Free Republic

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After states legalize the sale of weed for recreational use, on-the-job injuries rise among younger workers, new research shows. U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics for 2006 through 2020 show that legal "recreational marijuana sales were associated with a 10% increase in workplace injuries among individuals aged 20 to 34 years," the study authors concluded. They note that prior research involving older workers did not show this effect. In fact, older workers' injury rates typically decline after recreational weed is made legal in their state, perhaps because older folk are only using their marijuana to ease pain. In contrast, the rise...

Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that “reproductive freedom” was at risk with the prospect of a second term of former President Donald Trump. Anchor Dana Bash said, “Let’s start with the question of IVF. Republicans are moving really quickly to distance themselves from that controversial Alabama Supreme Court IVF ruling. The Alabama’s attorney general says he has no intention of prosecuting families or IVF providers. Republicans across the country now, including former President Trump, have come out in support of protecting IVF treatments. Does that undercut the arguments by Democrats that Republicans are...

Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, said on Monday that she would press on with her husband's fight for a free Russia and called on supporters to battle President Vladimir Putin with greater fury than ever. Navalny's death robs Russia's disparate opposition of its most charismatic and courageous leader as Putin prepares for an election that will keep him in power until at least 2030.In a nine-minute video message laced with rage, Navalnaya, 47, said Putin had killed her husband and in doing so had robbed her of a husband and her two children of a...

Governor Josh Shapiro (D-PA) said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that former President Donald Trump is an “agent of chaos who’s trying to restrict our freedom.” Partial transcript as follows: SHAPIRO: Joe Biden is going to be our nominee, and I’m proud to support him. He talks about being a bridge — and let me tell you something, he helped us repair that bridge on I-95 in 12 days. He was my partner in that, and he’s been a partner to many of us across the country in moving our country forward and saving our economy from ruin and helping...

There have been murmurs for at least the last ten years about the potential for civil war in the United States. Polls have shown that roughly half the country believes that future conflict is likely. The intrusion of unchecked government power into every crevice of our private lives has transformed politics into a high-stakes cage match in which furious citizens fight to survive. Because government exerts so much control over citizens, winning control of government has become an existential imperative. Such zero-sum thinking has fractured society and pitted Americans against one another. However, something fundamental has been shifting beneath our...

Following a federal court ruling against the Canadian government for using the Emergencies Act during the trucker convoy, several plaintiffs plan to sue.. Several Freedom Convoy protesters, buoyed by a recent victory in Canadian federal court, said they’re preparing to sue the federal government, banks, and the police that brought the 2022 protest to a heated end. “I think it’s the second phase to what took place with the federal court case,” military veteran and plaintiff Eddie Cornell said. “We’ve got a big hill to climb, but it’s something that’s necessary. It has to be done.” On Jan. 23, Federal...

His critics call him Prime Minister Zoolander after the vacuous male model in the movie of the same name. But Canada’s Justin Trudeau is someone much more sinister. That’s been obvious ever since the PM turned the federal government’s power on the COVID-mandate-protesting truckers of Canada’s Freedom Convoy in 2022, jailing them, seizing their rigs and even shutting down their bank accounts (“debanking,” as it’s known) — though that last came to a swift end when enough Canadians withdrew their money to threaten a bank run. We were told the truckers were “right-wing extremists,” probably racist and possibly agents for...

I argue in my recently published book, "America’s Last Stand: Will You Vote to Save or Destroy America in 2024," that “our present conflict is unprecedented in our own nation’s history and in our own lifetimes and marks the third major test, which will determine whether America survives or dies” — our previous major tests being the American Revolution and Civil War. While it was the left’s unprecedented and unlawful efforts to indict and imprison former President Trump that compelled me to make such a claim, more recent events have unfortunately reaffirmed its validity and served to exacerbate already deteriorating...

Two years ago, I wrote a column denouncing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s use of a counter-terrorism law to shut down the Freedom Convoy trucker protests as an authoritarian attack on free speech. Now, a Canadian court has agreed and ruled that the use of the Emergencies Act was unlawful and “unreasonable.” Despite Trudeau’s attacks on civil liberties, he remains a favorite of the media as an iconic figure on the left. Various civil liberties groups have opposed the iron-handed measures of Trudeau, including The Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Canadian Constitution Foundation. The characterization of political critics as...

