Free Republic

SACRAMENTO — The Republican Party will hold a presidential candidate debate at the Ronald Reagan library Wednesday. It’s a bad fit. The GOP’s modern idol is exactly the opposite of Reagan in personality and character. For upbeat Reagan, America was a “shining city on the hill.” For whining Donald Trump, it’s a waste bin for venom and lies. Reagan’s soaring rhetoric made people feel good about themselves. There was “always a bright dawn ahead” — “Morning in America.” Yes, maybe that was a tad naive and corny, but it brought a collective smile — and won over many Democrats.

Show more sharing options Tucked into a state Senate bill revising aspects of the Medical Board of California is a brief but unambiguous clause undoing a controversial law that was intended to curb “dissemination of misinformation or disinformation related to COVID-19.”If the bill passes as expected this week, it will put an end to the saga of Assembly Bill 2098, a well-intentioned, poorly worded and ultimately doomed effort to curb the most flagrant cases of COVID-related falsehoods by people wielding medical licenses. “We are happy that the Legislature is attempting to address the defects in last year’s legislation,” said Chessie...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is eyeing a change to the United States Constitution. The state's legislature on Thursday approved a resolution in support of Newsom's call for a 28th Constitutional amendment, according to the Los Angeles Times. The amendment would enshrine a list of Democratic gun-control policy priorities into federal law. California is requesting a Constitutional convention to enshrine the amendment. For the amendment to be considered, two-thirds of state legislatures would have to vote in favor of a convention, according to the Times. The proposed "Right to Safety Amendment" would limit legal gun ownership to adults 21 and older,...

Police discovered the naked body of a 32-year-old man inside a barrel at Malibu Lagoon State Beach on Monday. Authorities identified the deceased victim as Javonnta Murphy, an aspiring musician from Sylmar, California, according to the Los Angeles Times. A lifeguard allegedly discovered the 55-gallon drum in the lagoon at around 10 a.m. Monday, according to Lt. Hugo Reynaga. Upon inspection, Murphy’s body was found sealed within the barrel, showing no signs of decomposition, the Times reported. While the origins of the barrel remain untraced, detectives observed distinctive markings that may link it to a printing company, the outlet noted....

A 71-year-old Los Angeles man died in California’s Death Valley National Park on Tuesday, likely due to heat, as the afternoon high recorded in the park was 121 degrees, officials said. The Inyo County Coroner identified the deceased as Steven Curry. Curry fell to the ground outside the restroom at the Golden Canyon trailhead, the Inyo County Sheriff’s Office and the national park wrote in a news release. Before collapsing, Curry had been interviewed in the early morning by a Los Angeles Times reporter at Zabriskie Point; he had hiked about 2 miles from Golden Canyon to the point. “It’s...

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has the Leftist political and media elites deeply rattled, and that’s utterly delightful. Imagine this scenario: a wildly unpopular and manifestly incapable president is running, however haltingly, for reelection. Initially he seemed like a lock, but then he encountered an unexpected challenge from a scion of an old American political family, a man who defies all the conventional categorization of political candidates and has set the establishment on its ear by challenging not only the superannuated corruptocrat in the White House but many of that establishment’s most cherished assumptions. It would make a great novel, but...

Gregory Yee, a hard-charging breaking news reporter for the Los Angeles Times, died unexpectedly Wednesday at the Hollywood bungalow where he lived. His family said the cause appeared to be complications from a respiratory issue. He was 33. ... Hired during the pandemic, he worked from home and did not have a chance to meet many of his co-workers in person. Colleagues said he enjoyed the adrenaline rush and constant novelty of breaking news, and studied the paper’s online analytics to gauge how much time readers were lingering on his stories.

On Monday afternoon, just before 3:30 p.m., the couple heard their animals making the kind of noises that might warrant an inspection. According to Lieutenant Michael Arens of the San Diego County Sheriff's San Marcos Station, the couple went outside for peace of mind, but instead saw 36-year-old Alexander Belinksy attempting to abscond with one their goats. The couple attempted to intervene, but Belinsky allegedly threw them to the ground. The 79-year-old may have regarded goat theft to be a matter suited to remedy by bare hands, but an assault on his wife was apparently cause for a constitutionally-protected riposte....

One way to do that would be to restructure some food companies, distribution warehouses and retailers as a public utility, like how the energy grid, sewers and water delivery are managed. If some processing plants, distribution warehouses and retailers were owned by government, they could use subsidies to buy grains, legumes like beans and meat directly from farmers, and the resulting goods could be made available free to everyone. Programs could alternatively take the form of universal school meals and open-to-all cafeterias that serve meals throughout the day.

GREENVILLE, Calif. — Looking back, Bradley Bentz doesn’t know what took him so long to move out of Los Angeles County. For decades, he’d lived a short walk from the Santa Anita Park racetrack and a few minutes drive to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. It was the typical city life. “The cars and the smog. The noise. The lights that you can’t even tell when it’s dark,” Bentz said, shaking his head as if waking up from a nightmare. “I just couldn’t do it.” So he headed to the sparsely populated mountains of Plumas County. He joined the U.S....

