Free Republic

FReepers of a certain vintage will recall that strange species of missive, the “Opus.” Periodically members would leave, but would pen an “Opus,” the lengthy explanation. I never quite understood these; they seemed a bit self-important to me. Today is my 25th anniversary on FR. I’m not going to anywhere, so this is my “No-Pus.” Many thanks to my FRiends for this great community. Apologies if I’ve ever been unduly unkind. As of today I have 12,777 replies, 1.4 per day on average for 25 years. When I post a stat like this, some of my FRiends will point out...

This is what the newspaper Berlingske writes the day before Denmark's military intelligence service releases its annual threat image report. According to Thomas Ahrenkiel, head of the intelligence service, smaller countries are now facing a world where there is more "law of the jungle than rules-based world order." We now see that the three major military powers, the US, Russia and China, in their different ways do not support that world order, he tells the newspaper. The report states that the US is now using "its economic and technological strength as a tool of power, even against allies and partners."...

Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) took a page out of the authoritarian, theocratic Iranian regime’s playbook over the weekend, deeming the country he serves “The Great Satan” during a rant on The Dean Obeidallah Show. Johnson offered his evaluation of his country after host Dean Obeidallah submitted that President Donald Trump’s strikes on alleged drug runners in the Western Hemisphere were “defining us as some kind of-, like a Putin-esque type of nation.” “Yeah, we are the world’s No. 1 bully, and we’re using our immense, unrivaled power to rule over those who have less power. And we’re doing it with...

According to the Los Angeles Fire Department, the fire was reported at 9:20 a.m. on Foothill Boulevard, just below the 210 Freeway overpass. No children were aboard at the time, and the driver was transported to a local hospital for minor smoke inhalation injuries. Aerial footage showed a large plume of smoke emerging from below the underpass. The smoke led to the closure of the Osbourne Street offramp, according to Caltrans. Fire crews were at the scene but appeared to keep their distance from the flames. Experts say fires involving lithium-ion batteries, commonly used in electric vehicles, are typically controlled...

Matt Walsh Applies Proper Logic to Determine We Shouldn't Take Any Asylum Seekers at All

This is the dramatic moment that US commandos stormed a Venezuelan oil tanker in a breathtaking airborne takedown amid ratcheting tensions in the Caribbean. Footage released by the Trump administration on Wednesday showed American forces swooping on the tanker in helicopters and rappelling down ropes. Troops with guns drawn darted up stairs to the bridge to take control of the vessel off the coast of Venezuela. Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote in a statement on X: 'Today, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Homeland Security Investigations, and the United States Coast Guard, with support from the Department of War, executed a...

Radnor High School and Radnor Township Police are investigating an AI-generated video that allegedly depicts several students inappropriately, according to an email sent to families by Principal Dr. Joseph MacNamara. "I am writing to address concerns and rumors regarding an AI-generated video that was reported to depict several of our students in an inappropriate manner," MacNamara wrote. "We understand how upsetting and serious this situation is, and we want to assure you that we are treating it with the highest level of urgency and care.

Moment U.S. forces seized massive oil tanker off Venezuela “As you probably know, we’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela,” Trump said. “Large tanker, very large, largest one ever seized actually.”

On Friday, the Supreme Court announced that it would hear challenges to President Donald Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship. The 14th Amendment automatically makes all babies born on American territory citizens. Trump’s effort to overturn the traditional reading of the constitutional text and history should not succeed. Ratified in 1868, the 14th Amendment provided a constitutional definition of citizenship for the first time. It declares that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." In antebellum America, states...

ATLANTA -- Democrat Eric Gisler claimed an upset victory Tuesday in a special election in a historically Republican Georgia state House district. Gisler said he was the winner of the contest, in which he was leading Republican Mack “Dutch” Guest by about 200 votes out of more than 11,000 in final unofficial returns. Robert Sinners, a spokesperson with the secretary of state's office, said there could be a few provisional ballots left before the tally is finalized. “I think we had the right message for the time,” Gisler told The Associated Press in a phone interview. He credited his win...

Only one American woman in politics, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, made Forbes’s 2025 list of most powerful women. Wiles, the White House’s first female chief of staff, is ranked 66th on the Forbes list, behind figures like pop star Taylor Swift, television host Oprah Winfrey and General Motors CEO Mary Barra. But the fact that Wiles, a veteran political consultant who also served as Trump’s campaign co-chair in 2024, is the only one on the list who works in American politics highlights the low number of women in powerful positions within the federal government. Other women in...

