Free Republic

Norm Eisen's ongoing lawsuits against Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are drawing scrutiny—and not just because of the high-profile figures involved. It turns out, Eisen’s own family ties are raising serious questions about conflict of interest. His daughter, Tamar Eisen, worked as a Program Officer for the National Democratic Institute (NDI)—a non-profit organization that has been on the receiving end of millions in USAID funding. It doesn’t stop there. The NDI has been the recipient of substantial USAID grants, including a hefty $32.3 million for the “Electoral Empowerment of CSO Project.” Now, just as Norm Eisen’s lawsuits against...

The U.S. government is in the habit of sending hundreds of billions overseas each year—foreign aid, military assistance, humanitarian support—and most of it is wasted or siphoned off by the well-connected. It’s the ultimate slush fund. Billions are funneled to NGOs that line their pockets, pay exorbitant salaries to their cronies, and rarely, if ever, deliver on the stated mission. This is a direct line to the $36 trillion debt and a $2 trillion annual deficit we’re drowning in. Foreign aid is a massive scam, draining U.S. coffers while our own infrastructure and services fall apart. Look at the State...

Have you noticed that there has been a very alarming rise in volcanic activity in recent months? According to Volcano Discovery, 38 volcanoes around the globe have recently erupted, and dozens more are showing signs of either unrest or minor activity. In all my years, I have never seen anything quite like this, and I am entirely convinced that seismic activity will only increase during the months ahead. Here in the United States, I am watching Mt. Rainier very closely, and Yellowstone is a threat that is constantly hanging over our heads. But scientists are warning that Mount Spurr could...

In the run up to the 2012 election, both President Obama and Governor Romney downplayed the topic of gun control – even though Americans were on pace to buy more firearms than ever before. Because neither candidate was an avid shooter, special interest groups such as the NRA and the Brady Campaign dominated much of the campaign rhetoric. With this presidency came huge responsibility to the Second Amendment, as the previous four years had seen two high-profile 2A cases narrowly decided by split 5-4 decisions. President Obama’s victory ended up resulting in two appointments to the Supreme Court – Sonia...

• There have been 2,646 school shooting incidents in the U.S. since 1966. Of those, 2,205 (94%) occurred after the 1990 School Zone Safety Act (Amended in 1995). • There are 1,325 total State Gun Laws per this 2022 report. • The Federal government has been enacting Federal Firearm regulations since 1934. • The correlation between population density and school shootings is more profound in population density than in firearm legislation. • There is no standard “School shooting” definition in the U.S. The Secret Service defines targeted attacks, while most data includes incidents when a firearm is brandished, fired, or...

Key Statistics: • There have been 196 accidental deaths related to firearms so far in 2023. • Accidental shooting deaths have declined from 1,491 per year (1979-1998) to an average of 606 (1999-2023). • 728 accidental shootings (including injuries or death) occur on average yearly. • 1% of all firearm-related deaths in 2022 were unintentional. • Individuals aged 14-30 are consistently more likely to die of accidental shootings than any other age group.

She should have just kept her mouth shut about the economy. I know that sounds harsh, but it is true. The best chance that Kamala Harris had of winning was to stand for nothing. I am being completely serious. For the first few weeks of her campaign, she was being showered with positive coverage by the mainstream media even though she had not come forward with any serious policy proposals. She could have probably continued doing that all the way to election day in November, but now she has ruined her campaign by telling us what she actually plans to...

What in the world just happened at Reagan National Airport? Like many of you, I was deeply distressed to hear of such a great tragedy that should have been so easy to avoid. There is no way that we can bring back those that have died. Many believe that if competent people were running things at Reagan National Airport, they would still be with us. Others are entirely convinced that we aren’t being given the entire picture. There are so many unanswered questions, and I am going to share quite a few with you in this article. But let’s start...

It's December and seems the right time to play music related to Christmas back in the 1970's Boney M... "I'm praying for you China" Those lyrics in that song wow! We were all praying for China when it opened up opening up opportunities for evangelism in my youth. Well, the situation with China today is... It seems to me listening to folks like Gordon Chang a decade before COVID that China was in the crosshairs to become 'the enemy'... COVID was more than its 'origin' it was lockdowns, masks and vaccines... As I reflect on March of 2020 I was...

The first song this week was something I heard because Jimmy Buffett's music... "The Liberal Capitalists whipped The..." Not that people but the election came out this way... October 7th, 2023 changed a lot in this world... Here's something to think about is there anyone or anything in this world that can keep Benjamin "Machiavelli" Netanyahu in check? Insider Thomas Friedman who works for the New York Times and the "Deep State" IMHO had this to say... Behind "Democracy" There Is "Hierarchy"... "I do not believe that God created an egalitarian world. I believe the authority of parent over child,...