They were coming from the plane’s loudspeaker. Flight attendants assured passengers it was a technical mixup. It was presumed that once the flight got underway, the noises would cease. Instead, they continued for hours: weird guttural moans and grunts projected over the intercom, apparently coming from nowhere. In an interview with Gizmodo, Collins characterized the noises as a cross between “explosive diarrhea, vomiting, and a weird, vaguely sexual moan.” Having listened to the noises, this writer would add “bad impression of Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s monster” to that list. In general, the noises are weird, uncomfortable, and resistant to easy...

On the morning of May 3, Abby C. burst into tears when she learned a that leaked draft opinion signaled the U.S. Supreme Court would likely overturn Roe vs. Wade. Before getting out of bed, the 23-year-old booked a consultation to begin the process of getting sterilized. Abby, who did not want to use her last name for privacy reasons, said her previous gynecologist had dismissed her requests, citing her age. But with the leaked opinion throwing the future of reproductive rights into jeopardy, Abby stood firm in her decision. “I ended up telling her, this is the option I...

So you’re unhappy with the Supreme Court justices who turned back the clock on environmental protection, abortion, school prayer and guns? You’re angry because they’re ideologues with a reactionary agenda, flexing their muscles to eliminate rights, weaken government and endanger the planet? Me too. They’re reprehensible. But let’s be honest: The problem isn’t just with the justices. The problem, or at least a substantial portion of it, lies with the U.S. Constitution itself. Here are some of the criticisms. The Constitution created the undemocratic U.S. Senate that allots the same representation — two senators — to a state like Wyoming,...

The Los Angeles Times singlehandedly proved that the liberal media will go to asinine lengths to protect President Joe Biden’s political image even if the economy tumbles into a recession. The Times released a tone-deaf story that reeked of economic illiteracy. The story was headlined: “Yes, a recession looks inevitable. But it may not be that bad. Here’s why.” Times staff writer Don Lee trivialized the 40-year high inflation crisis that could legitimately plunge the nation into recession: “Whether it’s President Biden insisting a recession is avoidable or his critics arguing that the wolf is at the door, both sides...

On Saturday, Los Angeles Times journalist Jean Guerrero openly complained about “English-language supremacy” in the United States during an appearance on a National Public Radio (NPR) podcast. Fox News reports that, while on the NPR podcast “Consider This,” Guerrero addressed the issue of some foreigners or minorities having their names mispronounced, which she claimed “can signal criticism or exclusion.” She then claimed that her Puerto Rican mother faced “English-language supremacy” while living in the territory.

As Elon Musk attempts to purchase Twitter, many journalists and political commentators have viewed the Tesla CEO's plans to take over the social media giant as detrimental, and have slammed the idea of billionaire ownership, yet several liberal media organizations are themselves owned by billionaires. The Washington Post Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos purchased the Washington Post in 2016 for $250 million. The Atlantic Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs, became the majority owner of The Atlantic in 2017. TIME Marc Beinoff, the billionaire CEO of Salesforce, and his wife Lynne, purchased TIME in 2018 for $190...

The Los Angeles Times’s editorial board announced on Thursday that it was endorsing Republican Lanhee Chen in California’s controller race, saying “California needs a fiscal watchdog.” The newspaper’s editorial board said they were endorsing Chen because they believe that the controller, who looks at how taxpayer money is being spent by government divisions and can audit government agencies, “should be as independent from the party in power as possible.”

Joe Maddon selected an adjective usually applied to a gallon of milk. Then again, for all the romance that surrounds the sport, baseball is a consumer product too. “Once you eradicate National League rules, then everything becomes homogenized,” the Angels manager said. With the adoption of the designated hitter in both leagues this year, and with the expansion of interleague play next year, Major League Baseball is giving their consumers what the league believes they want. The National League dates to 1876, the oldest surviving professional sports league in the world, according to MLB historian John Thorn. The American League...

Within walking distance of Tesla Motors' Palo Alto headquarters and across the street from Hewlett-Packard, Ford Motor Co. has set up a new Silicon Valley outpost. With a team of 100 reporting to a former Apple engineer, the Detroit giant is researching how humans experience machines, running autonomous-vehicle driving simulations and testing software that examines how bicycles and cars interact. "For 100 years, automobiles have been a mechanical engineering industry," said the center's director, Dragos Maciuca, who on his morning commute drives past a nearby research center of German automotive electronics and parts supplier Bosch. "Now, there is the shift...

His own track record isn’t spotless. In 1985, as AIDS was overwhelming American gay communities, Young used a homophobic slur in an interview and said of gays and the virus, “You go to a supermarket and you see a f— behind the f— cash register, you don’t want him to handle your potatoes.”