Free Republic

Spring is a wonderful time of year. Despite T.S. Eliot’s line that “April is the cruelest month,” spring is a time of renewal, a good time to remind ourselves to open up to new facets of life. One of the best things about spring, to me, is the opening of the baseball season. I am a fervent baseball fan. To me, there is a good deal of metaphysics in baseball. You start out at a place called home, then you go on a little journey like the Prodigal Son, the aim being to return home. The ones who go home...

Former President Donald Trump’s campaign is ripping the current president and two former presidents for disrespecting a slain New York City police officer by skipping his wake to instead live it up in the Big Apple at a glitzy fundraiser.As Breitbart News reported on Thursday, Trump is set to attend the wake of Officer Jonathan Diller, who was killed during a traffic stop when a criminal shot him below his bulletproof vest. While Trump—the presumptive Republican nominee for president in 2024—attends the wake for Officer Diller, Democrat President Joe Biden has different plans for Thursday. Biden will join former Democrat...

The MP Andrew Bridgen has been ordered to pay Matt Hancock more than £40,000 in legal fees after an early stage of their libel battle. The MP for North West Leicestershire is bringing a libel claim against the former health secretary regarding a January 2023 message on X that followed Bridgen posting a comment about Covid-19 vaccines. The high court in London previously heard that Bridgen wanted to “clear his name” after allegedly being accused of antisemitism in a “malicious” social media post by the former I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! contestant. At the previous hearing,...

MOSCOW/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Russian investigators said on Thursday they had found proof that gunmen who killed more than 140 people at a concert last week were linked to "Ukrainian nationalists", an assertion immediately dismissed by the United States as baseless propaganda.Russia has said from the outset that it believes Ukraine was linked to the attack, even though Kyiv has denied it and the militant group Islamic State has claimed responsibility.In a statement, Russia's Investigative Committee said for the first time that it had uncovered proof of a Ukrainian connection. While it described the nature of the alleged evidence, it did not...

The chief diversity officer of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, LaVar Charleston, who also teaches at the university’s school of education, has a decades-long track record of research misconduct, according to a complaint filed with the university on Wednesday and a Washington Free Beacon analysis. That misconduct includes presenting old studies as new research, which he has done at least five times over the course of his career. FreeBeacon At Columbia, an Israeli-Designated Terror Group Teaches 'Palestinian Resistance 101'—And Lauds Plane Hijackings Read more The complaint, which was filed anonymously, implicates eight of Charleston’s publications, many of them coauthored, and accuses...

The Uniparty is quietly scheming (again) to rig the system and prevent President Trump from ever becoming President. This scheme involves a two-part strategy: using a combination of strategically planned retirements of Republican House members, coupled with the passage of carefully tailored legislation to remove President Trump from the ballot on bogus Insurrection grounds that would likely pass muster with moderate justices on the Supreme Court, like John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett, who prefer to avoid deciding on “controversial” legal questions and risk being seen in a bad light by their liberal peers.

When and why did American life become so coarse, amoral and ungovernable? In his classic 1993 essay, “Defining Deviancy Down”, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan offered a semantic explanation. He concluded that, as the amount of deviant behaviour increased beyond the levels the community can “afford to recognise”, we have been redefining deviancy so as to exempt conduct we used to stigmatise, while also quietly raising the “normal” level in categories where behaviour is now abnormal by any earlier standard. The reasons behind this, he said, were altruism, opportunism and denial — but the result was the same: an...

THIS is the dramatic moment Vladimir Putin's £32 million Su-27 fighter jet plunges into flames in the Black Sea. Footage shows the pilot ejecting from the burning aircraft and launching his parachute before it explodes into a fireball inferno. The plane could be seen hurtling through the sky as onlookers watched on with horror from below. The aircraft eventually smashed into the sea off annexed Sevastopol in Crimea, but not before the pilot managed to escape within an inch of his life.

NEW YORK (AP) — The number of U.S. tuberculosis cases in 2023 were the highest in a decade, according to a new government report. Forty states reported an increase in TB, and rates were up among all age groups, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday. More than 9,600 cases were reported, a 16% increase from 2022 and the highest since 2013.

Voters not thrilled with their options for president will be able to vote for anybody else. Literally. U.S. Army veteran and teacher formerly known as Dustin Ebey announced he had changed his name to “Literally Anybody Else” is now running for president. “For too long have Americans been a victim of its political parties putting party loyalty over governance. Together lets send the message to Washington and say, ‘You will represent the people or be replace,” his bio states. He is seeking to receive 13,000 signatures from Texas non-primary voters by May in order to make it onto the general...

