Free Republic

... In the 1960s, when the first right-to-die organizations began helping terminally ill people end their lives in Switzerland, the Swiss gave broad support to a practice widely viewed as a personal choice. Backed by the world's most liberal right-to-die laws, assisted-suicide groups have since then quietly helped thousands kill themselves. Lately, the increasingly controversial activities of Dignitas and its founder, Ludwig Minelli, are pushing even the famously tolerant Swiss too far, prompting calls for changes in the nation's assisted-suicide law. Mr. Minelli has long played the agent provocateur of Switzerland's right-to-die movement, most notably because his group helps the...

Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF), a German public-service television broadcaster, published a clarification on Monday regarding claims that the IDF struck an employee of a Palestinian Arab production company that worked in collaboration with the network A week ago, ZDF reported that an employee of the Arab company and the son of another employee were killed as a result of an IDF strike on Deir al-Balah in the Gaza Strip. The network wrote in a statement that it reached out to the IDF to demand answers regarding the circumstances of the deaths, and that the IDF provided unequivocal proof that the...

The University of California San Francisco scrubbed its website of details on its provision of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgical removals of healthy breasts and genitals for minors, following a query from then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson's show, according to a massive production to Judicial Watch in a California Public Records Act lawsuit. The UC system's designated campus for health sciences and University of Southern California-affiliated Children's Health Los Angeles also hid the fact that a 9-year-old was part of their blocker study through the National Institutes of Health, when they corrected New York Times reporters who asked about...

ar AL-QATTAA/AFP/AFP More than 250 media outlets in over 70 countries staged a front page protest Monday highlighting the deaths of scores of journalists in Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza, the Reporters Without Borders media freedom group said. "At the rate journalists are being killed in Gaza by the Israeli army, there will soon be no-one left to keep you informed," the group's general director Thibaut Bruttin said in a statement. The protest was taken up on the website front pages of publications including Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera, British news site The Independent, French newspapers La Croix and L'Humanite...

Saudi Arabia has executed a prominent Saudi journalist who was arrested seven years ago and convicted on terrorism and treason chargesA prominent Saudi journalist who was arrested in 2018 and convicted on terrorism and treason charges has been executed, the kingdom said. Activist groups maintain that the charges against him were trumped up. Turki Al-Jasser, who was in his late 40s, was put to death on Saturday, according to the official Saudi Press Agency, after the death penalty was upheld by the nation’s top court. Authorities had raided Al-Jasser's home in 2018, arresting him and seizing his computer and...

I am so bored with being lied to. I am even bored with the new lies being told to cover the old lies: Now It Can Be Told!!! The Behind-the-Scenes Inside Story of How I Lied to You for the Last Half-Decade by Jake Tapper and Wossname. Exclusive Excerpt! The longtime granite-jawed Deputy Assistant Under-Counselor to the President for Running the Country peered thoughtfully through the Oval Office window to the vast city beyond before loosening his cocktail dress and kicking off his three-inch heels. I was stunned by the evident anguish on his face as he turned to me...

SOKOTO, NIGERIA – Monday, May 12 marks three years since radical jihadists in Nigeria murdered a 22-year-old Christian woman, and new first hand testimony is shedding light on her final moments. However, the Nigerian Department of State Services detained the three journalists today for about four hours after publishing the new report. Deborah Emmanuel’s story first made international headlines when a violent Muslim mob beat her to death in 2022. Journalists identified her as a victim of a so-called “blasphemy” murder in the capital of Nigeria’s Sokoto state. Judd Saul, the founder of Equipping the Persecuted and executive director of...

Pope Leo XIV urged reporters to do their part in protecting the “precious gift of free speech” in his first address to the media on Monday – and also called on governments around the world to release journalists they have imprisoned. The pope called for an improved model of communication that “does not seek consensus at all costs, does not use aggressive words, does not follow the culture of competition, and never separates the search for truth from the love with which we must humbly seek it.” “The Church must face the challenges posed by the times. In the same...

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced on Friday the Department of Justice (DOJ) will change the policy that allows journalists to hide records and testimony related to suspects in a criminal investigation. In a memo first obtained by Axios, Bondi wrote that federal employees intentionally leaking sensitive information to the media undermines the ability of the Department of Justice to keep America safe. "This conduct is illegal and wrong, and it must stop," Bondi wrote. "Therefore, I have concluded that it is necessary to rescind Merrick Garland's policies precluding the Department of Justice from seeking records and compelling testimony from members...

