Free Republic

Prisons are expensive. States lock up only as many people as it takes to keep voters from getting up in arms about crime, and not one more. A small used container ship can be bought for $5 million. 40-foot shipping containers cost around $1,250. Fitted with plumbing, wiring, insulation, drywall, ductwork, windows and doors, each container becomes a spartan housing unit for roughly $8,500. Bunks stacked three-high in two rows along each side, one container would sleep about 30 inmates, and still have room for a shower, toilet, and sink. A small ship holds about 250 such units, enough for...

ORLANDO, Fla. – A man was found guilty of robbery and grand theft after taking more than $760,000 in jewelry from an Orlando store and using force against an employee while trying to escape, prosecutors said. Jaythan Gilder was convicted after a trial involving the February 2025 robbery at the Tiffany & Co. store at the Mall at Millenia, State Attorney Monique Worrell’s office said. Prosecutors said Gilder posed as a representative negotiating a jewelry purchase on behalf of a professional basketball player before grabbing the merchandise. After his arrest, he swallowed the stolen earrings in an attempt to hide...

The number of Americans dining out just hit a new low. In the early days of the pandemic, restaurants went into survival mode to stay afloat. It may be safe to grab a bite to eat out of the house these days, but with fewer Americans able to afford the luxury of eating out, business is drying up again. The percentage of Americans who say they dine out at least once a week slid almost 10% between 2022 and 2026, according to a new Gallup poll. In 2019, just prior to the pandemic, more than half of people surveyed reported...

Here’s One October Surprise, Anyway “The Left has always preferred the ashes of its own making to the inheritance of better men.” —Celina101 on X By now, everybody and his uncle interested in public matters has probably read that a claque of current-and-former agency officials, ex-USAID busybodies, military officers, activist academics, Democratic Party paladins, and freelance communist jihadis has been exposed plotting the overthrow of the US government. The plot was reported by the diligent “X” blogger Jennica Pounds under her nom-de-plume “Data Republican,” who lately received an enormous document-and-recording dump courtesy of careless color revolutionaries who recorded themselves and...

For decades, a fundamental question about the difficulty of computing in high-dimensional spaces has resisted proof. New research resolves this question, removing a major theoretical obstacle to understanding the efficiency of randomized algorithms used across science and computing. The Kannan–Lovász–Simonovits (KLS) conjecture was proposed in 1995. It asks whether, for a broad class of high-dimensional probability distributions, the best flat or hyperplane cut is always nearly as effective as the best cut of any shape. More precisely, KLS predicts that the two differ by no more than a universal constant, regardless of the number of dimensions. This would establish a...

With Representative Ilhan Omar seemingly unsure about whether she accidentally married her brother, millions of women have been left asking themselves a difficult question: Am I married to my brother? Don't worry. We'll help you sort this out. Here are nine signs to look for you might be married to your brother: You have the same parents: This probably should have tipped you off. You grew up in the same house together and he always calls you sister: At least you had a healthy relationship — at the time. He gave you a noogie after "kissing the bride": Evidence of...

Bound by shared opposition to Western institutions, Judeo-Christian values, and constitutional conservatism, leftists and Islamists have formed a tactical bloc, even as their underlying worldviews remain fundamentally incompatible. This journey of life is a complicated path filled with choices and unexpected variables that often confront us without warning. Our formative years are spent in structured learning environments tailored to meet community expectations or, at the very least, geared toward imparting foundational skills. Boundaries are generally established because even the most extreme elements of our culture recognize that total anarchy is unsustainable. However, as cultural norms have shifted dramatically over the...

n January of 2023, I wrote about a story where I thought, “This might be the most absurd thing I will ever cover." Here’s the short version: The Brits are no strangers to woke insanity themselves, as the British Museum has now decided to no longer refer to wrapped-up long-dead ancient Egyptians as “mummies” because it might offend them—even though they’re no longer alive to be offended. But I was wrong; things, especially when leftists get their hands on them, can always get more ludicrous, and indeed they did at Glasgow's Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Scotland. My DNA...

President Donald Trump, who has already renamed two bodies of water after America, said he would like to redub the Atlantic Ocean as well — but that the CEO of Google pushed back on the idea. At a rally at Clemson University in South Carolina Tuesday evening, Trump told the crowd, “So we have a lake. And we have a gulf. Now we need a river, and we need an ocean.” Trump continued: “I only like two oceans: the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. I’m not gonna put either ‘Trump’ or ‘America’ on any other ocean but these two.”...

You can wager that guns will be the first target of the commie left if they win the midterms; it’s always what they go after first. It wasn’t supposed to work out this way. A cycle of mass shootings was to be the vehicle for candidates like Abdul El-Sayed to call for a tweaking of the Constitution to get rid of the 2nd Amendment altogether. Because the right of self-defense is always their first target, they use the alleged scourge of mass shootings to take away rights, as they quickly did in Virginia. But things aren’t working out quite like...

