Free Republic

BETHESDA, Md. (WBFF) — A $2.3 million home in one of Maryland’s wealthiest neighborhoods has become the latest test of the state’s ability to respond to squatting, exposing how legal gaps, slow court processes, and limited enforcement can leave communities waiting for action – even when ownership is clear and criminal complaints are filed. The Bethesda case, now winding through Montgomery County courts, mirrors a pattern Spotlight on Maryland has documented statewide: Vacant homes, disputed occupancy, and neighbors caught between civil law and public safety concerns. Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy’s office said it cannot comment on this matter...

"Guns don't kill, people do." True or false, truth or lie, "people" do use their thoughts and words to help push their decisions to invalidate, as non-persons, other classes of "biological-organisms"-with-23-paired-chromosomes-which-are-totally-indistinguishable-from-humans; and whether or not to sentence the "non-persons" to termination because they want their land or money, or because if those 23-chromosome things are allowed to live it will curtail their ability to "do it" with whomever and whatever their supreme will dictates (what Ralph Nader called "gonadal politics"). So, yesterday, Jonathan Turley ("Democratic Despotism: The American Left Moves from Censored to Compelled Speech") noted: In Illinois, Democrats have...

TULSA, OKLA. (KTUL) — Repairs to multiple county overpass bridges along Interstate 44 and the Will Rogers Turnpike are nearing completion after an over-height commercial truck struck several structures earlier this month, transportation officials said. Work continues Monday on the N. 4300 Road overpass northeast of State Highway 28, where eastbound I-44 traffic remains reduced to one lane. The bridge is still closed to local traffic but is expected to reopen by Monday afternoon. Crews are also preparing for overnight repairs at the N. 429 Road overpass near Adair. Eastbound lanes of I-44 will be narrowed to one lane beginning...

EAST GREENWICH, R.I. (WPRI) — Maria Bucci, the chair of the Cranston Democrats and a former candidate for mayor, has been arrested and charged with driving drunk in East Greenwich. Body-worn camera video released by police shows that Bucci was pulled over on Division Road just after midnight Thursday. According to the police report obtained by 12 News, Bucci was stopped after an officer saw her swerving on the road. Her arrest was first reported by GoLocalProv. The report says Bucci’s vehicle had “a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage” and she was slurring her words. “You know who I...

Two teenage hikers in distress, with no food, water, warm clothes, or cold-weather gear, were rescued late Friday night after another hiker found them soaking wet and freezing after they fell into a brook on Mount Monadnock in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, officials said. According to a New Hampshire Fish and Game press release, at around 10 p.m. on Dec. 19, the other hiker called New Hampshire State Police, who contacted the Fish and Game Department to request a rescue of the two hikers in distress on the Ferry Spring Trail. Through contact via cellphone, officers found out that the two...

Last month’s mass shooting at a child’s birthday party in Stockton that left four people dead, 13 injured and more than 150 guests at the targeted event likely severely traumatized, should have been a rallying moment for California’s political leaders. In addition to calling for more gun control, elected leaders could have doubled down on support for crime victims — specifically by improving access to emergency financial assistance and trauma recovery services, as well as violence intervention programs. Available data shows these investment strategies to be effective in lowering crime rates.

Police had been responding to disturbances at Rob and Michele Reiner's Los Angeles mansion for over a decade – long before the Hollywood legend and his wife were found dead inside their home, the Daily Mail can reveal. LAPD records obtained by the Daily Mail show officers were called to the family's $13.5 million Brentwood property at least six times: in 2013, 2014, 2017, twice in 2019, and on December 14, the day the Reiners were killed. The 'calls for service' were for incidents ranging from alleged family violence to welfare and mental health checks. 'There's been quite a few...

"You're heading into 2026 with one of the biggest banks on Wall Street telling you the economy can ran stronger than most people expect. Bank of America's Global Research team used its December 2025 outlook to stake out a clearly bullish position on next year's growth, especially in the US." Average inflation over the last 20 years: 2.52% Inflation today: 2.7% Not the end of the world.

President Trump announced an exciting new Trump-class battleship that will be the largest, fastest, and most powerful battleship fleet in the world. The Babylon Bee has obtained an exclusive schematic of this formidable new war machine: Additional features not pictured will include: 19" solid gold cannons: Way better than the Yamato's puny 18.1" cannons. Escalator the Captain can use for big announcements: Order men to their battle stations in style. Loudspeakers play YMCA to start every morning: The Village People promote a warrior spirit. State-of-the-art detention center where prisoners are held in place by magnets: All the best detention centers...

The Trump administration will start garnishing the wages of student loan borrowers in default in early January, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education confirmed to CNBC on Tuesday. It will be the first time a portion of borrowers’ paychecks has been at risk since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, when collection activity was halted. Starting the week of Jan. 7, the Education Department expects around 1,000 defaulted student loan borrowers to receive notices of administrative wage garnishment, the spokesperson said. After that, the number of notified borrowers will continue to increase. The U.S. government has extraordinary collection...

