Free Republic

The top police official in Washington, D.C., pressured commanders to lower classifications of crime and retaliated against those who reported spikes, creating a widespread culture of fear and distorted public data, according to a new congressional report. An interim report from the House Oversight Committee released on Sunday claims that outgoing Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) Chief Pamela Smith, who announced her resignation on Dec. 8, oversaw an unprecedented system of intervention in crime reporting. The Republican-led committee alleges that Smith, who is expected to remain in the position through the end of the year, pressured commanders on numerous occasions, and...

CHRISTMAS BIBLE-ART EPISODE #3 of 33 GABRIEL'S AMAZING NEWS FOR MARY L U K E CHAPTER 1 In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you...

Ferrari is exploring radical oval pistons that could shrink engines, boost efficiency, and reinvent how high-performance gas motors are designed for the next generation. =============================================================== Key Points * Ferrari patents oval, or "stadium-shaped," pistons to replace traditional circular designs. * The design could significantly shorten engines while maintaining displacement and cylinder count. * Oval pistons could also lower frictional losses, improve combustion efficiency and lead to engines that "breathe" better. =============================================================== Breaking Away from Tradition For as long as internal combustion engines have existed, pistons have been round. This wasn’t necessarily because circular shapes were optimal for performance. It was...

Everyone loves a good party, even when they're behind bars. One shindig at a South Carolina prison was ruined, however, when authorities intercepted a drone carrying items needed for a heck of a crab boil. A photo from the Bishopville prison showed a raw steak still in the grocery store packing, crab legs and Old Bay with side plastic baggies of marijuana and a couple of cartons of cigarettes. The drone was also seized Sunday morning, authorities said. All in Piggly Wiggly bags, so you know it's high quality.

Some of the most ordinary words in English have origins that no one can explain. Among them: "dog", "big", "bird", "donkey", "boy", "girl" and "puzzle". In this episode, let's trace their earliest appearances, explore the theories behind them, and unravel why these everyday words became some of our language's greatest mysteries. The English words nobody can explain | 23:24 RobWords | 887K subscribers | 478,352 views | December 6, 2025 YouTube transcript (below) reformatted at textformatter.ai

MELBOURNE — To stem the growing tide of violence against Jewish citizens, the Australian government has moved to officially ban the celebration of Hanukkah. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made the announcement in the wake of Islamic attacks on a public Hanukkah celebration, which Albanese believes prompted the killings. "If Jews were not celebrating Hanukkah, this tragedy could have been prevented," said Albanese. "Some people don't want to blame Hanukkah, but let me ask you: did people get shot anywhere else except at the Hanukkah celebration? No. This is all because of Hanukkah. How many lives do we have to lose...

I wonder why Chinese company EngineAI would name their humanoid machine the T800 and then train it to fight. Here's the company's CEO Zhao Tongyang getting kicked by it: VIDEOS AT LINK................. If you don't know, the T-800 is the model of cybernetic hunter-killer Skynet sends back to kill Sarah Conner in The Terminator. Why would a CEO agree to get kicked by what's being heralded as the world's strongest humanoid fighting robot? To counter claims that EngineAI is using CGI to create their robots. Here's some behind-the-scenes footage they filmed to try to further disprove the CGI claims, which...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Sunday that partisan gerrymandering will “lead to more civil tension and possibly more violence in our country,” urging restraint in the ongoing redistricting wars playing out in more than a dozen states. “I think there is the potential that when people have no representation, that they feel disenfranchised, that it can lead, it might lead to violence in our country,” Paul said in an interview with Kristen Welker on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Paul’s warning comes as state lawmakers across the country consider redrawing congressional lines at the insistence of President Donald Trump, with Democratic-led...

Rob Reiner’s moving remarks about the killing of Charlie Kirk went viral after the famed director and his wife Michele were found dead Sunday in their Los Angeles home. Both had stab wounds, according to reports. Reiner, who directed such movie hits as “When Harry Met Sally” after notably playing “Meathead” Michael Stivic on TV’s “All in the Family,” appeared on Piers Morgan “Uncensored” in late September following Kirk’s assassination at a Utah rally earlier in that month. Reiner, a liberal political activist, paid more than lip service to the shooting of Kirk, a get-out-the-vote advocate for young conservatives, when...

🚨 BREAKING: President Trump is now saying “TRUCKLOADS” of evidence will be coming out proving the 2020 election was rigged “We have all the ammunition, all the stuff, and you'll see it come out. It's coming out in truckloads.” https://x.com/WallStreetApes/status/2000299373226561793/video/1 Trump’s DOJ is also now suing FULTON COUNTY, GA over 2020 records. “California more than any other place is so rigged. It's such a rigged election — If the vote in California was legitimate, which it's not, they have 38 million ballots. Everything is mail-in voting.” If there’s NOTHING TO HIDE, it should ALL be released.

