Free Republic

"Hooray for Hollywood" is the name of the song, not my general disposition toward that industry in its contemporary incarnation. For almost the more than two-decade history of this website, we have marked Oscar Night by celebrating an Oscar-winning song from the last nine decades, even though the Best Original Song category was one of the first to start running on fumes. Now the whole show is. I wasn't even aware tonight was Oscar Night until it was pointed out to me, and I would wager that general lack of interest will be confirmed by the ratings: it's a long...

The student council of Harvard Law School passed an anti-Israel resolution on Friday — after changing the voting rules to do so. The resolution calls on Harvard University to divest from the Jewish state and anything connected with it. As the Daily Wire reported last week, the Harvard Law School Government amended its bylaws to allow for a secret ballot by its elected representatives for the first time in the history of the institution. The Harvard Crimson reported that the resolution passed 12-4, with three abstentions. It resulted in two members of the council resigning in protest, condemning the change...

One thing we know about Pope Francis: He has an unhealthy obsession with Judas. In his private apartments, a crude painting hangs which depicts the risen Jesus ministering to Judas’s body after his suicide. Francis has repeatedly mused that Judas might have been saved — in support of the suggestion that no one is finally damned. That’s a heresy the early Church condemned for turning the drama of our salvation into a farce with a forced happy ending. You might think Francis is simply a little “too merciful.” Read my three-part analysis of the dark, perverse motivations that more likely...

London’s Metropolitan Police has come under criticism after footage emerged showing an officer telling a Jewish woman that swastikas seen at a pro-Palestinian protest should be “taken in context”. A clip shared widely online appeared to show a London police officer suggesting that under certain circumstances swastikas paraded in public could be legal, despite Britain’s tough restrictions on so-called hate speech. In the clip filmed at a pro-Palestinian rally on Saturday, the officer was heard telling a Jewish woman: “I don’t have an in-depth knowledge of signs and symbols. I know the swastika was used by the Nazi party during...

On September 11, 2001, Muslim terrorists attacked the Twin Towers and the Pentagon and would have attacked Congress were it not for the brave people on United Flight 93. They immediately killed 2,977 people, with untold others dying later from injuries, such as lung ailments and cancer. For one brief moment, Americans understood that Islam was engaged in an existential war against the West. That’s a war that began in the early Middle Ages and has continued in fits and starts since then. The latest hot front in that war is Israel, but make no mistake: This is a global...

Fifty years ago tonight after a nine-month gestation I was decanted from my mother's womb. I very nearly didn't survive. When I came out I wasn't breathing or moving at all. It was twelve minutes before inhalation was finally induced. Some have wondered if I've been brain damaged because of that. I don't know. But here I am fifty years later, feeling better than when I turned thirty. God has brought me far, past a lot of dark times and pain. But I'm in a place where I'm truly thankful and looking forward to where the next fifty years take...

These are the latest victims of New York's 'insane' housing laws that have given way to a wave of absurd squatting incidents where homeowners find themselves forced to go to court to kick out brazen would-be tenants. Denis and Juliya are a married couple who invested $530,000 in a property in Jamaica, Queens, several years ago. On March 5, a broker they were working with visited the property for a site check before allowing tenants to move in and found the locks had been changed.

Strikes on Russian oil refineries have a significant impact on Russia’s ability to conduct warfare. Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, Commander of U.S. Forces Europe in 2014-17, stated this during the 16th annual Kyiv Security Forum. “Of course, attacks on oil refineries have a significant impact. Russia is less able to pay for this war, and it also deprives it of the necessary fuel to continue hostilities. I would recommend ignoring the calls for an end to such attacks.” The Lieutenant General emphasized that sanctions against Russia need to be strengthened. He also added that 2024 will be the year of...

World renowned CV19 critical care and pulmonary expert Dr. Pierre Kory was one of the first to call for Ivermectin to treat Covid in the early days of the pandemic. Instead of using Ivermectin, the FDA and CDC vilified the drug and questioned its effectiveness even though Ivermectin won a Nobel Prize for safety and efficacy in 2015. Because of these actions from the FDA and CDC, people died in the hundreds of thousands in America alone for lack of treatment from a cheap and effective drug to treat Covid. Dr. Kory thinks he knows what happened and explains, “The...

This Easter Sunday is the 33rd anniversary of what the late Sen. Ted Kennedy would soon be describing as his family’s “traditional Easter weekend” in Palm Beach. And indeed it was traditional, in the Kennedy meaning of the phrase, which is to say rape accusations, cruelty and epic drunkenness, not to mention entitlement and depravity of the sort that characterized the entire squalid life of Sen. Ted Kennedy. But before recounting Ted Kennedy’s lost Easter weekend, consider that his fondest dream, our worst nightmare, is finally on the verge of being realized. I refer, of course, to the fundamental transformation...