One week after the Sioux Center Library board voted 8-1 to continue offering a sexually explicit book called “Icebreaker” to any patron with a library card, it has been discovered that the library also stocks a book called “Identical” in the 12-year-old section of the library.Bookshelves The book graphically details multiple incidents in which a 9-year-old girl is sexually abused by her father, including one incident while her identical twin sister watches. In addition, the book contains violence, including self-harm and suicidal ideations, profanity and derogatory terms and drug and alcohol abuse. The abuse of the daughter, Kaeleigh, started when...

BOOM!’ Conservatives Applaud Erika Kirk’s Stunning Takedown of Candace Owens Isaac Schorr Wed, December 10, 2025 at 3:04 PM EST Conservatives are applauding Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk after the grieving widow delivered a stunning takedown of the conspiracy theories about her husband’s death in what is widely being viewed as a rebuke of Candace Owens. Owens has promoted countless conspiracy theories about Charlie Kirk’s assassination over the last few months, even going so far as to implicate some of his closest friends and coworkers in what she has described as a plot to betray him. On Wednesday, Erika...

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday announced its third interest rate cut of the year as policymakers moved forward with the cut to support the labor market despite elevated inflation. Fed policymakers voted to lower the benchmark federal funds rate by 25 basis points to a new range of 3.5% to 3.75%. The move follows rate cuts of that size in September and October, which were the first of the year. Policymakers have been tracking economic data showing a slowdown in the labor market in recent months as companies adjust to shifts in trade and immigration policy. Meanwhile, inflation has trended...

Explanation: Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, this dusty interstellar molecular cloud has by chance assumed an immediately recognizable shape. Fittingly known as The Horsehead Nebula, it lies some 1,500 light-years distant, embedded in the vast Orion cloud complex. About five light-years "tall," the dark cloud is cataloged as Barnard 33, first identified on a photographic plate taken in the early 20th century. B33 is visible primarily because its obscuring dust is silhouetted against the glow of emission nebula IC 434. Hubble Space Telescope images from the early 21st century find young stars forming within B33. Of course, the magnificent...

It took less than a decade for Canada's Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) program to go from a compassionate means for terminally ill patients to end their lives to a full-blown euthanasia program that kills the poor, veterans, and people with depression. In December of last year, we learned that, per capita, the number of Canadians who die by MAiD exceeds the number of U.S. gun deaths. MAiD is even targeting teens and the mentally ill. Of course, it's purely a numbers game from a government that ultimately doesn't care if you live or die. Jolene is a woman who...

One of the big fights coming this January is how to reform the failing Obamacare program, aka, the Unaffordable Care Act. Without massive COVID-era subsidies, users will pay a lot more in 2026. The program itself has so many problems, beginning with the fact that many well-off people qualify, and so much money goes to directly fund insurance companies, no questions asked. It is more than past time to just let this whole mess disappear. But many working people who don’t qualify for Medicaid need some options. Sen. Rand Paul has perhaps the simplest and most effective answer, one that...

Miami’s mayoral election has been framed as a political earthquake, but those sweeping claims don’t hold water. They do, however, evince the ignorance of all too many, across party lines, about the actual power structure in the city, Miami-Dade County, and Florida. What happened in the mayoral runoff deserves attention, but it is hardly the warning siren some Democrat operatives want it to be, nor is it a reason for Republicans to panic. Miami politics simply don’t function the way national narratives assume. Let’s start with what this race actually was. The “nonpartisan” mayor of Miami holds a largely ceremonial...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio directed all diplomats to revert to using the Times New Roman typeface in official communications and criticized his predecessor for shifting to Calibri, a font deemed too woke for the Trump administration. Two years ago, Rubio’s predecessor, Antony Blinken, switched to Calibri, a softer, simpler-shaped, and wider font than Times New Roman, in part to assist individuals with certain visual disabilities such as low vision and dyslexia.

Safe to say, traditional Catholics repelled by the liberal views of the late Pope Francis are not finding much relief under its new pontiff. In October, Pope Leo took yet another sharp-tongued and sarcastic aim at President Donald Trump for ejecting illegal immigrants from America, likening it to abortion and implying he is a hypocrite. "Someone who says I am against abortion but in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States, I don't know if that's pro life," the Bishop of Rome pondered out loud to media from his luxe Castel Gandolfo digs in Italy. Castel...