Free Republic

Bigger agencies, higher spending, and expanded workforces don't always make government more effective.My recent trip to Malibu from Los Angeles was my first post-wildfire drive through the Pacific Palisades and, my goodness, there's nothing like seeing something with one's own eyes to grasp the enormity of the devastation. The obliterated hulks along Pacific Coast Highway 21 months after the tragedy raise multiple issues, including ones related to the excruciatingly slow rebuilding process. This being California, the state has yet to grapple sufficiently with the reasons the wildfires started—and the failed response to them. But late is better than never, so...

HeeHaw's owner argues that “no reasonable officer…would have believed that such force was necessary or justified.”The Georgia officer responsible for killing a 1-year-old miniature donkey, HeeHaw, has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit against him, claiming the body camera footage proves he "reasonably believed the donkey posed an imminent threat to a fellow officer." But even if it doesn't, the officer argues he is immune from liability. In the early morning hours of August 30, Hannah Michelle Israel was at her Cedartown home in western Georgia when she received a distressing phone call. A supervisor with the Cedartown Police...

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- A Center City woman was arrested after allegedly refusing to move out of the path of a delivery robot. The confrontation was captured on video and has since drawn online attention. Philadelphia police said officers responded to the 1200 block of Filbert Street after witnesses reported a disturbance involving Carolyn Marvin and an Uber delivery robot near Reading Terminal Market. According to police, Marvin repeatedly blocked the robot's path and ignored multiple commands from officers to move. She was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. Marvin tells Action News she was protesting the use of delivery robots...

Secretary Mullin and Commissioner Scott observed ongoing construction on secondary barriers and met with construction crews as the Trump Administration marked 17 months of ZERO releases of illegal aliens at the southern border. The latest data from CBP also revealed that Fiscal Year 2026 saw the lowest amount of border crossings of any fiscal year in American history. ...“Thanks to President Trump’s bold leadership, we have had ZERO illegal aliens released into our country for the past 17 straight months—that’s promises made, promises kept in action.” In Fiscal Year 2026, CBP completed construction of 250 miles of new border barrier...

[Catholic Caucus] The Modernist Gospel of Lived Experience: Rome Rediscovers the Heresy Condemned by St. Pius X At Leo XIV’s Vatican, theology is now said to emerge from people’s experiences. St. Pius X exposed this inversion of Catholic faith 119 years ago.The Modernists Are Finally Saying It Out LoudSometimes the Modernists make their intentions so obvious that one wonders why they bother dressing them up in theological jargon.During the October 14 Vatican press conference marking the tenth anniversary of Amoris Laetitia, Fr. Stanislaus Chu Ilo, a Nigerian theologian at DePaul University, offered this remarkable explanation of the theological revolution currently...

How the free market gets blamed for cronyism. Words have specific meanings. Unfortunately, capitalism is frequently misused by supporters and critics alike. Too often, what people defend or condemn is not free-market capitalism at all. Although distinctions exist among capitalism, free enterprise, and free market, for the purposes of this essay, I use capitalism to mean free-market capitalism: an economic system based on private property, voluntary exchange, competition, freedom of entry and association, and freedom of contract—including wages negotiated without government-imposed minimums. Government’s role is that of a referee: protecting property rights, enforcing contracts, and preventing force and fraud, not...

As smoking makes a comeback among Silicon Valley founders and engineers, Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar says some AI researchers are lighting up to signal their belief that the technology will cure cancer, calling it a form of “mass psychosis.” Speaking with Face the Nation’s Margaret Brennan Sunday, Sankar argued that some people building artificial general intelligence (AGI) have developed an almost religious faith in the technology, while others’ warnings about its dangers are driven by their own ideological beliefs. The X account Fireside Alpha shared a clip. [Palantir CTO reveals AI researchers are taking up smoking to signal to other...

If absentee ballot numbers are any indication, things in Wisconsin look really good for Republicans in the state, including Tom Tiffany. Here's a better breakdown of those numbers: There were 363,330 applications this year, down 20.3 percent from 2022, and 151,231 were returned, down 28.2 percent from 2022. Those numbers are down across the board, but especially so in bluer districts. Republicans must go and vote. But the signs are there that this may not be the blue wave Democrats are hoping for. That's great news for all of us.

Looking for an easy weeknight meal that the whole family will enjoy- this King Ranch Chicken casserole is a flavorful recipe with history too!

The weeping mother of the crazed teen gunman who carried out a mass shooting at an Oregon elementary school insisted her son was “a good boy” and that she would have tried to prevent the massacre if she could. Shauntai May Nickerson, the mother of 16-year-old John J. Griffin II, waved off reporters on the porch of her apartment complex as she smoked a cigarette and cried, the New York Times reported. The mother insisted Griffin — who killed three students and one teacher at Silver Rail Elementary School on Thursday — was “a good boy, he really was” and...