CNN's John King slammed former President Donald Trump for attending the wake of slain New York Police officer Jonathan Diller, saying "while President Biden was holding a perfectly normal $100,000 per ticket celebrity fund-raiser at the Essex House hotel, Trump was exploiting a tragedy for political advantage." Trump didn't shy away from King's criticism. "The brazen lawlessness that we see under the Biden Administration cries out for remedy," he asserted. "Yet, murders like the one of Officer Diller are ignored by the Democrats. Time-after-time we see that the perpetrators of vicious crimes are on release without bail when they harm...

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd warns squatters he will be their ‘worst enemy’ and has a place for them in jail NEWS Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd warns squatters he will be their ‘worst enemy’ and has a place for them in jail “So one of the first things [to] do is change the language: ‘the bad dude.’ What does that mean? What are the circumstances of that person coming into the criminal justice system in the first place? And what is the background to that person?” she said in a 2017 interview. The Florida sheriff said the idea the...

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg couldn’t give a time frame Sunday for when debris from the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse will be cleared from the critical mega US shipping channel. “We haven’t received a timeline yet,” the country’s top transportation chief told CBS’ “Face the Nation” of the massive expected clean-up of the wreckage from the destroyed Baltimore span, which runs roughly 1.6 miles over the Patapsco River, a key transportation route that handled a whopping $80 billion in cargo last year. “This is going to be a very complex process, there are even now forces acting on that steel,”...

Spring has sprung! And I'm feeling rather like the dramatis personae in what is apparently now just another of those "problematic" pictures, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (although, personally, I far prefer the director's cut, Fourteen Brides for Fourteen Brothers - presumably even more problematic): Oh, the barnyard is busy In a regular tizzy And the obvious reason Is because of the season Ma Nature's lyrical With her yearly miracle Spring, Spring, Spring...In Spring a young man's fancy turns to songs about a young man's fancy. Not that you have to be homo sapiens to feel the old sap rising...

VIDEOWhat is most striking about the 2024 Marxism Conference in Melbourne, Australia that has been going on over the Easter weekend isn't the idiotic blather from the naïve Communist attendees that we've all heard before. Instead it is the photo of the audience itself revealing absolute fealty to virtue signaling COVID masking rules that most of the rest of the world has already ditched. The only reason for their demand for absolute obedience from the Commie audience is to demonstrate Commie control which reveals that was the whole purpose of the worldwide masking and mandate rules during COVID. So you...

Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio) brushed off accusations that progressives are influencing President Biden’s border policy on Sunday, describing the president as “very independent” on the issue. The concerns were raised after Biden appeared to back off promises to use executive action to close the border, following mass criticism from progressives. The left wing of the Democratic Party has been critical of the president over his willingness to embrace hard-line immigration policy, which they argue is reminiscent of former President Trump.

Happy Easter! I mean Happy TRADITIONAL Easter, not a Biden weird trans celebration. Biden and Congress (Schumer, Johnson, McConnell, etc) spend and borrow like its cottage cheese. After hitting $1 trillion in late 2023, interest expense on US debt rose to a record $1.1 trillion in late March, and ii) while US debt is now rising at a pace of $1 trillion every 3 months, US interest expense is rising at a just as torrid $100 billion every 4 months (this interval will also shrink to three months very soon). he Biggest Picture: $1.1tn in interest payments on US government...

Governor Wes Moore (D-MD) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that claiming the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge was due to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies was “foolishness.” Host Dana Bash said, “Some Republicans are trying to blame the bridge collapse on policies that encourage workplace diversity. A Utah state representative who is running for governor tweeted, quote, ‘This is what happens when you have governors who prioritize diversity over the well-being and security of citizens.’ Another Republican running for Congress in Florida posted ‘DEI did this.’ What’s your response?”

An investigator with the Chemung County Sheriff’s Office is fighting for his life after being thrown from the hood of a moving car while trying to apprehend a suspect in Big Flats Friday night. On Friday, the Chemung County Sheriff’s Office and the New York State Police were conducting a joint retail theft operation in Consumer Square, in the Town of Big Flats. At about 6:45 pm, while pursuing a larceny suspect in the Target parking lot, the subject ran towards a getaway vehicle and jumped on the hood with Inv. Mike Theetge in close pursuit tackling him on top...

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) are neurodegenerative diseases that commonly occur in middle-aged people. Both ALS and FTD arise from neuronal degeneration through mechanisms that remain unclear. Dr. Yun-Ru (Ruby) Chen's team recently discovered a new pathological mechanism for neuronal degeneration using synthetic peptides. They also discovered that a disaccharide can increase neuronal survival and reduce degeneration. The result provides therapeutic strategies for future treatment. ALS and FTD differ in clinical symptoms, but they share many pathological features and genetic variations. Clinical data shows that more than 90% of ALS and about 70% of FTD patients are...