Free Republic

It just doesn’t fit....The list of reasons for football fans of a certain age to intensely dislike the National Football League in 2026 is a long one. I miss when defenses were allowed to tackle quarterbacks, for example. Google it, young fans. I swear it was legal! We’re not far from the day when linebackers will need to get the QB to sign a consent form before a pass can be disrupted in any way. I kid, but I don’t.I’ve had a theory for years that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is a plant by Big Soccer, sent to destroy actual...

President Donald Trump is approaching the midpoint of his second term, so it’s a good time to evaluate what he has accomplished on immigration issues. On the National Question (immigration and national identity), Trump’s achievements over the past two years are quite impressive. Trump solved the border crisis so decisively, the public has practically forgotten it was ever a problem. The border is under control, few cross it illegally, and catch-and-release has been terminated. In August, the Trump administration announced that 3 million illegal aliens had left the country since Jan. 2025: 985,000 were removed and 2.2 million self-deported. That...

Given what is going on in France....video at link.

Specimen: Western, educated, well-meaning. Habitat: universities, NGOs, quality newspapers, dinner parties where the wine is good and the opinions are better. Status: abundant.The useful idiot is not exactly stupid. This is the first and most important thing to understand. Stupidity would be a defense. The more precise diagnosis is what we in Poland call pół-inteligent – the half-wit. Not the bottom of the intelligence distribution, which is too obviously lost to be useful. Not the genuine top, which tends to develop the inconvenient habit of following arguments wherever they actually lead. The sweet spot: smart enough to absorb a complex...

Packers killing Cowboys. Ten years in a roll, it's getting boring. Go Pack Go!

You may have come across this recent story of Agatha Christie in the 21st century. A University of Wyoming student was arrested after police say she tried to poison a colleague, then attempted to flee to China when officers questioned her. Aili Wang, 32, was questioned by campus police after surveillance cameras set up by a coworker experiencing medical symptoms allegedly caught her rinsing his mug with liquid from her own cup on Oct. 1, according to a University of Wyoming police affidavit, which added that she was seen on camera “taking photos and manipulating notebooks.” Wang didn’t get along...

I wouldn’t have taken a more than average interest in Christopher Columbus if ill-informed and sometimes ill-intentioned people hadn’t made it necessary. Fairfax County, Virginia, where I’ve lived for more than thirty-five years, abolished Columbus Day in 2020 as a paid holiday, but schools are closed today anyway – to celebrate “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.” The state legislature did the same for all of Virginia, as have other states, in effect replacing our Western Christian heritage with – frankly – they know not what. Now, Columbus, like all of us, was an imperfect human being. But unlike most of us, he...

Hold onto your smartphones, folks, because Aaron Sorkin has done it again! The Social Reckoning is not merely a movie. It is a cinematic detonation! An absolute tour de force! From the dynamic opening scene to the breathless climax, this pulse-pounding masterpiece delivers non-stop excitement, razor-sharp edge, and heart-stopping thrills that will keep you glued to the very edge of your seat. It is, quite simply, one helluva thrill ride! A powerful, provocative, pulse-pounding look at the world we live in -- and the world we helped create. There are films you watch, films you enjoy, and then there are...

This loss of spiritedness—what the Greeks called θυμός—has had a far-reaching and depressive effect on the civilizations of the West.It would have been hard to improve the backdrop for Marco Rubio’s foreign policy address on October 7 in Athens, Greece. Standing on the Pnyx with the ruins of the Parthenon rising up behind him, the Secretary of State delivered a speech that won almost universal plaudits. Let me toss my vote in with the overwhelming majority and affirm that Rubio’s speech was simply splendid: robust, heartfelt, honest, masculine, and true. Is it still permissible to praise such a public performance...

The Bamiyan Buddhas: Giants of the Silk Road, Gone But Not Forgotten For nearly 1,500 years, the Bamiyan Buddhas stood watch over the Silk Road. Carved into the sandstone cliffs of Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Valley in the 6th century, these monumental statues — one rising about 55 meters tall, the other 38 — were among the largest standing Buddhas in the world. They gazed out across a crossroads of civilizations, where merchants, monks, pilgrims, and conquerors once passed between East and West.

My sources are telling me Talarico is in a mental health facility. His campaign has stopped actively planning events in the vital homestretch of the campaign.More at link.

We are a nation at war. Not by our choice, of course; but then, it only takes one country to declare a war. The jihadist Twelvers who run Iran declared war on the United States, and on Israel, and in fact on pretty much the entire world, 47 years ago, and they’ve been at war with the world ever since. Israel has borne the brunt of it, most of the time, since they are geographically so much closer, and when it came time for us to fully join the fight last year, Israel and the United States became true wartime...

International relations expert Ralph Schoellhammer says over “4 million” migrants arrived in the UK from 2021 to 2025, despite the government promising to reduce migration.

The number illegal immigrants who have crossed the English Channel since Friday has now reached 1,300, GB News can exclusively reveal. Today alone, 600 made the crossing in multiple boats. Another migrant dinghy is still en route, and authorities in the UK and France are preparing for hundreds more to cross tomorrow. It is an astonishing surge in migrant crossings over such a short period, at a time of year when the number of illegal dinghy crossings would normally slow down significantly. A total of 91 illegals arrived on Friday. That was followed by 164 on Saturday and a further...

Hachette is a French company that is also one of the big 3 foreign publishers that have taken over the American book industry. Like its German counterparts, Hachette has pushed out toxic woke garbage like ‘In Defense of Looting’ while suppressing books by conservatives and critics of woke abuses. Now, Hachette has managed to publish a book by an Iranian author accusing Jews of punctuation genocide. The book is “On the Mark: From Periods to Interrobangs, How Punctuation Remade the World” by Florence Hazrat, who has an Iranian background, and no survey of punctuation could not be complete without claiming...

A 15-year-old boy was arrested for firing a makeshift flamethrower at a woman's face during France's latest series of riots.The incident took place in Marseille on Friday, with video showing a hooded teenager using an aerosol can and a lighter to try to burn a woman who was calling for the riots to stop. French police arrested the suspect on Friday night, and the woman suffered first-degree burns, according to Le Parisi

Okay, I’m going to talk about Green Lantern again. The silly superhero, and what DC Studios is doing with that character, that franchise. It’s going to be one of those days, so be warned. About a month ago, I talked about The Green Lantern Show, a.k.a. Lanterns on HBO. Which is part of this new DC Universe they’re trying to establish, which launched with Superman last year. That reboot. (Technically, it launched with something called Creature Commandos, an HBO cartoon based on some obscure DC characters. Basically, monsters who fight for the United States. But nobody watched that.) Anyway, they’re...