Free Republic

An unidentified intelligence officer claimed that cross-dressing helped him perform his job better in an internal Director of National Intelligence (DNI) newsletter, according to The Daily Wire. The anonymous author of an article titled, “My Gender Identity and Expression Make Me a Better Intelligence Officer,” claimed that crossdressing “sharpened the skills” he used, according to The Daily Wire. The author claimed that his experiences as a cross-dresser also cultivated “strategic empathy” in the article.

New FBI data confirms previous indications that crime in the U.S. declined significantly in 2023, continuing a post-pandemic trend and belying widespread perceptions that crime is rising. The new fourth-quarter numbers showed a 13% decline in murder in 2023 from 2022, a 6% decline in reported violent crime and a 4% decline in reported property crime. That’s based on data from around 13,000 law enforcement agencies, policing about 82% of the U.S. population, that provided the FBI with quarterly data through December. “It suggests that when we get the final data in October, we will have seen likely the largest...

As America closes in on a major election, mistrust is brewing around the mysterious government entity that’s now denounced in scary-sounding terms — “the deep state” and “the swamp.” What do those words even mean? Who exactly do they describe? We went on a road trip to find out. As we met the Americans who are being dismissed as public enemies, we discovered that they are … us. They like Taylor Swift. They dance bachata. They go to bed at night watching “Star Trek” reruns. They go to work and do their jobs: saving us from Armageddon. Sure, our tax...

Last week, Judge Scott McAfee issued his opinion on the potential disqualification of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her subordinate-slash-romantic partner Nathan Wade from Fulton County’s prosecution of Donald Trump and some 18 other Republicans relating to the 2020 election. McAfee found that there was no actual conflict of interest but did find that there was an appearance of impropriety, and held that Wade, but not Willis, had to resign from the prosecution. The opinion was wrong on the facts and the law. But Trump and his co-defendants have strong grounds for appeal, and Fani Willis isn’t out...

Hezbollah, the terror group made up of Lebanese Shi’a, is a far more formidable fighting force than is Hamas. It has a vast armory of 160,000 rockets and missiles, many of them precision-guided, supplied by Iran, as compared to fewer than 10,000 much cruder rockets now possessed by Hamas after five months of war. Hamas had 30,000 troops on October 6, before the Gaza war began, and now has about 15,000 fighters still alive, with many of them having been wounded. Hezbollah, on the other hand, has at least 100,000 well-trained and well-armed troops, thanks to the backing, in weapons...

I think we underrate just how boring identity politics is. Obviously, it’s an attack on Western civilization, but on a more prosaic level, it’s just very tiresome, because when you’re talking about identity politics, what are you talking about? You. As my wife often points out, there’s nothing more boring than you. Talking about yourself was the most offensive thing you could do in the world that I grew up in. When my father would check our thank-you notes as children, if you began more than one sentence with the word “I,” he made you rewrite it. He would always...

A dissatisfied US reader, Neil Johnson, wrote the other day to chide me for "constant bitching about the legal system (which is accurate but so what?)" So what? Well, it's costing you your country, that's what. And don't start prancing around waving that constitution at me. A constitution is meaningless in a land without law: ask the Soviets about all their pretty-sounding paperwork. Politics is meaningless: cable pundits and radio hosts can yak about polls and policies all they want, but Democrats are pre-litigating the election because they're pretty confident it'll work for them. As I wrote a month ago,...

This morning the Supreme Court held oral argument in the case that is now styled Murthy v. Missouri. C-SPAN has posted audio of the oral argument here. The case arises from the government’s “encouragement” of censorship by the social media platforms, as documented in the Twitter Files. We have followed the case as it has wended its way through the district court to the Fifth Circuit and then to the Supreme Court. We (I) have been pulling for the plaintiffs. The Supreme Court has already entered an order staying the narrowed preliminary injunction that had been fashioned by the Fifth...

Rob Smith, a gay and Black conservative who was heckled and called racist and homophobic slurs while attending a MAGA event last year, said he is leaving the Republican Party. Smith, a longtime conservative commentator, announced he now identifies as "politically homeless" during an episode of his podcast Can't Cancel Rob Smith titled "I Was Betrayed—Rob Smith Speaks Out" on Monday. Smith shared a video on social media in December that he said showed him at an event in Phoenix being "confronted and surrounded by some White Supremacists that don't like gays or blacks in the Republican Party." He said...

A cynical public now expects any accused prominent leftist to remain unindicted, while any non-leftwing target will be indicted, convicted, and jailed—for the same alleged offenses. In 2011, then Homeland Security Advisor to President Obama, John Brennan, swore before Congress that drone-targeted assassination missions near the Pakistani border had not led to “a single collateral death.” That was an obvious lie with grave consequences, given that Brennan was sworn under oath and was one of the top officials in the US national security community. Yet there were no subsequent repercussions. In fact, the opposite occurred. Brennan was subsequently rewarded with...

