Free Republic

An FBI agent who was once the handler for tech billionaire Peter Thiel, and who later criticized the bureau for allegedly suppressing investigations into ties between Rudy Giuliani and Russian intelligence assets, was arrested this week on charges of illegally disclosing classified information, according to court records filed Tuesday. Johnathan Buma, who has worked for the FBI for 15 years, allegedly printed copies of confidential FBI documents and messages and later shared the material with associates as part of a draft of a book he was writing on his time in the bureau. He was arrested Monday at a departure...

A pair of former President Obama's speechwriters--Jon Lovett and Jon Favreau--appeared on an episode of "Pod Save America" to express regret that "we weren't able to achieve the kinds of efficiencies Trump's DOGE team seems to be making. We knew that efficiency is an admirable goal, but President Obama's directive said that it must be accomplished without laying off people or cutting the budget. He felt that hard-working government employees shouldn't have to sacrifice their jobs and that any money saved should be reinvested in programs to redistribute money more equitably and in planet-saving businesses." "Now those planet-saving businesses we...

Trump’s MAGA administration just dropped a nuclear bomb on Washington’s corrupt establishment. By rejecting taxpayer-funded GSA tools and launching a fully private transition, Trump is cutting the deep state out of the equation. This isn’t just a handoff—it’s a full-scale revolution. NO TAXPAYERS, NO OVERSIGHT, NO LEAKS! In a jaw-dropping move,

Actor Terrence Howard reportedly said it is "immoral for the United States government to charge taxes to the descendants of slaves" after being ordered to pay nearly $1 million in back taxes. According to a report from the Philadelphia Inquirer on Thursday, a federal judge in Philadelphia ordered the Academy Award-nominated actor to pay $903,115 in back taxes, penalties and interest. "For more than a year, the 54-year-old star of the TV hit ‘Empire,’ whose last listed address was in Plymouth Meeting, rebuffed IRS efforts to collect $578,000 in income taxes it says he failed to pay between 2010 and...

Tucker Carlson says he went “from amused to legitimately angry” at U.S. political leaders during a recent trip to a Moscow grocery store, where the independent conservative journalist and his crew guessed that a cart full of food would cost about the equivalent of $400 in American dollars – and it came in around a hundred bucks. “Coming to a Russian grocery store, the ‘heart of evil,’ and seeing what things cost and how they live, it will radicalize you against our leaders,” Carlson said in the video shot on-site as he shopped for eggs, bread, wine and other staples....

There are multiple moments in Jimi Hendrix’s short but eventful career that are hailed as iconic: his rendition of the Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock, setting his Fender Stratocaster alight at Monterey Pop, blowing Eric Clapton away during his Cream guest spot.However, ask the Hendrix cognoscenti and they’ll tell you that – from a playing point of view – it’s hard to top his extended version of Machine Gun, recorded live with Band of Gypsys at the Fillmore East on January 1, 1970.Now, through a quirk of the internet, a fully colorised clip of the 12-minute performance has surfaced on...

What’s known is that $250 billion in capital has left, equivalent to 14 percent of its GDP. One expert guesstimates that Russia’s economy has shrunk from the size of Italy’s to Chile’s in the past year — you wouldn’t know this based on bogus figures fed to the media by Moscow. Economist Janis Kluge of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) calculates that Western sanctions alone have also “basically shrunk Russia’s economy by 10 percent”, bigger than what happened in the 2009 financial crisis. What is also known is that immediately after the invasion of Ukraine, an...

Russian tax revenue from crude oil and petroleum products plummeted by 48% in February from a year earlier due to the much lower price of Russia’s flagship crude grade after the EU banned imports of Russian oil, according to Bloomberg estimates based on official Russian data. Total tax revenues from oil and natural gas dipped by 46% year over year to $6.9 billion (521 billion Russian rubles) in February, per data from the Russian Finance Ministry published on Friday. Russia’s revenues from crude oil and oil products alone crumbled by 48% annually to $4.8 billion (361 billion rubles), according to...

Graphic drone footage appears to show dozens of Russian armored vehicles getting ambushed and destroyed during a single botched attack near the coal-mining town of Vuhledar in eastern Ukraine, which Moscow’s forces have been trying to capture for months. Vuhledar, a Ukrainian stronghold at the strategic intersection between the eastern and southern front lines, has seen some of the bloodiest fighting of the war as the Kremlin is gearing up for a decisive offensive on the eastern front. Based on the newly released video evidence, a column of dozens of tanks and armored vehicles was lost or damaged last week,...

