Free Republic

New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham on Friday suspended laws that allow open and concealed carry of firearms in Albuquerque for 30 days after declaring a public health emergency. The order, in my view, is flagrantly unconstitutional under existing Second Amendment precedent. It could also be a calculated effort to evade a ruling by making the period of suspension so short that it becomes moot before any final decision is reached by a court. The order cites recent cases of gun-related violence in and around the city, including the killing of an 11-year-old boy dead and the wounding of a...

Fox News Channel is now the Bud Light of cable television. Donald Trump ruined their phony-baloney debate with his announcement Friday afternoon that instead of going to Milwaukee, he may be doing a one-on-one sit-down Wednesday night with Tucker Carlson. Think about how that’s going to play out. Fox’s bid to escape its post-Tucker ratings plunge is now wrecked. Instead, it becomes a vice presidential debate, a sour-grapes hiss-fest, Paul Ryan’s worst nightmare. And Fox & Friends can’t even discuss it, because then they would have to mention the other T word — Tucker. And that cardinal sin gets even...

Among the many trends the pandemic accelerated, one of the least noted has been the increase in so-called cashless toll roads—highways where electronic fee-collection systems have replaced human toll collectors. Now, as traffic returns to pre-pandemic levels, another trend is plaguing these new systems: fare evasion. Around the country, turnpike authorities and bridge and tunnel operators are logging hundreds of millions of dollars in losses as scofflaws find increasingly inventive ways to outfox the systems. Though advocates say that the losses represent a small portion of total revenues, some officials are contemplating raising tolls to account for the shortfalls—in the...

Gary Kent, the actor, director and stunt performer who also served as one of the inspirations for Brad Pitt’s Cliff Booth character in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” died on May 25 in Austin, Texas, The Austin Chronicle confirmed. He was 89. Kent began his career as a seasoned stunt performer after to traveling to Los Angeles in 1958. Ahead of doubling for Jack Nicholson in Monte Hellman’s “Ride in the Whirlwind” and “The Shooting,” Kent worked in film production offices and acted on the side, appearing in “Legion of the Doomed,” “King of the Wild Stallions,”...

In a stunning reversal from their prior blackout of the story, CBS News released an exclusive interview this week with an IRS whistleblower who is alleging that the Department of Justice intentionally stymied an investigation into potential tax law violations by Hunter Biden. The moment recalls memories of another famous incident of CBS suddenly turning on a Democrat president, when anchor Walter Cronkite broke with Lyndon B. Johnson’s stance on the Vietnam War, an incident that reportedly caused Johnson to remark, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost America.” That watershed moment came on February 27, 1968, in the midst of...

During TNT's broadcast of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals on Tuesday, Shaquille O'Neal hinted at his involvement in an FTX lawsuit while speaking to Stephen Curry — just hours before getting served. "Thanks for getting me in trouble," O'Neal said to Curry, likely in reference to their joint involvement in the FTX case. "Don't say nothing," he continued, as both NBA legends fell into laughter. Later that night, O'Neal was reportedly served two legal complaints — one for his involvement in the ongoing FTX lawsuit and another regarding an NFT project — by a process server who attended the game,...

Toe-tally gross. An evening manager of a Tennessee hotel was arrested after he snuck into a man’s room and sucked on his toes, according to police. David Neal, a 52-year-old manager at the 4th Avenue South Hilton Hotel in Nashville, allegedly crept into a male guest’s room while he was sleeping on March 30 and got intimate with his feet. According to Nashville Metropolitan Police, Neal made a key card to get into the room and entered around 5 a.m., WKRN reported. The guest told police he woke up to Neal’s mouth around his toes and immediately confronted him. He...

A body found in a walk-in freezer at an Arby's in New Iberia was that of a woman who managed the fast food restaurant and her death appears to be an accident, the lead homicide investigator told News 15. The gruesome discovery happened Thursday evening during regular business hours at the Arby's located at 1120 E. Admiral Doyle Drive in New Iberia's Lagniappe Village shopping center. “So it was an employee that discovered the female deceased inside the cooler, (and) the deceased is an employee of the restaurant,” New Iberia Police Capt. Leland Laseter told News 15 in an exclusive...

A former Vermont governor’s estate is suing Middlebury College for removing his family name from the campus chapel he paid for because he advocated for the sterilization of “degenerates and defectives” a century ago. A 79-page complaint filed in Vermont Superior Court alleges the school breached its contract with the estate of Gov. John Mead in 2021 when it removed the Mead name, which was a precondition of the money gifted to the school to build the chapel. The building sits atop the highest hill on the centuries-old campus. James Douglas, a spokesman for the estate of former Gov. John...

Marijuana and other products containing THC, the plant’s main psychoactive ingredient, have grown more potent and more dangerous as legalization has made them more widely available. Although decades ago the THC content of weed was commonly less than 1.5%, some products on the market today are more than 90% THC. The buzz of yesteryear has given way to something more alarming. Marijuana-related medical emergencies have landed hundreds of thousands of people in the hospital and millions are dealing with psychological disorders linked to cannabis use, according to federal research. But regulators have failed to keep up. Among states that allow...

