Free Republic

WASHINGTON - California Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell has formally resigned from Congress as new accusers allege that he raped and sexually assaulted them. Now, D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro told FOX 5 in an exclusive interview that she wants to hear from any potential victims in the District. Big picture view What many may not know about D.C. and Pirro's office, in particular, is that she serves as both the federal prosecutor and the equivalent of a local district attorney. She's concerned, given the recent victims who continue to come forward accusing Swalwell of rape and sexual misconduct, that there...

Accused SantaCon cheat Stefan Pildes actively flaunted his lavish lifestyle on Instagram — before being busted for allegedly funneling millions in charity cash from the annual Christmas-themed booze fest to bankroll his bougie vacations. The founder of the notorious seasonal bar crawl, who was arrested Wednesday on wire fraud charges, shamelessly paraded himself globetrotting with his wife and friends on trips to Nevada’s Burning Man festival, the Las Vegas Sphere and ski getaways, videos on his Instagram account show. Pildes, 50, was also seen blowing the would-be donations on a string of concerts last year, including Lady Gaga’s “Mayhem Ball”...

Before Michelangelo, before Leonardo, there was Giotto. Step back into the 14th century to discover the life and legacy of Giotto di Bondone, the man hailed by history as the "Father of European Painting." In this documentary, we explore how a humble shepherd boy from Vespignano shattered the flat, symbolic traditions of Byzantine art to breathe real human emotion, three-dimensional space, and dramatic narrative into the world of the living. Using our analysis model, we decode Giotto's revolutionary "Divine Spark"—from his legendary discovery by Cimabue to the breathtaking frescoes of the Scrovegni Chapel that serve as the "visual vernacular" of...

The papyrus, which contains 133 lines of preserved text, is the longest Greek papyrus ever uncovered in the Judean Desert, although for decades it had been misclassified as a Nabatean text and practically lost in the archives of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA)...Upon translation, the team that Cotton Paltiel put together realized the papyrus preserves an incredible snapshot into the Roman legal system and life between two Jewish revolts against the Romans: the Diaspora Revolt (c. 115–117 CE) and the Bar-Kokhba Revolt (c. 132–136 CE). The papyrus, which pertains to a legal case brought before a Roman court, contains the...

Sports researcher Alfonso Mañas of the University of California, Berkeley, examined an illustration of a third-century a.d. Roman mosaic discovered in 1860 in Reims, France, by archaeologist Jean Charles Loriquet, according to a Live Science report. Most of the mosaic was destroyed by bombing during World War I, but Loriquet's illustration of the artifact survived in his book, which was published in 1862. Mañas said that the surviving fragment of the mosaic, housed in the Saint-Remi History Museum, closely matches the drawing, which shows animals, hunters, and gladiators. He thinks that one figure in particular, previously identified as a paegniarius,...

New radiocarbon dates for Mohenjo-Daro obtained by archaeologists at the Sindh Directorate General of Antiquities & Archaeology indicate that the city on the banks of the Indus River in southwestern Pakistan was occupied as early as 2700 to 2600 B.C., about two hundred years earlier than previously thought, according to an IFL Science report. The site is known for its burnt-brick structures spread over some 590 acres, where at least 40,000 people are thought to have lived. Evidence for a system of water infrastructure, including baths, wells, and sewage pits, has been found among the city ruins. Samples for the...

WASHINGTON — Mercy for me, but not for thee. Former first son Hunter Biden trashed President Trump’s use of the clemency power while acknowledging the hypocrisy of him doing so after his father Joe gave him an “unconditional” pardon shortly before leaving office. “I’m completely biased as it relates to what my dad did for me. I fully understand how uniquely situated I am in being privileged enough to have received a pardon from my father,” the Biden scion said when asked by MeidasTouch if the pardon power needs reform. “I don’t think that the founders ever imagined Donald Trump....

The Los Angeles District Attorney’s office has already assigned a prosecuting attorney to aid in the criminal investigation of a bombshell rape claim against disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell. LA District Attorney Nathan Hochman announced the rare move after Lonna Drewes, 50, on Tuesday accused Swalwell of drugging, choking and raping her at a West Hollywood hotel in 2018. Drewes delivered evidence to the West Hollywood sheriff’s station shortly after giving a press conference to announce the allegations, saying she has damning texts, photographs and journal entries that will prove the claims. Representatives for LA Sheriff Robert Luna confirmed that...

It often seems that modern day American leaders and many of the American people are eager to intervene in conflicts…Over 75 years ago, the exact opposite could be said. With Europe locked in battle, President Franklin D. Roosevelt supported the idea of America going to war, giving Great Britain the backing it needed, but FDR faced his own struggles. The United States didn’t want to intervene. During an emergency cabinet meeting called by Roosevelt immediately after the war erupted in Europe, it was agreed that the United States would remain an outside influence unless directly threatened or attacked… The United...

