Free Republic

Not quite six years ago, wildfire expert Jack Cohen, who lives in Missoula, Mont., visited Pacific Palisades to instruct firefighters and property owners on how to protect homes against wildfires. Three days of training, including a tour of the community, left Cohen hopeful, but the feeling faded when it became clear that his lessons were not going to be fully implemented. This week’s tragedy has left him with a deep sadness. Respected by fire agencies across the country, Cohen and Pyne have found their straight-talk admonitions often disregarded or dismissed. Sensitive to losses and suffering, both said they are motivated...

Excerpts of his stand-up routine.

Explanation: Whatever hit Mimas nearly destroyed it. What remains is one of the largest impact craters on one of Saturn's smallest round moons. Analysis indicates that a slightly larger impact would have destroyed Mimas entirely. The huge crater, named Herschel after the 1789 discoverer of Mimas, Sir William Herschel, spans about 130 kilometers and is featured here. Mimas' low mass produces a surface gravity just strong enough to create a spherical body but weak enough to allow such relatively large surface features. Mimas is made of mostly water ice with a smattering of rock - so it is accurately described...

As Melania Trump is on her way to starting a new career move, going back to her First Lady days, all eyes will be on her fashion picks for the Inauguration Day, especially since the last political affair fared out on a controversial note. In January 2017, the former model settled for a £5,500 powder blue cashmere dress and bolero, thanks to Ralph Lauren stepping up as one of the few designers to volunteer to create an outfit for her on a big day for the US presidency's new chapter. This time around, a new wave has swept in. Although...

Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to run for president, instead, he seems to be in the running for the worst governor ever. Of any country. Including some that have active genocide taking place.So far Newsom has reacted to the California wildfires in his usual patented manner by…Getting into petty squabbles with criticsCalling for an “independent investigation” into who is running the statePretending to be on the phone with Biden when approached by a woman seeking helpLaunching a campaign website to give people the “facts” about the fires. This doesn’t mean a website tracking fires or providing useful recovery information, but a...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom sparked fierce outrage for soliciting donations to victims of the deadly Los Angeles wildfires via his super PAC, which pushed users to add their personal information to a Democratic fundraising site. Newsom, 57, posted a link on X to californiafirefacts.com, a website set up by his campaign committee, in response to what he claimed was misinformation on the wildfires. But the site urges users to give money to the California Fire Foundation and links them to a module from ActBlue, the Democratic Party’s fundraising platform. The ActBlue donation box says the money is being raised by...

Is it that they have the emotionalism of a woman and the aggression of a man, as an observer once suggested? Or is it that, as poet William Blake put it, the “eye altering alters all”? Or is it both — or something else?Whatever the explanation, there’s been another case of violence committed by a MUSS (Made-up Sexual Status, aka “transgender”) individual. Contrary to mainstream media narrative, too, it’s part of a phenomenon in which MUSS individuals are more likely to kill than be killed and are even overrepresented among pedophiles, according to a 2019 report.That Spiking “Female” CrimeAs for...

Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) claimed Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that President-elect Donald Trump was politicizing wildfires in Southern California. Reporter Jacob Soboroff asked, “President-elect Trump has blamed you for this crisis. He’s called you incompetent. What’s your response?” Newsom said, “Well, I called for him to come out, take a look for himself. We want to do it in the spirit of an open hand, not a closed fist. He’s the president-elect. I respect the office. We have a president of the United States that within 36 hours provided a major disaster declaration over a text. We had...

The "demoted" dwarf planet Pluto and its largest moon Charon make an unusual pair, and for decades, scientists have been discussing how the binary system—in which each mutually orbits the other—came to be. With Charon being half Pluto's size, experts have struggled to explain how it ended up in the dwarf planet's domain.Now, a team of researchers has suggested that Pluto may have secured Charon through a newly described "kiss and capture" mechanism... Their work was published on Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience.The new theory suggests that billions of years ago, Pluto and Charon collided in the far reaches...

LOS ANGELES — Adam Leber was nodding off in his Hollywood Hills mansion late Wednesday night when his housekeeper jolted him awake with an urgent message: There’s a fire at the door. Leber — a talent manager whose clients have included Miley Cyrus and Lil Nas X — opened his door and looked. Sure enough, “The entire hillside was on fire,” he said. “It was insane.” Orange-red flames sprung up everywhere, spitting embers dangerously close. Without thinking, he and his wife scooped up their dogs and 3-year-old daughter, threw some belongings in their car and drove east, to take refuge...

