for a haircut one day when he was press-ganged into joining the Ukrainian army. Three recruitment officials accosted the stocky, gray-haired 47-year-old outside the barber shop in his small hometown, ordered him to get in a car and detained him for two days in a dark room at the local draft center until he had signed up.

Pope Francis said in his Christmas Eve Midnight Mass homily that "our hearts are in Bethlehem," where Jesus was born and is currently being "rejected" due to Israel's ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, and in his Christmas Day homily on Monday, he called the children affected by war the "little Jesuses of today.""Tonight, our hearts are in Bethlehem, where the Prince of Peace is once more rejected by the futile logic of war, by the clash of arms that even today prevents him from finding room in the world," the pontiff said Sunday evening, according to the Vatican. The...

There’s abundant research on other therapy animals like dogs but there’s often a ‘shock factor’ involved with therapy cats because many don’t know they exist. Each morning, Juanita Mengel removes the silicone liner of her prosthetic leg from under a heated blanket so that the metal parts of the artificial limb don't feel as cold on her skin when she straps the pieces together. The 67-year-old Ohio resident then does the same for her five-year-old dilute tortoiseshell cat, Lola-Pearl, who is missing her left hind leg. The duo is one of an estimated 200 therapy cat teams registered in the...

IN Paris, France, Nina Metayer is now the first woman to win one of the world’s top pastry chef awards, World Confectioner. This is the first time in the history of the 92 year award, from the International Union of Bakers and Pastry Chefs, that it has ever gone to a woman! Her incredible cakes were what did the trick, and she explained that she was not one to follow the new low fat trends, “I like cakes with butter, gluten and eggs” she stated, “when we eat a cake, it’s for pleasure.” Although she trained as a baker, Nina...

Just months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, an al Qaeda supporter snuck onto American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami with explosives packed into his shoes, but his failed attempt to detonate spared the lives of nearly 200 people and sent him to prison for the rest of his life. According to the FBI, the 10 ounces of homemade explosives in his shoes were enough to blow a hole in the side of the plane and kill everyone on board. "Shoe Bomber" Richard Reid, the 50-year-old British citizen who trained with the terror group in Pakistan and...