Free Republic

A Grammy Award-winning rock star left White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stunned with his question about free speech and political asylum during Monday’s briefing. Winston Marshall, the former banjoist with British folk group Mumford & Sons, called on President Trump to grant asylum to his fellow countrymen and -women who faced prosecutions over “hate speech” in the UK. Marshall, who left the band in 2021, claimed that people in his country faced “extensive prison sentences for tweets, social media posts and general free speech issues,” before ramping up to his question.

A paralyzed Army veteran who drowned in a swimming pool may have taken his own life because he discovered his wife was having an affair with a pastor, his sister has claimed. Chris Skinner, 41, was found dead in a neighborhood pool in Myrtle Beach, SC, on Sept. 6, 2021. Both the cops and coroner’s office eventually declared the case a suicide and ended their probes, but the coroner’s office recently reopened its investigation again, although there is no suggestion it involves foul play. She pointed to conflicting descriptions of how Skinner got into the pool from police and coroner...

Virginia Giuffre, the most prominent victim of Jeffrey Epstein who accused some of the world’s most powerful men of sex trafficking, says she had just days left to live after being hit by a bus. The mother-of-three, 41, who was sex trafficked by Epstein as a teenager, shared a battered picture of herself from a hospital bed covered in bruises. She said she was suffering from kidney failure after a bus crashed into her vehicle. -snip- “I’ve gone into kidney renal failure, they’ve given me four days to live, transferring me to a specialist hospital in urology. I’m ready to...

Russian authorities are offering to pay schoolgirls $1,200 to have children in a desperate attempt to boost the country’s birth rate after it lost a reported quarter of a million soldiers in the Ukraine War meat grinder. School-age girls in the western Russian region of Oryol, some 200 miles south of Moscow and close to the Ukraine border, are the first in Russia to receive the payment if they have children. From this year, girls in “full-time education,” will be eligible for the one-off payment of 100,000 rubles ($1,200), Oryol’s regional Governor Andrei Klychkov announced in a statement. The region...

Failed Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris appeared drunk and rambled about nonsense during the AI conference HumanX at Fontainebleau in Las Vegas over the weekend. It’s hard to understand why Harris would be invited to speak at such a conference because if Harris were an expert on anything, it certainly wouldn’t be AI. This is probably why Harris veered off-script and droned on about her obsession with Doritos. Harris once said she binged on Doritos in dismay after former President Donald Trump secured the presidency in 2016. The story was recounted at the HumanX conference, where the former Vice President...

Maybe she needed the snacks for another reason … **SNIP** The failed 2024 Democratic presidential candidate went off on a bizarre (and nacho cheese-flavored) tangent while trying to make a point about DoorDash and affordable housing during her headline slot at the HumanX conference at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas on Sunday. Harris, 60, left many baffled during her conversation with Nuno Sebastiao, CEO of data science company Feedzai, as she recounted ordering food on DoorDash to keep her going while watching last week’s Oscars. “We did DoorDash ’cause I wanted Doritos. And the red carpet part was about to start...

UKRAINE has been handing out "surrender cards" to Russian soldiers containing secret codes with advice on how they can return home alive, reports have claimed. The cards feature a message in Russian for Vlad's invading forces, as well as a QR code on the back with links to further information on how soldiers can surrender to Ukraine. Pictures of the cards supposedly being distributed widely among Russian forces by Ukraine were shared on social media. One side of the card is in the blue and yellow colours of the Ukrainian flag. The headline reads: "YOUR TICKET TO A PEACEFUL LIFE."...

DERANGED tyrant Vladimir Putin shed his geeky image with the help of steroids and extensive plastic surgery to become the brute he is today. Pictures from through the years show the 69-year-old Russian President's transformation from skinny and wrinkled to bloated and bulky, which experts have claimed is down to his expensive procedures. As Putin's finger rests on the nuclear button, and his troops bombard Ukraine, the extent of his apparent vanity has been laid bare. Yesterday, former foreign secretary Lord Owen claimed Putin's aggressive Ukrainian invasion was down to his taking steroids, with the medical doctor saying changes in...

VLADIMIR Putin appeared confused and out of breath as he wheezed his way through his latest speech, threatening the West with nuclear weapons. The Russian president seemed to struggle to catch his breath and paused several times during the address to politicians, stumbling over his words and looking exhausted. At one stage, he appears breathless and stuttering, while on two other occasions, he seems to take quick gasps for air.

RUSSIAN troops have reportedly shelled an old people's home in Ukraine, killing 56 people. A tank allegedly fired at the residential home in what Ukrainian authorities branded a "cynical" and "deliberate" attack.

Dramatic video shows the immense ship ablaze with thick black smoke pouring into the sky as it appears to be sinking into the sea. None of the ship’s 10 crew members on board at the time of the explosion have been accounted for, according to the oil firm which owns the ship. Reports claim the Trinity Spirit exploded on Thursday morning at the Ukpokiti oil field close to the River Niger delta near the Escravos terminal in Nigeria. The cause of the explosion is still being investigated, according to Ikemefuna Okafor, chief executive of Shebah Exploration & Production Company Ltd...

The British like nothing better than to cut their leaders down to size, so it will be no surprise if many of us seize the chance presented by tomorrow's local and European elections to teach the Prime Minister a lesson. Iraq, which has dominated domestic as well as international politics for the past two years, continues to arouse indignation every time Tony Blair appears. Once an irresistible electoral force, he is now treated as an embarrassment by his own party strategists. They must be hoping that, during his current foreign excursion, first to the G8 summit in Georgia and then...

Europe is not working properly. I am quite clear about that. The European Union pumps out too many rules and regulations, and is too centralised and inflexible. It has a poor track record on waste and fraud, and is a prime example of the failed "big government knows best" approach to life. For almost a decade, auditors have refused to sign off the EU's accounts because of the level of fraud and corruption in the organisation. Every year, £3 billion goes missing. Red tape is strangling European business. It has a serious impact on jobs and growth. Productivity in the...

LONDON, Feb. 5 — The leader of the Conservative Party of Britain, Michael Howard, called on Prime Minister Tony Blair today to resign, saying that Mr. Blair failed to ask fundamental questions about Saddam Hussein's weapons before taking the country into war. Mr. Howard's sudden assault on Mr. Blair came after the admission by Mr. Blair in Parliament on Wednesday that he was unaware that intelligence suggesting Mr. Hussein could activate chemical or biological weapons in 45 minutes referred to short-range battlefield weapons, and not strategic weapons that could threaten British and American forces in nearby countries. Though Mr. Howard's...