The Left is turning us into a “sh*thole country.” During a White House meeting with Senators in January, 2018, then-President Donald Trump reportedly questioned the reasoning for allowing immigration from “shithole countries” such as Haiti. This triggered the pearl-clutching mainstream media, and charges of racism flew fast and furious, including from Haiti Ambassador to the U.S. Paul Altidor, who said Trump’s language was based on “clichés and stereotypes rather than actual fact.”Today Haiti is a shithole country, and that is not a racist cliché or stereotype but actual fact. It is a failed nation in a state of emergency, becoming...

Fundamentalist Christian churches from the United States are increasingly gaining power and influence in societies and political spheres across Africa. Many of them have been whipping up negative sentiments against LGBTQ+ people and abortion rights. Haley McEwen, a sociologist at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, has examined some of their influential networks. "US Christian right-wing groups have been very active in the US foreign policy since the early 2000s," McEwen told DW. "There are several organizations that have been around since the 1970s — and in the early 2000s they started to increase their influence internationally." ...

Pope Francis’s suggestion that Ukraine’s leaders should admit defeat, find “the courage to raise the white flag” and negotiate a halt to the war with Russia provoked justified fury in Kyiv and eastern Europe. He was wrong to say Ukraine is beaten, and gravely remiss in failing to condemn Moscow’s illegal aggression and war crimes. Yet Francis is not alone in wondering how this conflict ends. Two years on, there’s no sign of a winner. Maybe that’s just as well, in the sense that outright victory for either side could be disastrous for all. Does this unheroic consideration tacitly influence...

The South China Sea has once again become a focal point of international attention following sudden clashes between coast guard vessels of the Philippines and China. As tensions rise, the involvement of global powers like the US and Japan adds further complexity to the situation, potentially pushing more nations to align against Beijing. Amid these escalating tensions, it becomes imperative for China to reconsider its assertive stance and respect the existing global order to avoid further international backlash The South China Sea (SCS) has once again come into focus following sudden skirmishes between the coast guard vessels of the Philippines...

Late on Friday Steyn's lawyers filed three new motions in the District of Columbia Superior Court. You can read them in full here... ~There is not a lot of good news around as western civilisation floors it off the cliff. The last such in the anglosphere came last autumn, with the Australian people's coast-to-coast rejection of the proposed "Indigenous Voice to Parliament". In the face of suffocating universal support for the yes side from the political, legal, cultural and media establishments, Oz voted it down 60-40. Well, this weekend the Irish just upped the Aussies, and rejected overwhelmingly two constitutional...

Dear Idaho, You are not a conservative state. I know you think you are. After all, more than 80% of your lawmakers call themselves Republican. The Republican Party controls the House, the Senate, and the Governor’s office. But let’s be honest. Idaho just isn’t conservative. Many Republican lawmakers vote like Democrats. Even those who campaign as “conservatives” vote liberal more than half the time. Here are some examples: HJM11—To hold President Biden and the federal government accountable for the invasion at our southern border. (Failed on the House floor.) Conservative states stand up for the rule of law rather than...

The Consumer Price Index has increased 18.6% from 261.582 in January of 2021 when Biden took office to 310.326 in February 2024. Has your income gone up 18.6%, or did Biden make you POORER?

Together with my good friend and occasional courtroom adversary David Boies, I am attempting to persuade a federal court to invalidate California's Proposition 8—the voter-approved measure that overturned California's constitutional right to marry a person of the same sex.... Many of my fellow conservatives have an almost knee-jerk hostility toward gay marriage. This does not make sense, because same-sex unions promote the values conservatives prize. Marriage is one of the basic building blocks of our neighborhoods and our nation. At its best, it is a stable bond between two individuals who work to create a loving household and a social...

Anytime ideology and dogma trump merit, logic, and safety, the result is predictably dangerous. America needs to recalibrate its priorities to protect the lives and aspirations of its citizens. The horrific murder of Laken Riley by a repeated felony offender and illegal alien Jose Ibarra, 26, a Venezuelan citizen, was preventable—had federal immigration laws simply been enforced by the Biden administration. When called out in his recent State of the Union address, President Biden referenced the deceased Ms. Riley. But Biden misidentified her as “Lincoln Riley”—the USC football coach! Biden only accurately noted that she “was killed by an “illegal.””...

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...Ah, the Hadids. Where would we be without them? Brainless beauties, those Hadid girls, Gigi and Bella, sashaying down the catwalks of the Western world, and their doting, equally empty-headed, stage-door papa, a real-estate tycoon on his uppers and down on his luck, in sunny California, appear to have no other subject in their empty heads – as their Instagram postings make clear — than the hideousness of the Israelis and the sheer wonderfulness of the Palestinians they persecute. Gigi has informed the world that “Jesus was a Palestinian,” that the Palestinians are the “indigenous”...