Free Republic

"I’m famous, I’m too famous, and I‘m not famous enough ... all at the same time.” This is the dilemma of actor Tom Wilson, best known for playing bully Biff Tannen in the "Back to the Future" trilogy. It's a dilemma he explores in his entertaining documentary "Humbly Super Famous," available to watch for free on YouTube. Fame is a double-edged sword. It can promise you money and success, but in your most private moments, your humanity is stripped away, as you are unable to escape the fact that the world sees you as nothing more than a celebrity. The...

From J.D. Vance’s knowing glance at the camera to Tim Walz’s professed friendships ‘with school shooters,’ the debate was instant meme fodder.

Many Americans who return home after being illegally detained overseas arrive to find they've been billed thousands of dollars by the IRS—including late fees for unpaid taxes. That's the bizarre situation in which hostages Evan Gerskovich, Paul Whelan, and Vladimir Kara-Murza found themselves after they were released from detention in Russia last month. All three men say they faced a battery of surprise financial issues after returning home, including tax charges and hits to the credit stemming from bills they were unable to pay while behind bars. "I got one of those bills from the IRS saying, you owe this...

EVIDENCE OF CORRUPTION: Evidence of Obama, CIA Brennan, FBI Comey blackmailing Hillary Clinton with a bribe of $18 million dollars which she accepted. Garland and FBI Wray destroyed child porn evidence from Ukraine that was to be planted on Trump. Evidence Epstein was murdered.

Many of you may remember my reporting around "Operation Choke Point 2.0" from the spring of 2023; TLDR, Biden's financial regulators, namely the Fed, FDIC, and OCC, launched a crackdown on banks covering the crypto space. The first casualty was Silvergate Bank, which voluntarily liquidated. The standard reporting around Silvergate was that the bank lent to crypto depositors and those depositors were flighty; when rates rose, Silvergate suffered M2M losses on bond portfolios and ended up insolvent. Except that's not true. Silvergate weathered the storm, even though short sellers and members of Congress like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) encouraged a...

And now, if we may have a few moments of serious reflection, I give you… a lament for Hezbollah. They’ve had a great run, those Hez-ballers. Yeah, while everyone else is sliding around third base into the Year of our Lord 2025, these fine young men of the Book Qu’RAN into a little trouble while trying to climb up out of the 90s. Popular Science is rating them “Most Likely to Get Retroactively Killed by Y2K”. Accuracy In Media What Is Happening At This Seattle High School? Pagers and walkie-talkies? Sure, Abdul, we got pagers and walkie-talkies! And what a...

When John Huston's crew arrived on the island of Tobago in September of 1956 to begin filming his new picture, Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, 20th Century Fox were hoping that it would repeat the massive success of The African Queen – another story about a mismatched couple stranded in the wilderness, pitted against a well-armed enemy in a backwater of a global war. It was a war picture, but a decade since World War Two had ended these had gone from propaganda pictures (Bataan, Destination Tokyo) to gritty dramas full of battle scenes (Battleground, 12 O'Clock High) to adventure pictures...

Senate Republicans met Tuesday for Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s weekly off-the-record members’ lunch. These meetings, along with regular Wednesday Steering Committee lunches, are among the few regular times when party senators gather in one room to set party policy and messaging. There are few clearer windows into McConnell’s priorities than these lunches, and Tuesday did not disappoint: The RAND Corporation was invited to present its report on military spending and the potential need to raise taxes to increase the military percentage of the country’s GDP. That’s right; that was the priority. It wasn’t the former president and Republican nominee, who...

DETROIT, MI — Famed talk show host and meme subject Oprah Winfrey was showered with accolades today after last night's release of a moving 1-hour special on the dangers of alcohol abuse. According to viewers, Winfrey sat down with one of America's most well-known drunkards for an interview, presumably in a thinly veiled attempt to warn Americans just what might happen if they also succumb to the siren call of the bottle. "It was a really powerful show," recalled Oprah fan Jack Morley. "I watched it as Oprah went through and hammed it up with whoever that other completely sozzled...

~I have just returned from a rare post-cardiac public appearance - for Hillsdale College in Washington, DC. I was struck, as I always am on my increasingly infrequent ventures into internal travel in the United States, by the number of persons - fellow passengers, check-in agents, hotel staff - still wearing Covid masks. Are they now Monkeypox masks? Virus X masks? Or maybe mosquito masks? Right now, the states of Vermont and Massachusetts have cancelled public events and are "strongly recommending" their citizens remain indoors between 6pm and 6am because of a killer mosquito on the loose. (But don't worry,...