Italian police use a water cannon against a young girl dressed in red who had joined a group of far-left rioters in Bologna. The water cannon sent her flying!........... 0:02 VIDEO AT LINK......................

A Boston dad has been convicted of repeatedly fondling a teen girl aboard a JetBlue flight. Jonathan Alan Lefman, 48, was found guilty after a three-day jury trial of sexually abusing a 17-year-old girl seated in front of him on a Boston-bound flight from Puerto Rico on Aug. 30, 2024, the US Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts announced on Thursday. Lefman — who was on the plane with his wife and four kids — wedged his hand between the back and bottom of the seat in front of him to touch the girl’s buttocks without her permission, according to prosecutors. The...

In my post of October 7, I asked “How Can Democrats Possibly Run On Affordability?” The post specifically focused on energy affordability, and on consumer electricity prices, because, for reasons that I don’t understand, the price of electricity seems to be a big issue for Democrats in the upcoming elections. The post cited easily-available data from the federal Energy Information Administration showing that, among the contiguous 48 states, there is a sharp divide between states run by Democrats — which have the highest prices — and those run by Republicans — which have the lowest prices. The six states with...

Terrifying 911 audio captured the moment a witness reported a man who tried to kidnap a 13-year-old girl outside of a Florida gas station. Michael Polanco, 32, was arrested after police said he attempted to abduct the teen on Monday in broad daylight at a Shell gas station in Miramar, about 20 miles outside of Miami. Surveillance footage allegedly showed Polanco approach the girl and grab her neck before she escaped. A man who witnessed the incident called 911 and reported what he saw, according to audio NBC6 obtained. 'A guy just tried to grab a kid,' the witness said,...

A disaster emergency has been declared by Gov. Jared Polis over flooding in La Plata, Archuleta, Montezuma, Dolores, Hinsdale, San Miguel, Ouray, San Juan, Mineral, Alamosa, and Rio Grande counties. A mandatory evacuation order has been issued for residents along the San Juan, Rio Blanco, Navajo and Piedra rivers in Archuleta County. All low-lying and flood-prone areas along the rivers are under mandatory evacuation, according to the Archuleta County Sheriff’s Office and the town of Pagosa Springs. Two evacuation centers have been opened by the Red Cross of Western Colorado: .... All schools in the Archuleta School District will be...

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) has denied allegations this week she fraudulently married second husband and alleged brother Ahmed Elmi — but when asked if they were related, cautiously replied “not to my knowledge.” The Minnesota congresswoman, who arrived in the US as a refugee from Somalia in 1995, has vehemently denied allegations she married Elmi for immigration purposes. But significant evidence has emerged which continues to fuel speculation that is not the case: Clue 1: The marriage certificate Omar, 45, legally married Elmi, 41, who she described as a British citizen, in the US in 2009 and they divorced in...

Here’s one war that should’ve started years ago: Team Trump’s drive to stamp out fraud is still ramping up, but is already saving the public billions. This week alone, federal, state and local authorities conducted a string of fresh raids and made arrests, including in New York and California, as part of a nationwide crackdown on Medicaid fraud. Homeland Security also launched a massive operation to snare illegal immigrants who fraudulently stole $40 million in food stamps, bringing the total in food-stamp fraud ID’d so far to $641 million. The feds have also destroyed more than 2,200 illegal merchant SNAP...

A former Mexican state attorney general could face trial for treason over accusations that he illegally launched a joint operation with the CIA without telling the federal government. The operation to dismantle a drug lab in the state of Chihuahua in northern Mexico in April drew attention after two CIA agents and two state officials died in a car accident on their way back. That raised questions about the Trump administration’s actions on Mexican soil, and outraged President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has made a strong defense of national sovereignty a centerpiece of her administration. The state district attorney, César Jáuregui,...

NFL legend Marshall Faulk revealed that he has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, but has remained in a “good place” after doctors caught it early. Faulk, 53, announced the diagnosis this week on an episode of “Caring Neurologist” with Dr. Sandeep Thakkar and has been dealing with the disease, which is a progressive disorder of the central nervous system that impacts the body’s movement, for roughly 18 months. His first signs of Parkinson’s appeared while playing golf, Faulk revealed on the podcast, telling his doctor during a physical after having the issue when he wasn’t on the golf course. “I...

An off-the-charts Super El Niño that’s expected to peak this winter could be oddly good for New York City — while other parts of the US may be slammed by storms and flooding, forecasters said Thursday. The “behemoth” weather system — measured by sea surface temperatures — could rise to more than six times that of a typical El Niño between November and January, according to the World Meteorological Organization. “This is literally off the monitoring charts that we have used for the past four decades,” Celeste Saulo, secretary of the WMO, said Wednesday. In the Big Apple, it could...