Free Republic

Barstool Sports founder ​Dave Portnoy announced Thursday that he has raised $1.5 million for the family of slain NYPD officer Jonathan Diller – after he vowed to match contributions. “Thanks to everybody who donated. We raised 750k. With the matching of the funds that brings the total to 1.5 million that will go directly to the family,” the outspoken media personality wrote on X. Earlier, he wrote that he’d “match whatever our total raised through midnight today is.” The 31-year-old cop was shot and killed when a routine traffic stop in Queens turned into a shootout with alleged career criminal...

Getting arrested is no child’s play — except for these California cops. The Murrieta Police Department has been posting hilarious arrest and lineup photos with suspects’ faces replaced by Lego heads to comply with a woke state law protecting offenders’ rights. Images on the department’s Instagram page show the Lego blocks with a variety of facial expressions — crying, frowning, smirking or raging — digitally superimposed onto the bodies of people being busted. The agency said replacing suspects’ faces with Lego blocks allows it to be in compliance with a new state law. One appears to show two people handcuffed...

Sometimes, it feels like the San Francisco Giants just can’t help themselves. Another unforced error after an offseason spent repairing the damage from Greg Johnson’s “somewhat break even” debacle, this time in the form of letting longtime public address announcer Renel Brooks-Moon go after what appears to be a contract dispute. In a press release hilariously titled “Ahead of the 2024 Season, Giants Name Renel Brooks-Moon Public Address Announcer Emeritus” — I’m still dizzy from all of that spin — the Giants casually mentioned that after exchanging contract numbers with Renel, a new deal could not be reached and she...

Sports news and commentary Deadspin has been sold again — and its entire staff has been laid off. Deadspin, once owned by Gawker Media, became part of G/O Media in 2019. In a memo to company staff Monday, G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller announced that Deadspin was sold to European firm Lineup Publishing. With the sale, the staff of Deadspin is getting pink-slipped. “Deadspin’s new owners have made the decision to not carry over any of the site’s existing staff and instead build a new team more in line with their editorial vision for the brand,” Spanfeller wrote in the...

A retired California pastor has been caught on camera drawing a Swastika on his Jewish neighbor's groceries. Leah Grossman confronted her neighbor, Mark Nakagawa, at 10.15pm on December 5, seconds after her doorbell camera caught him scrawling on a box of seltzer. The single mother of two told CBS she was 'shattered' when she saw it was a Swastika, and asked him 'Is that a Nazi symbol?' Nakagawa initially denied drawing the Swastika, but when confronted with the video evidence, claimed he was trying to teach her about the history of the symbol. Grossman said it wasn't her first run-in...

It took almost 20 torturous years to build the Fontainebleau Las Vegas and, when it finally opened, four executives left in the first month. In a town built on luck, those aren’t good odds. There are few Vegas projects as snakebitten as the Fontainebleau. What was supposed to be a towering spinoff of the Miami icon has turned into a nightmare for just about every owner who’s taken it on. Not even its grand opening on Dec. 13 could stop the barrage of bad press, from execs bailing to a viral $21 plate of six sad nacho chips. With this...

Bradley Cooper admitted he struggled to feel connected to his and Irina Shayk’s daughter, Lea, when she was born. The “Maestro” star appeared on Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast Monday and discussed his growth as a father since welcoming the 6-year-old in March 2017. Cooper, 49, explained the first few months of Lea’s life he didn’t understand when fellow parents would say, “I would die in a second for my kid.” “That’s my experience,” the actor continued. “Fascinated by it. Loved taking care of it. But would I die if someone came in with a gun?” He admitted after only...

Citing what they describe as a “hostile” political climate, hundreds of Adobe workers are protesting the company’s decision to hold its flagship MAX conference in Miami Beach in October, according to a Wednesday report from Business Insider. The outlet secured a 10-page petition sent to company leadership, signed by more than 500 employees of the San Jose tech giant. The petition said workers were “shocked and dismayed” by MAX’s move to Florida, and called out the state’s history of “egregious policies,” BI reported. “We sincerely hope that the overwhelming evidence that Florida is a hostile environment for Adobe’s employees, partners,...

An 8-year-old boy suffered a gunshot wound to the head while he was out looking at Christmas lights with his mother who was also delivering food for DoorDash. It happened in Lawton, Oklahoma, which is about 90 miles southwest of Oklahoma City. Nichole Groshong said in a GoFundMe post that she, her sons Zack and Waylon and her mother-in-law were in the 900 block of SW 35th Street around 8 p.m. on Dec. 10 when she stopped and put the car in reverse to show them some more lights. Then shots rang out. “I drove away as fast as I...

Nikola founder Trevor Milton was sentenced Monday to four years in prison in connection to defrauding investors of the embattled electric- and hydrogen-powered truck maker. Milton also was fined $1 million and could later be forced to forfeit property as part of his sentence. The punishment was far lower than the 11 years prosecutors had requested at Milton’s sentencing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. But it was substantially more than the non-jail sentence of probation sought by Milton’s attorneys. “I did not intend to harm anyone and I did not commit those crimes levied against me,” Milton told Judge...