A DoorDash worker who was caught on a doorbell cam spraying a mystery substance on a delivery order bizarrely claimed she was only aiming at a spider. Kourtney Stevenson is seen on the Dec. 7 footage delivering Arby’s to the doorstep of an Indiana home, taking a confirmation picture — then calmly spraying an aerosol substance onto the bag. After identifying her, authorities in Indiana charged the driver with two counts of battery resulting in moderate injury and two counts of consumer package tampering. Stevenson was arrested in Kentucky and will be extradited to Indiana.

Built to rival the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, the great mosque in Damascus has always been claimed by rival faiths Sometime in the mid 1990s, I was standing in the marble courtyard of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus when two nuns asked me where they could find the head of John the Baptist. I pointed them towards the grand transept facade, gleaming with green and gold mosaics evoking a fertile paradise. Beyond lay the shrine to John or Yahya ibn Zakariyya, as he is known in Arabic, one of the few shared sites of Muslim-Christian pilgrimage. In 2001,...

The young woman identified as the first victim killed in Saturday’s deadly shooting at Brown University was Ella Cook, a 19-year-old sophomore and outspoken conservative activist whose death has sent shockwaves through both the campus community and conservative circles nationwide. Cook, a native of Birmingham, Alabama, was serving as vice president of Brown University’s College Republicans and was widely known for standing firm in her beliefs on one of the most ideologically hostile campuses in the country. Friends say she was thoughtful, kind, and unafraid to express her convictions, even when doing so made her a target for hostility or...

I have been writing here for about a decade that wind and solar would inevitably prove to be far more expensive for producing useful electricity than other methods like fossil fuels, nuclear, or hydro. The reasons are not difficult to understand. Wind and solar, due to intermittency, are not capable of powering a full-time electrical grid on their own. To make the grid capable of fulfilling customer demand 24/7/365, wind and solar require large amounts of additional capital infrastructure — dispatchable back-up generation, energy storage, additional transmission capacity, and more. If wind and solar prove insufficient to eliminate dispatchable back-up...

Elon Musk has championed the First and Second Amendments in the United States Bill of Rights. However, X, formerly Twitter, has a policy that prohibits the promotion of weapons and weapon accessories worldwide. In effect, this bans paid advertising for all weapons and weapon accessories, even so far as to include airsoft guns, air guns, paintball guns, and imitation guns. From business.x.com: This policy applies to monetization on X and X’s paid advertising products.What’s the policy?X prohibits the promotion of weapons and weapon accessories globally.Examples of weapons and weapon accessories include:Guns, including airsoft guns, air guns, blow guns, paintball guns,...

🇺🇸Pray For The Peace of Jerusalem 🇮🇱(12/15/25)[Prayer]The Scriptures in Handel’s “Messiah”1 Corinthians 15:52-5352 in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53 For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.Holy Bible, The King James Version________________________

There are so many advantages to being an old man that I wonder why I put it off for so long . One is that the Proust Reading Group has stopped inviting me to join and another is the number of dreadful stories in the news that for a man my age come under the heading "Not My Problem" such as the shortage of goods due to shipping backlogs, freighters lined up for miles waiting to unload in ports, people unable to find what they need. I have the opposite problem: too much stuff, need a ship to come up...

An obvious career shoplifter strolled into a Wisconsin Walmart she had robbed days prior, to find the store crawling with more than a dozen cops during an annual holiday event. Sophia Malak, 24, was quickly arrested by the officers during the yearly “Shop with a Cop” charity event at the Hartford, Wis., store, the Hartford Police Department announced in a post last week. Malak had allegedly stolen over $600 worth of merchandise just days prior and was found with a cart full of items. “Unfortunately for her, she walked straight into Walmart during the one time of year when the...

15 December 2025 Monday of the 3rd week of Advent Santo Niño Basilica, Cebu City, the PhilippinesReadings at MassLiturgical Colour: Violet. Year: A(II).First readingNumbers 24:2-7,15-17The oracles of BalaamRaising his eyes Balaam saw Israel, encamped by tribes; the spirit of God came on him and he declaimed his poem. He said:‘The oracle of Balaam son of Beor,the oracle of the man with far-seeing eyes,the oracle of one who hears the word of God.He sees what Shaddai makes him see,receives the divine answer, and his eyes are opened.How fair are your tents, O Jacob!How fair your dwellings, Israel!Like valleys that stretch...

On Saturday's On the Town I played the late Ted Egan's classic song "We Got Some Bloody Good Drinkers in the Northern Territory" - and wondered afterwards: "Does it get any more Australian than that?" Answer came there less than twenty-four hours later. Wherever you live in the west, "diversity" seems to be making us all the same: one big rapey-stabby blood-drenched craphole. That said, Sydney's Jew-slaughter was of sufficient scale to obscure America's two simultaneous Hannukah attacks - in Los Angeles and at Brown University, the would-be killer and actual killer still at large. As I first wrote all...