Free Republic

He always had them laughing their heads off. The hero cop who nabbed the killer behind the legendary 1983 New York Post headline “Headless body in topless bar” died Friday after a long, fittingly colorful life. Retired New York City Transit Police Detective Frederick “Freddy” Mack, 79, passed away while in hospice care, his daughter Debbie Comstock told The Post on Sunday. “He was a man full of character,” Comstock, 58, said. “He always had stories and jokes to tell. He was loved by many.” Perhaps Mack’s biggest story of all unfolded in April 1983, after 25-year-old lowlife Charles Dingle...

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Sunday dodged key questions about scandal-scarred Maine Senate hopeful Graham Platner, saying the fellow Dem and horny oyster farmer has to answer for himself. Platner, who is married and faces a primary-election race Tuesday, was hit early on with revelations of a Nazi-linked tattoo and cheating-by-sext. Then last week came allegations of deeply disturbing behavior toward female partners and him harboring fantasies about raping home intruders. “I haven’t followed these allegations closely, but what I have said is that violence against women in any way, shape or form is unacceptable,” Jeffries (D-NY) told Fox...

John Eisenhower, retired U.S. Army Brigadier General and son of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, talked about his father's role as Supreme Allied Commander Europe. He also spoke about President Eisenhower's relationships with American and British generals and how Eisenhower compromised with Allied nations to bring World War II in Europe to an end. Dwight Eisenhower's Son Talks About D-Day | 53:50 C-SPAN's American History TV | 56.1K subscribers | 3,691 views | June 6, 2026

NASA’s experimental X-59 aircraft marked a major milestone Friday, June 5, when it flew faster than the speed of sound for the first time, setting the stage for demonstrating its quiet supersonic capabilities later this year. NASA test pilot Jim “Clue” Less took off and landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California, reaching a top speed of approximately Mach 1.1 (713 mph) and altitude of 43,400 feet. The X-59’s flight began at 11:08 a.m. PDT and lasted 81 minutes, with the team focusing on flying qualities at both subsonic and then supersonic speeds. ”X-59 is getting ready for its...

The filming of The Strange Love of Martha Ivers happened when the Paramount lot was ringed by a picket line, part of the 1945 strike by motion picture set decorators that led to the infamous Black Friday riot outside the main gate at Warner Bros. The strike is a movie history footnote today, and though it gets aired out whenever the industry endures another labour dispute, it's hard to imagine pickets full of writers or actors today in a melee with studio security and police with "tear gas bombs, fire hoses, brass knuckles, clubs, brickbats, and beer bottles" as Variety...

One hundred days after former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in an attack on his office in Tehran, the Islamic Republic has yet to bury the man who led the country for more than three decades. The delay has become one of the most unusual and politically sensitive aspects of Iran's post-war transition. While senior military commanders and officials killed in the same conflict have already been buried, repeated promises of a massive funeral for Khamenei have so far gone unfulfilled. Tehran municipal officials spoke of plans for a multi-day funeral procession later this month. Ceremonies, they said, are...

An NYC councilwoman running for Congress owes $25,000 in back rent after squatting for five months in a luxury high-rise, according to her ex-landlord and court documents. Councilwoman Julie Won (D-Queens) and her family vacated a one-bedroom condo at swanky Skyline Towers on Long Island City’s waterfront on Monday — three days after being slapped with eviction papers by the condo’s owner, Justin Chae, a top NYC political consultant and former family friend. The gleaming-glass, 67-story skyscraper includes a fitness center with a swimming pool, a sauna and spa, a yoga room, and other A-list amenities. However, Won insisted to...

Archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority and Cologne University have made an unexpected discovery in Israel's Negev Desert: carved figurines with apparent African origins.The figurines were uncovered during excavations at Tel Malhata, an elliptical-shaped mound located in the eastern sector of the Arad -- Beer-sheba Valley.The site is often identified as Moladah, the biblical town of Simeon, and one of the cities of Judah (although other identifications have been suggested). Previous excavations at the Tel have found occupational layers dating from the Middle Bronze Age to the Byzantine period.According to a study published in 'Atiqot -- Publications of the Israel...

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) pledged to wear a suit “every day” if embattled Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner can prove he didn’t send “d–k pics” to minors. The extraordinary hoodie challenge came during Fetterman’s appearance on Fox News Saturday in America, where he referred to Platner, who admitted he had an active Kik account while newly married, as “P-Hustle” – Platner’s user name. The term drew a head-shake from interviewer Kayleigh McEnany. “P-Hustle, here’s a great chance. You can just prove that all these people that you’re dropping those d–k pics and saying these things to were over 18. “I...

