Free Republic

Explanation: This sight was worth getting out of bed early. Just over four years ago, Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) rose before dawn to the delight of northern sky enthusiasts awake that early. Up before sunrise on July 8th, the featured photographer was able to capture in dramatic fashion one of the few comets visible to the unaided eye this century, an inner-Solar System intruder that has become known as the Great Comet of 2020. The resulting video detailed Comet NEOWISE from Italy rising over the Adriatic Sea. The featured time-lapse video combines over 240 images taken over 30 minutes. The...

The ferry, with more than 240 people on board, was traveling from Surabaya in East Java to Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan province, on Borneo Island, officials said. The captain had reported rough seas with waves up to 3 meters (10 feet) before issuing a distress call, saying the ship was listing, said I Putu Sudayana, who heads the Banjarmasin Search and Rescue Office. Authorities later received information indicating the vessel had overturned. The rescue agency in Banjarmasin said it received a report two hours after contact was lost with the Virgo Transport 8 at about 2 a.m. Sunday. A rescue...

A Russian strike has hit a train near the Ukraine-Poland border shortly after former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other top European officials had passed through. No casualties were reported after the Russian strike, which hit the train's engine. Johnson and some of Europe's most senior security advisers, including the UK's Jonathan Powell, had passed along the same line on their way back from a conference in the capital, Kyiv. Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk said a Russian drone had struck 800m from Polish border. Russia has in recent months carried out a number of deadly attacks targeting Ukraine's...

Former Sarasota, Florida, second grade student Krystal Davis remembers a wave of confusion washing over her and her classmates on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, after a suited man whispered into the ear of the president of the United States, who was seated just in front of the students. Then-President George W. Bush was visiting Emma E. Booker Elementary School and had been listening intently to the children in Mrs. Sandra Daniels' second-grade class flexing their reading skills, when the look of admiration on his face suddenly gave way to an expression of concern. Chief of Staff Andrew Card...

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is now offering sanctuary to the lone holdout juror in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial as he faces harassment from the leftwing media and will likely be doxxed once his identity is revealed. “I’m sure he’d be welcomed and appreciated,” DeSantis said, offering to give him “asylum” in Florida." "A man objected to allowing a woman to kill her three young kids and get away with it, so NBC is trying to smear that juror, whose identity should be protected. Another low for legacy media. If the juror is being harassed, Florida will provide asylum —...

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal. I’d like to offer an update on the Canadian-American trade spat. Earlier, I had staged it. I said stage one was surprise on both sides of the border that two neighbors who spoke the same language, had the same civilizational origins in Britain, were close neighbors, and had the largest undefended border in the world were at a point of very angry disagreement. The second stage was that Prime Minister Mark Carney started to suggest that the United States was solely culpable, was a bully, and had forced him to...

You know him. He wears Jesus sandals, drinks Hennessy, still smokes menthol Kools, and has been saying “How ’bout them Cowboys?” since Jerry Jones had hair. The Cowboys aren’t just his favorite football team. They are part of his identity. And he is not alone. The Undefeated noted that the Cowboys’ iconic brand was “largely bolstered by their Black fans,” particularly through stars like Bob Hayes, Tony Dorsett and Emmitt Smith. But we need to have a family meeting. Because, Black folks, it is past time ya’ll break up with the Cowboys.

Democrats are embracing Islam's incompatibility with civilization. Perhaps the primary issue with Muslim immigration into America—beyond the importation of terrorist sleeper cells, that is—is the cultural differences, informed by Sharia, that make Islam fundamentally incompatible with American liberty. Democrats not only don’t care about that, they’re embracing it. The Danbury, Connecticut, City Council recently voted to allow non-citizen legal residents to become police officers, despite their being ineligible under federal law to possess or carry guns. Apparently, the Council is “sending a message” about ICE immigration enforcement. The former Muslim police chief of Detroit suburb Hamtramck took a big step...

Democrats are using every means possible to keep pushing the can down the road to buy time, but there is no time left to return integrity to America’s elections. The SAVE America Act, which would have cleaned the rolls and secured the elections, passed the House and is dead in the Senate. House and Senate recesses used up the calendar. Trump then tried to do by executive order what the Senate refused to do by statute: requiring proof of citizenship, a reliable federal voter list, and limits on mailed ballots. Election officials in fraud-prone areas, however, refuse to produce the...

Who's ready for urban Funky Soul Optimus with 'tude shopping for new threads?