President Donald Trump offered prayers for the journalists in the White House briefing room on Thursday, as he addressed the media about Wednesday’s deadly midair collision between a commercial jet and an Army helicopter. Trump began his remarks by asking for a moment of silence, then spoke for several minutes. At the end of his prepared remarks, he concluded: “God bless everyone in this room,” referring to the members of the press corps. It was a far cry from Trump’s usual jabs at the “fake news,” and a sign of the seriousness with which the president and the new administration...

After eight years of prosecuting Sandra Merritt, the California Attorney General’s office agreed to a plea deal to end this criminal case with no prison time and no fines for her role in the undercover journalism and videos that exposed Planned Parenthood’s trade in aborted baby body parts. Before this unprecedented case, the State of California had never criminally prosecuted undercover journalists for surreptitious recordings made in the public interest. Yet, this courageous grandmother was charged with 16 felonies and faced more than 10 years in prison for shining a light on the abortion industry’s profit from illegal organ harvesting...

Journalist Steve Baker of Blaze Media, who captured some of the most dramatic news footage at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has been ordered to surrender to federal authorities on Dec. 19 on as-yet-unknown charges.Paramedics from the D.C. Fire and EMS Department perform CPR on protester Ashli Babbitt, who was shot by police near the Speaker's Lobby on Jan. 6, 2021. (Courtesy of Steve Baker)Mr. Baker, whose Jan. 6 videos and photos have appeared on HBO and the BBC, as well as in The New York Times and The Epoch Times, told his followers on X, formerly known...

Journalists failed to ask Democrats for any proof of the bizarre claim that former President Donald Trump intended to reenact an obscure 1939 Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden other than the fact that it was in a same building. As Breitbart News noted, Democrats — starting with James Carville, then Hillary Clinton, then vice presidential nominee Tim Walz himself — claimed that Trump’s rally on Sunday evening was intended to evoke Nazi imagery.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — As the 2024 presidential race makes its turn into the final stretch, the White House assured journalists that they would only have to pretend Kamala Harris is likable for a couple more months. Members of the media, weary from the exhausting duty of portraying Harris as capable, experienced, qualified, and decent, were relieved to find out that they would only have to maintain the ruse until election day. "Don't worry, you don't have to do this forever," one White House insider told reporters. "We just have to make people think she's a bright, likable person until they...

The Treasury Department banned the maker of spyware used to target government officials, reporters and activists, deploying “first-of-its-kind” sanctions against sellers of commercial spyware. The U.S. government deployed sanctions against Greece-based spyware vendor Intellexa on Tuesday and the company’s leadership after targeting U.S. officials. “Today’s actions represent a tangible step forward in discouraging the misuse of commercial surveillance tools, which increasingly present a security risk to the United States and our citizens,” Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian E. Nelson said. The Treasury Department targeted two individuals and five entities associated with Intellexa for their...

Former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson blasted journalists in Washington, D.C. for failing to “hold power accountable” — and participating in a “massive cover-up” with the White House to shield President Biden’s “decline.” “It is our duty to poke through White House smoke screens and find out the truth,” Abramson told Semafor. “The Biden White House clearly succeeded in a massive cover-up of the degree of the President’s feebleness and his serious physical decline, which may be simply the result of old age. “Shame on the White House press corps for not to have [sic] pierced the veil...

I'm old enough to remember the hubbub over JournoList, a listserv of leftist reporters from different news outlets who convened regularly in a chatroom to strategize how to spin stories and set narratives, such as how to torpedo Gov.Sarah Palin to get Barack Obama elected president. From 2007 to 2010, JournoList was its own echo chamber, as Politico put it at the time. Now the same thing's happening again, with TV lawyers acting as rhetorical wetwork teams covering the trials of their political nemesis, Donald Trump. JournoList was started by Ezra Klein, who now works for the New York Times,...

The House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government is currently hosting a hearing on freedom of the press and protecting journalists, as the Biden Regime attempts to infringe on the rights of the press and shape news stories to fit their narrative. Rep Chip Roy opened the hearing at 9:30 am ET, remarking, “Today’s hearing is about defending our fundamental liberty and protecting journalists and their sources from these attacks. We will examine the federal government’s infringement on the freedom of the press and examine the prospects for federal shield law.” Witnesses include investigative journalists Catherine Herridge...

Normally they're the ones grilling Washington power players. But the tables have been turned on the White House press corps.

Blaze Media Investigative Journalist @TPC4USA has now been taken into FBI custody for his J6 reporting. PERP WALKED IN FRONT OF CAMERAS LIKE IN A BANANA REPUBLIC................ VIDEO AT LINK.......................