Free Republic

As House Republicans consider new legislation to guard against the threat of non-citizens voting in elections, urgent action is also needed to stop the federal government from raiding Americans’ pocketbooks to fund welfare and other programs for illegal aliens. While estimates vary widely, there are likely at least 15 million individuals illegally residing in the United States following four years of the worst border crisis in history under Joe Biden. According to some calculations, the number of illegal aliens in the country has already more than doubled under Biden, and could double again if he wins another term. The tragic...

What will be the endgame of all these attacks on the American legal system and the warping of it for blatant political purposes? None of the five civil and criminal cases currently lodged against former President Donald Trump have ever had merit. They were all predicated on using the law to injure his re-election candidacy—given a widespread derangement syndrome among the left and a fear they cannot entrust a Trump/Biden election to the people. These criminal and civil trials are merely the continuation of extra-legal efforts of the last eight years to destroy a presidential candidate in lieu of opposing...

Google has come in for some well-deserved criticism after its “artificial intelligence” wouldn’t answer a simple question: How many Jews did the Nazis kill? That’s bad enough. But then a not-so-intelligent Google employee compounded the problem with a lie about why it happened. The story goes that Michael Apfel asked a Google “virtual assistant” this question: “Hey Google, how many Jews were killed by the Nazis?” Google’s answer: “Sorry, I don’t understand.” Then he asked: “How many Jews were killed during World War II?” Google: “I don’t understand.” “How many Jews were killed in the concentration camps?” “Sorry, I don’t...

I have had several posts on a collection of related cases that I have called “The Stupidest Litigations In The Country.” These are cases where climate hysterics have sued oil and gas producing companies, or the federal government, or both, seeking various extreme punishments ranging from massive damages up to and including an order to end all production of fossil fuels. The asserted grounds vary somewhat from case to case, but a central theme is a claimed constitutional right to a “clean and healthy environment.” My last update on these cases was a post on April 9. A main subject...

Explanation: Northern lights don't usually reach this far south. Magnetic chaos in the Sun's huge Active Region 3664, however, produced a surface explosion that sent a burst of electrons, protons, and more massive, charged nuclei into the Solar System. A few days later, that coronal mass ejection (CME) impacted the Earth and triggered auroras that are being reported unusually far from our planet's north and south poles. The free sky show might not be over -- the sunspot rich AR3664 has ejected even more CMEs that might also impact the Earth tonight or tomorrow. That active region is now near...

Predictions that the U.S. and the world would run out of fossil fuels go back decades, and these predictions have so far turned out to be wrong. A new report shows the U.S. has 227 of oil, 130 years of gas, and 485 years of coal. or years, activists argued for an energy transition away from fossil fuels because, they said, we were hitting “peak oil,” the point at which we can no longer produce oil because there’s little left in the ground or it’s too expensive to recover. In 2023, the U.S. produced nearly 13 million barrels per day,...

“These agencies are not trusted because they are not trustworthy.” — El Gato Malo on “X”. The miasma of anxiety befogging so many brains in our troubled land begins to lift as every narrative served up by the US fascist intel blob goes annoyingly stale and impotent. The worst media meme — that a vicious officialdom is “defending our democracy” — gets laughed out of the room now when repeated incessantly by such shills as Jen Psaki and Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC. Everybody understands they want to “defend our democracy” by cancelling your freedom of speech, pounding you into bankruptcy,...

When brave Sir Biden rode south from Scranton toward the dark, fetid swamp of D.C., he was not afraid to die. No, based on his many, many tales of personal bravery, Joe was not at all afraid of being killed in nasty ways. Like being mashed to a pulp while driving a 16-wheeler, or getting knifed in the gut in the Puerto Rican neighborhood where he grew up, or having his brains beat out by racist police while bravely standing with a black family on their porch. Nor was Biden in the least concerned about being sliced to shreds by...

I love America. I love her history — good and bad — and everything she represents. I walk down forgotten streets in old industrial towns, read lost words chiseled on hidden tombstones, and breathe deeply whenever I find myself standing on hallowed ground where Americans fought and died. I treat old American books and maps like treasures, tracing the texture of their faded pages with my fingertips as a jeweler would rare stones. The spirit of America affects me in an emotional way. I have a vested interest in making sure she survives. Not long ago, we would have called...

While Israel fights for its life, the Biden adminstration plays bureaucratic games. I always thought “ironclad” meant binding, but to President Biden it apparently means a pledge that’s good until it becomes politically inconvenient to stick to it. On at least two occasions he asserted his (and our) commitment to Israel’s defense was “ironclad”: “On July 18, 2023, seated beside Mr. Herzog. “And as I affirmed to Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu yesterday, America’s commitment to Israel is firm. And it is ironclad.” He reiterated this pledge last month: "As I told Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu, our commitment to Israel's security...