...the Aurum Tolosanum never reached Rome. At least not in its entirety, since the silver was received, but not the gold. During its transfer to Massilia (Marseille), where it was to be shipped, it was stolen by a band of bandits who also made sure not to leave witnesses by murdering the cohort in charge of its custody. The operation was flawless; so much so that speculations about the authorship soon circulated. Who knew the caravan's itinerary and had the ability to organize a group of thieves large enough to eliminate the guards and take four hundred and fifty wagons?All...

The polybolos has long been a legendary weapon of Roman military might, both in the sense that it could inflict tremendous damage and that it may never have existed. But archaeologists and engineers from the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli and the University of Bologna have identified ancient artillery holes that they believe correspond to shots from the device, according to a Diario AS report.The polybolos, literally "multiple thrower," was a chain-driven freestanding catapult that fired metal-tipped bolts from a magazine in quick-repeating succession, automatically, according to a description by Philo of Byzantium, a Greek engineer living in the third...

When Murad Awadallah, 55, from the village of Ein Naqquba west of Jerusalem, used to pass by the nearby Yad Vashem museum, he thought the Holocaust was “a closed club of today’s elite — people who came from Germany and other European countries. We, the Arabs, did not enter the museum, because we didn’t know what it was about or what it had to do with us,” he recalls. “For me, it was an internal discourse among Jews, unrelated to me.” “I first heard about the Holocaust from my father...He told me about a friend he worked with — an...

The woman famously known as “Baby Jessica” over her dramatic miracle rescue from a Texas well as a tot in 1987 has just been busted for alleged domestic assault, authorities said. Jessica McClure Morales, now 40, was arrested Saturday night over a disturbance at her home in Midland County, Texas, where she is believed to live with her husband, Daniel Morales, and their two kids, KXAN reported. Authorities have not released details about the incident, but McClure Morales was charged with assault causing bodily injury involving family violence. Her arrest comes decades after the now-married mom of two made global...

According to a report in The Korea Herald, Jeong Choong-won of Seoul National University and an international team of researchers conducted a genetic study of 78 individuals buried in 44 tombs in South Korea's Imdang-Joyeong burial complex, which was in use during the Three Kingdoms period between the fourth and sixth centuries A.D. The scientists detected evidence of close-kin marriages and family-based sacrificial burials among the occupants of the burials. Most of the tombs in the complex consist of a main burial chamber and a secondary chamber. In at least 20 of the main chambers, the researchers found evidence of...

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced plans to open the city’s first government-run supermarket in East Harlem next year, a move critics warn could cost taxpayers millions and undercut nearby private grocers. Mamdani vowed during an address celebrating his first 100 days in office Sunday that the city will have five government-run grocery stores by the end of his first term on Jan. 1, 2030, falling in line with promises made during his campaign. "I was elected as a Democratic socialist, and I will govern as a Democratic socialist," Mamdani said. But Daniel Di Martino, a Venezuelan-born fellow at...

According to a statement released by the University of Tübingen, evidence of quarrying some 220,000 years ago has been discovered at the Jojosi site in eastern South Africa by a team of researchers led by Manuel Will of the University of Tübingen. It had been previously thought that early modern humans found stones for making tools incidentally as they looked for food. Team member Gunther Möller reassembled more than 350 rock fragments recovered from the site into "refits," or stones that had been broken apart by knapping. "With these 3D puzzles, we were able to see precisely where and how...

A new analysis of turtle shell fragments unearthed at the Paleolithic site of Neumark-Nord in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt suggests Neanderthals regularly hunted the diminutive European pond turtle. A team led by archaeologist Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser from the Institute for Ancient Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz analyzed 92 turtle shell fragments from the site dating back 125,000 years, and found evidence that the turtles had been butchered and their shells cleaned. The team suspects Neanderthals did not eat the turtles, which grow to be no longer than eight inches and weigh around two pounds. "Pond turtles have a comparatively...

The Iranian regime executed more than 1,600 people last year — marking a three decade high not seen since the end of the Islamic Republic’s war against Iraq in 1989. The shocking figures were included in a joint report released by the nonprofit Iran Human Rights and Together Against the Death Penalty, which estimated that in 2025 at least four people were put to death each day in Iran. In total, at least 1,639 were executed in Iran last year, the highest reported number since the post-war bloodbath in 1989, where an estimated 1,700 political prisoners were executed, according to...

WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice under former President Joe Biden “withheld evidence” and approved “aggressive arrest tactics” when targeting pro-life defendants — and then slapped them with longer prison sentences than pro-abortion ones, according to an explosive internal review released Tuesday. The DOJ revealed the stunning abuses in a nearly 900-page report after examining more than 700,000 records related to the Biden administration’s prosecutions under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. The 1994 law was passed to protect access to houses of worship, religious institutions, abortion clinics and pregnancy resource centers. But the Biden DOJ was...

DC is in full meltdown mode after Eric Swalwell announced on Monday he would resign from Congress amid explosive sexual misconduct allegations — sparking a firestorm of speculation from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. The bombshell departure of the high-profile Trump critic came via a somber written statement in which Swalwell apologized for his conduct and admitted to “mistakes in judgement” while still pushing back on the most serious accusations — including an ex-staffer who claimed he raped her. But his attempt to control the narrative quickly unraveled. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) torched Swalwell in a series...