Free Republic

An attorney celebrated by the Obama White House for campaigning against violence toward women is now facing nine criminal charges over an alleged yearlong campaign of abuse and intimidation against his girlfriend. You cannot make this up. Cody McDavis, 32, the 6-foot-8 former University of Northern Colorado basketball standout who later earned a law degree from UCLA and joined the firm Vedder Price, was charged on July 20 with six felony counts and three misdemeanors. Prosecutors in Los Angeles County Superior Court allege he “willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly” followed and harassed his girlfriend from July 2025 through June 2026, leaving...

Thanks to fossilized evidence from Richmond, Queensland, researchers found a marine reptile had eaten a flying reptile shortly before becoming a meal for a larger predator. This is some of the first fossilized evidence of its kind, according to a study in the journal Gondwana Research, and helps us better understand what happened beneath ancient waves over 100 million years ago...Inside the fossilized belly of a 19- to 22-foot ichthyosaur -- a prehistoric dolphin-like marine reptile -- researchers uncovered something they'd never seen before. Thanks to advanced 3D imaging, the research team found pieces of a pterosaur, a flying reptile,...

Hollywood pulled out all the stops for “The Odyssey” – They relied heavily on director Christopher Nolan’s built-in and generally pretentious audience to drive early box office revenues. The hype machine was running non-stop for months before the release. The distributor’s focused heavily on IMAX ticket sales, which cost more than double a normal theater ticket. They attempted to hide the woke content of the film from the public for as long as possible (an ancient Greek epic with no Greeks, featuring black, Asian, Hispanic and trans actors with a story that deconstructs the hero’s journey of Odysseus, making him...

America’s homeowners associations are running out of money — and patience. Amid rising insurance premiums, drained reserve funds and increased safety measures in the wake of the Surfside condominium collapse, the country’s hundreds of thousands of homeowners associations are cracking down on delinquent residents. Even more startling, HOAs are skipping grace periods and handing delinquent accounts over to attorneys. **SNIP** Besides delinquencies, costs have been rising for HOAs in insurance premiums, staffing, lawn care and materials. The annual insurance premium at one Long Island HOA surged to $360,000 from $60,000. Plus, there’s the expense of meeting stricter safety measures, which...

The author of the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) postmortem on the 2024 election said in an interview published Monday that the report left out a key chapter — accusations that DNC Chair Ken Martin disputes. The 2024 DNC report’s author, Paul Rivera, told The New York Times that he included a chapter that raised whether former President Biden should have run for reelection, examined how former Vice President Kamala Harris and President Trump fared with different racial voting blocs, analyzed the party’s challenges with voter participation and suggested that top Democratic leadership was blind to the economic realities of everyday...

In the autumn of 1982, a particularly recorded single appeared that projected the optimism of the 1950s into the future with an ironic gaze. “I.G.Y.” by Donald Fagen referred to the International Geophysical Year, a scientific collaboration project of sixty-seven countries that ran from July 1957 to December 1958. While most artists in that period embraced the synthesiser era with flashy new wave and electronic disco, Fagen chose a polished, jazz-inspired production that offered a reflection on lost dreams. The title stood for International Geophysical Year, but mainly imagined a world in which technology would solve all problems. The single...

Such a deal... "The whites could keep everything that they had and in exchange the blacks would have free housing and electricity and water forever. What that has economically done is locked the most of the black population into the townships." " it is a huge disincentive and people stay where they are. So, as a result, based on whose numbers you're using, South Africa [snorts] today has an unemployment rate somewhere between 35 and 55%. And it's been like that since the '90s. They also have some of the highest crime rates in the world because people will steal...

The streets of Iran are near a breaking point over public executions, economic collapse and a war that’s been raging on for more than five months, anti-regime figures in Tehran told The Post. “A revolution can happen any day now — people want revenge,” a protest leader said, referring to the regime’s brutal January crackdown that President Trump said killed 52,000 people. An independent journalist active in the Iranian underground said that preparations are already being made for the next uprising, and that activists from all walks of life are determined to make a final, decisive blow against the regime....

Investing.com -- AstraZeneca PLC (LON:AZN) shares fell nearly 7% in London trading on Monday after a report said the drugmaker has held merger discussions with Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (NYSE:BMY), a potential combination that would create a pharmaceutical giant worth almost $400 billion. AstraZeneca's London-listed shares fell 6.7% to 11,804 pence, while the FTSE 100 was little changed. Bristol Myers rose 2.7% in pre-market trading after closing Friday at $65.31, just shy of a 52-week high and its highest level since June 22, 2023. A combined entity would carry a value of nearly $400 billion, which would rank it among the...

It took a lot of courage for the family of Angel Sarah Rampersad to refuse to allow Mayor Mamdani to speak at her funeral on Friday. The 28-year-old US Army staff sergeant from Queens was killed on July 17, 2026, in an Iranian missile attack on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan where she was stationed as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Rampersad lost her life in a battle against the world’s largest terrorist regime, whose proxy Hamas Mamdani tacitly supports. She gave her life for the country she loves and Mamdani...