Concert Werchter, Belgium 03.07.2022

Filmed on B-Stage at Shepperton Studios on 25 May 1978 in front of an invited audience including members of The Pretenders, Generation X, the Rich Kids and the Sex Pistols and included in Jeff Stein’s documentary The Kids Are Alright.

Explanation: Right now, one of the largest sunspot groups in recent history is crossing the Sun. Active Region 3664 is not only big -- it's violent, throwing off clouds of particles into the Solar System. Some of these CMEs are already impacting the Earth, and others might follow. At the extreme, these solar storms could cause some Earth-orbiting satellites to malfunction, the Earth's atmosphere to slightly distort, and electrical power grids to surge. When impacting Earth's upper atmosphere, these particles can produce beautiful auroras, with some auroras already being reported unusually far south. Pictured here, AR3664 and its dark sunspots...

Firsthand notes from a wokester graduation ceremony. “We sit on stolen land” said the speaker at the University of Minnesota graduation ceremony, asking everyone in the auditorium to acknowledge that “fact.” “Racism is endemic, systemic in this country,” said another presenter. “We must make certain we are striving for equitable outcomes in the future.” “It is not enough for us in the nursing program to heal the human sick and wounded. We must also strive to heal the planet,” said a third, referring to climate change. “Diversity is our strength,” said yet another. All the proud parents, friends, and family...

Here’s the news we’ve all been waiting for: the iconic Swiss Army Knife will now be offered without the knife! At least in Britain. Yay! According to the Guardian, Victorinox will soon introduce "the first range of bladeless products designed specifically for activities where a blade would not be required.” Why? To help combat the "plague of knife crime” that has afflicted the United Kingdom in recent years, of course, though that isn’t precisely how Victorinox is presenting the knifeless Swiss Army Knives. Carl Elsener, the company’s current CEO, explained: "In some markets, the blade creates an image of a...

Generally, it’s best to go about one’s business as unobtrusively as possible, relying on situational awareness and solid knowledge of use of force law to avoid ever having to draw or fire one’s handgun. Among the perennial controversies in the firearm world is whether concealed or open carry is best. Circa 2024, open carry is widely allowed: State laws regarding open carry fall into several categories: permissive, permissive with restrictions, licensed open carry states, and those in which open carry is prohibited. Permissive states allow non-prohibited citizens to open carry without requiring a permit or license. Most states fall into...

Michigan’s Governor Whitmer and the Democrat-controlled Legislature passed a slew of bills that make it easier to commit voter fraud and harder to uncover it. In the 2022 mid-term elections in Michigan, voters handed control of the Michigan Legislature to the Democrats, giving them a majority in both the Michigan House of Representatives and the Michigan Senate -- something that hasn’t happened for forty years. Since then, they’ve been working hand in glove with our notorious Democrat governor, Gretchen Whitmer SNIP In November of 2022, Michigan voters also passed Proposal 2, a proposal to amend the voting procedures previously authorized...

Explanation: Relax and watch two black holes merge. Inspired by the first direct detection of gravitational waves in 2015, this simulation plays in slow motion but would take about one third of a second if run in real time. Set on a cosmic stage, the black holes are posed in front of stars, gas, and dust. Their extreme gravity lenses the light from behind them into Einstein rings as they spiral closer and finally merge into one. The otherwise invisible gravitational waves generated as the massive objects rapidly coalesce cause the visible image to ripple and slosh both inside and...

Nearly two years after Nina Jankowicz briefly led the Disinformation Governance Board at the Department of Homeland Security, she’s launched an organization demanding transparency and the public release of documents about the public debate on disinformation. An interesting move, likely without true transparency in mind. My organization, Americans for Prosperity Foundation, has spent the same two years fighting DHS for documents on the federal board Jankowicz managed. We’re filing a second lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act to fight continued government stonewalling of our requests. Thus far, DHS has refused to provide unredacted versions of documents that outline its...

The female voices rose high-pitched and shrill above the crowd: “Five, six, seven, eight, Israel is a terrorist state.” “We don’t want no Zionists here, say it loud, say it clear.” “Resistance is justified when people are occupied.” The voices that answered them were also overwhelmingly female, emanating from hundreds of students chanting and marching around tents pitched in front of Columbia University’s neoclassical Butler Library, part of an effort in late April to prevent the university from uprooting the encampment. The female tilt among anti-Israel student protesters is an underappreciated aspect of the pro-Hamas campus hysteria. True, when activists...