Free Republic

A glossy brochure labeled “Qatar City, Arizona, USA” has begun circulating online. It shows a 6,000-acre state land auction and a massive proposed development project strategically placed near Arizona’s TSMC high-tech zone. The name? Qatar City. The plan? Unclear. The funding? Opaque. The timing? Disturbing. The proposal was submitted under the name Khaled A. Shair, listing a contact email at kshair@lasaintl.com and a Nevada phone number. At first glance, it looks like a standard development pitch. But peel back even one layer, and the warning signs multiply. There is no public record of where Khaled A. Shair is actually from....

The House Judiciary Committee’s recent findings present a simple but unsettling conclusion. American speech is being curtailed in the United States, not because Congress has changed the First Amendment, but because foreign governments have learned how to route around it. Europe’s Digital Services Act, presented as a domestic regulatory framework, has in practice become a lever for global speech control. Its effects now reach deep into the American public square. To see how this happens, begin with a basic fact about the modern internet. Major platforms operate with global content moderation rules. They do so not out of ideology but...

VIDEOThe Democrats and their media mouthpieces are in such a state of PANIC over the FBI seizing 700 boxes of Fulton County ballots to be used as possible evidence of 2020 election fraud that creepy CBS reporter and self-described PTSD survivor Scott MacFarlane dropped his guard as well as any hint of professionalism and angrily called President Trump a LIAR as you can see in this video.How long will CBS continue to employ a supposed reporter who demonstrates such a pathetic lack of professionalism due to overbearing bias?

The New York City Police Department released body camera footage showing the moment an officer shot a mentally ill man who was allegedly charging him with a knife amid calls from Mayor Zohran Mamdani for mental health treatment instead of criminal charges. Jabez Chakraborty, 22, was holding a large kitchen knife and charged at officers who responded to an emergency call from his family in Queens on Jan. 26, according to the NYPD. The footage, released by the NYPD on Tuesday, shows an officer entering the living room of the home, where Chakraborty was allegedly brandishing a knife. Officers are...

SNIP Yet “personal protection dogs” like Cassidy are bought, sold and trained every day in the UK. At the top end of the market, purpose-bred animals trained to bite, hold and release on command are sold for tens of thousands of pounds, marketed as family pets that double as live-in security solutions. Demand for these dogs, once the preserve of the ultra-rich and security professionals, seems to be growing, fuelled by celebrity endorsements, social media and widespread anxieties about crime. This is also a largely unregulated corner of dog ownership, raising difficult questions about public safety, animal welfare and where...

Waymo‘s Chief Safety Officer disclosed Wednesday that some of the remote operators who assist its self-driving vehicles in navigating difficult scenarios are based in the Philippines. Mauricio Peña, the company’s Chief Safety Officer, confirmed under questioning that the Alphabet subsidiary employs human operators abroad to provide guidance to its robotaxis when they encounter challenging driving situations. Ad ends in 5 Peña noted that the vehicles remain in control of all driving tasks at all times. “They provide guidance. They do not remotely drive the vehicles,” Peña told the Senate committee. “The Waymo vehicle is always in charge of the dynamic...

Michelle Obama opened up on “Call Her Daddy” about whether she believes the U.S. is ready for a female president. The former first lady discussed a wide range of topics during her interview with Alex Cooper on the Jan. 21 episode of the podcast, including the scrutiny she faced while in the public eye and the media’s focus on her appearance during Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Obama also expanded on comments she made last November about whether she would ever consider running for president herself and what that says about the country’s readiness for a woman in the Oval...

The modern US Senate operates under a belief that is nearly universal and almost entirely false. Major legislation, we are told, requires 60 votes to pass. Without those votes, the chamber is paralyzed. Bills stall. Leaders shrug. The minority is said to have spoken. This belief is repeated so often that it has taken on the status of constitutional fact. I assumed it was true. It is nothing of the kind. There is no rule of the Senate, no clause of the Constitution, and no settled historical practice that requires 60 votes for the passage of ordinary legislation. The 60...

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on Wednesday outlined their 10 demands to pass a Department of Homeland Security funding bill ahead of the Feb. 13 deadline. Their 10 demands, which revolve around changes to immigration enforcement, include: Bar DHS officers from entering private property without a judicial warrant Ban ICE and immigration officers from wearing masks Require officers to display their name, ID number and agency they work forRestrict operations near schools, churches, polling placesand medical and child care facilities Prohibit execution of stops based on individuals’ jobs, ethnicity, race, language or...

An Arizona police helicopter crashed Wednesday night while responding to an active shooting, killing two of its occupants on board. A pilot and trooper-paramedic for the Arizona Department of Public Safety died in the tragedy in Flagstaff, Ariz., police confirmed Thursday, while video shared online captured the helicopter free-falling out of the night sky. ... Video, seen by KPHO, captured a fire raging in a forest, and locals were urged to shelter in place. The shooter was left with non-fatal injuries after exchanging fire with cops. They have since been arrested, cops said. The cause of the helicopter crash has...