President Donald Trump's restoration of the Great Reflecting Pool on the Washington Mall and the many fountains throughout the District of Columbia is really a metaphor for what is happening all over the country. Trump is succeeding at Making America Great Again. The president posted via Truth Social on Friday, "The Great Reflecting Pool, that stretches between The Lincoln Memorial and The Washington Monument, just opened to 'rave reviews' but, maliciously or not, some say, like The Washington Post, it was a 'paint job.' This was not a paint job. This was highly sophisticated material, industrial strength, that could last...

You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened. He will fight savagely.But this is...

Water has mass, and mass has leverage. Move enough groundwater from aquifers onto farms, into cities, and eventually into the ocean, and Earth’s spin changes by a measurable amount. The shift is tiny on a planetary scale, but the number still grabs you: between 1993 and 2010, researchers estimated that groundwater depletion nudged Earth’s rotational pole by about 31.5 inches. The figure comes from a 2023 study in Geophysical Research Letters, which estimated that humans depleted about 2,150 gigatons of groundwater between 1993 and 2010. When researchers added that water movement to their polar-motion model, the model lined up much...

A yoga pants stealing thief is still on the loose in San Francisco after they were able to escape the scene of a crime using a self-driving Waymo vehicle, police said. The suspect was able to make off with loads of stolen merchandise from the Hot 8 Yoga Studio in the Marina back in January. They were then able to flee the scene in a driverless white Jaguar that was parked out front, per the San Francisco Chronicle. Police are calling it the first-of-its-kind heist for the city after the suspect turned the high-tech vehicle in to a getaway car....

Raised in the rural Montana community of Big Sandy, Jeff Ament got hooked as a teenager on skateboarding at a time when not much more than only a handful of ramps were available in the state. Ament's first love was a “terrible” clay wheel skateboard and his passion blossomed on a family trip to California, where he skateboarded and felt the g-forces on urethane wheels on paved asphalt streets and then poured through the pages of Skateboarder magazine on the 20-hour drive home to Montana. Ament found pictures of decks and ramps that he used as inspiration for designs that...

The Biology of the Second Reich: Social Darwinism and the Origins of World War I reveals the ideological and scientific roots of the war that gave rise to Nazi Germany and the horrors of the Holocaust. To German intellectuals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, wars of annihilation were the natural outgrowth of Darwinian evolution’s survival of the fittest mantra, a “natural law, without which the organic world...could not continue to exist at all,” observed German zoologist Gustav Jaeger in 1870. Darwin clearly saw the implications of natural selection for human society. In his The Descent of Man,...

Four years ago, our Nation and Empire stood alone against an overwhelming enemy, with our backs to the wall. Tested as never before in our history, in God’s providence we survived that test; the spirit of the people, resolute, dedicated, burned like a bright flame, lit surely from those unseen fires which nothing can quench.Now once more a supreme test has to be faced. This time, the challenge is not to fight to survive but to fight to win the final victory for the good cause. Once again what is demanded from us all is something more than courage and...

One of the WNBA’s most prominent voices wants her league to consider the place of women in America at the birth of the country before agreeing to wear a celebratory jersey patch. Aces forward Brianna Turner, the players association treasurer, balked at the idea that WNBA All-Stars should wear the “USA 250” patch on their jerseys that other professional sports leagues have adopted to celebrate America’s upcoming 250th birthday.

Today we remember the D-Day invasion, 82 years ago today. That was the Greatest Generation, in its most courageous and finest moment. The end of the war was in sight. And now, almost all those brave men are gone. In many ways, it was like the Republican victory in November 2024. There was still a lot of hard fighting ahead. Nazi Germany, like the Democratic Party, was still very dangerous. But that day made total victory almost inevitable.

Thomas Albert Howard's "God and the Atlantic..." is a thoroughly researched examination of the contrasting religious paths between Europeans and Americans... Moving beyond Alexis de Tocqueville’s oft-quoted appraisal of American religiosity, Howard’s analysis progresses in two directions. First, he examines negative assessments both from the left (America viewed as overly religious) and the right (America’s religion is too distinct from Europe and thus represents bad religion). Second, he explores two European elites who each wrote about and lived in the United States: Philip Schaff, a Swiss-German Protestant church historian, and Jacques Maritain, a French Catholic philosopher... British intellectuals who were...

My fellow Americans: Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far.And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.Lead them straight and true; give strength...