Free Republic

Today is my 25th anniversary here on FR! Thanks to all of you -- and a posthumous thanks for all those FReepers who have passed on -- who have made this such a remarkable 25 years. I joined here in early November of 2000 while living outside the U.S. -- just to stay on top of breaking news and insights regarding the aftermath of the chaotic (and sometimes comical) 2000 election. It's been an interesting, informative and fun 25 years, folks. Another quarterly contribution will be coming shortly!And just for some FR history, I've gone back and posted as many...

President Donald Trump's administration called on a federal judge to approve the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Liberia on Friday, arguing all legal hurdles had been cleared. The Friday filing is the latest in the administration's efforts to deport Abrego Garcia a second time following his return from El Salvador earlier this year. The Justice Department called on U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis to clear the deportation, saying Abrego Garcia had failed to establish that he would face persecution in Liberia. "Petitioner's claims are procedurally barred multiple times over and fail on the merits in any event," the...

Greeks and Turks have been at each other’s throats for centuries over many different things, but a rivalry seldom mentioned revolves around the origins of baklava. The history of this scrumptious delicacy is quite controversial, and unfortunately not very well documented. Many ethnic groups such as the Greeks, Turks, and Middle Easterners claim baklava as their own and prepare it in their own way. The “Baklava Conflict” has been simmering for centuries, but it erupted into full-blown war in 2006, when Greek Cypriots decided to call baklava their own. A definite sacrilege according to the Turks! Turkey, as an aspiring...

Monday marks the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, a tragedy on Lake Superior that claimed the lives of 29 men. In the days following the calamity, songwriter Gordon Lightfoot read about it in Newsweek and immediately put his God-given gifts to their highest and best use.

BBC News reports that an intaglio that may have been set as a signet ring, Roman pottery, military items, jewelry, and a bronze lamp were unearthed at the site of Bremenium Fort, which is located in northern England. The fort is situated north of Hadrian's Wall on a Roman road that connected York to Corbridge and Melrose. The intaglio, carved from red stone, bears an image of two cupids picking grapes with a goat-like creature waiting beside them. Similarly carved intaglios have been found in Dalmatia and northern Italy. "It seems likely that the gem reflects the likely origin of...

Federal prosecutors say the FBI has broken up an ISIS-linked network stretching from Michigan to New Jersey, charging several young men in a coordinated investigation that allegedly involved plans for a Halloween mass shooting and efforts to join the Islamic State abroad. Tomas Jimenez-Guzel, 19, of Montclair, New Jersey, and Saed Mirreh, 19, of Kent, Washington, were arrested this week in a New Jersey case tied to others already charged in Michigan. The Justice Department announced the new charges Wednesday, calling the probe a "sprawling federal investigation" into extremists who used encrypted messaging to communicate. U.S. Attorney Alina Habba said...

Although he has a chestful of medals and a proud record as the country’s oldest poppy seller, Alec Penstone insists he is not a hero. ‘The heroes are all the dead ones. The heroes are the ones we left in the Arctic and on the Normandy beaches,’ the 100-year-old says from his home on the Isle of Wight. But, in the eyes of the millions of proud Britons who saw him give a damning assessment of the state of the nation on ITV’s Good Morning Britain on Friday, the D-Day veteran – who fittingly was born on St George’s Day...

A top executive at PBS was arrested and booked on drug charges after he was pulled over by law enforcement officials in Arkansas. Michael Hibblen, director of public affairs at Arkansas PBS, was arrested after Pulaski County deputies allegedly found methamphetamine in his car during a traffic stop earlier this week, authorities said. Deputies pulled Hibblen over around 9 p.m. on Monday on Interstate 40 westbound after clocking him at 80 mph in a 60 mph zone, according to an arrest report obtained by KATV-TV. The longtime journalist told deputies he was heading home after dropping off a friend at...

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s public conversation with Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr took a bizarre turn Monday night when a man rushed the stage at San Francisco’s Sydney Goldstein Theater to serve him with a subpoena, according to reports. The confrontation happened just minutes into the sold-out event, hosted by civic organizer Manny Yekutiel, when a man from the second row jumped onto the stage holding out a document and announcing that he had a subpoena for Altman, SFGATE said. Yekutiel immediately intercepted the man and handed the paper to a theater security guard, who escorted the intruder away...

Newly re-elected Minneapolis Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey is facing backlash from conservatives for giving a victory speech in Somali and saying that Minneapolis welcomes Somalians. In a video of the speech posted online, Frey can be seen leading chants in Somali as the crowd responds and applauds. Popular conservative influencer Paul Szypula ripped into the progressive mayor, writing, “The pandering here is insane.” “Mayor Jacob Frey, as he won reelection, spoke almost a minute in Somalia then said Minneapolis belongs to Somalia,” said Szypula. In a second round of nonpartisan ranked-choice voting, Frey narrowly defeated a challenge from socialist Minneapolis...

