Free Republic

The midterms are about more than Trump, Iran, and the price of gas. They reflect an ideological shift among Democrats that could permanently change America’s trajectory. So, you’re thinking about sitting out the midterms. Or you might just vote Democrat to protest. The Iran war has dragged on too long, you say. Months rather than weeks hardly make it Vietnam, though. Casualties are minor. Consider: Iran with nuclear weapons would be an uber-terror state. It would pose a 24/7 threat to U.S. security. Victor Davis Hanson is right: Breaking Iran is a gift, yet hard to appreciate now. Higher gas,...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a bill that formally recognizes two Muslim holidays as state holidays on Sunday, making it the second state to formally recognize both holidays statewide. California Assembly Bill 2017 officially added Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha to the list of state holidays, which would permit public schools and colleges to close and allow state employees to be eligible to observe the holidays. However, schools and businesses will not be required to close on these days, and courts will be required to stay open. This makes California the second state in the country, after Washington...

A Department of Energy electrical engineer has been arrested on charges of providing support to the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, including by buying materials for homemade explosives and drones and traveling to Yemen, the Justice Department said Thursday. Ashton Hamed Ellaboudy, 51, of Richland, Washington, was arrested Thursday and is due to make his first court appearance Friday. Court records do not list an attorney available to speak on his behalf. The FBI says Ellaboudy had a goal of helping the Houthis improve their communications capabilities and traveled last September to Yemen, where the Houthis and Saudi-backed government forces are now...

Anaheim’s mayor is facing an extraordinary workplace complaint from her own chief of staff that paints a picture of booze, alleged harassment and political-business-as-usual gone badly off the rails. Chief of Staff Berenice Ballinas claims Mayor Ashleigh Aitken repeatedly appeared intoxicated at city functions — including one City Council meeting — and that on one occasion the mayor allegedly ended up pawing through a former city manager’s car on the ride home. Ballinas’ 25-page claim, released by the city Thursday, also accuses Aitken of making crude comments about her sexuality and using a racial slur against her. Among the allegations,...

Two Louisiana brothers are facing terrorism charges for their alleged role in a twisted scheme to fund Hamas under the guise of Gaza humanitarian aid – and they were brought down with the help of the NYPD. Abdel Adhami and his sibling Omar Adhami were busted in the Pelican State last month for allegedly raising money online and funneling it to Saleem Alzaq, a member of the terror group who regularly uses social media to post Hamas propaganda, according to newly unsealed federal indictments. Abdel allegedly funneled more than $83,000 to Hamas from 2023 to 2026 while his brother is...

Today we seek out old humor and boldly go where cheap humor has gone before: Star Trek

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My latest song. Do not consent.

Wow we launched all vehicles this week! Starship, Falcon 9, Dragon and Falcon Heavy! 3 of them in one day plus 4 extraordinary humans 🚀👩🏽‍🚀😄

The 2-repeat allele of the MAOA gene confers an increased risk for shooting and stabbing behaviors Kevin M Beaver 1 , J C Barnes, Brian B Boutwell PMID: 24326626 DOI: 10.1007/s11126-013-9287-x Abstract There has been a great deal of research examining the link between a polymorphism in the promoter region of the MAOA gene and antisocial phenotypes. The results of these studies have consistently revealed that low activity MAOA alleles are related to antisocial behaviors for males who were maltreated as children. Recently, though, some evidence has emerged indicating that a rare allele of the MAOA gene-that is, the 2-repeat...

Hiya kids! Hiya, Hiya!Froggy apologizes for the strange timing of this crypto But he was up late watching the Steelers vs Browns gameThe Browns wonThen the post-game stuff... and after that, it was after midnight.Froggy decided that he didn't want to get out of bed after that and get up around 5:00 AM So here's your crypto - hope you like itGood Morning Crypto-FReepers.I see some of the same old faces out there.But that's OK - I like you anyway.Today's quote has deep meaning it does, it does.Ha Ha Ha!I'll be good - I will, (like heck) I will, I...

American Revolution 2.0Have you already seen how far the country has been pulled off course? Are You Counting the Days Until the Election? A nation in decline does not correct itself by accident. What you are reading is the product of years of quiet work by people who refused to stay inside the stable of group-think: researchers, memers, prayer warriors, and ordinary citizens who left the old media matrix, compared notes, and kept a watch. Five hundred threads ago many of us were still alone, ranging from half-asleep to already on duty. Small enclaves formed, drops were read for clues,...

Watch till the end

President Donald Trump again insulted Texas Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton, calling him “a pain in the a**” before wondering aloud, “Is he here, by the way?” The president has used similar lines countless times before, including at his Republican midterm convention in Dallas, where he declared, “He may not dress right. He may not talk exactly perfectly, and he may not be the best-looking guy I’ve ever seen, but you know what he is? He’s the greatest attorney general in America, and he deserves to be your next senator.” His latest remarks came as he returned to Denton, Texas,...

The laws already on the books cover a lot of harmful conduct involving AI, but they do not cover everything cleanly. As of October 2026, the U.S. still does not have one comprehensive federal AI law. Instead, AI is governed through a mixture of existing laws, agency authority, executive policy, and state laws.

A new Tavus AI chatbot nearly passes for human in face-to-face interactions, the company claims. Footage posted to X Thursday debuted Tavus’s Griffin chatbot, a first-of-its-kind Human Interaction Model the company says is the first to pass the Turing test, where a human user cannot tell they’re talking to a computer. “48% of people who talked to it live thought it was a real human. Previous systems have had a pass rate <3%,” Tavus wrote on X, adding, “It is #1 on NVIDIA’s benchmark for full-duplex AI video.” \ In one example shared, the model walks a human user through...

AI security/control will probably develop into something akin to "anti-virus" software. The closest analogy is the entire cybersecurity industry: Antivirus began as one layer, but eventually we needed firewalls, identity management, intrusion detection, security operations centers, audits, penetration testing, and incident-response teams. What follows is the most likely path for AI.

President Trump will join Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman to campaign in upstate New York next week, The Post has learned. The commander-in-chief will appear with the Nassau County executive in Syracuse for an event on Oct. 9, according to a source briefed on the visit. Another source said that Trump was considering making additional upstate campaign stops later this month. Blakeman’s camp has been trying in recent days to get Trump to join him on the campaign trail in areas of the state where incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul appears vulnerable. A recent Siena College poll had Blakeman trailing his...

Edmund, the main antagonist in Shakespeare’s “King Lear,” observes at one point that he is branded with “baseness,” and so decides to become more evil to match the perception. Artificial intelligence developers think their models are doing the same thing. Citing Edmund, researchers at Anthropic wrote that they believed when large language models learned to “cheat” in one area, they embrace their new identities as wrongdoers and behave in this way more broadly. A.I. experts are worried that models that learn to cheat — what’s problematically called “reward hacking” — will basically become Shakespearean evildoers that break the rules and...

AI is killing their A+. More than three fourths of teens use AI to do their schoolwork — but it’s causing test scores to plunge as they rely on the tech “to think,” according to a new survey. Meanwhile, Google is pushing to increase the use of its Gemini AI on school-issued Chromebook computers — which have become nearly universal in American classrooms. A total of 70% of teens ages 13 to 17 said they use AI for homework and assignments in class — with 63% admitting they take the shortcut simply “to get answers,” according to a survey by...