Free Republic

A North Korean delegation led by the cabinet minister for international trade is visiting Iran, the North’s official media says in a rare public report of an exchange between the two countries believed to have secret military ties. The minister for external economic relations, Yun Jong Ho, left Pyongyang on Tuesday by air leading a ministry delegation to visit Iran, the North’s KCNA news agency says. It gives no other detail. North Korea and Iran have long been suspected of cooperating on ballistic missile programs, possibly exchanging technical expertise and components that went into their manufacture.

There was a macabre familiarity to the sight last week of a dead man in Brazil being wheeled into a bank by a greedy relative to sign a loan document. The woman is seen on social media video talking to the corpse in the wheelchair while trying to hold up his floppy head with one hand. In her other hand, she clutches a pen lodged between the dead man’s fingers as she attempts to sign documents to secure a loan of $3,250. “Uncle Paulo, are you listening?” the woman, named by CNN Brazil as Érika de Souza Vieira Nunes, tells...

he sight of Bill Boeing was a familiar one on the factory floor. His office was in the building next to the converted boatyard where workers lathed the wood, sewed the fabric wings, and fixed the control wires of the Boeing Model C airplane. there is no authority except facts. facts are obtained by accurate observation read a plaque affixed outside the door. And what could need closer observation than the process of his aircraft being built? One day in 1916, Boeing spotted an imperfectly cut wing rib, dropped it to the floor, and slowly stomped it to bits. “I,...

As the 2024 presidential race heats up, a central paradox is becoming ever clearer: Many voters are growing disenchanted with, and are certainly not enthused, by the two main candidates, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, who are 81 and 77 years old, respectively. With a little over six months to go before election day on Nov. 5, this can be seen in Biden’s relatively low approval ratings. Meanwhile, Trump’s ever-growing list of controversies and court cases might be buoying his populist political base but they are turning off many independents and more moderate Republican voters. One of the key implications...

In the American Left’s vision of contemporary war, the West brings too many advantages in science, technology, and wealth. Why does Biden play Iranian poker with American and Israeli lives? Answer? He envisions war sort of like affirmative action, in which the less accomplished belligerent is allowed all sorts of concessions for the sake of equity. Israeli and American military capability, and particularly their missile defenses, are seen as unfair, almost like high achievers’ top SAT scores that are seen as unearned and used to privilege some over others and therefore must be countered or dropped. Given Iran’s and its...

How liberals killed Earth DayOPINION:Earth Day used to be a celebration of our individual and collective responsibility to protect the planet and improve human health. It was about science and data. Unfortunately, today, Earth Day has little to do with the planet and more to do with far-left agendas meant to increase control over the population.The paint-throwing, street-blocking activists will be out in force pushing their narrative of climate doom, more than happy to ignore science in the process. The media will reflexively add credibility to the nonsense.President Biden will tout the importance of some patently unachievable electric vehicle or...

Earlier this week, Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) decided not to veto an obscure law called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPV), which calls for the state's 4 Electoral College votes to be awarded to the presidential candidate who gets the most votes nationally regardless of the outcome in the state. The law doesn't go into effect, however, until states totaling 270 electoral votes join the compact. That's the number of Electoral College votes required to win the presidency. Once dismissed as an unworkable, almost farcical fantasy, the NPV just tallied its 209th electoral vote with Maine, and now...

By unleashing war in the Middle East and targeting Israel, Iran may soon learn that Israel, or America, or both might retaliate for a half-century of its terrorist aggression. The theocracy of Iran has been the world’s arch-embassy attacker over the last half century. So it has zero credibility in crying foul over Israel’s April 1 attacks on its “consulate” in Damascus and the killing of Iran’s kingpin terrorists of the Revolutionary Guard Corps there. Remember, the world was first introduced to the Iranian ayatollahs by their violent takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1980. Iranian surrogates next...

If you are planning a lengthy holiday getaway don’t leave your home unattended: beware the squatters. In some towns in the U.S. if homeowners take a lengthy vacation and squatters move into their home in the interim the intruders may wind up calling it their own “home sweet home.” And “yes,” it’s legal. The issue of squatter rights is not something new; squatters have been around since the first European settlers arrived in America. What is new is the emergence of squatters in growing numbers as a result of the Biden administration’s open borders policy. Texas Senator John Cornyn tells...

The Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday morning in the case of Fischer v. United States, one of the many criminal cases arising out of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Like defendants in a large subset of those cases, Joseph Fischer was charged, among other offenses, with obstruction of an official proceeding under 18 U.S.C. 1512(c)(2). Fischer’s case in the Supreme Court challenges whether the events of that day can be prosecuted using this obstruction statute. Most of the justices seemed dubious, or at a minimum concerned, about the Department of Justice’s very broad interpretation of the...

