Free Republic

Isn’t this the true “threat to democracy” endlessly brayed about by the Left? President Biden’s incoherent debate performance appeared to shock the world. But is it truly surprising? Politician Biden has always been a phony and a grifter. He has never been the sharpest tool in the shed, but his accelerating decline over the last few years has been obvious to everyone. Yet when conservative media points this out they are savaged by the Left, accused of “cheap fakes” and purely political motivation. Here is a list of just some of the people who were absolutely aware of President Biden’s...

Federal prosecutors said they are willing to disclose whether they used a controversial surveillance program to foil a Florida neo-Nazi leader’s alleged plot to attack Baltimore’s power grid last year, but will only do so in secret, during a classified meeting with the judge handling the case. Government lawyers refused Thursday to disclose publicly whether they used Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to build the case against the accused plotter, Brandon C. Russell, but agreed to a private meeting with Senior U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar where they will provide more information. Russell’s defense team remains...

Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas is tipped to become the European Union's next foreign policy boss, but her tough stance on Russia may raise doubts as to whether she can represent views from across the bloc. EU leaders' informal talks on Monday, their first since the European Parliament election, focus on the appointments for the bloc's top jobs, with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen expected to secure a second term and EU diplomats saying Kallas is in line for the foreign affairs role. Kallas, who turns 47 on Tuesday, has made her name as an eloquent critic of...

The 2023 census of Albania has shown a notable demographic change that marks a historic transformation in the religious scene of the nation. Muslims are no longer the majority of the population for the first time in more than 200 years. The Muslim count dropped to 45.7% based on the most recent census figures. This is a clear departure from past years when Muslims often accounted for the majority. On the other hand, the nonreligious population has grown somewhat steadily, reaching 23.4%. Furthermore, the Orthodox Christian community has expanded and now accounts for twenty percent of the population overall The...

The establishment left formulated its line quickly after Old Joe Biden’s catastrophic debate performance Thursday night, and now that line has received the stamp of approval not only from The Great Debater himself but from his handler of handers, the sainted one himself, Barack Hussein Obama. On Friday, both Biden and Obama halfheartedly conceded that Joe lost the debate but insisted that the putative president had won a much more important contest: Bad Orange Man lies with every breath, while Joe is unimpeachable (in all senses of the word), as honest as the day is long. But really, is he?

@LeadingReport BREAKING: New Jersey has not been won by a Republican since 1988, and now former President DJT leads the incumbent by 1%, according to a new Coefficient poll.

Some Democrats began calling for President Joe Biden to step aside so the party can nominate another candidate after he stumbled badly in Thursday's debate against his Republican rival, former President Donald Trump. "This was like a champion boxer who gets in the ring past his prime and needs his corner to throw in the towel," said a Democratic lawmaker, adding that he meant Biden should exit the race. The options for a switch are limited: If the president doesn't choose to leave of his own volition, there would have to be a revolt among Democratic National Convention delegates, the...

Election bettors had a visceral reaction to the CNN Presidential Debate on Thursday night, with the odds that President Biden will prevail in November taking a nosedive. PredictIt.org, an election betting website, showed shares predicting that the Democratic incumbent will win re-election dropped 15 points in the aftermath of Biden's widely panned debate performance. The website allows users to buy shares in a candidate, priced between 1 and 99 cents, which corresponds to the market's estimate of the probability that the candidate will win. Before the debate, the 81-year-old Biden traded at 48 cents per share. But in just one...

Did NAIOP get the memo? NAIOP (National Association of Industrial and Office Properties) is a trade group comprised of commericial real estate developers and academics. Lobbying for more office space to be built despite overbuilding, Another chink in the armor of the US economy (not the roaring economy Biden and Yellen keep screaming about). Overbuilding of office space, COVID shutdowns, remote working and urban crime. A recipe for office vacancy. Moody's predicts 24% of office towers will be vacant by 2026! During the first three months of 2023, U.S. office vacancy topped 20 percent for the first time in decades....

Slowly but steadily this summer, Russian troops are forging through Ukraine’s outgunned and undermanned defenses in a relentless onslaught, prompting the West to push for new weapons and strategies to shore up Kyiv. Russia took advantage of its edge in firepower amid delays in U.S. aid to scale up attacks in several areas along the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front. Relatively small units are probing Ukrainian defenses for weak spots, potentially setting the stage for a more ambitious push. Meanwhile, Russia has made incremental but steady advances in the Donetsk region, including around the strategic hilltop town of Chasiv Yar, a gateway...