Once, fatherhood was a very manly affair. It involved wearing a suit or a uniform, reading an actual newspaper, maybe in a recliner, maybe with a stiff drink by your side. That is, at least, the 1950s and 60s myth, which remains mighty, not least because we got to fall in love with it and critique it anew while watching Mad Men. Of course, flesh-and-blood dads were always more complicated. But for centuries, the commanding patriarch was at the center of family life. Dad was the decider of the domicile. But in the half century since father knew best, dads...

Remember how Democrats once hailed ObamaCare as a "big f---ing deal?"Nowadays, as inadvertently revealed by Politico, many Democrats have turned their backs on the 15-year-old program they have come to loathe (while urging continued funding for it) and instead increasingly demand its replacement with Medicare For All.On Sunday, Politico reporters Lisa Kashinsky and Elena Schneider revealed the deep Democrat discontent with ObamaCare in "Democrats are united in bashing GOP on Obamacare. Medicare for All could reopen a rift."The article began with how fervently many Democrats are in their desire to ditch ObamaCare in favor of the entirely government-financed Medicare For...

Explanation: What's happening in the sky? Lightning. The most commonly seen type of lightning involves flashes of bright white light between clouds. Over the past 50 years, though, other types of upper-atmospheric lightning have been confirmed, including tentacled red sprites and ringed ELVES. Although both last only a small fraction of a second, sprites are brighter and easier to photograph than their more common electrical-discharge cousins. ELVES are rapidly expanding rings that are thought to be created when an electromagnetic pulse shoots upward from charged clouds and impacts the ionosphere, causing nitrogen molecules to glow. Capturing either form of lightning...

You think you’re being watched by satellites and smartphones—but the real surveillance network is perched on power lines above your head. Scientists recently trained artificial intelligence on thousands of hours of crow vocalizations, expecting meaningless animal noise. Instead, the AI detected structured language, syntax, planning behavior, and something far more disturbing: humans are the primary subject of crow communication. This documentary explores how crows recognize individual human faces, assign identifiers, share reputations across generations, and coordinate warnings through a global avian network. From facial recognition experiments and tool-making intelligence to crow funerals, justice systems, and possible encrypted communication, the evidence...

We lived in Dresden, Germany a while back. The BEST time to be in Germany is during Christmas. The choir in the background is the choir that is pictured in the video.

According to a statement released by the Public Library of Science, a new study of the 2,400-year-old Hjortspring boat, discovered with a cache of weapons in the early twentieth century on Denmark's island of Als, suggests that it may have been constructed in the Baltic Sea region. First, Mikael Fauvelle of Lund University and his colleagues radiocarbon dated cording and caulk found with the boat to the fourth or third century B.C. Then, they used gas chromatography and mass spectrometry to determine that the caulk had likely been made of animal fat and pine pitch. At the time, there were...

Key Points * The Trump administration will start garnishing the wages of student loan borrowers in default in early January, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education confirmed to CNBC on Tuesday. * More than 5 million student loan borrowers are currently in default, and that total could swell to roughly 10 million borrowers soon, the Education Department said earlier this year. ============================================================== The Trump administration will start garnishing the wages of student loan borrowers in default in early January, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education confirmed to CNBC on Tuesday. It will be the first time...

The global disruptions we have seen in recent years are frequently presented as a chaotic sequence of events: a ‘pandemic’, inflation, energy shortages and war. Little wonder that most people are confused. However, a structural analysis reveals a more deliberate controlled demolition of the 20th-century social contract.We are witnessing a transition from a productive capitalist model, which required a healthy mass labour force, to what Yanis Varoufakis calls a techno-feudalist order.The engine of this transition was a desperate financial stabilisation strategy carried out by means of a public health event. As identified by Professor Fabio Vighi, the global financial system...

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rebuffed the Trump administration over its plan to deploy National Guard troops in Illinois over the strenuous objections of local officials. The court in an unsigned order turned away an emergency request made by the administration, which said the troops are needed to protect federal agents involved in immigration enforcement in the Chicago area. In doing so, the court at least provisionally rejected the Trump administration’s view that the situation on the ground is so chaotic that it justifies invoking a federal law that allows the president to call National Guard troops into federal service...

Rep. Harriet Hageman, a Republican, is running for Senate in Wyoming next year, seeking to replace retiring GOP Sen. Cynthia Lummis, who announced last week that she would not ​run for re-election. Trump quickly gave Hageman his "my Complete and Total Endorsement, writing in a Truth Social post hours after she launched her campaign that he knows Hageman well and she "is a TOTAL WINNER! Harriet has ALWAYS delivered for Wyoming, and will continue to do so in the United States Senate." Hageman, 63, was elected to be the state’s lone representative in Congress in 2022 after ousting then-Rep. Liz...