Free Republic

If it were up to Larry Ellison, the exorbitantly rich cofounder of software outfit Oracle, all of us will soon be smiling for the camera — constantly. Not for a cheery photograph, but to appease our super-invasive, if not totally omnipresent, algorithmic overseers. As Business Insider reports, the tech centibillionaire glibly predicts that the wonders of AI will bring about a new paradigm of supercharged surveillance, guaranteeing that the proles — excuse us, "citizens" — all behave and stay in line. "We're going to have supervision," Ellison said this week at an Oracle financial analysts meeting, per BI. "Every police...

As an old congressional investigator, some things really bother me. Dishonesty at the Justice Department is one. Attorney General Merrick Garland is a disgrace – and danger. He opposes textual interpretations of the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments. He resents individual rights, and how they limit government power to suppress rights – which is why they were framed. Now, he disavows another core principle, called “separation of powers.” To be clear, separating powers among those who make our laws, administer them, and interpret them is ancient. It is not a MAGA idea. It goes back to the French...

Last month, Brown-Forman Corporation, the parent company of Jack Daniels, announced that it would scale back the diversity, equity, and inclusion policies that critics say violate nondiscrimination law. Specifically, the company stated that it would no longer pursue “quantitative workforce and supplier diversity ambitions,” effectively ending efforts to engineer a specific corporate demography via racial and gender quotas. Compensation will now be tied strictly to business performance, the company added, rather than to metrics that incentivize discrimination. Brown-Forman also pledged to review all training programs to ensure they align with the firm’s “evolved strategy,” signaling a potential departure from the...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal judge has weakened the Biden administration’s effort to use a historic civil rights law to fight industrial pollution alleged to have taken a heavier toll on minority communities in Louisiana. U.S. District Judge James David Cain of Lake Charles handed down the ruling Thursday, permanently blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from imposing what are known as “disparate impact” requirements on the state.... In its lawsuit, the state argued that the Biden administration’s plans went beyond the scope of Title VI.... The state also said the policy is discriminatory because it would allow regulation of...

Liberty University has been sued for discrimination and wrongful termination because they enforced their doctrinal statement on a man who decided he was a transvestite. To make matters more intense, the ACLU is involved. According to Cardinal News: The lawsuit, filed Monday by the ACLU of Virginia and the Richmond law firm Butler Curwood, claims that the university violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. The plaintiff, Ellenor Zinski, was hired to work at the private university’s information technology help desk in 2023, and received a positive performance...

Stricter COVID-19 restrictions could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the states that refused to institute them, though efforts to close nursing homes and schools likely caused more harm than good, a new study has found. Between 118,000 and 248,000 more Americans would have survived the pandemic if all states had followed some restrictions practiced in Northeastern states, according to findings published Friday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The most effective responses were mask mandates and vaccine requirements, the JAMA study found. “COVID-19 restrictions saved lives,” the researchers wrote. “The death toll was probably...

Police officers can and will lie to you. They may claim that an accomplice has already ratted you out. They may claim to have hard evidence against you, such as video footage of you committing the crime. They may give you completely dishonest answers to your questions. Because they're free to lie, it's important to avoid overly trusting their words.

Is California slated to become Gov. Gavin Newsom’s gender transition sanctuary state? Gov. Newsom just signed Assembly Bill 1955 by Assemblyman Chris Ward (D-San Diego), the bill to prohibit schools from notifying parents if their child is “gender confused” or “transitioning” to the opposite sex. Horrifyingly, the bill’s title is “Support Academic Futures and Educators for Today’s Youth Act.”

How Did a Small Group Do This?A very interesting study appeared last week by two researchers looking into the pandemic policy response around the world. They are Drs. Eran Bendavid and Chirag Patel of Stanford and Harvard, respectively. Their ambition was straightforward. They wanted to examine the effects of government policy on the virus. In this ambition, after all, researchers have access to an unprecedented amount of information. We have global data on strategies and stringencies. We have global data on infections and mortality. We can look at it all according to the timeline. We have precise dating of stay-at-home...

The FBI Security Division questioned employees about a fellow agent’s views on COVID vaccines, Donald Trump, and a Second Amendment rally, according to whistleblower disclosures made to the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General on Saturday. This revelation raises more concerns that the FBI’s leadership has become hopelessly politicized and seeks to purge itself of agents with certain disfavored views.

