Free Republic

Florida has carried out theexecution of Curtis Wilkie Beasley, 77, by lethal injection, for the barbaric claw hammer murder of Carolyn Monfort, 62, Tuesday, Sept. 29, at Florida State Prison near Starke. Beasley was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. In 1995, Beasley was temporarily staying at Monfort's Polk County home while doing maintenance work at an apartment complex Monfort managed. Monfort knew Beasley through her daughter's ex-husband, who knew Beasley from high school. On Aug. 21, 1995, Beasley savagely beat Monfort to death with a claw hammer, then stole $800 and her car. Beasley eventually fled to Alabama and assumed...

(QUEEN CITY NEWS) — Former Charlotte City Councilwoman Tiawana Brown has filed an appeal of her 10-month federal prison sentence, saying she believes “it’s the right thing to do.” According to a notice of appeal filed on Thursday, Sept. 24, in federal court, Brown is appealing the judgment to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. She also asked the court to appoint separate counsel. Brown addressed this week’s sentencing in two separate Facebook Live videos. “I filed an appeal today on my case. So y’all [are] probably seeing that on the news. I filed an appeal because it’s the right...

President Donald Trump’s resolve is paying off, proving the “Iran is stronger now” crowd to be completely wrong. Oil shipments from the Persian Gulf are now approaching prewar levels, ending the energy blackmail — even as Tehran’s resources dwindle, pushing the regime ever closer to having to abandon its nuclear ambitions. Crucially, the campaign has proved that Iran can’t sustainably stop Gulf shipments — as long as a real leader stands up to its bullying. That’s a huge win for the entire civilized world. Consider the progress: Crude exports from the Gulf fell from 18.3 million barrels a day in...

WASHINGTON — Dennis Rodman is worming his way back into the spotlight. The Basketball and WWE Hall of Famer is expected to join President Trump on a midterm campaign trip to the bad boy’s college town later this week — as Trump considers more engagement with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Rodman, who traveled to North Korea at least five times between 2013 and 2017, is scheduled to take part in a campaign event in Durant, Okla., where he attended Southeastern Oklahoma State University in the mid-1980s, sources say. “After the midterms, Trump wants to refocus again on North...

Parts of a medieval ship have been discovered in an unlikely place: forming the ceiling of a 13th-century cellar in southern Germany. Researchers say the unusually well-preserved timbers could provide new insights into medieval shipbuilding on Lake Constance. The discovery was made during an architectural investigation of a building on Konradigasse in Konstanz, a southern German city on the shores of Lake Constance. Researchers from the State Office for Monument Preservation (LAD) found that timbers reused to construct the ceiling of a cellar dating to 1244 had originally belonged to a ship... Once the vessel was no longer needed for...

Today we cover the Indictment of Madduwatta: a 3,400-year-old Hittite legal complaint that happens to contain the oldest named Greek warrior in the historical record. Long before Homer ever put pen to paper on the Iliad or the Odyssey, a warlord named Attarissiya crossed the Aegean with a hundred chariots, tore through western Anatolia, unseated a Hittite-backed ruler, and fought the empire's own army to a standstill before sailing home. We also trace the wider collapse-era: the Hittite Empire at Hattusa, the Lukka coastal peoples, the Assuwa confederation, and Ahhiyawa. The Invasion That Inspired Homer's Iliad | 18:55 Bronze to...

A big developer that’s desperate to build a data center near a Pennsylvania town has reportedly offered to pay every family there $10,000 – but most are still pushing back, part of a nationwide trend of opposition to such sites. While seeking approvals for a data center project in the Pocono foothills, Northpoint Development sent letters to the 10,460 residents of nearby Hazle Township this summer, offering to write a check to each household to spend on “whatever you want.” Totaling $45 million, the payouts would be a substantial boost for many residents of the town, where the average household...

A transgender Florida teenager was sentenced to 50 years behind bars after accepting a plea deal in the grisly 2024 slayings of her mother and her mom’s much-younger boyfriend. Julia Egler, 18, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for the killings, in which she lay in wait for the couple to arrive at their Palm Bay home — greeting them with a “welcome home” before opening fire with her mother’s .38 revolver and then staging the scene to look like a burglary. The mom, Kelly McCollom, 38, and her boyfriend Matthew Szejnrok, 22, both died at the scene. Egler, who was...

Every time Hunter Biden opens his mouth to indulge his newfound addiction to publicity, he confirms The Post’s reporting on his “laptop from hell.” For instance, he used to pretend that the corrupt Ukrainian energy company Burisma was paying him $1 million to sit on its board while his father was VP because of his expertise as a seasoned board member and learned lawyer. Now he admits all he had to do was show up to a few meetings high on crack to collect the money. “The requirement of the board would be that I would show up for four...

WASHINGTON — “Squad” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been decidedly absent from some of the most competitive battleground races this cycle — as the liberal darling mulls a 2028 presidential run. Moderate Democrats appear to have shown an aversion to stumping with Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) as the midterm homestretch kicks into gear, raising questions about the Bronx and Queens rep’s clout beyond the lefty base. “I get the sense that a lot of swing state Dems are byproducts of the very Democratic Party that lost 1,000 seats since 2010 and lost to Trump twice,” Corbin Trent, Ocasio-Cortez’s former communications director, bluntly told...