Author and media personality Oli London labels Greta Thunberg a "hypocrite" for fighting climate change while joining protests that are further polluting European streets. "Greta Thunberg has to be labelled a hypocrite. She claims to be a climate change activist, but she's constantly jetting around Europe," Mr London told News24 Digital Presenter Gabriella Power.

New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez donated $1 million to Dr. Abdul El-Sayed who is running for U.S. Senate as a Democrat. Ocasio-Cortez has been campaigning for El-Sayed as the midterm elections are less than a month away. She has been on the road and has campaigned for El-Sayed and other Democratic candidates as her party is expected to have some midterm victories in tight races. El-Sayed is facing Republican challenger Mike Rogers.

A White House official on Friday told The Epoch Times that new White House press secretary Katie Zacharia has left her position about a week after she was named. The White House also shared an X post from a Fox News reporter saying she is transitioning away from the position. President Donald Trump on Friday said he offered Zacharia the option to reconsider taking the job after she was “treated very badly” in the media. “I said to Katie just two minutes ago: ‘You don’t have to do this,’” he told reporters at the White House on Friday.

Things Have Changed “Most people are not the enemy. They are scared, proud, lonely, overworked, and trying to protect something they love with the only map they were handed.” —LHGrey I remind you once again: history is a trickster. Sometimes things turn out, and sometimes they just turn, and these days they’re turning hard. Get this: Russia is not our mortal enemy anymore. This is not 1956 or even 1986. It is no longer the so-called Free World against the wicked Hammer and Sickle. Russia is no longer a weird political science experiment acting in defiance of human nature —...

I first got onto this "Hacking Your Own Brain" business, because, whereas I used to be able to schmooze with almost anyone, after a certain decline in one of the cognitions, (social, emotional, intellectual and motor skills), I found myself, no longer a sociability master, but silly, to the point of irking others.I never formally studied this topic, how to reverse brain aging. But I have practical experience with it, that you probably can't get in college. (In the 1st comment, "I hacked my own brain, as it were, going through the exercises in "Your Brain, for Dummies".) This brings...

THEY'D LOSE MICHIGAN. "The average error rate, off by 3.7 points!" "Siren warning for Democrats...if we get this average error rate...THIS is what we're talking about...Republicans would get 52 seats, Democrats would get 48." In 2024, Mike Rogers came within roughly 19,000 votes of winning Michigan. HE CAN DO IT THIS TIME The polls have underestimated Trump voters in every one of his elections. If they vote, we win. This is why ALL OF US in EVERY STATE need to vote no matter what Texas, Ohio, Alaska, Maine, Michigan, it's all winnable!

A Southern California woman who illegally registered her dog to vote and cast ballots in two elections has had her criminal case dismissed after pleading guilty and paying for anti-voter fraud billboards featuring her own pet, prosecutors announced Thursday. Laura Lee Yourex, 64, of Costa Mesa, was initially charged with five felonies after authorities discovered she had registered her dog, Maya Jean Yourex, to vote and submitted mail-in ballots in the animal’s name during California’s 2021 gubernatorial recall election and the 2022 primary election. According to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, the dog’s vote was successfully counted in the...

Explanation: Blasting into the predawn sky on Tuesday, October 13, a Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft are headed for low Earth orbit in this stunning timelapse video captured from Indian Harbour Beach, Florida. Starting with a launch from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Falcon and Dragon are chasing the International Space Station on NASA's 35th Commercial Resupply Services mission. On cue, the space station itself enters the frame from the top. Almost 8 seconds into the 30 second timelapse. the bright streak of the ISS appears heading "down" toward the horizon. The first and...

1. The Left collapses in Latin and South America2. Far fewer kids claim to be Alphabet people"a recent analysis of federal data indicates a sharp decline in the percentage of young American teenagers identifying as lesbian, gay, or bisexual. According to a October 2026 report by The Washington Post and an analysis by psychologist Jean Twenge on her Substack Generation Tech, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows a significant reversal of previous upward trends."https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2026/10/08/number-teens-who-identify-themselves-gay-or-bisexual-free-fall/3. (C)rap suddenly collapses"Rap and hip-hop experienced a historic commercial downturn, marked by a complete absence of rap songs in the top...

A state law in California ostensibly meant to make it easier for religious institutions and nonprofit colleges to rezone their property for building low-income housing for the homeless is now being used to potentially confiscate church property, according to legal experts in the Golden State. The controversy began in October 2023, when California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed into law a measure that allowed religious institutions and nonprofit colleges to bypass local zoning laws in order to quickly establish affordable housing. The measure was apparently intended to make it easier for local jurisdictions to abide by state regulations that...