Free Republic

One of my kids sent me this video. It purports that there are many (dozens? hundreds?) of historical accounts/reports of giants, tribes or giants, encounters with giants, etc. The video seems to be well made and plausible. However, I remain skeptical. Supposedly many of the giant skeletal remains made their way to the Smithsonian. There are plenty of snopes articles debunking stories of this sort, but who knows what to believe from snopes? Like any other topic of this sort their are supporters & detractors. The trick of course is sorting through the BS. Before I dig further into this,...

Has anyone here - if their kids are still in public school - had any experience with their kids being exposed to the CRT agenda? I'd be curious to see any of the actual materials, etc. The reason I'm asking is I have an acquaintance who claims the whole argument is right-wing alarmism without any basis in fact.

One of my kids found this in his room today and took the picture. He & mom let it go outside. Apparently the leg-span is about the size of a nickel. I don't recall seeing anything like this before in our area (Minneapolis subs). Anyone have a clue as to what species this is?

t really is quite simple. Everyone is smart except Donald J. Trump. That’s why they all are billionaires and all got elected President. Only Trump does not know what he is doing. Only Trump does not know how to negotiate with Vladimir Putin. Anderson Cooper knows how to stand up to Putin. The whole crowd at MSNBC does. All the journalists do. They could not stand up to Matt Lauer at NBC. They could not stand up to Charlie Rose at CBS. They could not stand up to Mark Halperin at NBC. Nor up to Leon Wieseltier at the New...

All the reasons for refusing to allow ourselves to be led by children were summed up in the latest coronation of the Parkland kids, this time by ancient leftist Bill Maher. He invited David Hogg and Cameron Kasky on his show so Hogg could boast about hanging up on the President of the United States, and so Kasky could give us this sanctimonious little lecture: “I mean this sincerely, I really do, to all the generations before us, we sincerely accept your apology. We appreciate that you are willing to let us rebuild the world that you f—ed up.” This...

Full title: REVIEW Clint Eastwood’s “15:17 to Paris” Is An Eclectic Mix of Patriotic, Christian, and Cutting Edge — And Will Resonate in the Heartland ***Don’t believe the mixed or bad reviews coming in early for Clint Eastwood’s “15:17 to Paris.” I saw it tonight, and like A.O. Scott in the New York Times, I found it fascinating and much more complicated than a snarky dismissal. You know, I’m Jewish and liberal, so “patriotic” and “Christian” aren’t two of the things I warm to in movies necessarily. But Eastwood’s take on these real life heroes is not simplistic. The real...

A government watchdog is raising new concerns about the safety and readiness of US ships in the Pacific region following a series of collisions that led to the deaths of US sailors. More than a third of warfare training certifications for the Navy's Japan-based destroyers and cruisers had expired in June -- a five-fold increase from two years prior, the Government Accountability Office has found. In testimony to be delivered Thursday, the GAO found that 37% of the Navy's destroyers and cruisers in Japan had expired -- up from 7% in January 2015 -- and over two-thirds had been expired...

Martin seems to be on vacation, so I thought I'd start the thread.

We are looking at vacation spots - is Houston recommended?

Sometimes my natural skepticism asserts itself, but I cannot walk away. My father-in-law is one of the fairest, most patient, and most virtuous people that I know. He’s always available to help out, his capacity for forgiveness is immense, and when he’s unavailable it’s usually because he’s caring for or teaching people in his community. He’s intellectual honest, and he’s a profoundly decent human being. He’s also an atheist. He’s part of the reason why I have respect for people in the atheist community, and why when I write about atheism I usually have positive things to say. I don’t...

As Wall Street’s ‘fear gauge’ nears all-time lows, one commonly used measure shows Asian equities near their least volatile this century. The calm that has descended on U.S. financial markets is stretching around the world. Based on one commonly used measure, Asian equities are near their least volatile this century—a byproduct of improving corporate earnings, stabilizing economic growth and the diminishing impact of geopolitical events on markets. In the U.S., Wall Street’s “fear gauge” is near all-time lows, and in Europe, volatility has also largely subsided.

With just six months until Germans go to the polls, Angela Merkel's re-election is looking less certain by the week. Martin Schulz is a dangerous adversary and his Social Democrats are full of the kind of enthusiasm that the chancellor's party lacks. In November 1998, Angela Merkel gave an interview to the photographer and writer Herlinde Koelbl. It was a moment of uncertainty in Merkel's career, coming as it did just after Chancellor Helmut Kohl, on whose cabinet Merkel had served for seven years, lost that year's general election. Kohl had failed to recognize that Germans had grown weary of...

A government inspection has found that the United Kingdom’s largest abortion chain, Marie Stopes International (MSI), was coercing women to abort and violating safety procedures, leading them to suspend nearly half of the abortions they were performing. More than 2,600 violations were found, according to inspectors. The inspections were detailed in a report published in December by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). The report included a letter from the Chief Inspector of Hospitals, Professor Sir Mike Richards, stating that in order to avoid “urgent enforcement action” by the CQC, Marie Stopes voluntarily agreed to: “Suspension of the termination of pregnancy...

... First, SCOTUSblog’s profile on Gorsuch highlights cases in which his “opinions also reveal a measure of distrust towards unwritten constitutional provisions like the dormant commerce clause”—a useful clue: Gorsuch’s opinion shows respect for the doctrine’s “[d]etractors,” like Scalia, who “find dormant commerce doctrine absent from the Constitution’s text and incompatible with its structure.” Though Gorsuch’s personal constitution seems to require him to write clearly about the many unclear aspects of the doctrine, his opinion plainly takes some joy in the act of demonstrating that not only does the dormant commerce clause not apply — the doctrine also doesn’t make...

In case you were wondering, Donald J. Trump was in fact inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States. Video at the link...

The group Vietnam Veterans Against McCain attacks Senator John McCain's heroism as a POW in the Vietnam conflict; this is making some waves in the news due to McCain's presidential candidacy. The documentary "Missing, Presumed Dead the Search for America's POWs" however focuses more on Senator John McCain successfully blocking the release of classified POW/MIA documents.

At the Democratic National Convention speakers are repeating the claim, amplified ad nauseam by the left and establishment GOP opponents over the past year, that Donald Trump mocked the disability of New York Times reporter, Serge Kovaleski. This accusation has served as a very convenient tool to both smear Trump’s character and to avoid having to confront him on substantive political issues. But is it true? Here is the story the media is not telling you.

"If I don't win, this will be the greatest waste of time, money and energy in my lifetime," says Donald Trump. Herewith, a dissent. Whatever happens Tuesday, Trump has made history and has forever changed American politics. Though a novice in politics, he captured the party of Lincoln with the largest turnout of primary voters ever, and he has inflicted wounds on the nation's ruling class from which it may not soon recover. Bush I and II, Mitt Romney, the neocons and the GOP commentariat all denounced Trump as morally and temperamentally unfit. Yet, seven of eight Republicans are voting...

Michelle Talks about her experience working at Trump National Doral Miami and interacting with his Family. How Trump turned Trump National Doral Miami into a beautiful masterpiece.

It is getting late, yet I made up my mind to sit down at the laptop to write these couple of sentences. Today I have read what Ms. Bakuła said: “Without abortion, cripples would be born into this world.” I have also read the following commentary: “Rather than fight about abortion, we should think about what to do so that so many cripples would not be born. I partly know that answer to how to dramatically limit this fact”; I won’t even mention some private emails here. I am disabled. I am a person who, in many people’s opinion, should...