Free Republic

ALTADENA, California — Residents of California’s San Gabriel Valley had been coexisting with wildfire danger for generations before this week’s firestorm. Even relative newcomers, like me, know the house will shake when helicopters carrying water to fires in the foothills fly low overhead, or how to tape plastic to the windows and hose down our eaves. We’ve swept ash and burnt leaves that have rained down in our yards. We trim the trees and hope our insurance companies won’t drop us. We nervously watch the hills. And even in this place where there is little dispute that the danger is...

This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. In an ember storm, every opening in a house is a portal to hell. A vent without a screen, a crack in the siding, a missing roof tile—each is an opportunity for a spark to smolder. A gutter full of dry leaves is a cradle for an inferno. Think of a rosebush against a bedroom window: fire food. The roses burn first, melting the vinyl seal around the window. The glass pane falls. A shoal of embers enter the house like a school...

As Americans languish behind enemy lines in a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, President Biden addressed the nation on his administration's response to the Wuhan coronavirus and push to mandate vaccination among additional groups before ignoring reporters' questions for the second time this week. Worse than ignoring the crisis of his making 7,000 miles away, Biden burned valuable time to launch false smears. Time he could have used to make clear any sort of commitment to bring every single American home from Afghanistan. Time that could have been used to communicate to the Taliban that any attempt to harm Americans would be met...

Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic - a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year. Sixty-three of the 66 largest police jurisdictions saw increases in at least one category of violent crimes in 2020, which include homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault, according to a report produced by the Major Cities Chiefs Association. Baltimore City, Baltimore County and Raleigh, North Carolina, did...