Free Republic

The headlines grow more disgusting -- and, frankly, more unbelievable -- with each passing day. Jeffrey Toobin, a columnist for The New Yorker, was suspended earlier this week (and placed on leave from his gig as chief legal analyst for CNN) after he was allegedly observed masturbating during a Zoom call with some of his colleagues from the magazine and from WYNC radio. Unsurprisingly, Toobin has become an object of derision and the butt of countless jokes. (Other parts of his unseemly backstory are getting more publicity. This is not, as they say, his first rodeo.) Not everyone has piled...

Twitter faced unrelenting backlash after blocking the spread of a New York Post bombshell that was highly critical of Hunter Biden on Wednesday, as critics pointed out the platform gave no such treatment to stories from CNN, The New York Times and other media with highly questionable sourcing. CEO Jack Dorsey even admitted his company was wrong to intervene on the Hunter Biden story without sufficiently explaining why. Dorsey called his company’s actions “unacceptable” after Twitter initially claimed it took action against the article due to the company’s “Hacked Materials Policy.” Twitter had blocked the article from being shared on...

On Thursday, October 15, 2020 at 1:30 pm ET, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) will convene a virtual unclassified hearing entitled, “Misinformation, Conspiracy Theories, and ‘Infodemics’: Stopping the Spread Online.” Conspiracy theories and misinformation narratives that prey on individuals’ fears and uncertainties continue to mar the online landscape. Against the backdrop of a global pandemic, an economy in turmoil, and a tumultuous presidential campaign, there is ample terrain for malicious actors at home or malign foreign operatives and governments abroad to exploit such tensions by stoking chaos and dangerous, even life-threatening, untruths. Recent trends in the spread...

Sympathetic Washington Post writer Matt Viser reports Joe Biden is pushing his religion in "a seven-figure ad buy that will air on religious TV stations and Christian radio networks in nine battleground states." In one ad, "Morning," the narrator cites Biden's faith as what got him through "dark times," when he lost his wife and daughter in a car crash in 1972 and his son Beau Biden to cancer in 2015. Faith in God should get us through hard times. But you don't have to belong to a church to have faith. Maybe I watch too many Biden presentations, but...

It's getting scary out there, people. Everywhere you turn, Trump haters are venting their wrath against Trump supporters, as if supporting President Trump is an unforgivable sin. They're projecting and gaslighting -- blaming Trump and his supporters for everything they're doing. It's madness, but at long last, they might have awakened the sleeping giant they're trying to hunt down and destroy. MSNBC's Joy Reid tweeted, "Genuine question: what will be the relationship between the majority of Americans, and Trumpists after this long, national nightmare ends -- and it will eventually end -- do people anticipate simply letting bygones (be) bygones...

Nineteen percent of the 1.4 million new coronavirus cases in the U.S. between Aug. 2 and Sept. 2 can be traced back to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally held in South Dakota, according to researchers from San Diego State University's Center for Health Economics & Policy Studies. That's more than 266,000 coronavirus cases attributed to the 10-day event, which more than 460,000 people attended despite fears it could become a so-called super-spreader event...... Researchers from the Center for Health Economics & Policy Studies also studied the spread of COVID-19 tied to Black Lives Matter protests throughout the U.S. and concluded the...

Angry San Francisco salon customers protested outside Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home Thursday by hanging blow driers and curlers from nearby trees. ... Pelosi was busted this week violating state and local coronavirus lockdown restrictions in San Francisco.. to get her hair done – and she wasn’t wearing a mask. She forced a local salon to open up just for her, and then when caught, claimed she was “set-up” by the salon owner. The salon owner steadfastly denies it was a set-up. ... San Francisco requires residents to stay 6 feet apart and wear a mask to cover the mouth and...

Gyms within government buildings in San Francisco have been open for months, despite privately owned establishments being ordered to close due to the coronavirus. “It’s shocking, it’s infuriating,” Daniele Rabkin, of Crossfit Golden Gate, told a local NBC station. “Even though they’re getting exposed, there are no repercussions, no ramifications? It’s shocking.” The gyms that have been open for government employees include those for police officers, judges, lawyers, bailiffs, and paralegals, according to the report. One such gym, the Hall of Justice gym, has been open since July 1. “It just demonstrates that there seems to be some kind of...

There are a lot of empty tables inside restaurants in Philly due to the orders of Mayor Jim Kenney, who nevertheless enjoyed indoor dining this weekend in Maryland. The Maryland restaurant is owned by the mayor’s friend; but Pa. chefs fume that the mayor is a job-killing hypocrite. Chefs and restaurant owners in Philadelphia are sizzling hot over a photo showing Mayor Jim Kenney, who banned indoor dining in Philly due to COVID-19, enjoying an indoor restaurant meal in Maryland. 6ABC in Philadelphia reports the mayor’s office confirmed that he went to a friend’s restaurant in Maryland on Sunday. This...