Only Rayne Beau, a house cat from Salinas, California, knows how he survived 60 days on his own and traveled 800 miles from Yellowstone National Park to a shelter in Roseville, California, about 200 miles from home. Rayne Beau was traveling with his owners, Benny and Susanne Anguiano, camping in Yellowstone National Park in June. For reasons known only to himself, the cat got spooked, ran off into the wilderness at their campsite and disappeared. The Anguianos told KSBW TV news in Salinas this week that they spent several days trying to find Rayne Beau and lure him back, while...

Lindsey O’Brien, Oregon Governor Kotek’s deputy chief of staff, who went on extended leave earlier this year, has officially resigned this week. Lindsey was among the three top staffers who stepped down all at once over Kotek’s push to expand a role for her wife within the Governor’s office. In the past few weeks, Kotek has closed the planned First Spouse office for her wife. Kotek’s wife’s personal aid ($11,000/month) also recently resigned last August. Also in August, it was reported that Oregon Governor Tina Kotek spent $200,000 of taxpayer dollars for a health-care event put on by her wife...

Below are the results of Year 4 of the Natural Landscape Photography Awards! This gallery showcases the photographs chosen by our judging panel. Each image’s RAW file has been vigorously checked to ensure it meets our unique rules.

Sweden’s right-wing government said this week that it will drastically increase grants to incentivize migrants to leave the country and go home after citizens have revolted to the flood of migrants. The once migrant-friendly nation is upping its offer by 35 times to more than $34,000 to those who leave the country, AFP reported. The country has been flooded with migrants over the last 30 years from third-world countries, especially Islamic countries, including Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iran, and Iraq. New Swedish Migration Minister Johan Forssell told reporters this week that the country was “in the midst of a paradigm shift...

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Saturday he is being investigated over a decades-old story that he decapitated a dead whale and transported its skull across state lines. Kennedy made the admission during a campaign event for former President Trump, saying he had received a letter last week. The report comes weeks after a left-wing environmental group resurfaced the whale story and called for an investigation. “I received a letter from the National Marine Fisheries Institute saying that they were investigating me for collecting a whale specimen 20 years ago,” Kennedy said Saturday. “This is all about the weaponization of...

Two months after memory-holing the first near-successful assassination of an American president in four decades, the Secret Service figures it's safe to start letting the gunmen near Trump again: Trump rushed to safety as Secret Service opens fire on man with AK-47 near golf course Ryan Wesley Routh got to within three-to-five hundred yards of Trump. From the corrupt G-men of the FBI: The FBI has responded to West Palm Beach Florida and is investigating what appears to be an attempted assassination of former President Trump. The alleged perp is said to have been "known" to the FBI, and, even...

The latest national New York Times/Siena College poll revealed that whereas likely voters feel confident they know who President Donald Trump is, they are still largely unsure about Kamala Harris, her policies, and her plans. KFile, an investigative outfit at CNN, unearthed a document this week that provides several alarming insights into what the Democratic candidate might actually believe in, including taxpayer-funded sex changes for illegal aliens and federal prisoners, eliminating the Hyde Amendment, statehood for Washington, D.C., decriminalizing crack cocaine for personal use, and cutting Immigration and Customs Enforcement funding. These revelations, contained within an American Civil Liberties Union...

'I think any father would’ve done the same thing. It’s my baby girl.' Bill Steinkirchner and his wife, Melanie, got a call Sunday morning from their college-student daughter that no parent wants to receive. Melanie Steinkirchner wrote on Facebook that their daughter was walking to breakfast when a male assaulted her, took swings at her, said he had a gun, and threatened to kill her. She was able to duck down, run, and avoid getting hurt, but she was still shaken during her phone call home. But her home is in Southern California — and KIRO-TV noted that the Steinkirchners'...

~Half of America gets its news from respectable "mainstream" "journalists" such as ABC's David Muir, a man who "fact-checks" Donald Trump by citing a press release from the city manager of Springfield, Ohio that there's nothing to see here. Being a most solicitous court eunuch, Mr Muir - like his fellow mainstreamers - sees no reason to listen to those who actually live in Springfield. In the last four years, so many Haitians have descended on this Ohio town that they now constitute one-in-four of the population. And, whether it be the right to decapitate and eat waterfowl from municipal...

When will Portland learn? There’s a movement afoot in Portland to provide free food to the homeless from front yard refrigerators. Willamette Week thinks it’s a great way “to Be a Better Neighbor”. I don’t. It’s a misguided feel-good effort at charity by naïve social justice warriors that perpetuates their presence while not resolving the situation on the ground. And of course the homeless services complex never shrinks because the client base never diminishes. A while ago I went to a free lunch for the homeless in an underground Portland parking garage. Tables spread out across the center of the...