By the time Rick Knigge died last September, he had spent decades turning 20 acres outside Casper into a gearhead's paradise. The oilfield worker spent a lifetime hauling home muscle cars, hot rods and vintage trucks. Now they are all finding new homes. ================================================================== Rick and Stephanie Knigge shared 36 years of marriage, countless road trips in search of classic cars and a lifetime together before Rick's death in September 2025. (Stephanie Knigge) ================================================================== CASPER — By the time Rick Knigge died last September, he had spent decades turning 20 acres outside the city into a gearhead's paradise. He had...

Joseph ben Matityahu, better known as Josephus Flavius—the Roman name Titus Flavius Josephus given to him after his surrender—is a deeply controversial historical figure. The man who left his fellow Jews and joined the Romans ultimately became the principal chronicler of Jerusalem at the time of its destruction. Today, his writings remain the most important source on the fall of the Second Temple. Born into a priestly family in Jerusalem, Josephus commanded Jewish forces in the Galilee during the Great Revolt against Roman rule. After his forces were defeated, he hid in a cave with a group of commanders. The...

A couple of weeks ago MIT's Sloan School of Management published an article with the prosaic but to-the-point title "These are the most urgent AI risks, according to 272 experts". Artificial intelligence is a contentious topic everywhere, but the article is concerned with how it "presents business leaders with a difficult management problem: The risks are numerous and fast-moving and fall unevenly across organizations, sectors, and stakeholders." There are the well-discussed "challenges", like "the potential for discrimination and the spread of misinformation". (Note that it's apparently concerning that entities defined by their lack of emotion and pitiless logic might discriminate...

Boy George has split from the manager of his record label after he refused to release his controversial pro-Israel song. On Saturday, the singer confirmed on social media that he had parted ways with Tony Pontius, calling the executive, who had run his record label, BGP, for several years, "gutless". "I wanted to release We Will Dance Again, but he [Pontius] was unequivocal and said, 'I want nothing to do with this song', and I responded, 'ok, we are done'," the former Culture Club front man wrote on X. "When someone is gutless, it really does not hurt to say...

The Draken Harald Hårfagre is not modeled after a single historic ship, but an amalgamation of many Viking vessels described in stories. Viking Nilsson / Draken Harald Hårgfagre In Christopher Nolan’s new film adaptation of the Odyssey, Calypso is played by Charlize Theron, Odysseus by Matt Damon, and his ancient Greek sea vessel by Draken Harald Hårfagre—a completely functional Viking longship. The wooden ship, commissioned by Norwegian entrepreneur Sigurd Aase, is about 115 feet long and 25 feet wide and equipped with square sails and 50 long oars. Most importantly, it can actually traverse the sea—a necessity for Nolan’s loyalty...

Homer’s epic poem, “Odyssey,” is in the news lately, primarily because Christopher Nolan has produced a three-hour, and I can use the word impressionistic, retelling of the “Odyssey.” And a lot of people have criticized it; a lot of people like it. I’m gonna talk about the film later in one of our episodes, because I have now seen the new film, and Jack Fowler and Sami Wink and I have talked variously about it. But I wanted to today just talk about the “Odyssey” as a work of literature and history. A lot of people, I think, have the...

In this video, we explore the history of Arabia before Islam, starting with the prehistoric period when the region was far greener than today, filled with lakes, rivers, and wildlife. We follow the transformation of this landscape into desert and how early communities adapted to it. What Was Arabia Like Before Islam? | DOCUMENTARY | 38:22 Para Bellum | 140K subscribers | 1,362,096 views | March 29, 2026

A California man faces felony charges after U.S. Postal Inspectors caught him pulling stolen mail — including unvoted election ballots — from a collection box outside a Scottsdale post office. Richard Anthony Ramos Jr., 26, of Stockton, California, was arrested July 21 at the Scottsdale Hopi Post Office. He is accused of two counts of third-degree burglary and one count of aggravated identity theft, according to court records filed in Maricopa County. Investigators say the scheme began as early as May 2026, when the U.S. Postal Inspection Service started receiving reports of stolen checks taken from the blue collection box...

Disgraced ex-Rep. Eric Swalwell’s zombie campaign is continuing to still cover legal fees with donors’ money as he prepares for potential court battles over sexual misconduct allegations that ruined his political career. The former California gubernatorial candidate reported paying around $150,000 in campaign funds to the law firm Coblentz Patch Duffy & Bass LLP between May 17 and June 30, according to financial disclosures filed Friday. He had already shelled out $50,000 to the firm before May 16, the Post previously reported. The law firm declined comment to media outlets, but Swalwell has used the firm for legal guidance since...

A nonprofit funded by far-left billionaire kingmaker George Soros is trying to silence a surging movement to keep NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani from attending the 25th-anniversary memorial for victims of the 9/11 attacks at Ground Zero. September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows put out a statement on Tuesday that sharply contrasted with the views expressed by many other 9/11 victims’ families. It all but accused the Change.org petition of targeting Mamdani because he’s the city’s first Muslim mayor. “We strongly condemn the anti-American accusations and Islamophobic sentiment underlying the effort seeking to prevent him from being at Ground Zero,” said...