Antonio Sabato Jr. was hot stuff in Hollywood. He was a soap opera star. He was a renowned model. He was dating Madonna. But that all changed in 2016 when he decided to run for Congress. As a Republican.  In his new book, "Sabato: The Untold Story," Sabato, Jr. gets candid about how his conservatism cost him his agents and his gigs, but not his dignity. The actor begins by explaining the unimaginable obstacles his family endured while he was still a boy."My family had to flee from socialist run Czechoslovakia to Italy, then having to leave Italy, where I was...

In the weeks before Joe Biden named Sen. Kamala Harris his running mate, women’s groups were readying a campaign of their own: shutting down sexist coverage and disinformation about a vice presidential nominee they say is headed for months of false smears and “brutal” attacks from internet haters. The groups put the media on notice in recent days that they will call out bias — one campaign is dubbed “We Have Her Back” — and established a “war room” to refute sexist or false attacks as they happen. They didn’t have to wait long. Within minutes of the presumptive Democratic...

‘Tis the season for tearing down statues. And renaming schools and buildings and bridges. And removing the names of virtually all our important forebearers from the public square.   Does any of this make sense?  To help us think less emotionally and more clearly, let’s traverse the Atlantic and consider the case of Isaac Newton.            There is a statue of him at Oxford University. Should the British tear it down? According to Stephen Hawking, who held the Newton chair, the man who was perhaps the greatest scientist in the history of the world, was devious,...

Michael Goodwin of the New York Post published an extensive investigative article on Sunday claiming that ancestral members of the family that owns the New York Times likely included slaveowners. Moreover, Goodwin recounted, the extended family also included members who fought for the Confederacy; contributed to Confederate memorials after the Civil War; and perhaps even engaged in the slave trade.

Hockey commentator Jeremy Roenick is firing back at NBC Sports, accusing his former employer of discriminating against him for being straight. Roenick was fired by NBC Sports back in February after he made sexually suggestive remarks about colleagues Kathryn Tappen and Patrick Sharp on a podcast. Now Roenick has filed a lawsuit against the network in New York Supreme Court, claiming wrongful termination and discrimination based on gender or sexual orientation, according to our sister site Variety. Roenick’s lawsuit states that figure skating commentator Johnny Weir made “colorful commentary” about skaters’ body parts for NBC Sports during the 2018 Winter...

Television companies working with Cannon refuse to answer questions Fox Television and the producers of actor Nick Cannon's upcoming daytime talk show are remaining silent about the TV host's recent anti-Semitic tirade, which included comments claiming that Jews control the global banking system. Cannon, host of the Fox TV show The Masked Singer, praised anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and claimed people of African descent are "the true Hebrews," a trope meant to undermine the Jewish people's connection to Israel. His comments, made on his YouTube talk show, have sparked a fierce backlash from pro-Israel and anti-hate groups,...

The parents of two toddlers featured in a manipulated video posted on social media by President Donald Trump plan to file a lawsuit against the president, his campaign and the creator of the video, pro-Trump meme creator Carpe Donktum, escalating the fallout from the doctored video, which was taken down by Facebook and Twitter. Lawyers representing the parents of the children featured in the video are drafting a lawsuit alleging the video was altered and shared as an “advertisement and political propaganda” without permission or parental consent.

Florida State University's student senate narrowly voted to keep its president despite his history of anti-Semitic comments. FSU student senate president Ahmad Daraldik wrote "f— Israel" and "stupid Jew" in social media posts and created a website comparing the "occupation of Palestine" to the Holocaust. He defended his past behavior in a video circulated prior to the vote. "I was a child living under an oppressive occupation, where my voice was not heard. So, when I saw a post of a child with a soldier's foot on their chest and a gun to their face, I had no time," Daraldik...

Over the two last weeks, Mayor Bill de Blasio and others have voiced concerns that packed police brutality protests across the city could trigger a new wave of COVID-19 infections. Whether or not that’s the case, however, remains unknown — and de Blasio’s team won’t be directly trying to find out. The hundreds of contact tracing workers hired by the city under de Blasio’s new “test and trace” campaign have been instructed not to ask anyone who’s tested positive for COVID-19 whether they recently attended a demonstration, City Hall confirmed to THE CITY. “No person will be asked proactively if...

MOULTRIE, Ga. -- News of former Moultrie Fire Chief Jeff Thibodeau’s resignation hit shortly before noon Friday with an announcement from the city. Thibodeau had been put on administrative leave on Tuesday, June 9, because of an “offensive comment” posted this past weekend on his personal Facebook page. The post included a picture of George Floyd...stamped with an alleged rap sheet. Thibodeau captioned it saying, “I’m just going to leave this right here.... ................................ In the wake of Thibodeau’s situation, however, some people have looked into Moultrie City Councilman Cornelius Ponder’s Facebook posts and called some of them into question...

A black professor tweeted that he wants white people to die and supports “fighting white people,” concerned individuals notified his university. However, instead of firing or even punishing him, the campus administration insists that he did nothing wrong. For Irami Osei-Frimpong, every discrepancy within minority communities can be reduced to racial inequality, namely the oppression of white people. Additionally, he has been afforded a gratifying platform to spew this racial propaganda and spread the idea of victim superiority at the University of Georgia, convincing young people that a certain race of people is inherently racist and, therefore, evil. Fighting White...