Jan and Els were married for almost five decades. In early June, they died together after being given lethal medication by two doctors. In the Netherlands, this is known as duo-euthanasia. It’s legal, and it’s rare - but every year, more Dutch couples choose to end their lives this way. Some people might find this article upsetting ... .

Washington — In a blockbuster decision Friday, the Supreme Court overruled a 40-year-old decision that directed federal courts to defer to agencies' interpretation of unclear laws enacted by Congress. The landmark ruling from the court, which divided 6-3 along ideological lines, curtails the regulatory power of federal agencies and is expected to restrict the government's ability to impose regulations on areas like the environment, health care and the workplace. The decision marks a major victory for the conservative legal movement, which has long called for dismantling the framework that arose out of the 1984 ruling in a case known...

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Thursday that an order barring an anti-abortion protester from coming close to a Planned Parenthood nurse violated his First Amendment free speech rights and must be overturned. The court, controlled 4-3 by liberals, ruled unanimously in ordering that the injunction be dismissed. A Trempealeu County judge in 2020 barred Brian Aish from being near nurse Nancy Kindschy who sometimes worked in a small family planning clinic in the western Wisconsin city of Blair. Kindschy said Aish threatened her by saying bad things would happen to her or her family if she didn't quit her...

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — Mall of America now has a new way to keep shoppers safe. A new high-tech layer of security has been added after gun-related incidents in recent years. Signs let you know you're coming face to face with new facial recognition technology. "Very mixed feelings about this because it could be useful and not so useful sometimes," said Melva Bargiela, a long-time Minnesota resident who is now living in Spain. Cameras with the ability to map faces have been installed to give shoppers peace of mind while detecting potential threats. "I think they're watching us all the...

New insights into the function of the world's oldest analog computer, the famous Antikythera mechanism, have been made with help from an unlikely source: technology developed for the study of gravitational waves...Roughly the size of a shoebox, the device features an array of intricately tooled gears that are surprisingly complex for any innovation from the second century BCE. Over the decades, studies of the device have revealed that it likely functioned as a hand-operated computer that would have allowed its operator to predict the arrival of eclipses, as well as calculate the positions of planets over time.Fast forward to 2020,...

A study shows that repetitive tasks carried out by ancient Egyptian scribes – high status men with the ability to write who performed administrative tasks – and the positions they sat in while working may have led to degenerative skeletal changes.Researchers in Prague, Czech Republic, examined the skeletal remains of 69 adults males, 30 of whom were scribes, who were buried in the necropolis at Abusir, Egypt...They identified degenerative joint changes that were more common among scribes compared to men with other occupations.These changes were in the joints connecting the lower jaw to the skull, the right collarbone and the...

Tokyo — Japanese health supplement maker Kobayashi Pharmaceutical said Friday it was probing 76 more deaths possibly linked to its tablets containing red yeast rice, meant to lower cholesterol. It deepens a scandal that erupted earlier this year when the company said it was looking into five deaths potentially linked to the over-the-counter products after dozens of customers reported kidney problems... Fermented with a mould culture, red yeast rice, or "benikoji," has been used in food, alcoholic drinks and folk medicines for centuries around East Asia. "Even if the direct cause of hospitalisation or death was not kidney-related disease,...

Paris — Voters in France go to the polls Sunday for the first of two rounds of an election to select 577 members of the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament. The snap elections were called by President Emmanuel Macron on June 9 after his ruling Renaissance party performed poorly in elections for the European Parliament, which governs the 27-nation European Union snip... Opinion polls ahead of the first round showed the far-right grouping of parties led by Marine Le Pen's National Rally (RN) firmly in the lead, predicted to win 36% of the vote. Polls indicate the far-right...

Neurodegenerative diseases (NDDs) result in irreversible damage to the brain and nervous system. Research into these diseases typically focuses on the brain, but mouse studies from the last few years suggest that the microbiome plays a role in the onset and progression of some NDDs, as well. Those researchers report a new link in humans between a metabolite produced by gut microbes and three NDDs. Their analysis suggests that the metabolite DHPS (2,3-dihydroxypropane-1-sulfonate) may help answer critical questions about how sulfur metabolism pathways can connect the microbiome to these diseases. DHPS has not previously been detected in people, and the...

Muted microphones and no live studio audience were among the debate guidelines.The nation watched as President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump squared up Thursday evening in the first presidential debate of the 2024 general election. While this debate wasn't the first time the two candidates contended over issues ranging from immigration and the economy to abortion access -- this presidential debate saw the two candidates forced to follow the rules. Ahead of the debate, held in a studio at CNN's Atlanta headquarters, both campaigns agreed to a set of guidelines established by CNN, which included muted microphones, no...