Free Republic

1:42pm PT -- RJ's reps tell TMZ ... "It is with profound sadness we share the tragic passing of beloved actor, philanthropist, and passionate disability rights advocate RJ Mitte." "RJ Mitte was best known for his role as Walter 'Flynn' White Jr. on AMC’s critically acclaimed, award-winning series Breaking Bad. Drawing from his own experience living with cerebral palsy, Mitte brought authenticity to the role and built a platform on disability awareness and inclusion," his reps continue, "Beyond entertaining friends and family around the world, he served as an ambassador for United Cerebral Palsy and Shriners Children’s."

Explanation: How many moons can you see? The best answer is five: four orbiting Jupiter and Luna orbiting Earth. This multi-moon picture was possible because Earth's Moon moved directly in front of Jupiter last week. The featured image is a series of exposures near alignment taken from Westchester, New York, USA. The sunlit crescent of Earth's Moon, on the lower left, is overexposed, while the Moon's night side, on the upper right, is faintly illuminated by Earthshine. Lined up nearly vertically above our Moon, listed from bottom to top, are Jupiter's bright Galilean satellites: Ganymede, Io, Callisto, and Europa. Callisto,...

When President Trump’s former personal lawyer, Alina Habba, married a Turkish businessman last month, the lavish ceremony cemented their status as a power couple. Ms. Habba, 42, a longtime Trump loyalist, and Turhan Mildon, 29, an investor, hosted some of Washington’s most powerful people, including Attorney General Todd Blanche, the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, and Will Scharf, the White House counsel. At that point, his patrons could no longer protect him. Mr. Maduro was not only out of power, but sitting in an American jail. Mr. Saab, Mr. Mildon’s most powerful ally in Venezuela, was arrested and extradited to the...

The disgraced musician returned to the low-security federal prison in New Jersey before sunrise, conscious and talking, according to TMZ. Sources at the prison told TMZ the injury was not life-threatening. It is not clear how he was injured. A Combs representative told Page Six, “We are aware of the reports concerning Sean Combs and are working to confirm the circumstances.” Combs has been in custody since September 2024. He was convicted last year of two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution and acquitted of the more serious sex-trafficking and racketeering charges. In October 2025, a judge sentenced him...

One of the latest narratives disseminated widely by abortion advocates is the claim that induced abortion (intentionally killing human beings in the womb) is central to the idea of reproductive and economic 'justice' for women. But killing humans should never be offered as a sort of 'solution' to financial hardship. Key Takeaways: * The Center for Reproductive Rights recently released a flawed, non-peer-reviewed study promoting the message that women need abortion because having children is too expensive. * Abortion advocate Jessica Valenti appeared on Vox Media's "America, Actually" podcast to discuss abortion, which she claims is an "affordability" issue. *...

Nidal Hasan is a savage Islamic terrorist who killed 13 innocent US service members at Fort Hood in 2009. He deserves the death penalty, nothing less. But the idea of broadcasting his execution publicly — livestreaming it — is beyond grotesque. America is supposed to be a model nation, with the highest values, a shining light that leads the world into a civilized future. The spectacle of a publicized, glamorized execution sends us in the opposite direction. It signals a type of gloating and bravado unbecoming a proud, moral country. America is not a medieval caliphate. Our leaders aren’t supposed...

Acouple of weeks ago, the winning entry of the annual Nikon Small World in Motion contest was embroiled in a controversy, with experts alleging the undisclosed use of AI in creating some parts of the video. At the time, the winner, Ning Xu, an optical engineer at Tsinghua University, and Nikon Instruments Inc. maintained that he only used AI for image enhancing, which fell within the competition policy. Nikon had also noted that “this particular use of AI—as a tool for enhancement of microscopy-generated source data, not for image generation from scratch—to be in compliance with the rules set forth...

The structure was concealed just beneath the forest floor in the foothills of the eastern Taunus Mountains, on the northern outskirts of Frankfurt, according to a September 25 announcement from the Hesse State Office for Monument Preservation. The temple is rectangular and measures about 16 feet long. Inside, it appears to have contained a smaller, square chamber with just three roughly 20-inch-thick walls, Thomas Kurella reports for Hessenschau... Archaeologists unearthed this temple during ongoing excavations of the Kapersburg fort -- a Roman military fortification thought to date back to the second century... likely constructed under the reign of Emperor Trajan...

NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University Beneath its pock-marked, craggy exterior, the Moon is thought to harbor a network of caves and tunnels from its volcanic past. Now, NASA has selected a mission to go investigate a promising window into our space rock’s subterranean secrets. Gaping up at outer space, as if mugging for the orbital satellite cameras, is the Marius Hill Pit, a hole on the lunar surface that’s thought to be up to 150 feet deep and up to 300 feet across. Scientists believe it’s an example of a skylight — the collapsed roof of an underground lava tube, which forms...

New York Attorney General Letitia James, the hyper-partisan Democrat who built her career targeting President Trump, is now facing a formal bar ethics complaint for publicly prejudging the “Cornell 7” sexual assault case just days before Governor Kathy Hochul appointed her special prosecutor. According to the New York Post, the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog organization, filed a nine-page bar complaint against James with New York's Attorney Grievance Committee on Friday, October 9. The complaint accuses James of a clear, incurable conflict of interest and a “flagrant, obvious and therefore shocking” violation of the New...

