Free Republic

SPECIAL SERIES: Religious Liberty Around The World. In deteriorating health and 78 years old, Jimmy Lai is not likely to survive the 20-year prison sentence that Hong Kong’s kangaroo court handed him on Jan. 9. The Chinese Communist Party has ensured that the voice of this prominent media mogul and ardent defender of democracy will never be publicly heard from again, on anything. It accomplished this by distorting the territory’s formerly celebrated judicial system and rule of law. Over a thousand democracy defenders have been imprisoned since Hong Kong’s draconian national security law was imposed in 2020 and, as a...

Super Bowl halftime has devolved into a stale Roman bacchanal—gaudy, raunchy, and empty—leaving millions bored, alienated, and wondering who the spectacle is even for anymore. In recent years, Americans have known what to expect from our Neronian Super Bowl halftime shows: mediocre music veneered over with gaudy, flashily lit, but ultimately empty and meaningless sets. As seen again this year, the usual array of supporting dancers twerk and simulate intercourse, in sync with the main singer, mindlessly grabbing his/her genitals—apparently to highlight the explicit sexual allusions of mostly nonsensical lyrics. For some strange reason, this Roman orgiastic ritual is supposedly...

I often make fun of the liberal mindset that prescribes that all the personal problems of people in our society can and must be solved by government taxing and spending and the creation of more and more “programs” of one sort and another. As I write on my “About” page: The central tenet of [the Manhattan] orthodoxy is that all personal problems of the people in society can be solved by government taxing and spending. The obvious corollary is that since all problems can be solved by taxing and spending, therefore they must be solved by taxing and spending, and...

Annually and increasingly, tens of thousands of people are leaving blue states because of politics. If you’re old enough, you’ll recall the 1961 Berlin crisis. I recall it subsequently, when schools taught real history. That crisis happened during the Cold War’s peak years. In brief, Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev wanted the U.S. out of West Berlin. There were multiple reasons, but, chiefly, access to West Berlin allowed East Germans to escape communist rule. According to the National Archives, by 1961, as many as four million Germans had escaped East Germany using West Berlin. With tensions rising, and the hemorrhaging increasing,...

Immediately ahead of tomorrow’s EU summit, French President Emmanuel Macron is calling for the introduction of Eurobonds. Collective debt financing would be the final salvo in the march of Brussels’ central planners.As the 27 EU heads of government convene today with EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, the stakes are high from a fiscal perspective. A decisive item on the agenda at Belgium’s Alden Biesen Castle is the so-called Draghi Plan. The question hovering above it all is as simple as it is explosive: How can the obvious productivity and growth weakness of the Eurozone economy be overcome? For...

Foreign-born Rep. Shri Thanedar openly threatened to prosecute his political enemies this week — a reminder of what Democrats plan to do if they get power back. During a committee hearing Tuesday, Thanedar — struggling to speak English — threatened to prosecute Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott when President Donald Trump is out of office. “You better hope you get pardoned because you will be held accountable for the absolute disregard of the law your agencies have shown over the past year,” Thanedar threatened. “Your agencies have lost the trust of the American people, with millions taking to...

How stupid and offensive was the the Super Bowl halftime show? Here’s a game that has evolved over the decades to become an unofficial American holiday and long shared a patriotic spirit similar to that felt during Fourth of July celebrations. It has created and sustained tremendous brand value for the National Football League. But rather than protect that investment, Roger Goodell and the NFL lit it on fire for laughs. Or to make a political statement… I guess. Because it’s pretty difficult to ignore the intended message of “entertainers” singing in a foreign language, waving foreign flags, and simulating...

EU Europe is increasingly abandoning a civilized approach to dissenting opinions. The raid on the Paris offices of Elon Musk’s company X appears to be just the tip of the iceberg. Today, those who resist are being attacked on multiple levels, while those who submit are largely spared. It is time to increase pressure on Brussels. Elon Musk’s communications platform X has become caught between systemic fronts. On one side stands the American understanding of free speech, which has experienced a political revival under Donald Trump’s new presidency. On the other, an increasingly repressive EU control regime is eroding the...

As the United States advances toward the 2030 Census, a structural political realignment is quietly but relentlessly taking shape. It is not being driven by campaign slogans or cable news theatrics, but by population movement, economic performance, and policy outcomes that are increasingly difficult to ignore. Together, these forces are placing Democrats on the brink of a profound loss of electoral power in the 2030s, one that could permanently reshape the national political map. Fresh population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau have been analyzed by redistricting experts. The facts indicate a clear and persistent migration away from Democrat strongholds,...

Oh, the horror! The sheer, unmitigated brutality! Vice President JD Vance's motorcade descended upon the Winter Olympics in Milan like a fleet of rogue armored personnel carriers, "wreaking havoc" in ways that would make even the most dramatic speed skating wipe-out look tame. At least, that's the breathless hysterical narrative spun by the Daily Beast in its latest masterpiece of journalistic gymnastics, headlined "Vance's Clunky Motorcade Wreaks Havoc at Winter Olympics." Penned by the intrepid "Breaking News Reporter" Vic Verbalaitis, this exposé reveals the true villain of the 2026 Games: not doping scandals or judging controversies, but a convoy of...

