Free Republic

As the US government weighs its options following a landmark “monopolist” ruling against Google last week, online publications increasingly face a bleak future. (And this time, it’s not just because of severely diminished ad revenue.) Bloomberg reports that their choice now boils down to allowing Google to use their published content to produce inline AI-generated search “answers” or losing visibility in the company’s search engine. The crux of the problem lies in the Googlebot, the crawler that scours and indexes the live web to produce the results you see when you enter search terms. If publishers block Google from using...

EXCLUSIVE — Under Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), the state of Minnesota awarded over $2 million to an Islamic group that fundraises for a charity linked to an al Qaeda affiliate, according to funding records reviewed by the Washington Examiner. The Islamic Association of North America, the recipient of the state grants from 2019 to 2024, is fundraising after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel last year for Rahma Worldwide, a Michigan-based charity that says it is shipping humanitarian aid to Gaza, according to flyers. In a since-deleted Facebook post in October 2023, Rahma Worldwide President Shadi Zaza revealed his charity...

Republican pollster Frank Luntz said early Friday that if he was to give advice to former President Trump, he would tell him “to stop behaving like a petulant child.” “If I were advising him, which I am not, I would look him straight in the eye and say, ‘Sir, you need to shut up. You need to stop behaving like a petulant child, and start focusing on what the American people want, in a way that they want to hear it,’” Luntz said on “CNN This Morning” with anchor Kasie Hunt. Republicans have pushed Trump to focus on policy differences...

Less than a month after announcing his retirement from touring due to serious health issues, Jack Russell, the frontman of Great White, has died. He was 63. “With tremendous sadness, we announce the loss of our beloved Jack Patrick Russell — father, husband, cousin, uncle, and friend,” a post on the singer’s X, formerly Twitter, page on Thursday read. “Jack passed peacefully in the presence of his wife Heather ann Russell, son Matthew Hucko, cousin Naomi Breshears Barbor, and dear friends Billy and Cherly Pawelcik.” White announced his retirement and revealed his health issues on his Facebook page on July...

Kamala Harris finally came out with a policy position. Her prior one was one that she swiped from her opponent, former President Donald Trump — no tax on tips. Her new policy was going after "price gouging" by corporations, saying that she'd crack down on "excessive prices" and "excessive profits." What qualifies as "excessive"? This smacks of the Soviet Union and communism, in addition to being truly bad policy. In the U.S., the government doesn't control/dictate to private companies. Now, what's pretty funny is that the Washington Post recognized this too, in an op-ed entitled: "When your opponent calls you...

[Catholic Caucus] Excommunicated woman ‘priest’ lauded in heterodox Catholic newspaperThe National Catholic Reporter has written sympathetically about ‘Father Anne’s' willingness 'to pay the price’ of excommunication to follow her call’ to the ‘priesthood.’Anne TropeanoThe heterodox National Catholic Reporter (NCR) has described an excommunicated woman who goes by the name “Father Anne” as a “priest” while shining a sympathetic light on her claims to sacramental priesthood.On Friday NCR published a news piece about the hopes of “Father Anne” (Anne Tropeano) — whom the newpaper describes without qualification (or even scare quotes) as a “priest” — that the Catholic Church will allow...

Democrats appear rattled that they could lose Senate, House, and presidential elections if Vice President Kamala Harris is transparent about policy solutions to reverse the administration’s failures. Harris, who has not held an unscripted press conference for 26 days since joining the race, is facing calls to not only remain hidden from the press but to keep her proposed policies a secret as she prepares to deliver economic proposals in North Carolina on Friday. Harris, however, already published several policies, such as socialist-style price controls, subsidies for homeowners, and two policies that copy the Trump-Vance ticket: a child tax credit...

Former President Donald Trump announced his White House transition team Friday, revealing the key members who will prepare his day-one rollout. The team will include Linda McMahon and Howard Lutnick as co-chairs, and some of Trump’s closest allies as honorary chairs, including his vice president, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, and his eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. McMahon is a former professional wrestling performer and business executive who served as Trump’s administrator of the Small Business Administration during his first term before chairing the super PAC America First Action. Lutnick, the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, is a billionaire...

16 August 2024 Friday of week 19 in Ordinary Time St. Stephen's Basilica, BudapestReadings at MassLiturgical Colour: Green. Year: B(II).First readingEzekiel 16:1-15,60,63I clothed you with my own splendour but you made yourself a prostituteThe word of the Lord was addressed to me as follows, ‘Son of man, confront Jerusalem with her filthy crimes. Say, “The Lord says this: By origin and birth you belong to the land of Canaan. Your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite. At birth, the very day you were born, there was no one to cut your navel-string, or wash you in...

