Free Republic

A federal appeals court on Tuesday reversed former Nebraska congressman Jeff Fortenberry's three felony convictions, agreeing with Fortenberry's argument that the trial should not have taken place in California. Fortenberry was convicted by a federal jury in Los Angeles in 2022 on one count of concealing conduit campaign contributions and two counts of lying to federal agents, all felonies. The charges stemmed from Fortenberry allegedly accepting an illegal campaign donation from billionaire Nigerian businessman Gilbert Chagoury at a 2016 fundraiser and then lying about the donation during later interviews with FBI agents. On Tuesday, a panel of three judges with...

Hamas terrorists and their allies in Islamic Jihad have shot down Egypt's ceasefire proposal. While still open to bartering with the lives of Israeli hostages in order to temporarily stave off annihilation, the terror groups appear unwilling to surrender control over Gaza or make other concessions per the terms of the proposal. Egypt developed the ceasefire proposal with the Hamas-friendly Gulf state of Qatar and presented it to Israel, Hamas, the U.S., and various European governments on Monday, reported Al Jazeera. The proposal asks that Israel fully withdraw from Gaza and for the establishment of a technocratic Palestinian regime to...

A North Carolina homeowner fed up with the plague of porch pirates over the Christmas holidays decided to play a little trick on the next culprit to steal from him — and one crook actually was caught on video lugging away the heavy surprise in a box. The homeowner in question — who lives in southwest Charlotte but didn't want to be identified — decided to get back at those who steal packages from people's porches, Queen City News reported. “I was at the hardware store and doing a little bit of Christmas shopping, and I said, ‘Let’s get something...

CBS News' "Face the Nation" held a roundtable on Christmas Eve, affording various talking heads an opportunity to make predictions for 2024. While most of the predictions were relatively banal, one among them stood out, prompting critics to puzzle over its possible significance. Network correspondent Catherine Herridge, the wife of a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force, suggested that "2024 may be the year of a black swan event. This is a national security event with high impact that's very hard to predict." Statistician and former options trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb popularized the term "black swan event" in his...

Boxing Day is traditionally held the day after ChristmasBoxing Day is a public holiday celebrated in the United Kingdom and some Commonwealth countries, including Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Why is it called Boxing Day? Boxing Day originated as a day when servants, tradespeople and the poor were given gifts, according to Britannica. The origin of the name has varied, with some believing it started when churches would leave alms boxes to collect donations for those less fortunate. Others say Boxing Day started when employers would give their employees boxes of gifts the day after Christmas because servants were required...

Bob Katter has accused Qantas of being anti-Christian after claiming the national air carrier snubbed traditional Christmas carols inside of one of its prestigious business class lounges. In a written complaint against the airline, the independent MP said he was angered to hear no holiday music with faith-based messages while sitting in a Qantas Club during a flight delay. 'I noticed that throughout the two hours I was there, they were playing 'Xmas' music,' Mr Katter said. 'Two hours of the most un-Christmassy music I've ever heard.

AMERICA PRAYER VIGIL (12/27/23)[Prayer]Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for AMERICA: For those in Authority in Government, Family, Military, Business, Agri-Business; End to Sex Slavery; Healthcare, Education, Churches, and the Media. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. (1 John 5:14)Forum threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind. God Bless America.ML/LTOS

I'm looking forward to watching California environmentalists argue with each other over whether or not they should mine this lithium for electric cars.

State police report they are investigating an incident where a mannequin with “blackface” was found hanging. According to Pennsylvania State Police, on Friday, December 22 around 12:30 a.m., troopers responded to High Road in Cass Township. 198 DUI arrests over Christmas holiday in PA Police say they received a report of a mannequin with blackface hanging from the neck. Further details on the incident was not given by state police. Blackface is a term used when a person wears makeup to imitate the appearance of a Black person and is considered highly offensive. The investigation is ongoing.

