Free Republic

Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right nationalist who on Sunday was elected Brazil’s new president, has been called the “Brazilian Trump.” But he’s more extreme than that. His rhetoric is more explicitly violent and bigoted, and his rule threatens more than just the fourth-largest democracy in the world. The livability of the entire planet is at stake. The Amazon rainforest, more than half of which is within Brazil’s borders, covers 4 percent of the earth’s surface and is a major regulator of the world’s climate. Its trees act as a sponge for carbon dioxide, absorbing the planet-warming gas from the atmosphere and...

Sweden is to prosecute the 21-year-old student who single-handedly grounded an aircraft preparing to deport an Afghan asylum seeker. Elin Ersson broadcast her one-woman protest on Facebook in July, during which she refused to sit down on the flight from Landvetter airport in Gothenburg, thereby preventing it from taking off. The video has been watched 13m times. Several other passengers, including an entire football team, joined her protest and an asylum seeker was removed from the plane – to applause from passengers. On Friday, Swedish prosecutors announced that Ersson would be prosecuted at Gothenburg district court “for crimes against the...

Sascha Atkins-Loria had only a few hours at Alameda County jail in Oakland to register inmates to vote, so she didn’t waste time last week as she delivered her pitch to each housing unit. “You can’t be on parole,” the social worker for the Alameda County public defender’s office yelled, as inmates emerged from their cells. “The election is on Nov. 6,” Atkins-Loria said. “There’s a lot of important stuff on the ballot.” The only people who cannot vote in California are state and federal prison inmates, parolees, noncitizens and people deemed mentally incompetent. Inmates serving prison sentences in county...

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) demanded Thursday that his Democratic opponent, Ammar Campa-Najjar, return a $250.00 donation he received last year from Palestinian ambassador Feda Abdelhady Nasser, Deputy Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine [sic] to the United Nations. Breitbart News reported the unusual donation on Wednesday from Abdelhady Nasser, the second-ranking Palestinian diplomat at the U.N. Ambassador Abdelhady is the daughter of Palestinian immigrants to the U.S. “A campaign contribution from a representative of a state which sponsors attacks on Israel’s citizens is troubling to Americans,” Hunter said in a press release. “Why is Palestine supporting the election of...

This is the dramatic moment that two female protesters, and alleged rape victims, trapped Sen. Jeff Flake in an elevator and berated him after he announced he was voting to confirm Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanugh. Flake gave Kavanaugh's nomination a major boost from the Judiciary Committee after the holdout Republican senator announced his support Friday morning following a day of harrowing testimony from Christine Blasey Ford who claims he sexually assaulted her. Shortly after the announcement, Flake was walking into an elevator when two women ran up to him and stood blocking the doors. Both woman revealed that they...

A Mexican national who was living in the US illegally and free on bond in a prior domestic violence incident has been charged with murder in an attack on his fishing crew mates off Nantucket. Franklin Freddy Meave Vazquez, 27, is charged with murder in the Sunday attack on board the Captain Billy Haver, which was trawling the waters about 55 miles off Massachusetts. Prosecutors say that the vessel had seven crew members on board, including Vazquez, when he charged at a shipmate wielding a hammer in one hand and a knife in the other. The victim said that he...

Gov. Jerry Brown on Friday ordered a performance audit of the state Department of Motor Vehicles in response to the public outcry over hours-long wait times and repeated computer crashes that delayed serving customers. State Finance Director Keely Martin Bosler, who was appointed by Brown, notified the agency that her office will conduct the financial review amid concerns about the DMV’s performance. “As we have discussed, long wait times at the Department of Motor Vehicles do not reflect the high standards of service that Californians expect from their state government,” Bosler wrote in a letter Friday to DMV Director Jean...

A traffic warden is living in fear of reprisal after being savagely beaten "for doing his job." Charlie Weston was left lying helplessly on the floor as a group of men repeatedly stamped on his head after he approached a car to give it a ticket. The 21-year-old admits he feels "lucky to be alive" after the ordeal which happened in Birmingham and left his face splattered with blood. He had been inspecting cars in the road for 10 minutes when the incident unfolded. Charlie was kicked in the throat and had his head stamped on before his attackers allegedly...

Venezuela is clearly having its moment in the American conservative mediasphere. The country’s catastrophic collapse is, we’re told, all we need to know about the terrifying dangers of socialism. First there was Meghan McCain turning Venezuela into Exhibit A in her screed against socialism on ABC’s “The View.” On Fox Business Network, Stuart Varney used Venezuela’s latest bout of instability as a “teaching moment” for Americans tempted by “pie-in-the-sky” socialism. Off on the fringes, it’s a popular theme, too: Remember that the priceless Infowars gotcha video with the world’s most unflappable sailor girl turned on the killer line: “You know...

A nationwide manhunt is underway for a Northwestern University professor and an Oxford University employee who are wanted as suspects after a man was found fatally stabbed inside a luxury Chicago apartment, police said. On Monday, first-degree murder warrants without bail were issued for Wyndham Lathem, 42, and Andrew Warren, 56, for their alleged involvement in the death of Trenton H. James Cornell-Duranleau, Cook County court records show. The documents say Cornell-Duranleau, 26, died after being stabbed multiple times. A community alert released by the Chicago Police Department says the body was discovered on July 27. Lathem has been an...

A 60-year-old man has died after a drunken fight with a pig which saw his genitals mutilated and three of his fingers severed. Farmer Miguel Anaya Pablo was rushed to hospital in Tuxtepec, Mexico, after suffering the horrific injuries, but medics were unable to save his life. It is not known why he got into the fight with the animal. The pig, which was in the patio of his home, bit off three of Pablo's fingers and bit his private parts, El Debate reports.

In 1972, President Richard Nixon’s White House dispatched burglars to bug Democratic Party offices. That Watergate burglary and related “dirty tricks,” such as releasing mice at a Democratic press conference and paying a woman to strip naked and shout her love for a Democratic candidate, nauseated Americans — and impelled some of us kids at the time to pursue journalism. Now in 2016 we have a political scandal that in some respects is even more staggering. Russian agents apparently broke into the Democrats’ digital offices and tried to change the election outcome. President Obama on Friday suggested that this was...

MEXICO CITY -- A committee in Mexico’s lower house of congress has voted down a proposal by President Enrique Pena Nieto to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide. The measure seeking to enshrine in the constitution same-sex couples’ right to wed was defeated 19-8 Wednesday in the Commission on Constitutional Matters. According to a summary published online by the Chamber of Deputies, commission chairman Edgar Castillo Martinez said the vote means the matter is “totally and definitively concluded.” Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled last year that it was unconstitutional for states to bar same-sex marriage. But that decision did not have the effect...

Miami state Sen. Gwen Margolis apparently disparaged three of her opponents as “Haitians” and dismissed two others as “some teacher and some lawyer” at a local Democratic meeting Monday night, according to the only one of her rivals who was present. “It’s reprehensible that three Haitians, some teacher and some lawyer think that they have the right to run against me,” Margolis said, according to teacher Don Festge. “I’ve been in office for over 40 years,” Margolis continued, according to Festge. “What does some teacher know about Tallahassee and how to run the Senate?” Margolis went on to refer to...