French President Emmanuel Macron joined other world leaders in holding phone conversations with US President-Elect Donald Trump on Wednesday. Macron said to have stressed the role of Europe... "I am a candidate for the presidential election:" Marine Le Pen making the point to judges at her trial in Paris on Thursday. The frontrunner in polling for the 2027 Presidential Election being put on trial for alleged misuse of funds at the European Parliament... A small group of protesters on the streets a banner fronting the protest. Left-wing rhetoric and even a yellow flag with the "peace sign"...

On this date in 1946, market day in the southeastern Polish town of Debica, three captured fighters* from the anti-communist Freedom and Independence (WiN) movement were publicly hanged. This salutary, and surprise, hanging was a nasty public message during the dirty post-war war to consolidate communist authority in Poland. The message, however, was not exactly meant for a world wider than Poland itself, so the fact that it was captured in a grainy photograph snapped by WiN agent Józef Stec and subsequently smuggled out to the West was not at all to the liking of Polish authorities....

On this date in 1835, five professional gamblers were strung up in Vicksburg. It was an event more adjacent to than constituent of the slave rebellion panic shaking Mississippi, for the men were neither slaves nor their confederates and they were not struck down for threatening the Slave Power; at best, the uneasiness of possible insurrectionary stirrings abroad informed the tense background, or offered the post hoc justification — but these lynchings were a different thing that inhabited by chance the same time and place. A Mississippi River boomtown “created by the easy credit of the Jacksonian ‘flush times’ and...

On this date in 1963, Francisco Franco’s government shot Communist agitator Julian Grimau. Grimau (English Wikipedia entry | Spanish), a member of the Communist Party of Spain‘s Central Committee since 1959, had fled to exile after escaping the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939. But he in 1959 he took over the Communists’ activities within Spain itself, and began living underground in his old homeland. The Franco regime dearly wanted to take him. In November 1962, secret police arrested Grimau on a bus and hustled him to Madrid’s Puerta del Sol, where within hours Grimau met with that...

On this date in 1374, mayor Tile von Damm was beheaded by rebel populares in his home city of Braunschweig (Brunswick). One of northern Europe’s great Hanseatic merchant cities, Braunschweig enjoyed a rich history of civic unrest — the Braunschweiger Schichten. (Literally shift, but also carrying the sense of rebellion.) The Great Rebellion in Braunschweig, by Alfred von Schüssler (mid-19th century). One of its most outstanding installments — the one recalled as the Große Schicht — kicked off on April 17, 1374. (Most of the information about this incident is in German, as are most of the links in this...

The five ordinary Londoners pictured above had been snitched out by neighbors for shirking the Catholic Mass under Queen Mary — the offense that Protestants would call recusancy when the mitre was on the other bishop. They had the sturdiness one would attribute to men and women of the common clay, and also the theological unsophistication; our martyrology caveats of their interrogation that “some of them attributed the title and honour of a sacrament to the holy estate of matrimony” — the standard Anglican and also Lutheran position was that there were only two sacraments, baptism and eucharist — but...

Mexico is our next-door neighbor but it seems many Americans are not well-informed about it. Wrong and outdated impressions of Mexico affect our policymakers as well. This is particularly true regarding border and immigration policy. Americans think of Mexico as a poor country. And it is, compared to the United States. But Mexico is wealthier and has a higher standard of living than most countries in Latin America and Africa. There are, of course, many poor Mexicans. But doesn’t Mexico itself, with all its wealth, have a responsibility to help its own poor people? In the U.S., any meddling perpetrated...

On this date in 1828, William Dyon, 45, and his son, John, 23, were hanged for the murder of William’s brother, who was also named John. The brothers had fallen out over their father’s inheritance; William Dyon Sr. had favored John’s family over William Jr.’s. Writing dramatically of the case in his book Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in Doncaster, Stephen Wade described the brothers as sons of a Lincolnshire farmer, and the two boys were so different that this tale almost attains a biblical resonance, with jealousy, brooding and resentment, and finally a deathly hatred that led one brother...

“In the yeare 1307 the first of Aprill,” Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland records, “Murcod Ballagh was beheaded neere to Merton by sir David Caunton knight.” First published in 1577, this document — heavily mined by Shakespeare for his histories — is silent as to the further particulars of the beheading. But the accompanying image depicting the execution surprisingly presents a guillotine-like device being employed for the task. s John Wilson Croker’s History of the Guillotine observes, this one illustration 270 years after the fact scarcely suffices to establish that a guillotine precursor really was in use in...

Bangladesh on this date in 2007 hanged six Islamic militants* for a terrorist bombing wave two years prior. Several were agents of the terrorist organization Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, notable for a headline-grabbing coordinated bombing on August 17, 2005 that saw hundreds of explosions throughout Bangladesh. That organization’s chief Shaykh Abdur Rahman was among those executed on March 30, 2007, as was “Bangla Bhai” (Siddique ul-Islam), the leader of the Al Qaeda-aligned Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB).