Free Republic

Mauricio Jimenez, 48, of Hialeah, was arrested Tuesday on charges of grand theft over $100,000 and organized fraud of $50,000 or more, Miami-Dade jail records showed. The manager of a Miami-Dade Home Depot store has been arrested in a years-long fraud scheme involving merchandise markdowns that cost the home improvement company millions, authorities said. Mauricio Jimenez, 48, of Hialeah, was arrested Tuesday on charges of grand theft over $100,000 and organized fraud of $50,000 or more, Miami-Dade jail records showed. According to an arrest report, Jimenez was the manager of the Home Depot at 7899 West Flagler Street and had...

Jean Raspail’s ‘The Camp of the Saints’ isn’t a racist screed, it’s a story about how civilizations die. In an act of censorship that liberals would normally decry as fascist and authoritarian, Amazon banned a new edition of The Camp of the Saints by the late French novelist Jean Raspail — and then quietly re-listed the book after online backlash to the company’s attempted censorship. The book, published by a small outfit called Vauban Books, was removed from Amazon’s U.S. site on Monday with almost no explanation. As of this writing, Amazon has not explained why it de-listed the...

We were newlyweds. We still walked around holding hands, even if we were just going to the store. I would say to him, "I love you." But I didn't know then how much. I had no idea… We lived in the dormitory of the fire station where he worked. There were three other young couples; we all shared a kitchen. On the ground floor they kept the trucks, the red fire trucks. That was his job. One night I heard a noise. I looked out the window. He saw me. "Close the window and go back to sleep. There's a...

Christopher Nolan made his way to Las Vegas to talk up “The Odyssey,” his historical drama based on Homer’s Greek epic... “Why ‘The Odyssey?’ ‘The Odyssey’ is a story that has fascinated generation after generation for 3,000 years,” Nolan mused. “It’s not a story. It’s the story.” Nolan treated exhibitors to an extended look at “The Odyssey,” which opened with Damon’s Odysseus, shirtless on the beach with a burly beard. He’s been gone a long time and admits to Calypso (Charlize Theron) that he “can’t remember anything before Troy.” Most of the footage revolved around “the story of the horse”...

The Newberry Library in Chicago is scouting transcribers to demystify its handwritten collection. As Dan Kelly wrote in yesterday’s Chicago, the archive’s hunt for “living Rosetta stones” first kicked off in 2013, when the Newberry launched a campaign to transcribe all its Civil War letters in time for the sesquicentennial. This was such a success that the project has since gained momentum, expanding into all corners of the collection’s vast archive. Volunteer crowdsourcing efforts began in earnest during the pandemic. Because, as Alison Hinderliter, the Newberry’s curator of modern manuscripts and archives has put it, “people were looking for something...

Ever since the unveiling of Bitcoin on Halloween 2008, the true inventor behind the revolutionary digital currency has been shrouded in mystery. Its creator adopted the mysterious pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, but no individual had so far been decisively identified as Satoshi, now undoubtedly one of the world’s richest people. But after an extensive investigation involving artificial intelligence and forensic linguistics experts, the New York Times has claimed to uncover the anonymous architect of Bitcoin, who has hidden his identity for 17 years. That man is Adam Back, a 55-year-old British computer scientist who the newspaper says pioneered the decentralised digital...

"Somebody stole something… and the number-one suspect is Black Snape?"Saturday Night Live is diving headfirst into the discourse surrounding one of Harry Potter's most controversial casting choices. During the sketch show's latest "Weekend Update" segment, Kam Patterson stepped into the role of Professor Snape — a nod to the upcoming HBO series casting a Black actor, Paapa Essiedu, to play the previously white character — and like many Potter fans and critics, SNL had some interesting observations to share about the decision. "Good evening, Mr. Jost," Patterson began, appearing as Snape and trying out a faux-British accent. Immediately dropping...

Yenny/El Ateneo, Argentina’s oldest and largest bookstore chain, publishes weekly charts of the top 10 bestselling books in their retail stores across the country. The Spanish edition of Letters for Life, a new book on the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Torah-based advice for emotional wellbeing, surprised the country’s publishing wizards and emerged as #5 on the list. As a result, the book is now being sold in airports and malls across Argentina. The book’s popularity follows the increased interest in the Lubavitcher Rebbe caused by Argentina’s philo-Semite president Javier Milei. Milei has visited the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Ohel several times on his trips...

Children in Finland start school at the age of seven. They are only in classrooms half the time as most other countries. Its students outperform most others across the world. Why is that?

A stubborn patient has refused to leave her Florida hospital room even though she was discharged by doctors five months ago, a lawsuit alleges. Charlotte Paynter has allegedly been unlawfully occupying Room 373 at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital since October, according to a civil lawsuit filed by the hospital on March 3. Paynter, 69, was admitted to the medical facility for treatment for an undisclosed condition last year, the hospital said in the complaint obtained by the Daily Mail. Doctors issued a formal discharge order on October 6 after it was determined that she no longer needed acute care services, the...

What I remember about it is that it is approximately a Victorian era movie or miniseries. The show aired anywhere from the late 70's to late 80's. In the show, it involves an older sister or single mother and two younger children who are taken in by a compassionate wealthy young gentleman, possibly an aristocrat. He tries to raise the children to be fit for his level of society, but the young man becomes resentful of him and ends up stabbing him in the leg when the young man reveals that he is now broke because of bad investments. I...

San Francisco is restoring eighth-grade algebra after more than a decade, with the San Francisco Board of Education voting 4-3 Tuesday night to approve the change, reversing a controversial policy that had eliminated the course in middle schools in the name of equity. The vote follows years of debate over academic rigor, access and declining outcomes, as families increasingly pushed the district to expand advanced coursework options. "Families want to see a public school system that offers rigorous coursework. This is absolutely an instructional strategy," school board President Phil Kim said, according to The New York Times. "But it’s also...

Former First Lady Michelle Obama has advice for young women starting their careers: Don’t try to dismantle a broken system until you have clout that commands authority. Sadly, that means waiting until you’re older and established in your career to make those changes. Her new book chronicles the evolution of her personal style as First Lady and after leaving the White House. Specifically, the book delves into how fashion played a key role in establishing Obama’s credibility—a rubric all professional women are judged by, sadly. In her talk with Cooper, Obama reflected on how fashion choices are more consequential for...

3,000 Jewish children vanished from the face of Nazi-occupied Europe. They weren't deported. They weren't found in concentration camps. They simply evaporated. And the most unlikely place on earth became the perfect hiding spot: a small Protestant village in the heart of occupied France, where pastors and farmers transformed their homes, barns, and schools into underground sanctuaries. But here's the detail that will make you question everything you know about World War II. These children weren't hidden in secret basements or distant forests. They walked the streets. They attended classes. They played in public squares. And the Nazis, with all...

"The purpose of this volume is to tell the story of Cicero's life, and at the same time to set forth from his writings a presentation of the concluding age of the Roman Republic, and to record the disastrous but not inglorious failure of the last Free State of the ancient world. So far as may be, I propose to let Cicero himself to speak to my readers."

Letter Concerning Toleration by John Locke was originally published in 1689. Its initial publication was in Latin, though it was immediately translated into other languages. In this "letter" addressed to an anonymous "Honored Sir" (actually Locke's close friend Philip von Limborch, who published it without Locke's knowledge) Locke argues for a new understanding of the relationship between religion and government. One of the founders of Empiricism, Locke develops a philosophy that is contrary to the one expressed by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan, primarily because it supports toleration for various Christian denominations. Locke's work appeared amidst a fear that Catholicism might...

DEAD MEN'S DUST. You don't buy poetry. (Neither do I.) Why? You cannot afford it? Bosh! you spend Editions de luxe on a thirsty friend. You can buy any one of the poetry bunch For the price you pay for a business lunch. Don't you suppose that a hungry head, Like an empty stomach, ought to be fed? Looking into myself, I find this true, So I hardly can figure it false in you.

Engineering school taught us to write code. It never taught us to write. Now writing is the whole job. I went to engineering school at the University of Virginia. I appreciated the education. The engineering program is rigorous. I learned differential equations, thermodynamics, signal processing, data structures, and enough physics to respect what I didn’t understand. (And, I barely made it through.) I now wish I had majored in English if you’d told me that thirty years ago, I would have laughed at you, and then gone back to failing an electromagnetics exam. You know what I didn’t learn? How...

Len Deighton, the British author who brought a documentary-style realism to the spy genre in 1960s Cold War thrillers like “The Ipcress File” and “Funeral in Berlin,” the film versions of which helped make Michael Caine an international star, died on Sunday at his home in Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands between England and France. He was 97. His death was confirmed by Russell Clark, the family’s lawyer. Unlike the impossibly suave, action-oriented Bond or George Smiley, John le Carré’s dumpy, cerebral, upper-class spy hero, Mr. Deighton’s central character is self-consciously proletarian, with a jaded, frequently hostile attitude toward...

13 March 2026 7:54 PM Today the Ides of March survives as a powerful historical metaphor. What was once simply a day for settling debts and observing rituals became one of the most famous dates in historyFew dates in history carry the dramatic weight of the Ides of March. Falling on March 15, the phrase is forever tied to political intrigue, betrayal and the assassination of one of ancient Rome’s most powerful leaders, Julius Caesar. In the Roman calendar, the term “Ides” referred simply to the middle of the month. While the Ides fell on the 13th day in most...