Free Republic

It was worse than a bad hair day.Secret Service agents taped over a security camera and broke into a Massachusetts hair salon while securing the area for a Kamala Harris campaign event, according to the salon's owner.(snip)When Powers returned to the property later that day, she found the door's lock looked like it had been picked, she told BI.The people who entered the Four One Three Salon didn't do much damage aside from leaving an untidy bathroom behind, Powers said.But what bothered her was what she saw as sheer disregard for her business, by entering without permission and leaving the...

THIS is the moment a devastating Ukrainian missile bombardment killed 400 of Vladimir Putin's soldiers inside Russia. The footage shows HIMARS pounding a convoy and Russian troops sprinting for their lives near Rylsk, in the Kursk region. Putin's war machine was rushing to halt a surprise Ukrainian offensive launched two days ago into Russia, reports say. Ukraine's brave strike across the border has caught the Russians off-guard and captured a number of villages miles into the country. New black and white footage of the strike shows explosions mushrooming one after the other as HIMARS missiles hit the column of stationary...

JOY! IRRATIONAL EXUBERANCE SOARS TO NEW LEVEL. The polls suggest that many Democratic voters feel better about the new and untested candidacy of Kamala Harris than they did about the old and enfeebled candidacy of Joe Biden. But the polls cannot measure the off-the-scale enthusiasm for Harris and new running mate Tim Walz that is appearing every day in some of the nation’s biggest media outlets. Sometimes videos are more effective than lists. Look at this compilation of media figures marveling at what a “happy warrior” they believe Walz to be. He’s America’s coach or he’s America’s dad or both....

The Biden administration unleashed a torrent of criticism against Israel’s polarizing finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, on Friday after he referred to cease-fire negotiations with Hamas as a “dangerous trap.” White House national security communications adviser John Kirby said a lengthy statement posted by Smotrich to the social platform X made “ridiculous charges” regarding his opposition to a cease-fire deal to end the fighting in Gaza. “Some critics, like Mr. Smotrich, for example, have claimed that the hostage deal is a surrender to Hamas or that hostages should not be exchanged for prisoners. Mr. Smotrich essentially suggests that the war ought...

The chaplain of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s field artillery regiment said there is no excuse for the Democratic VP pick to have abandoned his National Guard unit before a critical deployment — not even running for Congress. “In our world, to drop out after a WARNORD [warning order] is issued is cowardly, especially for a senior enlisted guy,” retired Capt. Corey Bjertness, now a pastor in Horace, North Dakota, told The Post. Bjertness, 61, was the chaplain for the 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery, of which Walz was command sergeant major before retiring in 2005, two months before the unit...

The Maduro regime is broadcasting disturbing videos of its crackdown on dissent, featuring clips from Saw and music from A Nightmare on Elm Street.Nicolás Maduro claimed victory in the presidential race in Venezuela once again, but voting tally receipts collected and published online by his opposition reveal a very different outcome. In response, Maduro's regime has unleashed a brutal crackdown on dissent throughout the country. As part of "Operación Tun Tun" (Operation Knock Knock), the regime is showcasing its crusade against dissent on social media and national television. Videos typically begin with footage of a protester, followed by music from...

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Az.) on Friday called on the Biden administration to pause approvals for deepwater oil export terminals. In a letter to the U.S. Department of Transportation Maritime Administration (MARAD), Markey and Grijalva called for the approval criteria for deepwater terminals to be expanded to factor in criteria like public health, environmental justice and impact on climate change. The criteria currently requires MARAD to determine whether such ports “will be in the national interest and consistent with national security and other national policy goals and objectives, including energy sufficiency and environmental quality.” In its...

Female NYPD officer left bloodied after she’s punched in the face by repeat offender, leading to wild caught-on-camera arrestA repeat offender on probation allegedly punched an NYPD officer so hard that she fell to the ground before other cops pounced on the violent suspect on a Bronx sidewalk Thursday evening in a caught-on-camera arrest. Ernst Delma, 41, slugged the female officer in the face when she tried to break up an argument between him and a group of kids around 7:10 p.m. on the corner of Rosedale and Randall avenues, authorities and law enforcement sources said. Footage captured by a...

Breaking, a.k.a. break dancing, kicked off its inaugural appearance as an Olympic sport in style. Snoop Dogg opened the competition Friday at Place de la Concorde in Paris via the coup de baton, when a wooden baton is struck on the floor to signal an event’s commencement. Dressed in a red, white and blue tracksuit, the Grammy-nominated rapper — who has been making the most of his time in Paris and reportedly earning $500,000 per day as an Olympics correspondent for NBC and Peacock — accessorized with colorful kicks as the festivities got underway. Men and women will compete separately...

COSMIC! This name has become increasingly popular in the open-source community over the past year, raising high expectations. Now, more than two years after System76 unexpectedly announced its bold plan to create a new desktop environment written in Rust programming language from scratch, users can finally try it out. And let me tell you, the wait was worth it.We recently tested the alpha version of COSMIC, and our initial thoughts can be summed up most briefly with this: it’s a game-changer! Above all, it is incredibly fast. And when I say fast, I don’t just mean fast – it’s fast...

