Free Republic

I tried to post this and it seems to have disappeared for no reason, nothing about it being deleted, etc., so, I'll try again! Here’s the mystery: I have tried asking web searches (Brave and Google) to identify a one piece fiberglass fishing rod I picked up at a yard sale a couple years ago. The model appears to be “151C”, followed by “5” and then illegible (likely refers to the rod’s length of 5’ 4-1/2”), then the brand (I assume) is “L” “illegible”, a tall letter, possibly a “d”, then(I think) an “e”, then “ll” (lower case “LL”), then...

Trump War Room reposted Freedom 250 @Freedom250FIRST LOOK Freedom 250 presents the Great American State FairAll 56 states and territories. One massive, World’s Fair–scale takeover.June 25 – July 10, 2026. America’s biggest celebration of freedom. Don’t miss it. April 16, 2026

The Trump administration is yanking $74 million in federal highway grants from the Empire State for refusing to comply with the feds’ demand that it boot immigrant truck drivers with expired work authorizations off the roads, The Post has learned. The US Department of Transportation warned Gov. Kathy Hochul’s Department of Motor Vehicles, in a bombshell letter on Thursday, that continued non-compliance could lead Washington to withhold another $147 million in highway funding grants. “I promised the American people I would hold any state leader accountable for failing to keep them safe from unvetted, unqualified foreign drivers. I’m delivering on...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — As part of ongoing ceasefire negotiations with Iran to bring the weeks-long conflict to a close, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the Strait of Hormuz had been officially renamed as the "Donald J. Trump Straight of America." The strait remained under military blockade as tense negotiations continued, with Trump publicly declaring that the U.S. had taken control of the waterway and christened it with a new title named after his two favorite things — himself and America. "It is now the greatest strait of all time," Trump said in a post to Truth Social. "Other straits...

Accused sexual abuser Eric Swalwell spent a whopping $500K of donor cash inside luxury hotels — including the rooms where he allegedly raped two women — according to campaign financial records reviewed by The California Post. The disgraced politician racked up close to $36,500 in hotel expenses over the last 12 months — billing 70 different charges in the US and Mexico, according to the records. Swalwell’s hotels of choice included the Intercontinental Mexico City, where he spent $4,300 meeting with deported resident Miguel Hildago; Hotel ZIggy in West Hollywood, the Roosevelt Hollywood, the exclusive Ned Nomad in New York...

Nick Sortor@nicksortor·3h🚨 HOLY CRAP! ICE Director Todd Lyons just revealed ICE recently busted the largest gift card fraud scheme EVER — and that stolen money was being sent DIRECTLY BACK to military units in CHINAIt was being carried out by illegal Chinese men who were let in under BIDENAll military aged, of course.The scam is fairly simple: these Chinese fraudsters steal barcodes off gift cards from retail stores, place them back on the shelf, and when a shopper buys it, that money is IMMEDIATELY skimmed by CCP operatives who have the numbers in a databaseAnd the American consumer is left...

Mike Maharrey’s latest Money Metals Midweek Memo zeroed in on two big themes with major implications for sound money investors. First, much of the gold supposedly backing America’s financial credibility may be lower-quality metal that does not meet modern international standards. Second, the silver market could be heading into even tighter supply conditions as a new disruption tied to China threatens copper production and, by extension, silver output. The result was an episode that tied together history, monetary policy, and today’s metals markets in a way that made the stakes feel immediate. Maharrey’s central argument was simple. Physical metal still...

Explanation: If you live in the northern hemisphere, you may have learned how to locate the North Star, Polaris, in the night sky. It can be used to find north, and it approximately marks the northern celestial pole. If you live in the southern hemisphere, there is no bright star marking the southern celestial pole, but the Southern Cross can be used to find south. The featured image was taken in Padre Bernardo (GO), Brazil. It shows the apparent motion of the stars around the apparently empty southern celestial pole over 2 hours, on August 20, 2018. Each star takes...

US actress Joy Harmon, who was best known for a provocative short scene in the classic film Cool Hand Luke, has died aged 87. Harmon died at home in Los Angeles on Tuesday after being ill with pneumonia for weeks, US media reported. Her character did not have a line in the Paul Newman prison drama and was only on screen for about three minutes, in a car-washing scene rife with sexual innuendo.

NEW YORK, NY — Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that the city was going to spend a whopping $30 million on his city-run supermarket, with the project expected to take three years to build. Still, he urged the citizens of New York not to wait for his experiment with Communism but to go ahead and get in line for bread now. "Remember, we're not using evil capitalism for this," Mamdani told the press. "We're going to give goods like bread at a reasonable price. We just have to know how many people want that, so if everyone lined up now for...