Daniel Alman from Squirrel Hill @DanielAlmanPGH The profit margin for supermarkets is only 1.6%. #KamalaHarris said that's "excessive," and she wants to impose #PriceControls on food. Either she wants to cause food shortages, or she's too dumb to understand #Economics 101. Which is it? https://washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/15/kamala-harris-price-gouging-groceries/ #Communism

https://x.com/TonySeruga/status/1816913079780987070

Wait till you get a gander at the NYT's latest groundbreaking, earth-shattering, absolutely-not-years-late revelation about Hunter Biden!.Suddenly the New York Times has just had an epiphany. Hunter Biden, son of the President, might have been doing some not-so-kosher stuff with foreign countries! Gasp! Shock! Awe! Who could have possibly seen this coming? Oh, right. Everyone who's been paying attention for the last four years.With this month’s revelations that Hunter Biden directly contacted American officials for the benefit of foreign clients in Ukraine and allegedly Romania, and with Mr. Biden facing a new trial next month stemming from charges of tax...

Jan Markell features two guests: Michele Bachmann and Ken Mikle. We play a portion of Michele’s message from our recent conference. Then Ken Mikle, experienced in law enforcement, speaks into the inconsistencies in the Trump assassination attempt. Maranatha ☝️

The presidential campaign for Kamala Harris is now including special pronoun options for job applicants, as part of their commitment to diversity and inclusion. The job application for the Harris campaign includes nine different options for pronouns, including 'xe/xem,' 'ze/hir,' 'ey/em,' 'fae/faer' and 'hu/hu.' 'Fae/faer,' indicates a gender-fluid person but non-masculine, sometimes of Celtic origin. 'Hu/hu,' pronouns are third person gender-neutral pronouns referring to both a man and a woman. The other pronouns are considered gender neutral. 'Let the employer know what pronouns you use so that they can address you correctly,' the application reads. A tenth option exists allowing...

Hurricane Ernesto is closing in on the strongest strike on Bermuda in almost four years, then could brush parts of Newfoundland, Canada, early next week after its flooding rain and damaging winds hammered Puerto Rico and the Lesser Antilles. Ernesto will remain well off the U.S. East Coast, but beachgoers will need to be aware of its swells generating a threat of dangerous rip currents. C​urrent status: Category 2 Hurricane Ernesto is centered just over 200 miles south-southwest of Bermuda and is moving north-northeast. Ernesto's scope of strong winds continues to grow. Hurricane-force winds now extending up to 75 miles...

Terrified dictator Alexander Lukashenko has urged Russia and Ukraine to agree a peace deal to avoid the war spilling over into Belarus. President Lukashenko, a key ally of Vladimir Putin, said he fears Kyiv's troops are now planning an incursion into his nation after they launched a cross-border offensive in Russia. Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers smashed through Russia's western border on August 6 in a major embarrassment for Putin's top military brass. Now in an interview with Russia state television, Lukashenko has said that only 'high-ranking people of American origin' wanted the Ukraine-Russia war to continue. The West, he said,...

VIDEOTim Walz acting the part of the bland "white guy" pretends to Kamala Harris that black pepper is at the top of the spice level in Minnesota. In reality, Walz won several hotdish competitions while in Congress using a recipe of rather spicy ingredients. I might even cook it myself but I don't think my wife would like it because she can't tolerate food that is too spicy.

France and the United Kingdom must help Israel hit Iranian targets should the Islamic Republic make good on its threat to directly attack the Jewish state, Foreign Minister Israel Katz told his French and British counterparts on Friday. "If Iran attacks, Israel expects the international coalition led by the US, Britain, and France to join Israel not only in defense but also in attacking significant targets in Iran,” Katz said. He spoke after meeting with the foreign ministers of Great Britain David Lammy and of France Stéphane Séjourné in his office in Jerusalem. The two politicians made a lightning visit...

Election math should be simple: 1 Voter = 1 Ballot = 1 Valid Vote. Those 3 numbers should always match. That’s the basic goal of a commonsense election rule up for final approval by the State Board of Elections in Georgia on Aug. 19. The rule aligns exactly with Georgia’s election statutes on tabulating election results and ensures that election officials reconcile the number of ballots cast to the number of voters who are shown as having cast a ballot. If 200 voters cast ballots in a precinct, but election officials tally 220 ballots, election officials must investigate and find...

Guest Post by Miriam Judith It doesn’t even have to be a swing state… State officials have discovered over 3,000 illegal voters registered on Alabama’s state voter rolls. This report comes following Secretary of State Wes Allen ordering the removal of all non-citizens from the election database. During the officials’ review, the state found a whopping 3,251 individuals with ‘alien registration numbers’ who were registered to vote – despite it being a federal offense. The U.S. Constitution and federal laws unequivocally stipulate that only U.S. citizens are entitled to vote in federal elections. Secretary Allen’s decisive action to remove these...