An experimental skin patch is showing promise to treat toddlers who are highly allergic to peanuts — training their bodies to handle an accidental bite. Peanut allergy is one of the most common and dangerous food allergies. Parents of allergic tots are constantly on guard against exposures that can turn birthday parties and play dates into emergency room visits. There is no cure. The only treatment is for children 4 and older who can consume a special peanut powder to protect against a severe reaction. The patch, named Viaskin, aims to deliver that kind of treatment through the skin instead....

Robert De Niro now has a septet of children. When an interviewer mentioned De Niro’s “six kids” recently, the two-time Oscar winner had a late-breaking update: “Seven, actually.” “I just had a baby,” De Niro added in the ET Canada interview, which was published online on Monday. There’s no word on the newborn’s name or age or the partner with whom he became a dad again. The “Raging Bull” star has six other kids with three former partners, per People. With his first wife, Diahnne Abbott, he has daughter Drena, 51, and son Raphael, 46. With ex-girlfriend Toukie Smith he...

Is there any more depraved and greedy crew of Beautiful People anywhere than the Democrats from Harvard who sucked up to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein before his, uh, suicide in 2019? Talk about greedy — every last one of Epstein’s sycophants couldn’t stop rump-swabbing the Democrat pervert, despite the fact that all of them were already fabulously wealthy and privileged and hated everybody who didn’t have a trust fund like they did. C’mon down, “Dr.” Lawrence Summers, former US Treasury secretary and ex-president of Harvard University. Kudos to the Wall Street Journal, which in addition to running the usual two or...

Beth and Les Bogar of West Chesterfield, New Hampshire, spent over a year planning their trip of a lifetime to Bali. The globe-trotting couple was thrilled to be able to end their trip was a memorable experience getting up close with elephants at the Mason Elephant Park & Lodge. "It was a vacation that I was dreaming about, and it did come to a screaming halt at the very end," said Beth Bogar. However, their dream trip took an abrupt turn, after Beth said she was hurt during a photo opportunity with an elephant. She had just finished swimming with...

Howie’s poll question of the day yesterday asked “Who is the biggest piece of white trash in America?” The results are in: Hunter Biden. Endless transgressions – criminal and otherwise — have been committed by Hunter Biden. In fact, I am hard pressed to find anything that the President’s son has done that could be considered a moral or personal achievement. Certainly, we can’t praise him for his brief affair with his dead brother’s widow, although President Biden and Dr. Jill thought it was just charming. In a statement released after that scandalous story broke, Sleepy Joe gave his public...

There has been widespread speculation about how advances in artificial intelligence (AI) assistants like ChatGPT could be used in medicine. A new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine led by Dr. John W. Ayers from the Qualcomm Institute within the University of California San Diego provides an early glimpse into the role that AI assistants could play in medicine. The study compared written responses from physicians and those from ChatGPT to real-world health questions. A panel of licensed health care professionals preferred ChatGPT's responses 79% of the time and rated ChatGPT's responses as higher quality and more empathetic. "The opportunities...

An Arkansas judge ordered Hunter Biden on Monday to personally show up in court in May to address questions about his laptop, including whether financial records on it belong to him. FreeBeacon Supreme Court Blocks Restrictions on Abortion Pill READ MORE Circuit Court judge Holly Meyer gave the order as part of Hunter Biden’s drawn-out custody battle with Lunden Alexis Roberts over their four-year-old daughter. It would be his first public appearance in the case—the Bidens have steadfastly refused to acknowledge the child’s existence, and Hunter denied that he was the father until a court-ordered DNA test proved otherwise. "I...

John “Zip” Connolly is apparently one of those hoodlums who cares what his obituary says about him after he’s dead and gone. At age 82, the infamous ex-FBI agent seems obsessed with clearing at least one indelible stain off his remarkably squalid (even by Boston G-man standards) underworld career. He’d prefer not to have “Mob hitman” in the first sentence of his death notice. There’s not much he can do about the racketeering conviction, or all his tawdry connections to the Bulger Crime Family. But “Mob hitman” is a bit much. Sadly, Zip has failed yet again to remove “assassin”...

Barry Humphries, the Australian comedian who for over 60 years played his character Dame Edna Everage on the stage and screen, has died at the age of 89. Humphries’ family announced his death Saturday at a Sydney hospital, where he had been due complications from a hip surgery he underwent in March; the comedian suffered a fall the previous month in his native Australia. “He was completely himself until the very end, never losing his brilliant mind, his unique wit and generosity of spirit,” a family statement said (via The Associated Press). ”With over 70 years on the stage, he...

Last summer, after an elderly passenger died of a heart condition during a Celebrity Cruises vacation to the Caribbean, the cruise line allegedly advised his wife of two options: allow her husband's remains to be removed from the ship in nearby Puerto Rico, where she would have to stay alone for days pending a possible autopsy, or leave his body with the ship's morgue until the vessel arrived back in the United States. In hopes of returning to her family as soon as possible, the woman, 78, chose the latter option, trusting that the ship would safely transport her husband...