Canadian doctors, having accepted the country’s assisted-suicide regime, are now considering whether to harvest organs from euthanasia patients before they have died, The Federalist reported Wednesday. The doctors reason thus: Organs are normally removed from a donor as soon as possible after death to ensure they are in the best possible condition for transplant. If organs were removed from a live person, they would be in even better condition. And if that patient is about to die voluntarily anyway, what’s the harm in killing him by taking his organs? Stealing Hearts “The best use of my organs, if I’m going...

The US House of Representatives passed the Laken Riley Bill. The 216 Republicans present were joined by 48 Democrats in voting for the bill. All the opposing 159 votes were cast by Democrats. The legislation requires the Department of Homeland Security to detain illegal immigrants who have committed crimes other than illegally entering the country. Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn) argued for the bill, saying "the tragic and preventable murder of Laken Riley serves as a stark reminder of the consequences of failed leadership. The Laken Riley Act is a direct step toward ensuring that criminal illegal aliens are swiftly...

President-elect Donald Trump’s remarks that Canada should become the 51st state drew condemnation and a patriotic outburst on Saturday from a former Canadian prime minister who offered blunt advice to the incoming U.S. leader: “Give your head a shake!” Jean Chrétien, who was Canada’s prime minister from 1993 to 2003, joined a chorus of officials from the northern U.S. neighbor who say Trump’s remarks are no longer a joke and may undermine America’s closest ally. Canada would never agree to become part of the United States, Chrétien wrote in an article published in The Globe and Mail newspaper, celebrating his...

Two looters were arrested recently after they dressed as firefighters and entered local homes vacated in the Palisades Fire, according to information given by the Los Angeles Police Department to community members Saturday evening. Police have arrested dozens of would-be looters who have targeted the affluent Pacific Palisades, devastated by the fire that raged last week. Many neighborhoods were destroyed, but some homes remain intact — enticing looters. The police said that in addition to twenty looters who had been arrested in the first days of the fire, seven looters had been arrested more recently. Some 400 officers were assigned...

Washington — FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell said Sunday that L.A. officials were "very prepared" for devastating wildfires, noting that the area is prone to fires. But "they have never seen 100-mile-an-hour winds that are fueling the fire," she said. "Those winds and that weather condition is what really impacts, you know, where this fire is going to go, but more importantly, how they're able to try to contain it in those first few hours and days," Criswell said on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan." Communities in Los Angeles have been engulfed in wildfires in recent days, which have killed...

Within one month of each other, two federal judges ruled that a law passed by Congress is “likely unconstitutional” and ruled in favor of small businesses. At issue is the Corporate Transparency Act, which Congress passed in 2021, overriding a veto issued by then President Donald Trump. The law requires entities incorporated under state law to disclose the personal information of their stakeholders, including current address, identification documents, and other sensitive information, to the Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. After Trump’s veto was overridden, several small businesses in Texas sued U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, arguing the...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom blasted President-elect Donald Trump’s response to the California wildfires in an interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” recorded Saturday, saying, “Mis- and disinformation I don’t think advantages or aids any of us.” Newsom appeared to be referring to Trump’s posts on Truth Social blasting Newsom, President Joe Biden and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass since the fires broke out Tuesday. In one post, the president-elect baselessly claimed Newsom had blocked a measure that would have allowed water to flow from Northern California to Southern California. “Responding to Donald Trump’s insults, we would spend another month,”...

Some in the media and the Democratic Party are trying to use the Los Angeles wildfires to attack Donald Trump. It’s pathetic one: Trump isn’t president but Joe Biden is when he can remember. In California, the brain trust that led to this disaster is all headed by Democrats. It’s a big blue mess. So, when Gov. Gavin Newsom whines about Trump torching his managerial skills, he should sit down and take it. The reservoirs weren’t filled when they should’ve been, Newsom—that’s on you and this entire political leadership core you have in the Golden State.

On this week’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday” Vice President-elect JD Vance said Trump’s incoming administration “obviously” should not give pardons to people who were convicted of committing violent act on January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol. Host Shannon Bream said, “January 6 pardon, President Trump says there is a process. Where is the line drawn on who will and would’t be considered for a pardon?” Vance said, “I think it’s very simple. If you protested peacefully on January 6 and you’ve had Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice treat you like a gang member, you should be pardoned. If...

Gavin Newsom said he has called Donald Trump to discuss the wildfires emergency, but still hasn’t heard back from the President-elect. Newsom sent a letter Friday urging Trump – who has been starkly critical of the governor’s policies and response since the outbreak last week – asking for him to lay down arms and come see the devastation for himself. A Fox LA reporter speaking with Newsom Saturday asked how that conversation was going. “I’d like the President of the United States, at least the President-elect, to come and visit the people out here whose lives have been completely torn...