Free Republic

Kamala Harris has been accused of plagiarism for the second time in as many weeks, this time including Congressional testimony she gave as a district attorney and at least one instance of lifting material from Wikipedia. According to the Washington Free Beacon, Harris lifted much of her 2007 testimony before Congress from a Republican district attorney in Illinois named Paul Logli. She also allegedly copied a paragraph from Wikipedia in a 2012 report on human trafficking. In a third instance, the outlet reported that Harris passed off a fictionalized story about a sex trafficking victim as fact, only changing the...

Tulsi Gabbard announces at Trump’s rally in NC that she is joining the Republican Party

Anthropic on Tuesday released an upgraded version of its Claude 3.5 Sonnet model that can understand and interact with any desktop app. Via a new “Computer Use” API, now in open beta, the model can imitate keystrokes, button clicks, and mouse gestures, essentially emulating a person sitting at a PC. “We trained Claude to see what’s happening on a screen and then use the software tools available to carry out tasks,” Anthropic wrote in a blog post shared with TechCrunch. “When a developer tasks Claude with using a piece of computer software and gives it the necessary access, Claude looks...

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's last poll before election day takes Georgia out of the "swing state" category and puts it firmly in Trump's column. Ever since shenanigans in Fulton County in 2020 led to a 0.24-point Biden victory in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, the left and the media have insisted on calling Georgia a swing state, a claim that ranks right up there with claiming Texas is going to elect a Democrat senator this year. State of Play As of Tuesday, FiveThirtyEight.com gives Trump a 2.0-point lead, and RealClearPoliitcis shows a 2.5-point lead. Trump has led in every poll...

U.S. officials said Russian social media influencers created and helped amplify fake videos and other false content that alleged abusive conduct by Tim Walz.U.S. intelligence officials on Tuesday said Russians seeking to disrupt the U.S. elections created and helped amplify fake videos and other false content last week that alleged abusive conduct by Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz. The content, which included false allegations that Walz had acted inappropriately with students while serving as a teacher and coach, was widely disseminated on social media, smearing Walz, the Minnesota governor, ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election. Walz and the Democratic...

Kamala Harris voiced opposition to providing religious exemptions in any federal legislation legalizing abortion nationwide in the event that such legislation is brought to her desk as president. The moment came during the vice president’s sit-down interview with NBC News’ Hallie Jackson. The network anchor asked Harris how she would advance baby-killing legislation at the federal level if elected president and Republicans control both chambers of Congress. Jackson also asked if she would be willing to make any “concessions” to get any prospective bill to her desk. Instead of answering the question, the Democrat presidential nominee pivoted to attacking President...

DETROIT, MI — Eyewitnesses at Kamala Harris' recent town hall with Liz Cheney say that the current Vice President lashed out at a citizen who tried to ask her a question, telling her "You're at the wrong town hall!" According to Maria Shriver, the facilitator at the town hall, Kamala's outburst was provoked by an ordinary, everyday citizen who got up to ask Kamala how she would respond to the problems with the US economy. "I think you're at the wrong town hall," Kamala reportedly fired back at the citizen as several Kamala staffers came to escort the poor woman...

Dalton is being evaluated by the team's medical staffCarolina Panthers quarterback Andy Dalton was involved in a car accident Tuesday, the team announced. Dalton's wife, three kids and family dog were also in the car at the time of the accident. A positive is that no one from Dalton's car was transported by emergency medical personnel. Dalton is being evaluated by the Panthers' medical staff. Dalton, who will turn 37 years old on Oct. 29, has been the Panthers starting quarterback for the majority of the season. Against the Raiders in Week 3, Dalton threw for 319 yards and three...

Updated, 4 PM, 10/22/24 Good afternoon, blog mates. Here’s your stat for the day: In the 15 rural counties, in-person voting, which is about 37 percent of the rural vote, the Rs lead the Ds by 73 percent to 11 percent. I kid you not. In rural mail ballots, the Rs lead the Ds by a wide margin, 46-28, but those in-person numbers are startling. They account for about 8,000 of the Rs nearly 12,000-votes lead in the rurals, which are punching above their weight with 13 percent of the vote (nearly 3 points above their percentage of reg voters)....

Israel on Tuesday confirmed it had killed Hashem Safieddine, the heir apparent to late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah who was killed last month in an Israeli attack targeting the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group. The military said Safieddine was killed in a strike carried out three weeks ago in Beirut's southern suburbs, its first confirmation of his death. Earlier this month, Israel said he had probably been eliminated. There was no immediate response from Hezbollah to Israel's statement that it had killed Safieddine. "We have reached Nasrallah, his replacement and most of Hezbollah's senior leadership. We will reach anyone who threatens...