Never-before-released details of the behind-the-scenes investigationsHow it Started“Reeeeeeeee.”The noise is coming from my personal Apple desktop computer in the small office adjacent to my bedroom. It’s starting up.On its own.“Reeeeeeeee…chik chik chik chik,” says the computer as it shakes itself awake.The electronic sounds stir me from sleep. I squint my eyes at the clock radio on the table next to the bed. The numbers blink back: “3:14 a.m.”Only a day earlier, my CBS-issued Toshiba laptop, perched at the front of my bed, had whirred to life on its own, untouched by human hands. What time was that?I think it was...

It’s the preeminent civil rights issue of our day: the protection of girls in women’s sports. Last month’s stolen victory by a male runner in the girls’ 400-meter dash at the Washington state championships underscores a heightened sense of urgency for current and future generations of female athletes. Lauren Matthew, West Valley School District’s top-seeded runner, is just the latest young woman to lose a title to a mediocre male claiming to be female. Naturally, the boy secured the championship by one second.

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”—Thomas Jefferson If America’s schools are to impart principles of freedom and democracy to future generations, they must start by respecting the constitutional rights of their students Take the case of Lucas Hudson. With all the negative press being written about today’s young people, it’s refreshing to meet a young person who not only knows his rights but is prepared to stand up for them. Lucas is a smart kid, a valedictorian of his graduating class at the...

Fox News host Jesse Watters weighed in on recent reports that the FBI authorized the use of “deadly force” in the raid of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. According to court filings, the Department of Justice authorized “the use of deadly force” when FBI agents swarmed Trump’s home as they searched for classified documents in 2022. According to an operations order revealed in evidence as part of Trump’s criminal case, agents were tasked with seizing “classified information, [National Defense Information], and US Government records.” The filing by lawyers for the former president said authorities also were told to conceal their...

“4 years ago today, we reopened Atilis Gym in direct violation of an unconstitutional order by Governor Philip Murphy to close small businesses in New Jersey,” says gym owner Ian Smith. A New Jersey court has dismissed the case against gym owner Ian Smith over 80 citations and violations of Gov. Phil Murphy's (D) order to close small business during the covid pandemic. Smith, owner of Atilis Gym in Bellmawr, made a statement on X Saturday breaking the good news.

What will be the endgame of all these attacks on the American legal system and the warping of it for blatant political purposes? None of the five civil and criminal cases currently lodged against former President Donald Trump have ever had merit. They were all predicated on using the law to injure his re-election candidacy—given a widespread derangement syndrome among the left and a fear they cannot entrust a Trump/Biden election to the people. These criminal and civil trials are merely the continuation of extra-legal efforts of the last eight years to destroy a presidential candidate in lieu of opposing...

In December 2022, Reason reported that both state and federal wildlife agents routinely trespass onto private land and plant cameras. Two Tennessee homeowners successfully sued the state over the practice, and a three-judge panel ruled in their favor. The state appealed the decision, and this week the court of appeals ruled in the homeowners' favor. At issue is a state law allowing officers of the Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency (TWRA) to "go upon any property, outside of buildings, posted or otherwise," in order to "enforce all laws relating to wildlife." In the case of Terry Rainwaters and Hunter Hollingsworth, TWRA...

Automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) cameras are becoming more and more common on American roads, thanks to one company. Flock Safety is a tech company that provides surveillance products to a wide array of clients. Its largest customer is law enforcement. Namely, governing bodies use the company's ALPR cameras to capture millions of U.S. driver plates all over the country. Many local citizens are unaware of the cameras. Chiefly, this is due to the quiet methods used to install them and utilize recorded data. Eric Fielder works in real estate. He recently noticed something unusual in his community. The resident...

CLAIM: President Joe Biden, 81, recently claimed on The Howard Stern Show that he “got arrested” during the civil rights movement. VERDICT: Likely false There is no evidence authorities arrested Biden while defending civil rights, CNN reported: There is no evidence Biden ever got arrested during a civil rights protest, as The Washington Post and PolitiFact found when they looked into this claim in 2022 — and Biden has at least twice told the story of his supposed presence at this particular Delaware protest without mentioning any arrest, instead claiming that the police merely took him home that day. The...

A report in the Daily Mail says that Republicans in Congress are investigating more than ten banks “for colluding with the federal government to spy on Americans after the January 6 protests.” The alleged witch hunt was in search of “‘extremism’ indicators.” You won’t be surprised at all to learn what qualifies as an “extremism indicator.” Fox News reported on January 17: Federal investigators asked banks to search and filter customer transactions by using terms like “MAGA” and “Trump” as part of an investigation into Jan. 6, warning that purchases of “religious texts” could indicate “extremism,” the House Judiciary Committee...