The back cover copy of the celebrated book, The Limits to Growth, by Donella H. Meadows, et al. begins as follows: When each of us decides to buy something, we first consider the price. Yet society at large has long bought the idea of continual growth in population and production without adding up the final reckoning."The final reckoning" sounds a little terrifying, doesn't it? The Christian often thinks of "the final reckoning" as the Last Judgment: that moment when the human soul stands alone before Christ, the Just Judge. All his faith, thoughts, and deeds are weighed in the balance...

In 1811, New York courts enforced blasphemy laws rooted in Christian doctrine.Chief Justice Kent declared that Americans “profess the general doctrines of Christianity.”Blasphemy statutes remained on the books in multiple states well into the 20th century.Long before the modern culture wars, early American courts treated insults against Jesus Christ as criminal offenses.In 1811, a New York man was sentenced to prison for blaspheming the name of Christ, and the state’s highest court upheld the conviction without hesitation.The ruling came from Chief Justice James Kent, who wrote that the United States was a Christian nation that “profess the general doctrines of...

OpenAI’s autonomous agents probed U.S. government websites this summer without the company noticing. The agents interacted with sites operated by the Education Department, the Commerce Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), according to the New York Times. OpenAI has confirmed the Commerce and SEC episodes while it keeps investigating what happened at Education. At the Education Department, the software tried and failed to break into the civil rights office in search of data, according to researchers at the AI firm Transluce. At Commerce, the agents pulled Census Bureau figures after finding login credentials in public code repositories, Politico...

Who were the Phoenicians, really? Let’s look at the civilization behind the ancient Mediterranean’s most mysterious seafaring culture. The Phoenicians Were Stranger Than You Think (No AI) | 41:12 Nils | 47.6K subscribers | 353,198 views | September 21, 2026

Massachusetts law faces fierce criticism from legal scholars, scientists, and prosecutors as you cannot prove a negative (disproving the existence of something that leaves no physical footprint, like a specific psychiatric defect at a precise moment in the past). Because of this, the Massachusetts legal framework creates a deeply controversial paradox in practice. The court system tries to bypass this scientific impossibility by changing the definitions. Legally, the state argues they aren’t requiring prosecutors to prove a negative. Instead, they insist that prosecutors are required to prove a positive behavioral state (the presence of rational, goal-directed, and controlled behavior). However,...

ITHACA, NEW YORK — It’s socialist red at Big Red! Cornell University’s lefty crowd gave Democratic Socialist superstar Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a warm, hate-filled welcome by singing anti-Israel chants at a campaign event meant to gin up support for Democrats ahead of the midterms Sunday. While warming up the standing-room-only crowd of roughly 2,000 people gathered for the congresswoman’s “Students vs. Billionaires” town hall in downtown Ithaca Sunday, Cornell University Young Democratic Socialists of America co-chairs Mina Petrova and Zoe Reisman led the crowd singing “from the river to the sea” and declaring “long live the student intifada.” “Cornell is...

Archaeologists have unearthed a monumental 2,700-year-old tomb at Vulci, an important ancient Etruscan town north of Rome. Despite repeated attempts by tomb robbers to loot this burial over the centuries, the tomb still contained a massive collection of grave goods, including weapons, gold and bronze plates, chariot parts, a rare pair of women's shoes, and a complete banquet set. The burial, nicknamed the Tomb of the Stone Chamber, was excavated this summer, according to a translated statement from the Italian Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the Province of Viterbo and Southern Etruria (SABAP-VT-EM). But the discovery builds...

Analyzing the teeth of a 25,000-year-old skeleton from Sulawesi, Indonesia, researchers have deduced that this individual habitually sucked on betel nuts, and probably developed an addiction to this popular stimulant. Widely consumed across southeast Asia and the Pacific, betel nuts are the world's fourth most popular drug, behind alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine. These days, the nuts are typically mixed with slaked lime and chewed as a "quid" in order to release the psychoactive compound arecoline, triggering mild euphoria and heightened alertness. Although the roots of this practice are poorly understood, it is generally assumed that betel chewing does not pre-date...

WASHINGTON — Iran’s beleaguered economy will soon have “nothing to trade” in about two weeks after it makes its final oil deliveries, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed. Bessent assessed that the Islamic Republic is becoming desperate to make a deal because of its collapsing economy, hastened by Operation Economic Outcast, and warned that its problems will get dramatically worse in two weeks. “I am confident, given that there’s only 15 million more barrels of Iranian oil on the water, that Iran will have nothing left to trade for anything,” Bessent told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.” “Probably within the next...

A dozen teens were shot after gunfire broke out at a chaotic birthday party gone awry inside a Georgia park Saturday night, according to local authorities and reports. The shots broke out around midnight at Carolyn Crayton Park in Macon, where a “large gathering” had congregated following a birthday party at a nearby Airbnb, the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office said. Two of the victims –- a 17-year-old boy and an 18-year-old boy — were left in critical condition, while the other 10 were listed in stable condition. The group, which included high schoolers, had been asked to leave that Airbnb...