Over four years ago, someone sent me a November 2019 Huffington Post article titled “Coal Knew, Too” by Élan Young, a writer for the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of (UTK). The story, remarkably, also promptly appeared in Mother Jones, the UK’s Daily Mail, and even in an article from the Kent Law School. We were told that the Department head, Chris Cherry, “accidentally discovered what is, so far, the earliest known evidence of the coal industry acknowledging its awareness of the impending climate crisis”. The supposed “confession”, which fit nicely into an ongoing activist litigation...

a larger share of voters see Mr. Trump’s term as better for the country than the current administration, with 42 percent rating the Trump presidency as mostly good for the country compared with 25 percent who say the same about Mr. Biden’s. Nearly half say the Biden years have been mostly bad for the country. Many of Mr. Trump’s key constituencies, such as white voters without a college degree, are particularly likely to have a fond view of his time in office. But a broad swath of the country — including Hispanic voters, voters over 30 and most lower- and...

Global warming has slightly slowed the Earth’s rotation — and it could affect how we measure time. A study published Wednesday found that the melting of polar ice — an accelerating trend driven primarily by human-caused climate change — has caused the Earth to spin less quickly than it would otherwise.

The most consequential falsehood in American public policy today is the idea that any racial disparity in any institution is by definition the result of racial discrimination. If a cancer research lab, for example, does not have 13 percent black oncologists—the black share of the national population—it is by definition a racist lab that discriminates against competitively qualified black oncologists; if an airline company doesn’t have 13 percent black pilots, it is by definition a racist airline company that discriminates against competitively qualified black pilots; and if a prison population contains more than 13 percent black prisoners, our law enforcement...

In July 2023, Joshua Youngerman was arrested in California on five misdemeanors for his participation in the events of January 6. According to charging documents, Youngerman entered the Capitol at 2:37 p.m.—20 minutes after the House went into recess amid the escalating chaos—through an open door as Capitol Police stood by. He exited through the same door two minutes later. But just last week, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves added another charge to Youngerman’s case: 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2), obstruction of an official proceeding. Youngerman is one of more than 330 J6ers charged with the evidence-destroying...

For over six months, the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protests have accelerated, and now are predictably incendiary and violent. Recently, they have jumped the shark with unapologetic chants of “Death to America”. Or so a cheering crowd in Michigan chanted in homage to the late king of all Western-hostage-takers, the murderous Ayatollah Khomeini. And the huckster speaker revved them up by quoting Malcolm X that America is “one of the rottenest countries that has ever existed on this Earth.” (Does such a condemnation of fellow Americans presage mass reverse migration of unhappy Middle Easterners back to the West Bank, Gaza, and Iran?)...

Will Biden’s feebleness still earn him sympathy? Or will it devolve to the point that the public concludes that Joe Biden would not be able to keep any job in America—except the U.S. Presidency? We have seen enough of the Biden-Trump race so far to predict what lies ahead over the next seven months of the campaign. Currently, the polls are about dead even. Trump, however, for now enjoys small leads in the majority of the fickle swing/purple states that will likely decide the election. So here is what we should expect: BidenBiden has three major vulnerabilities and three major...

If the Biden administration is trying to restore American parents’ confidence in the public school system, they sure have a funny way of showing it. Nowadays, one of the most significant causes of concern — and perhaps the deciding factor for most parents pulling their children out of public schools — has been the increasing woke indoctrination from the public school system, especially in regard to the ever-prominent LGBT agenda. And how is Biden’s Department of Education handling the increasing wariness of parents toward the public school system? By releasing on social media a video celebrating another made-up LGBT holiday,...

How odd it is that America is wasting billions of dollars hiring DEI czars and electing woke politicians, who so often accuse others of a multitude of sins, largely as a way of enriching themselves. When ideology replaces meritocracy or provides immunity from the consequences of illegal behavior, systemic mediocrity follows. Under toxic National Socialism, Stalinism, and Maoism, millions of cronies and grifters mouthed party lines in hopes that their approved ideology would allow them to advance their careers and excuse their lawbreaking. The same thing has happened with the woke movement and the now-huge Diversity/Equity/Inclusion conglomerate. Grifters and opportunists...

I wonder if there is ever a moment while DHS Secretary Mayorkas is claiming that America’s borders are entirely secure and blaming “climate change” for the influx of tens of millions of illegal aliens into the United States when he thinks, “Wow, I am really full of BS. I mean, it is simply amazing how much BS I shovel down the American people’s throats every single day.” The notion that powerful people lie to the public is certainly not new. You can go back through the centuries and find essays, songs, drawings, and folktales that all attest to the timeless...