Democrats have spent years insisting illegal immigrants do not vote, yet Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries just gave the whole game away. In a letter to GOP leadership, they demanded a slate of “reforms” to immigration enforcement as the price for funding the Department of Homeland Security, including targeted enforcement, no masks, mandatory use of body cameras, and other demands, several of which I suspect are nonstarters. I don’t see Democrats getting anywhere with these, but the big thing is that buried in that list is a rather revealing demand: Protect Sensitive Locations -...

"Amazon fired 16,000 employees last week. At first glance, the terminations appeared standard. Online retail demand fluctuates with the seasons, and orders always decrease following the holidays. Factor in a few extra weeks of busyness due to post-Christmas returns, and late January makes sense as a time for layoffs. The gift-giving rush is over, so warehouses no longer need as many people. That is not a defense of a multi-trillion-dollar company pulling the plug on $15-per-hour workers, but if you’re a shrewd capitalist, the justification checks out. But there’s more to the story. It turns out the 16,000 fired Amazonians,...

President de Gaulle of France initiated the secret operation “Vide-Gousset” and repatriated 3,313 tonnes of gold reserves from the vaults of the Federal Reserve in New York and the Bank of England in London from 1963 until 1966. De Gaulle feared America’s deficit in its balance of payments would rupture Bretton Woods and lead to a devaluation of the dollar against gold. All France’s dollars were converted into gold, and to avoid treachery, the metal was repatriated over the course of three years. It took 44 boat trips and 129 flights to bring home more than three thousand tonnes of...

Democrats, lacking a positive agenda, bet on chaos, Trump hysteria, and media allies to spark a midterm backlash as Trump’s economic rebound gains steam. Recent regional special elections have seen Democratic candidates win a number of special election races. Now energized left-wing politicos remind the nation daily that every incumbent president, except three over the last century, has suffered substantial midterm losses in Congress. Polls show Trump suffering an average 11-point negative unfavorability rating. So Democrats promise to soon stop all new legislation and end Trump and his counterrevolution itself. But the left will never offer any alternative agenda on...

Republicans should be wise, not allowing conservative justices to linger on, only for them to pass away during a Democrat Presidential administration. Would we want a possible President Newsom or Shapiro to replace Thomas or Alito?

The Democratic Party has come a long way from 1996, when President Bill Clinton’s reelection campaign declared that America “cannot tolerate illegal immigration” and added, “We continue to firmly oppose welfare benefits for illegal immigrants.” When we seek explanations for why today’s Democrats refuse to call those here without permission “illegal,” oppose lawful deportations, and seek government benefits for those who’ve snuck into the country, we probably need to look no further than the population woes of Democratic states. At a time when states are governed increasingly by one party or another, the latest migration trends, released last week, show...

The story on that illegal Chinese biological lab found in Las Vegas keeps getting creepier. Recent news about the discovery of an illegal Chinese biological lab full of contagious disease specimens in Las Vegas is starting to sound a lot worse than the coverage it's getting would suggest: According to news accounts, the lab, which was located inside an airBNB house, which accomodated paying guests, seems to have left at least some of the guests "deathly ill," according to this local television report: [video at link] All that good money for Hunter on the line, perhaps. Hunter used to get...

Of the more than 4,500 stars known to have planets, one puzzling statistic stands out. Even though nearly all stars are expected to have planets and most stars form in pairs, planets that orbit both stars in a pair are rare. Of the more than 6,000 extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, confirmed to date - most of them found by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) - only 14 are observed to orbit binary stars. There should be hundreds. Where are all the planets with two suns, like Tatooine in Star Wars? ... ... Over time,...

Today, I am rejoicing about the Washington Post existential spasms. Here is what I said on Free Republic ("Post Mortem" was the title, over 20 years ago!) about the Washington Post and its relentless imbedded leftist bias. "The millstones of the gods grind late, but they grind fine . . ." ========= "POST MORTEM" (transcript of letter to the WAPO editor; posted 10/29/04) On October 27, 2004 Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. penned an op-ed entitled, “A Strict Separation”. Therein Mr. Downie, the self-described “ultimate gatekeeper” (Post, “Live Online” 10/6/04) for everything printed in the newspaper, reassures readers...

Federal agents carried out a military-style raid on a South Shore apartment complex last fall with the permission of the building’s owner and manager, according to new court filings that appear to confirm residents’ suspicions and corroborate key allegations driving a state investigation. The Trump administration has claimed the squalid building was a magnet for criminals and Venezuelan gang members, but the court records filed Tuesday indicate the harrowing raid was actually based on intelligence that “illegal aliens were unlawfully occupying apartments in the building.” Arrest reports for two of the 37 people detained in the overnight raid at 7500...