Free Republic

You wouldn’t jump out of an airplane wearing a tie. So, naturally, the most famous skyjacker to never be found, the dapper D.B. Cooper, took his tie off on Thanksgiving Eve, 1971, just before dropping out of a Northwest Orient Airlines plane somewhere south of Seattle. Now, 52 years later, Eric Ulis—the amateur sleuth who has made it his mission to solve the enduring D.B. Cooper mystery—thinks the infamous tie yields enough clues to finally reveal the skyjacker’s true identity. “I would not be surprised at all if 2024 was the year we figure out who this guy was,” Ulis...

A massive fire near Moscow has destroyed a plant that supplies body armour for Vladimir Putin’s troops. Video footage shows flames engulfing the plant on Entuziastov Avenue, Obukhovo, in the Moscow region this morning, and no casualties have been reported. Law enforcement in Russia is investigating whether the inferno was caused by an act of sabotage or arson. The fire has destroyed 86,000 feet of a warehouse and a workshop. Workers were evacuated from the plant just as it took hold and more than 100 firefighters tried to save the key production line. It has been sanctioned by Ukraine for...

Yes, it’s Biden’s fiscal inferno! And getting worse as the Presidential election approaches! Remember when I showed that the “stealth” secret sauce behind Bidenomics was nothing more than a massive, multi-trillion debt-fueled spending spree, which led to the biggest peactime, non-crisis budget deficit in US history, with the total deficit for fiscal 2023 ending just over $2 trillion, or double the prior year, something which BofA’s Michael Hartnett called the “era of fiscal excess”? Well, we have news for you: if 2023 was bad, 2024 – an election year of course – is shaping up to be far worse. Moments...

When deciding where to settle down and raise a family, there are many important factors to consider. The personal-finance website WalletHub released a new report ranking the best states to raise a family, evaluating states according to 50 metrics across five categories: family fun, health and safety, education and childcare, affor1. 1. Massachusetts WalletHub named Massachusetts the best state to raise a family, citing its low unemployment rate, good school systems, and safety for children's health and well-being.

[Catholic Caucus] BREAKING: Vatican official says St. Peter’s Basilica will bless homosexual ‘couples’VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) – Clergy at St. Peter’s Basilica will bless same-sex couples.According to a report in the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero today, the archpriest of Rome’s most famous church, Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, has stated that blessings of homosexual couples could happen there.“To show the world the maternal face of the Church and along the lines of what Pope Francis has asked for,” Gambetti reportedly said.However, he added that as yet nobody has asked the canons of the basilica for such a blessing.“It doesn’t seem to me that...

Explanation: Named for a forgotten constellation, the Quadrantid Meteor Shower puts on an annual show for planet Earth's northern hemisphere skygazers. The shower's radiant on the sky lies within the old, astronomically obsolete constellation Quadrans Muralis. That location is not far from the Big Dipper asterism, known to some as the Plough, at the boundaries of the modern constellations Bootes and Draco. The Big Dipper "handle" stars are near the upper right corner in this frame, with the meteor shower radiant just below. North star Polaris is toward the top left. Pointing back toward the radiant, Quadrantid meteors streak through...

Two media members were heard cracking jokes over a hot mic Tuesday about former President Donald Trump being cut down by an assassin’s bullet as they waited for him to appear at the federal courthouse in Washington. The unidentified male journalists had their news cameras stationed outside the E. Barrett Prettyman US Courthouse when they started to grouse about the difficulties of getting a view of the 77-year-old 2024 Republican front-runner.

British wives boasting of luxury new lives funded by millionaire husbands in Dubai have been warned they risk being dumped homeless on the streets at any moment. Experts have revealed a surge in complaints from not only women but also men betrayed and dumped by wealthy partners after upping sticks for the Middle East. The alert comes amid a TikTok and Instagram trend of UK women sharing footage of spending sprees in the United Arab Emirates after wedding wealthy husbands. It comes as Mail Online reported on an influx of expats pampered by rich partners, enjoying days filled with shopping...

Horrifying videos have surfaced of a gang of at least seven men sexually abusing toddlers inside the restroom of a Texas mall, cops say. Arthur Hector Fernandez, 29, a kiosk worker at the Galleria mall in Houston, is charged with assaulting the toddlers and then posting the videos online. Two friends of Fernandez sometimes left their children, two 2-year-olds, in his care while they worked at the mall, according to police. The FBI says they launched a probe last month after the abuse videos posted on a private online forum were shared by by the Australian Centre to Counter Child...

Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, is expected to plead not guilty on charges related to his failure to file and pay income taxes. The appearance in Los Angeles will be before U.S. District Judge Mark C. Scarsi, who was appointed by then-President Donald Trump.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) endorsed Donald Trump for president Wednesday morning, the final member of the Republican House leadership team to endorse the president.“Democrats have made clear they will use every tool in their arsenal to try to keep Joe Biden and his failed policies in power. We cannot let them,” his statement on X reads.“It’s time for Republicans to unite behind our party’s clear frontrunner, which is why I am proud to endorse Donald J. Trump for President.”We must stop Joe Biden and his failed policies. Read my full statement endorsing @realDonaldTrump for President. pic.twitter.com/qZFfCHBExA— Tom Emmer...

Mark 1:40-45 Friends, our Gospel today gives us one of the great scenes of Jesus healing a leper. And as is usually the case, it becomes an icon of the spiritual life in general.Once in the Lord’s presence, the leper kneels down and begs him. The suffering man realizes who Jesus is: not one prophet among many but the incarnation of the God of Israel, the only one before whom worship is the appropriate attitude.In our sickness, our weakness, our shame, our sin, our oddness—lots of us feel like this leper. Whatever trouble we are in, we have to come...

More than $1 billion worth of shoulder-fired missiles, kamikaze drones and night-vision devices that the United States has sent to Ukraine have not been properly tracked by U.S. officials, a new Pentagon report concludes, raising concerns they could be stolen or smuggled at a time Congress is debating whether to send more military aid to Ukraine.The report by the Defense Department’s inspector general, released Thursday, offers no evidence that any of the weapons have been misused after being shipped to a U.S. military logistics hub in Poland or sent onward to Ukraine’s battlefields.“It was beyond the scope of our evaluation...

*** The dramatic moment unfolded after three Trump lawyers each made their final pitch to Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, arguing that the claims and proposed $370 million fine against the former president were “manufactured.” “I did nothing wrong, they should pay me for what we’ve had to go through,” Trump, 77, said of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office *** Engoron — who has said he expects to issue a decision on the non-jury case by the end of the month – ruled Wednesday that Trump couldn’t participate in closing arguments because he hadn’t agreed to stick...

Attorneys at the ACLU of Northern California found what they called an “alarming error” in a geofence warrant application that “resulted in a warrant stretching nearly two miles across San Francisco.” The error, likely caused by a typo, allowed the requesting law enforcement agency to capture information on anyone who entered the stretch of San Francisco erroneously marked on the search warrant. “Many private homes were also captured in the massive sweep,” wrote Jake Snow, ACLU staff attorney, in a blog post about the findings. It’s not known which law enforcement agency requested the nearly two-mile-long geofence warrant, or for...

On Wednesday, House Republicans moved forward with the Pregnant Students’ Rights Act, a measure that would help protect students who deal with unplanned pregnancies. The bill, introduced by Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa), would mandate that colleges explain rights and accommodations to women who are pregnant to help them recognize that there is a way to both have a child and continue their education. The bill aims to counter leftists' rhetoric that abortion is the only way for a pregnant woman to succeed in school. That’s not true, and that’s what House Republicans are trying to emphasize. The bill indicates that...

Anyone with a reasonably sound mind (which omits Joe Biden) could see from the start that the sham indictments against President Trump were as politically driven as the debunked Russia hoax and the overblown COVID “pandemic” were. It’s the same old strategy, but now the regime loyalists, in their utter desperation, are constantly raising the stakes. What they’re attempting to do to Trump by trying to imprison him is tear apart the very fabric of our judicial system and the entire rule of law in our country. The implications of this could be even more far-reaching than the so-called “pandemic.”And...

Meilin Keen was studying for the bar exam and preparing to move to New York City last June when she started throwing up blood. Keen, 27 years old, learned days later that she has gastric cancer. She postponed the bar exam. Brain fog from chemotherapy made it hard to do her legal work. Surgeons removed her stomach in December. Keen is coming to terms with all that means for her diet, her health, even her dating life. “That’s a fun icebreaker: I don’t have a stomach anymore,” she said. Cancer is hitting more young people in the U.S. and around...

If you inherited $27 million dollars, what would you do? For Austrian heiress Marlene Engelhorn, 31, she's determined to give it all away. "I have inherited a fortune, and therefore power, without having done anything for it," she said in a statement, per BBC. "And the state doesn't even want taxes on it." (In 2008, Austria got rid of its inheritance tax.) Engelhorn is descended from Friedrich Engelhorn, a German industrialist who, in 1865, founded BASF, a chemical and pharmaceutical company. Engelhorn's grandmother, Traudl Engelhorn-Vechiatto, was estimated to have a net worth of around $4.2 billion. This week, Engelhorn...

With a nation full of crime, high prices, rising inflation and a bad economy, Democrats have very little to run on this presidential election. So more abortions is the pitch they keep pushing over and over again because it’s the only issue Joe Biden and pro-abortion Democrats have to rally their base. And Jill Biden promoted abortion in a new interview this week. Not only did she tout abortion, she said Joe Biden and Democrats would keep trying to secure abortions up to birth nationwide. Of course she didn’t use those words exactly – she couched that radical agenda behind...