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Even on the Kennedy Scale, Robert F. Kennedy Jr's sexual dalliances are legendary — as in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the Legend of Legend of Hell House, or the Legend of Chupacabra. It's all awful and somebody ends up dead. Kennedy's father, Bobby, and uncles, Jack and Ted, were also notorious lechers. Cruel comparisons were drawn — sometimes by Democrats — between Bill Clinton's conquests like Paula Jones and Marylin Monroe. Monroe was rumored to have been passed around between JFK and RFK, perhaps contributing to her untimely death by a barbiturate overdose in 1962. RFK is believed to...

John 13:1-15 Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus washes the disciples’ feet. He is giving them a visual proclamation of his new commandment:“Love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.”When we accept this commandment, we walk the path of joy. When we internalize this law, we become happy. And so the paradox: happiness is never a function of filling oneself up; it is a wonderful function of giving oneself away.When the divine grace enters one’s life (and everything we have is the result of divine grace), the task is to contrive a way to...

A 2018 letter from Michael Cohen’s lawyers admitting Trump knew nothing about the Stormy Daniels ‘hush money’ transaction re-emerged as the judge set the trial for April 15. Last year the Daily Mail obtained a 2018 letter from Michael Cohen’s lawyer stating Cohen used his own personal money to pay Porn Star Stormy Daniels in 2016. The letter also states that the Trump Org nor the Trump campaign reimbursed Michael Cohen for the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels. This directly contradicts Cohen’s testimony – not surprising given Michael Cohen is a convicted perjurer. Trump has been accused of paying Daniels...

Explanation: Globular star cluster Omega Centauri, also known as NGC 5139, is 15,000 light-years away. The cluster is packed with about 10 million stars much older than the Sun within a volume about 150 light-years in diameter. It's the largest and brightest of 200 or so known globular clusters that roam the halo of our Milky Way galaxy. Though most star clusters consist of stars with the same age and composition, the enigmatic Omega Cen exhibits the presence of different stellar populations with a spread of ages and chemical abundances. In fact, Omega Cen may be the remnant core of...

To understand how Russian police is programmed to fail people over and over again is crucial in understanding how Russia works in general. Transcript Follow along using the transcript (link). .....

The failed politician who was arrested for allegedly sucker-punching a 23-year-old woman in Manhattan on Monday has a penchant for documenting his harassment of women on his multiple TikTok accounts. Skiboky Stora, 40, of East New York, was charged with assault Wednesday in connection with a random Monday attack on Halley Kate Mcgookin after she recounted the incident to her more than a million TikTok followers. Stora, an aspiring rapper who unsuccessfully ran for mayor, governor and City Council over the past three years, appears to maintain ten different TikTok accounts, which were viewed by The Post and document his...

Michigan’s Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is facing backlash for her rent subsidies for illegals program after an illegal border crosser allegedly murdered a woman. A previously deported illegal alien, identified as Brandon Ortiz-Vite, was arrested and charged with the murder of 25-year-old Ruby Garcia in Kent County, Michigan. The illegal from Mexico was charged with felony murder, open murder, carjacking, carrying a concealed weapon, and felony possession of a firearm for the March 22 incident. Ortiz-Vite stands accused of murdering Ruby Garcia and leaving her body beside the road on U.S. Highway 31.

House Speaker Mike Johnson on Thursday notified Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) that the House will deliver the articles of impeachment against DHS Chief Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate on April 10. “Together with the 11 House impeachment managers, I sent a letter to Senator Schumer telling him we’ll deliver the articles of Secretary Mayorkas’ impeachment to the Senate on April 10th and that he must hold a full trial,” Speaker Johnson said. “The American people deserve accountability,” he added.

Democrats in Congress are encouraging the Biden administration to quickly enact a slew of far-reaching regulations ahead of the 2024 presidential election, according to Punchbowl News. The Biden administration has pursued an aggressive regulatory agenda to implement President Joe Biden’s political priorities, including measures to encourage the production of more electric vehicles, forgive student loans, restrict “junk fees” by service providers and ban non-competition clauses in contracts, among many others. Amid concerns that Biden may not win the election against former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, Democrats have been encouraging the administration to finalize rules as soon as...