Of all the writers retreats in all the summer towns in all of New York, he had to walk into hers. As the sun fades on a perfect Montauk night — setting the stage for a first kiss ... Nora (Greta Lee) tells Arthur (John Magaro) about the Korean concept of In-Yun, which suggests that people are destined to meet one another if their souls have overlapped a certain number of times before. When Arthur asks Nora if she really believes in all that, the Seoul-born woman sitting across from him invitingly replies that it’s just “something Korean people say...

The association was also forced to address rumours circulating online that Yan had cheated during the competition by using anal beads equipped with wireless transmitters to send and receive signals. Yan allegedly clenched and unclenched rhythmically to communicate information about the chess board via code to a computer, which then sent back instructions on what moves to make in the form of vibrations, according to reports circulating on the Chinese social site Weibo.

These cryptic messages have reportedly been found across Pennsylvania in a variety of food packagesHow did a note get into a sealed cereal box? That’s the question, among others, being asked by a Luzerne County man. He contacted the FBI about the note as well as the I-Team to look into the situation. There are a lot of moving parts to this story, but it does appear, based on our research thus far, that notes like this are showing up in all types of food products from numerous grocery stores around eastern Pennsylvania and beyond. It also does appear that...

December 23rd, a day synonymous with last-minute shopping and plenty of traffic is a big day for another group of people: Fans of Seinfeld. For the uninitiated, Festivus is a holiday celebrated by the Costanza family in Season 9 Episode 10 of Seinfeld. Festivus was born from the trials and tribulations of Christmas shopping. When George’s dad Frank went to buy his son a doll many Christmases ago, he battled with another father for the last doll. In the intense battle, Frank thought there had to be another way, and through the destruction of the doll, Festivus was born. While...

News today from the UK: the ukrainians are running short of ammunition particularly artillery shells and this "money is really critical and it's 61 billion if which is in the package there's 14 billion for Israel 61 billion for Ukraine about 31 billion for other things including Taiwan it's 106 billion and it's held it's locked and some Republicans oppose it because they're playing hard ball against more money for a wall in the South against immigration but some Republicans oppose it simply because they oppose it they oppose the idea of money for Ukraine they're saying look we spent...

Yeah, well, if you want to understand the ideology of the leftists, communists and facists, look no further than this proclamation from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries:We will never yield our democracy to the MAGA extremists who want to take it away. Hakeem Jeffries

[Catholic Caucus] Fiducia supplicans appears to have failed spectacularlyThat the strongest resistance is coming largely from the global south and the developing world only reinforces the already powerful impression that Pope Francis’s solicitude for “the peripheries” is only so much talk.It isn’t every day that the top papal lieutenant goes on the record to discuss something about which he’d just said there would be no further clarification, but that’s what just happened in an interview published by The Pillar with the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.That’s one of the things that happened, at any rate,...

President Biden will be ringing in 2024 from the Caribbean island of St. Croix. The White House says Biden and first lady Jill Biden will depart Wednesday morning for the trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands. The White House didn’t disclose who will be accompanying the first couple on the jaunt, but the Bidens spent last New Year’s with family there, as they have several times over the years. Biden and his family spent Christmas at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, but returned to the White House at about 2:30 p.m. Tuesday.

The secretive board called the Harvard Corporation that decided to retain Harvard president Claudine Gay after revelations about her repeated plagiarism had surfaced and she had made controversial statements about anti-Semitism on campus is facing increased pressure to address the problem more actively.Two of the board members, nonprofit founder Tracy Palandjian and the private-equity executive Paul Finnegan, met with academics demanding they do more to counter the damage done to the school’s image after a growing number of donors said they were through with the school.“You need to be more out front of this,” Jeff Flier, the former dean of...

In this episode, the podcast delves into the life of Mosab Hassan Yousef, a man who grew up as the son of a Hamas founder and later became a spy for Israel. The conversation reveals his upbringing in a strict Muslim family, his life in Hamas, and the dramatic shift that led him to work for Israeli intelligence. He gives an inside look into the intricacies of the Hamas mission, its roots in the Muslim Brotherhood, and the tribal mentality that fuels the Israel-Palestine conflict. The episode continues with a discussion about the convoluted relationship between Israeli intelligence and Hamas,...