The former home of the late Michael Nesmith, a member of the iconic made-for-TV band, The Monkees, is up for grabs. Nesmith, who died in 2021, lived in this three-bedroom, 3.5-bath home in Carmel Valley, CA, about 20 minutes from the coast. The house is listed for $3.5 million. The ranch-style pad is spread over 3,365 square feet, all tucked into a gated community called Sleepy Hollow. The dwelling sits on more than 6 acres, surrounded by majestic oaks and stunning vistas. The living room features a vaulted, beamed ceiling with large windows and a brick fireplace. This main room...

Forget the national polls that show the country has soured on President Joe Biden, and consider the Electoral College with less than 11 months until Election Day 2024. Former President Donald Trump would need to flip three states Biden won in 2020 to complete his political resurrection and retake the White House – and a new set of CNN battleground state polls out Monday suggests that if the election were held today, Trump is most of the way there. Biden, like Hillary Clinton, got millions more votes nationwide than Trump, but Biden secured the White House in 2020 thanks to...

What to know about the UNLV shooting The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department is responding to reports of an active shooter on the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The shooting occurred near Beam Hall. There appears to be multiple victims, police said in a post on X. Police urged everyone to avoid the area.

In late 2020, Colorado voters did something relatively unprecedented in the nation’s history by voting to reintroduce wolves to the state. That process, several years in the works now, will involve transplanting wolves from Oregon — and even though the measure was given the goahead three years ago, some opponents of the measure remain skeptical. That in and of itself isn’t too surprising; you’d think that if people changed their mind on how they’d voted, it would likely happen after wolves returned to Colorado, and that hasn’t happened yet. A recent article at NPR by Kurt Siegler offers a good...

Imperial County, a sprawling desert region three hours southeast of Los Angeles that straddles the U.S.-Mexico border, may not be what you would typically associate with Southern California. Home to ramshackle landmarks like Salvation Mountain, the Salton Sea and Bombay Beach, it’s the least populated county in the region with just 180,000 residents. But U.S. politicians are suddenly interested in this rural area for other reasons — namely, the wealth of lithium deep beneath its surface. The rare mineral used in batteries, now in particularly high demand with the rise of electric vehicles, could be enough to produce 375 million...

* President Biden shows significant vulnerability in five critical demographic groups based on the TIPP Presidential Leadership Index * Our analysis categorizes 21 vulnerable demographic groups into three levels of negative momentum: significant, considerable, and moderate One year before the 2024 election, President Biden faces challenges among several demographic groups. Using our TIPP Presidential Leadership Index, we identify 21 demographic segments where Biden is vulnerable. Our analysis reveals that his greatest vulnerability lies in the Midwest, among individuals aged 18-24, moderates, households with incomes under $30K, and households in the $50K-$75K bracket. Presidential Leadership Index Two decades ago, TIPP developed...

Daryl Hall has filed a lawsuit against his Hall & Oates bandmate John Oates. The Grammy-nominated duo have broken up and reunited several times throughout their career with Hall, 77 and his trust, The Daryl Hall Revocable Trust, now suing Oates, 75, as well as his individual trust, The John W. Oates TISA Trust and its co-trustees, in the Nashville Chancery Court on Nov. 16, per The Philadelphia Inquirer. With the documents being sealed and classified as a 'contract/debt' matter and neither party yet to make a statement on the situation, details of the lawsuit are slim. However, TMZ claims...

Venture capitalist Kenneth Ballenegger has been suspended from the US investment firm he cofounded, Oyster Ventures, after making offensive remarks on X on the Israel-Hamas conflict. According to screenshots shared with Business Insider, Ballenegger wrote on Sunday: "After the war, Israel should handle Gaza like China handles Xinjiang. Full surveillance state. Re education camps. Sterilizations. It's warranted and the only way to pacify the jihadi population." Responding to criticism from a former colleague, Ballenegger continued: "They reproduce like rabbits and raise them to be terrorists, creating more poverty misery and terrorism. Why should we allow that. The world would be...

The Sphere in Las Vegas reported an operating loss of $98.4 million for the fiscal quarter ending Sept. 30, Sphere Entertainment Co. said this morning on an earnings call. Additionally, the company lost its chief financial officer, as Gautam Ranji has resigned, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Ranji’s exit was “not a result of any disagreement with the company’s independent auditors or any member of management on any matter of accounting principles or practices, financial statement disclosure or internal controls,” the company said in the filing. The New York Post reported Tuesday that Ranji suddenly quit after...

I’d never seen anyone talk so excitedly about a mayor. I drove up to the California mountain town of Idyllwild in March 2022 for a day trip and was finishing a purchase at a local vintage store when the cashier informed me, “The mayor is in town.” Before I could say anything, another shopper swung around with a big smile and asked, “Is he really?” I listened to them talk ecstatically about the mayor for a few minutes, until finally the cashier clued me in: The mayor was a dog. Everything suddenly made sense, and of course I had to...