The gang kidnapped and tied up the victim in a Chicago apartment as they physically tortured and racially abused him on the livestream. They could be heard shouting 'f*** white people' and 'f*** Trump' during the ordeal. During the days-long torture campaign, Hill also called the victim's mother and demanded $300 in ransom for his return. The victim was kidnapped on New Year's Eve after telling his parents he was meeting Hill at a McDonald's and staying at his home. Instead, Hill drove the victim around in a stolen van for a couple of days, ending up at a home...

I was never one to make a big deal out of call center prompts that state "Press 1 for English ... blah blah blah Espanol". My assumption was that a large company wants to be able to assist customers by being able to communicate with them. So in a room with 20 operators, maybe 15 would be native English speakers, and five would be native Spanish speakers. That used to be the case. Not any more. My wife had to call Capital One. She selected English, and the person on the other end could barely speak English, and had a...

Stanford researchers and their European colleagues drew on ancient DNA to construct the first genetic history of Rome...Those genetic data reveal at least two major migrations into Rome, as well as several smaller but significant population shifts over just the last few thousand years...Notably, DNA analysis revealed that as the Roman Empire expanded around the Mediterranean Sea, immigrants from the Near East, Europe and North Africa pulled up their roots and moved to Rome...An analysis of some of the earliest samples more or less comports with what has been found around Europe -- they represent an influx of farmers primarily...

Identical twins Nathan and Nick Roberts, the former a dedicated MAGA supporter and the latter a Democratic Indianapolis city council member, demonstrated that profound political disagreement need not fracture personal relationships during a candid appearance on The Unknowns, hosted by Charlie Stone.

According to a Greek Reporter article, archaeologists led by Panayiota Galiatsatou of Greece's Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities have investigated a submerged harbor complex off the eastern coast of the Peloponnese. The platform had been built in shallow water in order to take advantage of the natural harbor and nearby defensive hill. Pottery recovered from within the platform suggests that it dates to the Roman period. This year, the research team examined structures that had been built on top of the platform. These features have roughly square shapes and are made of stones. The team members now think that the stones...

Carnival Cruise Line must pay $300,000 to a former passenger after a federal jury in South Florida found that the company was negligent in serving the woman more than a dozen shots of tequila before she fell down some stairs and suffered a possible traumatic brain injury. The Miami federal jury decided last Friday in favor of Diana Sanders, a 45-year-old nurse from Vacaville, California. ... According to the lawsuit, Sanders was a passenger aboard the Carnival Radiance on Jan. 5, 2024, when was served at least 14 shots between approximately 2:58 p.m. and 11:37 p.m. She experienced a fall...

The Barbegal Roman Mill was a flour mill complex powered by 16 waterwheels, fed by two aqueducts bring water to Arles. The mill was located on a hillside near the village of Fontvieille, and was considered "the greatest known concentration of mechanical power in the ancient world"...operated for a couple of hundred years, from the end of the 1st century until the end of the second century. The mills had a capacity to produce 4.5 tons of flour a day, enough to provide bread for all 12,500 inhabitants of Arles (Arelate) at the time...The Barbegal mill complex was built in...

Consider a thought experiment. Imagine the US Congress paid a freshman representative his full salary, gave him immunity from criminal prosecution, and then quietly arranged for him to skip 98% of all floor votes so that no voter could ever discover what he actually believed. Now imagine that same representative ran for governor on the promise that he was “just like the incumbent, minus the corruption,” while powerful institutions spent billions creating the conditions for his victory. You would call that election interference. When the European Union did precisely this in Hungary, the Western press called it democracy. On...

Caitlyn Jenner says he now regrets accepting Glamour Magazine’s “Woman of the Year Award.” He still, however, wants biological men to have access to women’s bathrooms. “Here I am fighting the battle to keep biological men out of women’s sports because it’s not right… And I want to protect women,” Jenner admitted to Tomi Lahren on Tuesday. “I started thinking what a hypocrite I am, trying to keep biological men out of women’s sports, but I’m a biological man, and they gave me Glamour’s Woman of the Year Award.” Jenner added he doesn’t regret transitioning to a woman but that...

It’s the feel-good story of the week, if you don’t mind taking joy from others’ misfortunes. When it comes to the wind and solar energy grifters, I don’t mind a bit taking joy from their misfortunes. The last few days bring the news that apparently the majority of the remaining wind and solar electricity projects still in development in New York State are under imminent threat of cancelation. At this point the details are sketchy, and nobody is attributing the news to any named source as far as I can find. Nevertheless, the story is sufficiently widely-reported from normally reliable...