Pope Francis says to vote for lesser of two evils, and we know abortion is the real evilThe pontiff insisted abortion and deportation are equally evil, but the lesser evil principle requires voting against the candidate who would do the most harm.(Population Research Institute) — I have long regarded this papacy as a kind of penance.From its sacrifice of the Underground Church in China to its suppression of the Latin Mass, from its dalliance with Masonry to its relentless sermonizing about climate change and our collective sins, it has at times seemed to be nothing more than a collection of...

ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10)– Known as Proposition 1 on the ballot, the Equal Rights Amendment would change the state constitution to expand discrimination protections to more people. That includes age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, and pregnancy outcomes. “I think most New Yorkers think we do have these rights,” said Senator Liz Krueger. “And we’ve passed many laws that say we have these rights. The dilemma is, if you end up in a discrimination lawsuit, and a court says we don’t see that in the constitution, we don’t have that right.” Supporters of the amendment say that adding pregnancy outcomes, it...

On Oct. 1, the Biden-Harris administration awarded $60,000 to anti-Israel scholar Seth Anziska to write a book about "Palestinian self-determination." One day later, the University College London professor criticized the Jewish state for fighting Hamas, condemned Israel's assassination of Hezbollah's leader, and called U.S. officials "merchants of death."The National Endowment for the Humanities granted Anziska the taxpayer-funded award on Oct. 1 for his book project focused on the "1982 invasion of Lebanon by Israel," also known as the First Lebanon War. The conflict, according to the grant description, "influenced movements for Palestinian self-determination."The war began with the Palestine Liberation Organization...

The Georgia Supreme Court has denied the Republican Party's request to immediately reinstate new ballot rules passed by the State Election Board (SEB) last month. The Peach State’s highest court said it will hear the Republican National Committee’s (RNC's) request for an expedited appeal late last week after Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas A. Cox, Jr. ruled the measures were "illegal, unconstitutional, and void." The one-page decision by the state Supreme Court released on Tuesday afternoon indicates that ruling will remain in place through Election Day. It was unanimously backed by all judges on the court. Cox's decision covered...

After decades of sitting on the sidelines of politics, Bill Gates, one of the richest people in the world, has said privately that he recently donated about $50 million to a nonprofit organization that is supporting Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential run, according to three people briefed on the matter. The donation was meant to stay under wraps. Mr. Gates, one of the founders of Microsoft, has not publicly endorsed Ms. Harris, and his donation would represent a significant change in the strategy that has previously kept him away from gifts like this. In private calls this year to friends...

According to an El País report, a team of researchers led by Carlos Odriozola of the University of Seville has studied replica amber beads produced by people living on the Iberian Peninsula between 3,000 and 5,000 years ago. More than 2,000 beads crafted to resemble amber have been found at 15 different Bronze Age sites in the region. Odriozola and his colleagues examined these imitation beads with infrared analysis techniques and computerized microtomography, and found that to begin the process, a stone or shell was chosen as a core material. Next, a mixture of pine resin, beeswax, and linseed oil...

Republicans have spent months and millions of dollars on an effort to push former President Donald J. Trump’s most loyal supporters to change their minds about voting early. There is some evidence to suggest it’s working. With polls opening on Tuesday in Wisconsin, some form of early voting has commenced in all seven of the swing states. As of Monday, 17 million people nationwide had already cast a vote — and there are initial indications that Republicans are showing up to the polls or returning absentee ballots with more gusto than in recent years. In many cases, Republican officials and...

oe Scarborough loves to describe himself as a conservative. On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough boasted at length of his conservatism, describing Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind (first published in 1953) as his philosophical North Star, keeping a copy of it on his desktop throughout his adult life. The show opened with a clip of Liz Cheney endorsing Kamala Harris. Scarborough praised Cheney for it, calling her a "real conservative" in the Kirkian tradition. [snip] So let's do a little thought experiment. What if, by some miracle, Liz Cheney had won the Republican nomination? And if that is too far-fetched, what...

Former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries and two others were arrested Tuesday as part of a criminal investigation into the alleged sex trafficking of more than a dozen victims, according to the FBI and federal prosecutors. Jeffries, his partner Matt Smith and a third man, Jim Jacobson, are accused of operating an international sex trafficking and prostitution business that recruited young men for parties in the U.S. and abroad, according to a 16-count indictment. The former retail executive and Smith relied on their vast financial resources, Jeffries' power as the CEO of Abercrombie, and numerous people, including Jacobson and...

Dozens of people across the U.S. have contracted E. coli traced to ingredients in McDonald's Quarter Pounders, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Tuesday. So far, 49 people from 10 states have fallen ill with a strain known as E. coli O157:H7, which causes a severe intestinal infection in humans. Most of the cases have been in Colorado, which has 27 reported cases, and Nebraska, which has nine reported cases, according to the CDC. MORE: Listeria recall expands to nearly 12 million pounds of meat, hits US schools Ten people have been hospitalized, including a child with...