Free Republic

As inflation remains stubbornly high, farmers throughout the Western world are warning that cost increases from the net zero movement will drive food prices still higher, while simultaneously putting many smaller farmers out of business.January inflation numbers showed that prices increased by 3.1 percent over what they were a year ago, indicating that the fight against inflation, while progressing, has not been won.Overall, prices have surged by nearly 18 percent since January 2021 when President Joe Biden took office.Americans are struggling in an economy in which, by official statistics, nearly one-fifth of the value of their dollars has evaporated in...

In St. Johns County, on the Atlantic shore of Northeast Florida, more than 55% of public school teachers paid their union dues this last year. Despite that, nearly 3,500 teachers are facing the threat of having their union representation revoked. At the same time, in Southwest Florida, only 16% of law enforcement officers of the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office paid union dues last year. Their union is under absolutely no threat of being decertified. A year after Governor DeSantis signed into law a sweeping anti-union bill requiring most public sector unions to boost the rate of members paying dues or...

Every civilian death is a tragedy. Another country, struck by the type and immensity of the atrocities committed against Israel, would likely have responded with vastly greater force and inflicted far greater numbers of civilian casualties. But Israel is the Jewish State, not only in the way we conduct our daily lives but in the moral manner in which we defend ourselves. Even when the enemy is using its own population as a human shield, Israel must do its utmost to reduce the damage to civilians. This is not only a strategic interest for Israel – civilian casualties help substantiate...

In an episode of “The Sopranos”, a popular television series which started airing in the 1990s, a gangster tells Tony, from the titular family, that he wants to retire. “What are you, a hockey player?” Tony snaps back. Non-fictional non-criminals who are considering an end to their working lives need not worry about broken fingers or other bodily harm. But they must still contend with other potentially painful losses: of income, purpose or, most poignantly, relevance. Some simply won’t quit. Giorgio Armani refuses to relinquish his role as chief executive of his fashion house at the age of 89. Being...

A deal cut between the government in Northern Belgium (Flanders) and farmers organizations. This follows protests... Tonight in the UK results of two Special Elections for House of Commons seats...Labor Party taking both seats... The drama in Washington over a "national security threat" now identified as a potential Russian weapon in space... The US Defense Department leaking...cyber-attack on an Iranian vessel more than a... Greece's parliament passing a law establishing civil same-sex marriage... Pushing back on criticism from President Donald Trump, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg... The Biden Administration Justice Department indicting a former FBI informant who alleged wrongdoing by...

It is almost midnight, but at this stage most of the population doesn’t even care about the endless procession of babies that are having their lives snuffed out at our abortion mills. Terms such as “massacre”, “slaughter’ and “genocide” are not nearly strong enough to describe what is taking place on a daily basis, and the vast majority of us seem to think that there will never be any serious consequences for what we are doing. But the truth is that we shall surely reap what we have sown. I knew that the number of abortions that happen worldwide each...

Idaho is moving forward with legislation that would allow the execution of child rapists. The Idaho Capital Sun reports that the legislation, introduced by Republican lawmakers, will target those who have committed the most serious offenses against children as well as repeat offenders. The bill passed the Idaho House by a 57-11 vote. The legislation states: This legislation amends Idaho Codes 18-1508 and 19-2515 to allow a sentence of capital punishment for a person convicted of lewd conduct with a minor, if said minor is under the age of twelve (12) and there are aggravating circumstances. Upon conviction, a jury...

The eleventh World Governments Summit, a three-day event known as “Davos In the Desert,” comes to a close today. Held in Dubai, it was begun in 2013 as a forum for the rulers of these small oil and gas rich gulf statelets. Relaunched with a video address by President Barack Obama in 2016 as an organization with global ambitions, it returned this year with the ambitious theme of “shaping future governments.” The UAE Minister of Cabinet Affairs Mohammad Al-Gergawi told reporters in a statement announcing the Summit on February 1: We don’t claim to have all the solutions, but we...

Governor Brian Kemp (R-Ga.) announced Tuesday that he will send National Guard troops to establish a forward command post in Texas to aid the Texas National Guard’s effort to secure the southern border and reduce the unprecedented level of illegal immigrants crossing into the United States. “Because of Joe Biden’s failure to address the crisis at the southern border, every state is now a border state,” Kemp said in his announcement on Tuesday. “That’s why Georgia is once again stepping up to help do what the White House and Democrats in Congress refuse to do – secure our southern border....

