Free Republic

On January 20, 1981, Iran released 52 Americans it had held hostage for 444 days, minutes after the presidency had passed from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan.

Bacillus subtilis bacteria with green fluorescence indicating a lack of magnesium. (Ashley Moon, Süel Lab, UC San Diego) New tactics in controlling infection are sorely needed, with antibiotic-resistant bacteria expected to claim as many as 2 million lives each year by 2050. US and Spanish researchers have now discovered at least some bacteria pay a steep price for their resistance – a cost that we may be able to exploit to fight infection. "We discovered an Achilles heel of antibiotic-resistant bacteria," says molecular biologist Gürol Süel from the University of California, San Diego. "We can take advantage of this cost...

ontingent on political beliefs or withhold services based on them. In other words, there are not supposed to be loyalty oaths in this country. But California’s new law requiring foster parents to “affirm” the sexuality and gender identity of kids as a condition for caring for them is leading to a purge of Christian families from the foster care system, according to Christian groups and conservative leaders. The law, SB 407, was enacted in 2023 and sponsored by California State Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) with this exact purpose in mind: to weed out Christian families from the foster system...

The distant galaxy has all the structure of a modern spiral galaxy (the object next to it is another galaxy in the foreground). Image credit: Xiao et al., arXiv 2024 (CC BY 4.0) It has been just over three years since JWST was launched into space and in that time, the telescope has dramatically expanded our understanding of the distant universe. Among the important findings is the discovery of very young galaxies that already looked like their more senior counterparts in the local universe, and a recent study has shown a spiral galaxy that already had everything modern ones do...

The much-covered song had its origins at the end of World War II.Late in 1957, Sam Cooke was making his fans swoon. The smooth, stylish pop of “You Send Me” had just been No.1, and was about to spread Cooke’s name internationally, early in 1958. In an explosion of activity on the US charts, he also charted in November with George Gershwin’s “Summertime,” then again in the week before Christmas with the double-sided “I’ll Come Running Back To You” and “Forever.” Then, on December 30, 1957, he entered Billboard’s Best Sellers In Stores chart with yet another hit, “(I...

A Royal Dutch Airlines plane with nearly 180 passengers onboard made an emergency landing in Norway Saturday after a hydraulic failure in midair and went off the tarmac into the grass. The flight was en route from Olso, Norway to Amsterdam when pilots heard a “loud noise,” the airline said. Statement from Royal Dutch Airlines: UPDATE 29-12 | Incident with flight KL1204 During takeoff of flight KL1204 from Oslo with destination Amsterdam this evening (28-12) a loud noise was heard. It was decided to divert to the airport of Sandefjord. After landing, the Boeing 737 veered off the runway into...

Journalists increasingly see their job as protecting their preferred candidates, not asking tough questions.On September 25, more than two months after entering the presidential race, Democratic nominee Kamala Harris finally sat down for her first one-on-one interview with a national television reporter. It wasn't just any reporter. Stephanie Ruhle, host of a nightly show on the Democrat-cheerleading cable network MSNBC, had, just five days prior, ridiculed the very notion that journalists, let alone voters, needed to hear anything more from the vice president before Election Day. "Let's say you don't like her answer. Are you going to vote for Donald...

s this Georgia, or Jersey? A family of angry masons wielding baseball bats, sticks and a a lever-action rifle allegedly launched a Sopranos-style assault on a rival paving company outside Macon, Georgia when they saw the compeitor doing a job near one of their homes. Cops collared six members of the Buckland family Dec. 19 after the bloody, broad-daylight beatdown on guys from rival EH Paving at a Monroe County job site, according to WMAZ. “Like something out of ‘The Sopranos,’” Monroe County Sheriff Brad Freeman told the outlet. The Buckland boys thought EH Paving was being “disrespectful” by working...

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un ordered the communist nation to prepare its “toughest anti-U.S. counteraction to be launched aggressively” during an end-of-year party meeting, state propaganda ordered on Sunday, an apparent attempt to be ready for major foreign policy changes under incoming American President Donald Trump. Kim’s Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), the only legal political entity in the repressive communist state, regularly holds end-of-year meetings to evaluate its performance over the past year and recalibrate its leadership. Kim appoints or removes officials at will, gives multiple speeches on his various ideological priorities, and usually concludes with some excoriating of...

"President Jimmy Carter strongly supported the Ayatollah regime's takeover of Iran. In 1978, Carter and his advisors concluded that the Persian Shah, America's Gulf policeman, was obsolete, and they believed Ayatollah Khomeini, who was in exile in Paris, would suit the US as he was anti-Communist and anti-Soviet." Ettinger added, "Carter went so far as to declare—ten days before Khomeini landed in Tehran—that US intelligence determined Khomeini would be an Iranian Gandhi. He also claimed Khomeini had no desire to spread the revolution outside Iran, would focus on tractors rather than tanks, and be a loyal envoy for the interests...