A former North Dakota State Senator pleaded guilty today to traveling to Prague, Czech Republic, to have commercial sex with minor boys. According to court documents and facts established in public proceedings, Ray Holmberg, 80, of Grand Forks, took approximately 14 trips to Prague between 2011 and 2021 to engage in commercial sex acts with minor boys. During some of these trips, Holmberg used the alias “Sean Evans” while staying at a brothel where young boys provided commercial sexual services. Holmberg also went to a public park in front of the main train station in Prague to procure sex from...

[Catholic Caucus] Vatican loosens stance on food, water for patients in vegetative stateROME – This week the Vatican’s Academy for Life issued a new text on a series of bioethical issues, including the provision of food and hydration for patients in a vegetative state, which marks a modest departure from the Vatican’s previously held position on the issue.Published Thursday by the Pontifical Academy for Life (PAV), the volume is titled, “Small Lexicon on End of Life,” and covers a variety of bioethical issues.According to an introduction by Italian Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the PAV, the volume has the aim...

Explanation: Denizens of planet Earth typically watch meteor showers by looking up. But this remarkable view, captured on August 13, 2011 by astronaut Ron Garan, caught a Perseid meteor by looking down. From Garan's perspective on board the International Space Station orbiting at an altitude of about 380 kilometers, the Perseid meteors streak below, swept up dust from comet Swift-Tuttle. The vaporizing comet dust grains are traveling at about 60 kilometers per second through the denser atmosphere around 100 kilometers above Earth's surface. In this case, the foreshortened meteor flash is near frame center, below the curving limb of the...

As Vice President Kamala Harris fights for the votes of Americans threatening to abandon the Democratic Party, she faces challenges across the battleground states, from working-class Nevada communities to Arab American enclaves in Michigan.But perhaps no swing state has vexed Democrats as much this year as Arizona.A longtime Republican stronghold before President Biden’s victory in 2020, the state is tricky political territory for Democrats, who confront magnified concerns over the number of migrants coming across the U.S.-Mexico border. A handful of polls in recent weeks have shown former President Donald J. Trump leading Ms. Harris by the mid-single digits, even...

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is reportedly closing in on Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in the Gaza Strip, as he runs out of places to hide and as other senior members of the terrorist organization are eliminated. The Jerusalem Post reported Friday: Sinwar is almost alone at the top of Hamas. His close friends in the senior military ranks of the organization, as well as the senior officials, have been eliminated or have disappeared: Mohammad Deif, Rafa’a Salama, Ahmed Ghandour, Raad Saad, and Ayman Nofal. … The fact that Sinwar’s entire operational hub has disappeared makes it difficult for him,...

Conscription — a practice most Americans believe should be relegated to the dustbin of history — has returned as an uncomfortable topic of conversation among U.S. allies and adversaries alike. This has generated concern and even conspiracy theories among American voters. But a candid discussion would be healthier. The fact is, if the United States hopes to deter or defeat a Chinese attack on Taiwan, it should be prepared to effectively implement a draft. To be clear, this is a solution of last resort, but one that may be necessary. Right now, U.S. mobilization has not been tested in decades....

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VIDEOAgenda-Free TV becomes like "Seinfeld" a show about NOTHING when NOTHING happens as they spent eight and a half hours waiting for something, anything to happen as live cameras capture NOTHING happening in Israel as they anticipated an attack from Iran in retaliation for the assassination of a Hamas leader in Tehran. Mercifully, the DUmmie FUnnies will show you only very brief clips of absolutely NOTHING happening on Agenda-Free TV as Steve Lookner and his audience waited for NOTHING to happen. Okay, something actually did happen. Steve took a meal break which was the highlight of his eight and a...

The violent unrest that has broken out in multiple towns across England and Northern Ireland this week feels simultaneously shocking and familiar. Rioters have rampaged across more than 15 towns and cities, looting businesses, injuring police officers, attacking mosques and targeting hotels that house asylum seekers. Britain has had sporadic outbreaks of semi-organized mob violence for decades, including brawls by infamous “firms” of soccer hooligans in the 1980s and ’90s, an outbreak of race rioting in northern England in 2001 and a spate of rioting and looting centered on London in 2011. But some circumstances are markedly different. While the...

Microsoft's Outlook email is changing in September. You can no longer set your email program's Authentication Method to Normal Password. You must set it to OAuth2. I'm having difficulty doing this. My Thunderbird, fully up to date, allows me to set the Server Settings to OAuth2, but my Outgoing Server (SMPT) setting has no OAuth2 option. Also, when I log into MS online, it wants to verify me. MS has my phone number, and my non-Outlook email (which forwards to my Outlook address). But though MS claims to have texted and emailed verification codes to me, I never receive them....