The first reported fatality of the Alaskapox virus was recently revealed by Alaska public health officials after an elderly man in Alaska succumbed to it in January. According to a bulletin released by the state’s public health officials, the elderly man lived in the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska before being hospitalized in November and dying from the virus toward the end of January. While health officials could not make a final determination regarding how the elderly man contracted the Alaskapox virus, health officials suggested that he could have contracted the virus from a stray cat that he was taking care...

Already, America is under attack from China, according to a new report. For example, authorities near Fresno, California, found a secret Chinese biological weapons lab containing pathogens like Ebola. There, mice were being genetically engineered to spread diseases. Further, Chinese agents could gun down Americans, bomb power stations, attack military bases, start wildfires, poison reservoirs, and more. China expert Gordon Chang, in a report at The Gatestone Institute,where he is a distinguished senior fellow, explained such schemes "come straight out of Unrestricted Warfare, a 1999 book written by two Chinese air force colonels and first published by the PLA Literature...

The Justice Department filed a lawsuit today against the State of Tennessee and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The department previously notified Tennessee and the TBI that they violated the ADA by enforcing the state’s aggravated prostitution statute against people living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). That letter of findings detailed the minimum remedial measures necessary to address the discrimination. The department’s investigation found that the state and TBI subject people living with HIV to harsher criminal penalties solely because of their HIV status, violating Title II of the ADA. Tennessee’s...

SpaceX has moved its state of incorporation from Delaware to Texas!If your company is still incorporated in Delaware, I recommend moving to another state as soon as possible.

To me, one of the strangest oddities of the year 2020 was the call for safety in the face of COVID-19. “Stay safe,” we were cautioned. Here in Wisconsin, our governor even issued an order titled “Safer at Home.” This seemed to me to be an extraordinary choice of wording—because COVID-19 results from a virus. I’m sure that experts disagree on the best methodologies for warding off infection from a virus. But one thing that you certainly cannot do to escape it is to stay safe. Your only hope is to stay healthy. So, the expression itself was bizarre but...

The California legislature proposed a bill requiring gun owners to pay an annual tax and register each gun they own. The bill, SB 1160, was introduced by Senator Anthony J. Portantino (D – Burbank) and would require the Department of Justice to register all firearms in the state annually.

From the very beginning, the Moscow Metro was designed as an instrument of propaganda as well as transportation. Its grandiose stations were not only a projection of the power of the regime but also designed as a promise of sorts, a glimpse for the Soviet people of the heaven on earth that communism would (one day) deliver. It was perhaps thus appropriate that some of its marble was said (probably accurately) to have come from the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which had been blown up on Stalin’s orders just a year or two before work on the metro began...

Rate increases will go into effect April 1, 2024.. As Holy Cross Energy experiences increased costs due to higher-than-normal inflation and constraints in the supply chain throughout the entire economy, its board of directors approved an increase to its monthly customer rates in January 2024. The increase will be based on individual rate classes and go into effect starting April 1, 2024. This increase addresses rising costs due to inflation and better aligns Holy Cross Energy rates with how its actual costs are incurred. Small and large members are separated by their monthly demand reading falling below or above 50kW....

I'm hearing a lot of chatter tonight that the Ukrainian position in Avdeevka has all but collapsed. Evidently the air defense base anchoring their southern defenses was flanked and rapidly overrun, with the Russian flag planted on it. I'm also hearing: The Neo-Nazi Azov brigade (disingenuously referred to simply as the 3rd Brigade in Washington/MSM propaganda today) was sent to bolster Ukrainian defenses on the flanks while troops in forward positions retreated, but they were caught in the open field, massacred, and are refusing to follow orders. This would help explain the general collapse scenario. Maybe it is not so...

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) pointed to Missouri gun laws and blasted the state’s annual gun deaths but failed to mention that California has more than twice as many gun deaths each year. On November 16, 2023, this author wrote a piece highlighting the left’s tendency to point to firearm-related homicide deaths instead of actual homicide numbers. This allows someone like Newsom to avoid mentioning Centers for Disease Control and Prevention numbers showing California had 3,576 firearm deaths in 2021 while Missouri only had 1,414.

"Yoko actually helped a lot with the lyrics, but I wasn't man enough to let her have credit for it," Lennon confessed to reporter David Sheff during a series of interviews for Playboy magazine published just two days before Lennon was shot dead on December 8, 1980. In early 1971, Lennon finished the lyrics (and Ono's input was officially credited in 2017) and in June that year, he recorded takes at the purpose-built studio at his Tittenhurst Park mansion home — sound engineer Eddie Veale, who helped construct the studio, called it "the first professional home studio in the...