Salvation Army Angel Tree Drama: These People Are Not Grateful In today’s video we’ll be discussing how some parents are not grateful for the gift given to their kids for Christmas by Salvation Army Angel tree FReepers youtube and tic tok is blowing up over this. Some who received items from the Salvation Army's Angel Tree were quite ungrateful and posted about it. They have since deleted their video over bad comments but everyone saved them. People are upset, as they should be over this. Now not all were going on tic tok and saying their "Christmas was ruined" but...

A murderer who ruthlessly gunned down two innocent female bank workers has now demanded to be let out of prison - just days after President Biden saved him from death row. Brandon Council, 38, who was sentenced to death for the cold-blooded murders of bank employees Donna Major and Katie Skeen, filed the bold request for 'compassionate release' on Friday. Council murdered the two women during a horrific bank raid in Conway, South Carolina, in 2017. After a three-week trial, he was convicted in September 2019, with judges handing down the death sentence the following month. But in a controversial...

Former firebrand Rep. Matt Gaetz, who instigated the House GOP toppling of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy last year, declared that resistance to House Speaker Mike Johnson “is now futile” in the wake of President-elect Donald Trump’s endorsement. But that and Trump’s endorsement did nothing to pacify Johnson’s most outspoken House critic, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who had come out in opposition to his speakership bid. “I respect and support President Trump, but his endorsement of Mike Johnson is going to work out about as well as his endorsement of Speaker Paul Ryan,” Massie replied on X, posting an image of...

The Iran Hostage Crisis was a disaster for President Jimmy Carter’s image both domestically and abroad. Coupled with attacks on other American embassies in the Muslim world and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979, the hostage crisis made him look weak in the eyes of not only Americans, but also the rest of the world. Carter and Brzezinski called a National Security Council (NSC) meeting to discuss the question of a rescue mission. At this point, Brzezinski was gung-ho on the idea. Although Warren Christopher, the acting Secretary of State, attended, his role was largely symbolic, as Brzezinski...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov rejected proposals Monday floated by President-elect Trump’s allies to end the war in Ukraine, dealing a major setback for the incoming president’s hopes to freeze the conflict. In an interview with Russian state-run media outlet TASS, Lavrov said Moscow has “not received any official signals regarding a settlement in Ukraine” but the Kremlin was resistant to those unofficial ideas. “We are not happy, of course, with the proposals made by members of the Trump team to postpone Ukraine’s admission to NATO for 20 years and to station British and European peacekeeping forces in Ukraine,” he...

In an opening salvo that needs more discussion — “Losing Alignment: Why have establishment politics become so destructive, immoderate and self-defeating?” —Eugyppius asks a series of important questions about the severing of political inputs. The voting public hates the projects of the governing class, but the governing class doesn’t abandon those projects: Our rulers ought to appease the restless masses by preempting their political demands – not because they are happy benevolent paternalistic overseers with our best interests at heart, because it is in their interests to do so. In the United States they should’ve dialled back the racial egalitarianism...

The New York Stock Exchange will close trading on Thursday, Jan. 9, in accordance with a national day of mourning for the death of former President Jimmy Carter. It is customary for the NYSE to close trading to honor the passing of a president. The last such occasion was in December 2018 for the death of former President George Herbert Walker Bush. The Nasdaq exchange will also close trading that day. Bond market trading will end early at 2 p.m. ET, per the recommendation of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. Carter, the nation’s 39th president known for his...

Key Points * Jeju Air Flight 7C2216 crash landed at Muan International Airport killing 179 of the 181 people on board, in South Korea’s worst air disaster in decades. * Investigators are trying to figure out what caused the fatal belly landing of the Boeing 737-800. * The aircraft is one of the world’s most common models of aircraft, with nearly 4,400 in service, according to Cirium. ========================================================= Accident investigators are trying to figure out what caused a Jeju Air flight to belly land without its landing gear down at Muan International Airport in southwestern South Korea, killing all but...

South African-American billionaire Elon Musk promoted the Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) in unambiguous terms in a newspaper column, prompting the publication’s opinions editor to resign in protest. Germany has been failed by its legacy parties and is teetering on the brink of collapse, Elon Musk wrote in an op-ed for the Sunday edition of the national newspaper of record Die Welt. His diagnoses of Germany’s problems came with a suggested solution, voting for the right-sovereigntist AfD. The legacy media and prevailing political opinion in mainstream Germany considers the AfD extreme if not outright dangerous. Moves to ban the party are...

One of the defining moments of Jimmy Carter’s presidency was the Iran hostage crisis. Retired Army Col. Chuck Scott was one of the 52 hostages held in Iran for 444 days. In an interview with Channel 2 Action News, he said Carter got a lot of blame he did not deserve. “People say, ‘Yeah, he really screwed up the hostage crisis.’ But how do you know? You weren’t there,” Scott said. The crisis would overshadow many of the accomplishments during President Carter’s one and only term. “We looked like idiots. Here we were, the most powerful nation in the world...