...Blessed Are Those Who Read This Book’ The book of Revelation is the only book in the Bible where we are told twice: “Blessed are those who read this book.” If you want to be blessed, you should read and study the book of Revelation, because the Bible promises that if you do, you will be blessed. And I surely have. I’ve learned so much about God’s sovereignty and His wonderful promise to us through the study of the Word. I know that He’s still in charge even though everything else looks like it’s going south on us....

Chutz-POW! A host of rabbis recently participated in a five-day “summer camp” featuring extensive firearms training as Jewish leaders from across the US prepared for the High Holidays. The pilot program, run by Los Angeles-based Jewish security organization Magen Am USA, brought together 20 Chabad Hasidic rabbis from 12 states for an intensive crash course designed to help them respond to potential threats at their synagogues and in their communities. The program, which also included emergency medicine and security training, took place in August in Los Angeles. It came as Jewish communities across California and the country grapple with heightened...

The failures that led to 9/11 remain unaddressed to this day. uch has been written about 9/11 on the 25th anniversary of this attack on our soil. To my mind, the most prescient was by Ayaan Hirsi Ali in Tablet Magazine. Before I get to it (and I hope you will take time to read more than I can summarize here), we need to review failures that led to the attack and failures that followed. In this regard, we are aided by this week’s CIA declassification of 71 Presidential Daily Briefs from 1998 through December 2001. SHOCKING DECLASSIFIED CIA FILES...

Chauffeurs ferrying wealthy clients around London are being trained how to keep their passengers safe at one of the capital's busiest transport hubs, the Daily Mail can reveal. Regarded as one of the UK's most iconic stations, King's Cross and its neighbours, St Pancras International and King's Cross St Pancras Underground, have become a hotspot for Algerian gangs, luggage thieves and phone snatchers. Just last week, footage emerged of a smartly dressed thief brazenly snatching an influencer's Louis Vuitton suitcase – worth an estimated £2,600 – from a taxi rank outside the stations. Elsewhere outside St Pancras, an Algerian gang...

[Note: Catching up for yesterday] Explanation: Bright sunlight glints as long dark shadows mark this image of the surface of the Moon. It was taken on July 20, 1969, by Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first to walk on the lunar surface. Pictured is the mission's lunar module, the Eagle, and spacesuited lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin. Aldrin is unfurling a long sheet of foil also known as the Solar Wind Composition Experiment. Exposed facing the Sun, the foil trapped particles streaming outward in the solar wind, catching a sample of material from the Sun itself. Along with 22...

She was the perfect American neighbor — sweet, hardworking and the ideal homemaker. Everybody liked her. She was also a Nazi. The new movie “The Housewife,” which had its world premiere this week at the Toronto International Film Festival, tells the strange story of Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan, a notoriously cruel Nazi death camp guard who hid out undetected for years in New York, before finally being caught. Director Ben Shirinian’s film, starring a Stepford-style Naomi Watts as Ryan, is just OK. The drama is often overplayed. Watts, with a store-bought sauerkraut accent, has been stuck in schmactor mode lately. And...

In a blurry red, visually cryptic post on X.com, Tesla announced the launch date for its long-promised second generation Roadster: 10.01. Although the image and text in the post itself don’t confirm that the announcement is indeed about Roadster, Tesla posted a link to go with it, to the Roadster page on Tesla.com, which makes it indisputable: come October 1, we’re getting a big update on the second-generation Tesla Roadster and it may have rockets mounted on top. Or... big searchlights. Or possibly snow blower nozzles. Who knows? The image is really blurry. If you recall, back on November 16,...

KPIBF YZ JPB N ENJYZFCQ BFYJW, HIB ZPUCBFYJW BFNB QLCMMZ APTCECT YJ BFC FCNTB. —MIXK UNIQ UPJBWPUCTK

Resonating as strongly as ever, ‘Three Little Birds’ was slow to take flight, but now stands as one of Bob Marley’s most affecting songs.Bob Marley was a gifted songwriter, but sometimes inspiration came to him like a gift received from somewhere else. “Three Little Birds,” a simple, joyful song that has been a hit several times over, was a gift from nature, its writing prompted by the birds that fluttered by the window at 56 Hope Road, Bob’s Tuff Gong HQ, and home during the second half of the 70s. “It was amazing how he put the words together” Bob...

The man born on September 12, 1931 in Saratoga, Texas is still seen by many as the greatest singer in country history.The country legend they called “Possum” was born on September 12, 1931 in Saratoga, Texas, and is still seen by many as the greatest singer in the genre’s history. We must be talking about George Jones. Jones was an incredible presence on the country scene for nearly half a century, from his first hit “Why Baby Why” in 1955 to his last entry to date, “50,000 Names,” in 2002. Along the way, George scored 13 No.1 singles, including such...