Free Republic

Oakland City Council approved funding to hire more tow companies and use the state DOT’s vacant lots.Oakland, California is struggling to deal with a deluge of abandoned vehicles across the city. According to the Oakland Department of Transportation, 13,856 cars were reported abandoned over a six-month period in 2023. The city ran out of space in its storage lots and is renting even more room to hold the excess. In total, Oakland is spending $1 million on storage. Anecdotally, car theft is the root of this problem. ABC7 Bay Area reports the Oakland Police Department will not respond to...

He used a kid's boarding pass to get on the flight, but flight attendants soon realized he didn't belong.A Delta passenger from Texas somehow managed to use a child’s boarding pass to get on a flight from Salt Lake City, Utah to Austin, Texas; flight attendants caught onto his little scheme after he hid in multiple bathrooms shortly before takeoff. Salt Lake City police arrested Wicliff Fleurizard on March 17 after he was removed from Flight 1683. Fleurizard managed to board the Airbus A320 and stayed in the front lavatory for an extended period of time, according to USA Today....

Hell on Earth. Washington, DC, Possibly Sometime in the Near Future A 1-megaton thermonuclear weapon detonation begins with a flash of light and heat so tremendous it is impossible for the human mind to comprehend. One hundred and eighty million degrees Fahrenheit is four or five times hotter than the temperature at the center of the sun. In the first fraction of a millisecond after the bomb strikes the Pentagon, there is light. Soft X-ray light with a very short wavelength. The light superheats the surrounding air to millions of degrees, creating a massive fire-ball that expands at millions of...

As technology has advanced, AI-generated deepfakes have become more convincing, says disinformation researcher Eileen Culloty.Disinformation caught many people off guard during the 2016 Brexit referendum and US presidential election. Since then, a mini-industry has developed to analyse and counter it. Yet despite that, we have entered 2024 - a year of more than 40 elections worldwide - more fearful than ever about disinformation. In many ways, the problem is more challenging than it was in 2016. Advances in technology since then are one reason for that, in particular the development that has taken place with synthetic media, otherwise known as...

Correlation does not imply causation, but timing is everything, and this looks really bad. Two sayings are pertinent to this essay. The first is that correlation does not imply causation. Just because two events seem connected doesn’t mean they are. The second is that timing is everything. Think about both as you consider the Department of Justice’s decision to dismiss a massive corporate fraud lawsuit a short time after the corporation’s founder made a sizable donation to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. DISH Network is an American satellite network. In 2015, the DOJ sued DISH under the False Claims Act. The...

[Catholic Caucus] The Good Thief, The Bad Thief, and Hell’s ThiefWithout the opportunity to defend Jesus from the Bad Thief’s insults, perhaps the Good Thief might have remained silent, without turning to Our Lord for mercy. Then, as now, God uses the wickedness of others to bring about the salvation of those who make use of His mercy. The Gospel of St. Luke relates the story of the Good Thief, which should be dear to all of us sinners in great need of God’s mercy:“And the soldiers also mocked Him, coming to Him, and offering Him vinegar, And saying: If...

A new report from the Federal Trade Commission suggests grocery giants used inflation and supply chain disruptions during the pandemic to drive their profits and keep raising prices. Now, the agency is urging Congress to take a closer look into grocery profits. The data shows food prices in the United States spiked 11% between 2021 and 2022, the largest annual increase in over 40 years. News4JAX asked local consumers about their current spending Friday. “Everything. Everything. Everything that I can think of that I need, you know, it’s expensive,” a consumer said. The prices at the grocery store are high....

Greg Lee, co-lead singer of stalwart L.A. ska group Hepcat, died March 19. He was 54. Lee suffered a brain aneurysm followed by cardiac arrest on March 17 at his home in Paramount; he died in a hospital. Hepcat was slated to perform at the highly anticipated SoCal festival No Values at the Pomona Fairplex on June 8. "He has touched the lives and hearts of so many people all around the world through music and travel. His songs with Hepcat helped so many of us in both joyous and even depressing times. He has inspired so many to create,...

If the idea of drinking civet cat coffee, which is made from feces from the Asian palm civet, is a turn-off, there may be yet another reason to rethink the drink. This week, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) issued a warning aimed at tourists in Bali after an investigator showed undercover footage of how the civet cat excrement, containing partially digested coffee beans, is obtained. The video showed the animals confined to cages encrusted with feces, dirt and decomposing coffee berries, many with open wounds, according to PETA. The footage was obtained through undercover work conducted by...

Angela Chao, the billionaire sister-in-law of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, was drunk when she accidentally reversed her Tesla into a pond on a Texas ranch and died last month, according to police. The revelation was detailed in a report released Wednesday by the Blanco County Sheriff’s Office, which said Chao’s blood alcohol level was nearly three times the state’s legal limit when she backed her car into the pond while making a three-point turn. The sheriff’s office investigation determined Chao’s Feb. 10 death was “an unfortunate accident,” according to the report.