Americans were forced to sit through one of their biggest cultural events of the year in a language that is not theirs, surrounded by symbols of other, foreign places. The Super Bowl is supposed to be one of the cultural cornerstones in American life that still belongs to Americans. There are only a handful of days each year when most of the country pauses and gathers around the same screen to participate in something recognizably ours. It’s a shared experience — rooted in common language and culture and tradition. Which is why the Super Bowl half time show this year...

For the Democrats, it’s been a short, slippery slope from demanding Trump’s impeachment to likening him, ICE, and all Republicans to Nazis. Trump “is impeached forever,” declared Nancy Pelosi, voicing an accidental truth after Democrats impeached Trump for his phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky. What Ms. Pelosi meant to say was that it did not matter whether Trump was or was not convicted, or even if the charges against him had merit. She had left her mark. The stain of impeachment would last forever. That’s what Speaker Nancy Pelosi meant. She laughed and smiled as she asserted that it...

The violence and size of the anti-ICE riots in Minnesota took federal officials by surprise. But maybe they shouldn’t be shocked. As it turns out, and as is often the case when it comes to far-left demonstrations, outside money, organizations and foreign influence are firing the revolt. As Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche this week told “The Ingraham Angle,” investigators discovered a “massive fraud going on all through Minneapolis, all through Minnesota, and suddenly it turned. It turned almost on a dime, and it became suddenly all about ICE, all about getting ICE out and how horrible ICE was...

Another sterling week for the Trump administration, another interval of agony for his opponents. The attention of those less politically minded is focused on the disappearance of Savannah Guthrie’s mother, Nancy -- always fodder for the would-be Colombos and Miss Marples -- and the Olympics. Yet this week saw some victories for the administration along with some serious unfinished business. The ousted dictator Nicolás Maduro seems isolated, depressed, and devoid of funds sufficient to hire teams of lawyers to defend him. Any claims he might have for immunity seem destined to fail. The evidence establishes he was born in Colombia;...

Since the start of the Trump administration’s “Operation Metro Surge” in Minnesota, federal prosecutors have reportedly charged 158 anti-ICE agitators with federal crimes, including “FACE Act violations, conspiracy charges, and obstruction of federal agents.” Some of the offenses carry penalties of up to 20 years in prison. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced last week that she “expect more arrests to come” as the Justice Department is poised to crack down on similar anti-ICE insurgencies nationwide. Those arrested in Minnesota include nine agitators who disrupted a church service (including Don Lemon, and a number of “ICE Watch” insurgents who “blocked, assaulted,...

It’s imperative that the people support the President as he faithfully enforces the laws of the United States. We occasionally encounter the notion that America is an experiment, carried out under controlled conditions, in democratic governance. The control for experiments in our democracy is the Constitution and subordinate laws. George Washington advised in his Farewell Address “the Constitution… is sacredly obligatory upon all. The right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.” When Joe Biden took office he refused to enforce U.S. immigration law, allowing millions to enter the country...

My last two posts have been about the new Federal Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, just out (December 31) from the Federal Justice Center. The Chair of that Center is U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts. The latest version of the Manual is the Fourth Edition. The prior version in 2011 was the Third Edition; and there were also two prior Editions from 2000 and 1994. In those previous two posts, I principally criticized a newly-added chapter in the Fourth Edition titled “Reference Guide on Climate Science.” Today, I want to take a look at another chapter titled “How Science Works.”...

Governments habitually lie. They lie so often that it is peculiar for governments to claim “authority” on anything other than falsehood. Before the Gutenberg press and general literacy, “authorities” announced self-serving lies in the public square. With the arrival of newsprint, “authorities” disseminated State propaganda as daily news. Radio and television revolutionized the mass manipulation of minds. The adoption of the personal computer, the rise of the Internet, the commercialization of pocket computers posing as handheld phones, and the sticky web of an ever-growing social media complex have made it possible for government “authorities” to reach inside every human brain...

Trash and rats are piling up as snow stays uncleared, but Mayor Mamdani has more important things to do. Under socialism, New Yorkers are learning the hard way how fast a city can go downhill. Garbage filled streets is providing New Yorkers with the Warmth of Collectivism. https://t.co/hewdZHfJKq — Rob Schneider 🇺🇸 (@RobSchneider) February 3, 2026 In Mayor Mamdani's New York City, they don't actually remove the snow, they just spread it out on the street so that everyone suffers equally. It's called Socialist Snow Plowing. pic.twitter.com/LW7EcOJoKe — Joel M. Petlin (@Joelmpetlin) February 4, 2026 NYC outdoor death toll rises...

The House Judiciary Committee’s recent findings present a simple but unsettling conclusion. American speech is being curtailed in the United States, not because Congress has changed the First Amendment, but because foreign governments have learned how to route around it. Europe’s Digital Services Act, presented as a domestic regulatory framework, has in practice become a lever for global speech control. Its effects now reach deep into the American public square. To see how this happens, begin with a basic fact about the modern internet. Major platforms operate with global content moderation rules. They do so not out of ideology but...