MI5 believed a hardcore of around 750 teachers was attempting to spread communist propaganda in British schools in the wake of the second world war, documents released today show. A secret MI5 memo written in August 1949, released by the National Archives at Kew, west London, charts apparent efforts to recruit teachers and infiltrate the leadership of the National Union of Teachers. The document, which traces a Soviet-backed drive to free worldwide education from capitalist "enslavement" back to 1920, also reports attempts to penetrate teaching in British colonies in the early post-war period. The report was written against a backdrop...

Oregon teens Alexa Anderson and Reese Eckard scored a win in their legal battle against the state’s high school sports association after they stepped down from a medal podium to protest a trans athlete in May. Anderson and Eckard’s lawsuit against the Oregon School Activities Association (OSAA) alleges the league excluded them from official photos after the protest and even withheld their medals. The suit argues the girls’ First Amendment rights were infringed upon by the officials. US District Court Judge Youlee Yim You denied the OSAA’s motion to strike a portion of the lawsuit that highlighted what forms of...

"Rest in peace," Iraqi government spokesperson Bassem al-Awadi said in a eulogy for the former U.S. vice president shared with Newsweek. "Without delving into the intentions behind actions, the change that took place in Iraq under your leadership and that of President Bush in 2003 was profound." "Despite all the events that followed, the transformations Iraq witnessed after the fall of Saddam’s regime were vast and astonishing, though many have tried to distort them to serve their own interests," Awadi said. "The numbers are remarkable, Mr. Dick Cheney, and too many to list here." Iraqis are even more divided on...

Donald Trump is often described as a “populist,” a “nationalist,” or as someone who sits outside the traditional ideological categories. However, when one examines his foreign policy closely, a different picture emerges. Trump is, in practice, a neoconservative. He is not a neoconservative in the sense we once knew: he does not cloak American interventions in the language of democracy promotion, human rights, or universal values…What makes him distinctive is not the substance of his policies, but the way he frames them, stripped of the moralizing tone. Oddly enough, this makes his foreign policy more transparent—and perhaps, in some ways,...

A well-preserved Caenagnathid dinosaur, affectionately known as Spike, is expected to headline Christie’s inaugural “Groundbreakers: Icons of Our Time” auction in London on December 11. At 68 million years old and counting, Spike is one of the most complete specimens of its kind, possibly representing a new species. Discovered in 2022, the sub-adult dinosaur has more than 100 preserved fossil bones and is believed to have once been heavily feathered. This is the first time a Caenagnathid Oviraptorosaur has been offered at auction. It is estimated to fetch between £3 million and £5 million ($4 million to $6.6 million). Related...

The Armenian presence in Jerusalem dates back to 301 AD, when Armenia adopted Christianity as its national religion, and Armenian monks and pilgrims subsequently settled there. Today, Jerusalem is home to a small Armenian community comprised of descendants of Armenians whose ancestors came to the Holy Land after 301 AD, and descendants of Armenians who survived the Ottoman genocide and immigrated to Palestine in large numbers between 1915 and 1923, before the establishment of the Jewish state. On Tuesday, August 26, 2025, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Patrick Bet-David — an American media personality — on his podcast, that...

A federal judge on Friday ruled that the Trump administration’s attempt to deploy National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon, was unconstitutional. On Sunday, US District Court Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, temporarily extended an order blocking the administration from deploying troops to The Rose City, saying the government failed to justify the move. In the Sunday evening order, Immergut temporarily blocked “Defendant Secretary of Defense [Pete] Hegseth from implementing” memorandums that authorized the federalization and deployment of National Guard members from Oregon, Texas and California into Portland. The injunction remained in effect until Friday. Friday’s 106-page ruling makes the...

Fake rental applications are proliferating across the country as the U.S. rental market has become increasingly unaffordable and competitive. Greystar, the country’s largest apartment landlord, told FOX Business that it has seen a clear increase in fraudulent applications nationwide. "Fraud in rental applications has become increasingly sophisticated across the industry, with some of the most advanced cases involving AI-generated documents and fabricated payroll systems," Greystar said. Eric Taylor, lead for trust and safety at TurboTenant, a free online property management platform, is also seeing an uptick, telling FOX Business that nearly 75% of apartment owners across the nation reported a...

Former President Joe Biden, wearing a seemingly fresh bandage on his head, told Nebraska Democrats Friday that his late son should have been elected commander-in-chief in 2020, not himself, in a speech ripping President Trump. The ex-president invoked the 2015 death of his eldest son, Beau Biden, from brain cancer to attack Trump, who he accused of “cutting government funding for cancer research” after his administration made it a “priority.” “Folks, I know what cancer research means,” Biden said in a speech at the Nebraska Democratic Party’s Ben Nelson Gala. “Cancer hits every family. It’s hit my family hard.” “When...

Of all the ancient cultures, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Thracians are some of the most mysterious. Seen by the Greeks as great warriors -- as well as barbarians -- the Thracians had no written language, and left behind little in the way of monumental architecture.However, this didn't mean they weren't good craftsmen, and the Thracians who ruled an area from the Balkans to Bulgaria and Hungary, were expert metal workers making exquisitely crafted jewelry. In Homer's Illiad he describes a Thracian chariot as "like no war-gear of men but of immortals."But despite the fact that they were numerous --...