March 22, 2024 House Oversight and Accountability Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) suggested the impeachment vote against President Biden may not be the “best path” and said he instead thinks criminal referrals will be the way to go. “I believe that the best path to accountability is criminal referrals,” Comer told Newsmax hosts Thursday. The Oversight Committee held a hearing Wednesday on the impeachment inquiry into Biden. Democrats pressured Republicans to identify the criminal conduct underlying their probe, as doubts rise about the future of the investigation into the president’s business dealings. Comer argued in the interview that “real accountability” for...

The Biden administration finalized its crackdown on gas cars Wednesday, with the Environmental Protection Agency announcing drastic climate regulations meant to ensure more than two-thirds of passenger cars and light trucks sold by 2032 are electric or hybrid vehicles. The EPA rule imposes strict limits on tailpipe pollution, limits the agency says can be met if 56% of new vehicles sold in the US are electric by eight years from now, along with 13% that are plug-in hybrids or other partially electric cars. That would be a huge increase over current EV sales, which rose to 7.6% of new vehicle...

ISIS had a huge Russian and Central Asian contingent in its heyday. About one out of every five Russian citizens is Muslim, but that population is not evenly distributed either geographically or socioeconomically. In cities, a lot of taxi drivers and hard-luck laborers have names like Magomedov and Ismailov, indicative of Muslim ancestry.... The center of geographic gravity of Islam in Russia is the Northern Caucasus, the site of domestic strife and bloodshed in a series of episodes going back centuries. Some groups around Dagestan and Chechnya have become proficient guerrilla warriors, and Putin perfected his own harsh methods on...

Though he could be earning much more if he had taken up a job in New York, one American chose to settle down in Singapore instead. It's already been six years since he moved to our little red dot but in a recent video uploaded to his YouTube platform, Living in the Lion City, he shared why he took a pay cut to be here. "Believe it or not, it's not because of the salary," he said in the clip published last Saturday (March 16). As he strolled around Gardens by the Bay, he pointed out how clean Singapore is....

M. Emmet Walsh, the character actor known for his roles in films such as “Blade Runner” and “Knives Out,” has died. He was 88. Walsh’s longtime manager, Sandy Joseph, confirmed to The Post that Walsh died Tuesday of cardiac arrest at Northwestern Medical Center in St. Albans, Vermont. When asked about his career, Walsh said, per Joseph’s release, “I approach each job thinking it might be my last so it better be the best work possible. I want to be remembered as a working actor. I’m being paid for what I’d do for nothing.”

President Biden pressured House Speaker Mike Johnson to pass the Senate’s sweeping foreign aid and border security package now that Congress has finished funding the government. The Senate passed the $95 billion last month, which includes aid for Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific, but so far Mr. Johnson, Louisiana Republican, has not brought the bill to the House for a vote. The speaker argued that he would bring foreign funding under consideration in the House once the long-delayed spending process was completed. Mr. Biden’s signature on the latest, $1.2 trillion funding package means the end of the Fiscal Year 2024,...

MOSCOW, March 22 (Reuters) - Russia has added what it calls the "LGBT movement" to a list of extremist and terrorist organisations, state media said on Friday. The move was in line with a ruling by Russia's Supreme Court last November that LGBT activists should be designated as extremists, a move that representatives of gay and transgender people said they feared would lead to arrests and prosecutions. The list is maintained by an agency called Rosfinmonitoring that has powers to freeze the bank accounts of the more than 14,000 people and entities designated as extremists and terrorists. They range from...

There’s a concerted effort to make straight, white men like me perpetually angry. In case you’re not paying attention, guys are constantly reminded that we are the victims of diversity, feminism and what has generally come to be known as “wokeness.” Here in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis plays the role of civil rights leader for us beleaguered straight, white males. This takes many forms. Most recently, the perpetual DeSantis campaign took credit for scuttling a National Hockey League job fair next month in South Florida that had been directed at recruiting “diverse job seekers who are pursuing careers in hockey.”

PALM SUNDAY Matthew 21.1 - 11 1 And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and were come to Bethphage, unto the mount of Olives, then sent Jesus two disciples, 2 Saying unto them, Go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her: loose them, and bring them unto me. 3 And if any man say ought unto you, ye shall say, The Lord hath need of them; and straightway he will send them. 4 All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the...

High school students at a New York high school staged a massive walk-out protest this week in opposition to the district’s attempts to force them to share restrooms with the opposite gender, in the name of “transgender” acceptance.Breitbart reports that the Wappingers Central School District, which oversees John Jay High School and other campuses, is set to allow students to choose whichever restrooms they want to use, rather than assigning them on the basis of their actual gender.The protest consisted entirely of students who do not support the policy, with one student, Shauna Neilan, saying that “a bunch of people...