In the last few days, the titles of YouTube videos about Europe have tended toward the exceedingly agitated: “They’re Destroying France” (October 6); “France Has Collapsed” (Rubin Report, October 8); “We’re Watching France’s End” (October 9); “France Is on Fire” (Triggernometry, October 9); “The Siege of London” (Bill O’Reilly, October 8); “Germany’s Crisis: Why Living Here Is Impossible Now” (October 3). What a fascinating moment it is in Western European history. Not a happy moment, not a promising moment, but certainly fascinating. Not so very long ago, Germany, France, and Britain were world powers; now all three of them are...

In 2019, Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security simulated a potential nuclear conflict between the United States and Russia. In one series of escalatory exchanges, the United States expended between 930 and 1,080 nuclear warheads.1 These simulated figures represent 65–76 percent of U.S. strategic warheads deployed on missiles and bombers as of March 2023.2 With limited remaining warheads and a degraded NC3 network, could the United States effectively deter China in the aftermath?In a 2024 report to Congress, DoD updated its estimate of China’s stockpile of nuclear weapons to more than 600 operational warheads.4 If this trajectory continues,...

It was his only relief. A whizzing Minnesota college professor allegedly spilled his own urine on a student’s backpack in what authorities believe to be the latest in a disturbing series of the educator’s pee-soaked incidents, according to new court docs. The plot was uncovered after a Macalester College student said biology professor Paul Fischer, 55, had heeded nature’s call on Dec. 5, 2025, after she briefly stepped away while working at the school’s science center – only to return to find her backpack moist with a pungent yellow liquid, CBS Minnesota reported. When local cops in Saint Paul investigated...

Submarine production falters when a fragile industrial base cannot deliver the specialized castings, forgings, ceramics, magnetics, steels, and acoustic coatings that nuclear safety and acoustic stealth demand. Unfortunately, the United States relies on a dangerously thin bench of suppliers. The Naval Foundry and Propeller Center (NFPC) remains the Navy’s organic foundry and design reference for submarine propellers.6 But the NFPC alone cannot carry the load, nor was it designed to. Each propulsor involves long-lead steps—patterns, molds, pours, and machining—that stretch timelines even in the best cases. When quality issues arise, such as pour defects, heat-treatment variability, or radiographic anomalies, delays...

The United States will soon carry out the largest reduction in sea-based strategic launch capacity in its history—at precisely the moment the threat demands more. The November 2024 unclassified nuclear employment strategy report—submitted under 10 U.S.C. §491 and known as the 491 Report—now directs the joint force to “deter Russia, the PRC, and [North Korea] simultaneously in peacetime, crisis, and conflict.The Navy built 14 Ohio-class SSBNs with 24 missile tubes apiece—336 tubes of design capacity, of which 20 per boat remain operational after New START conversion. Twelve Columbias will carry 16 tubes apiece, netting 192 tubes.20 The transition surrenders 43...

“What if?” That’s a question you may have asked yourself at times throughout your life. What if something happened or didn’t happen is often the query. I won’t go into detail about all the “what ifs” I’ve questioned myself about in my life. I could write lots of columns on that question alone. No one wants to read about that, for sure! When it comes to American history, though, I’ve often thought about that question — wondering how history would have been different had this or that happened or not happened. What if George Washington had not had fog to...

Charles Laughton shows his humorous side with Tennessee Ernie Ford on The Ford Show, April 6, 1961 in this historic television appearance.Charles Laughton - Dramatic Reading Of The Tax Form (The Ford Show - April 6, 1961)

Guest post by Banafsheh Zand at Iran So Far Away The growing influence of Islamists linked to the Khomeinist Regime in the United States was shown on September 23, 2026, when a University of Michigan student of Iranian heritage named Iman Dashti asked Michigan’s Democratic Senate Candidate Abdul El-Sayed if he opposed the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Confronting El-Sayed with his words from earlier this year that he would not comment on the death of Regime leader Ali Khamenei because “there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad today,” Dashti asked him “if you renounce the...

Ocean County's [NJ] entire fleet is from DJI, a Chinese manufacturer of drones. LEDA estimates that about 80% to 90% of law enforcement agencies flying drones use DJI devices. China controls a vast majority of the global drone market, and it's the dominant source for the minerals and raw materials needed to build them, researchers say. The Trump administration wants that to end. It's made several moves to bolster U.S. drone makers, including by banning many new foreign-made drones from entering the American market. Most recently, his administration announced tariffs of 15% to 100% on some foreign-made drones, making it...

The Democratic Socialists of America are demanding Mayor Zohran Mamdani fire police Commissioner Jessica Tisch following a controversial shooting by ICE agents in the Bronx last week. In a scathing online statement, the DSA called on its most high-profile member to get rid of the city’s top cop and disband two elite NYPD units. “We demand that Mayor Zohran Mamdani fire NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch and use every power available to him to drive ICE out of New York City,” it said. “ They demanded that the city abolish police strategic response and community response teams. The lefty organization cried...