A slide in Russian revenue from oil and gas clashed against the Kremlin ramping up spending on its nearly year-long war against Ukraine, resulting in a wider budget deficit for the country in January. Oil and gas revenue tumbled 46% in January from the same month a year ago to 426 billion rubles ($5.96 billion), Russia's finance ministry said Monday in a preliminary release. It attributed the decline largely to a drop in prices for its Urals blend — its largest crude oil export — and to a fall in exports for natural gas. Russia sold Urals at an average...

Babylon Mom: How I Created a Peaceful Family Environment By Just Giving All My Kids iPads FAMILY · Feb 4, 2023 · BabylonBee.com Article Image Hey everyone, sorry it's been a while since I've updated this blog. It's just been crazy around here! If your kids are anything like mine, having a peaceful evening around the table is like trying to enjoy a marching band filled with rabid hyenas. Hear me when I tell you this: it's not your fault. Children are simply unstable. They are not okay! Just today, my 4-year-old threw the most epic tantrum because the banana...

80 years ago today, the greatest electrical engineer ever passed away. Feel free to share any nerd comments, or arguments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

Hello Friends! To Celebrate the beginning of a New Year we present to you the full recording of our epic show at the Musikprob Brassfestival in Pfullendorf, Germany that was one of our highlights of the year! Special Thanks to Mr. Ewald Restle for stellar production of the festival and this concert recording! We wish you all the happiest New Year and may it bring lots of happiness, love and dreams coming true! (and great music too, of course!) We can’t wait to meet again! ❤️ Happy New Year! 🎉🎇🎉 PS. If you would like to help support the band...

into humiliating retreat: and liberate dozens of occupied towns - as NATO 'warns Kremlin will test NUKES on the border to save face' Russia's frontline has collapsed in the south of Ukraine with dozens of towns liberated in a matter of hours Kyiv said its troops are 'confidently advancing to the sea' as city of Davydiv Brid is now under their control Pro-Russian military bloggers said their forces had retreated around 10 miles down the Dnipro River It comes just days after Putin declared the Kherson region - along with three others - to be part of Russia Russia's frontline...

Massive Offensive Across the Entire Eastern Front "Something surprising has happened" - DPA It looks like a direct frontal attack right into where the Russians have been trying to advance, and supposedly where they are strongest. The Ukrainians keep surprising all of us. The sourcing is all from Russian Telegram sources apparently. No word yet from the Ukrainian side.

Few nations have as deep a sense of their own history as the Russians. On the basis of this tendentious tract about historic 'unity' of Russians and Ukrainians that President Putin justified his invasion of an independent neighboring state. But another word, also with great resonance in Russian history, now hangs over the Kremlin's flailing military campaign. And that word is: MUTINY. Remarkably, it was raised on Moscow's main TV channel by the woman described as Putin's propagandist-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, on the state of the 'special military operation' to a Russian audience. She was raging about the incompetence which Putin's...

Jack Ross is a British volunteer aid worker helping to deliver supplies to the Ukrainian front line. He returned to Ukraine from his UK home as soon as news broke of the Ukrainian army's successful Kharkiv offensive. "My role in going over there early is to make sure that recently liberated people have enough food to survive," said Jack, explaining his initial plan was to return in November before the counter-offensive changed everything. He added: "We saw after the Russians stopped occupying places like Bucha, Irpin and Chernihiv they literally killed every living being in sight… Just to deprive the...

Russia suffered another setback during Ukraine's counteroffensive, confirming it withdrew troops from the eastern town of Lyman, within the newly annexed Donetsk region. Ukraine’s armed forces on Saturday said they had "liberated" five settlements in the Donetsk region and encircled thousands of Russian soldiers. "Due to the risk to be encircled, the allied forces were withdrawn from Krasny Liman to more advantageous frontiers," Russia's Ministry of Defense said Saturday. "The Russian troops in the area of Lyman are encircled. Yampil, Novoselivka, Shandryholove, Drobysheve, and Stavky settlements are liberated. Stabilization measures are being conducted there," Serhii Cherevatyi, Speaker of the Eastern...

Why Russia will lose this war? Much of the "realist" discourse is about accepting Putin's victory, cuz it's *guaranteed*. But how do we know it is? I'll argue that analysts 1) overrate Russian army 2) underrate Ukrainian one 3) misunderstand Russian strategy & political goals🧵 Consider a timely paper on Russian army by Bismarck Analysis. It's good & informative. It's correct on its land-based and artillery-centric character. It's also correct that Minister of Defence Serdyukov greatly increased army's efficiency in 2007-2012. But it's still misleading Yes, Minister Serdyukov indeed reformed the army. He increased its efficiency, fought with corrupt and...

Russian President Putin:- We're witnessing sheer satanism in West - Do we want our children to be offered operations on sex changes? It's unacceptable! - Our future is different. We're fighting for a great, historic Russia… Vladimir Putin: “We are witnessing Satanism”