The nation’s ruling class holds deeply authoritarian opinions widely divorced from the rest of the American electorate, finds a survey out this week. It found nearly 60 percent of American “elites” think there is too much individual freedom in America. Meanwhile, nearly 60 percent of registered voters have the exact opposite opinion, reporting the United States has too much top-down control, limiting liberty. The study, titled “Them Vs. U.S,” defined the American “elite” as “having a postgraduate degree, a household income of more than $150,000 annually, and living in a zip code with more than 10,000 people per square mile.”...

Who would have guessed freedom of speech would become the biggest barrier to saving humanity? Luckily, a fix is pending from the billionaires, political poohbahs and other weasels attending this week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. WEF has two big goals this year: “rebuild trust” and “crush dissent.” OK, that last one is a paraphrase. Instead, WEF is proclaiming the greatest peril humanity faces is “misinformation and disinformation.” And how can we recognize “misinformation”? Easy: It denies that Davos cronies should rule the world. OK, that’s another paraphrase.

It’s a sad state of affairs when freedom’s best friend is no longer the U.S. Who knew that a president from Argentina would deliver a speech about freedom and capitalism? I ask “who knew” because we expect speeches like that from a U.S. president or some Western leader. I guess those were the days my friend. We are happy that President Milei did it. This is from Douglas Murray: While the gods of Davos have spent recent years warning against climate change and ‘populism,’ Milei has a different prognosis. He declared that the West is in danger ‘because those who...

In a world of now close to 200 countries, every day provides an updated report card as to what works and what doesn’t in economic policy. As reported by the IMF, World Bank, and UN, some countries have per capita GDP as much as 300 times more than the per capita GDP of other countries. What are the poor ones doing wrong? Most countries largely stick with the same collection of economic policies for long periods of time, with only small changes. Unsurprisingly, the rich get richer, because what they are doing is working. The poor may or may not...

Faculty said they felt trapped in an ‘alternate reality’ when trying to navigate the college’s ‘toxic’ DEI environment.. College students attending universities with restrictive speech codes are used to walking on eggshells and keeping their heads down on campus out of fear of committing social suicide or experiencing violence. In the disordered world of contemporary higher education, Jewish students receive limited, if any, support from school administrators amid explicit calls for violence against them, while other students face punishment for banal infractions like rolling a “free speech ball” around campus. But if you are shocked at how students are subject...

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” chant myriads of Jew haters and their airheaded acolytes in academia. It is meant to be offensive, provocative, and intimidating, and is a not-so-subtle call for the genocide of the Jews of Israel. It has become a staple at rallies and on college campuses, where analogous calls for ethnic cleansing anywhere else in the world but Israel and to any other ethnic group but Jews would be met with swift retribution. By the modern standards of the loony left, this is protected free speech. There are those who argue that...

Memphis — An After School Satan Club plans to begin offering activities to children at a Tennessee elementary school following Christmas break, officials said, and the move immediately proved controversial. The Satanic Temple plans to host the club at Chimneyrock Elementary School in Cordova, news outlets reported. It will begin meeting on Jan. 10 in the school's library and run through the spring semester, according to an announcement Tuesday posted on social media.

Patriotism? To What? I wish more people could see the United States Government for what it really is, a brutal organization seeking every means of stepping on one’s neck while they rip the wallet from their back pocket. What method of thuggery have they refused to utilize? A SWAT team descending on a local preacher or common welder who participated in a protest is not police work or law enforcement, it’s terrorism. It’s not fear of the preacher or common welder that dictates their actions, but the sheer terror they might strike into the hearts of patriots that they strive...

Citizens threatened into compliance are no match for citizens inspired to reach for higher ideals. There are two great battles dominating Western nations today. The first is political and involves a contest between freedom-minded citizens and an ever-expanding State. The second is cultural (or perhaps, more accurately, spiritual) and involves a contest between fear-driven dogma and inspiration-driven ideals. Globalization, or the secular religion dedicated to the concentration of power into the hands of an elite few, runs on the energy of fear. Liberty movements that abhor the current trend toward a new-world-order framework intent on micromanaging human activity run instead...

True Leadership Stops It.. People talk about the Weimar Republic that gave rise to Adolph Hitler but very few understand what the Weimar was all about. ... from deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.. The Germany of the late 1920s and early 1930s was a world leader in most fields of art, science and intellect. ... Berlin had three opera houses, and Germany as a whole no less than eighty. Every middle-sized city had its own orchestra ... And in science, of course, the Germans were preeminent…. The Germany of 1920 had a significantly higher per capita educational level than...