Free Republic

The Tuesday, Jan. 24, regular meeting of the Bellefontaine City Council again featured a large, standing-room-only contingent of residents and advocates with strong feelings about a drag queen’s participation in the downtown Christmas parade. This time, however, it was the participants and allies that had their say. Over a dozen speakers — 17 by the council’s count — addressed city council during the meeting with arguments ranging from religious to Consititutional for why the city’s elected leaders should not take any actions to prohibit drag queens or any other LGBTQ+ participation in community gatherings, parades or celebrations. Several of the...

Mug shots, from top left, of Desmond Mills Jr., Demetrius Haley, Tadarrius Bean, Emmitt Martin III and Justin Smith, the Memphis police officers who are accused in the death of Tyre Nichols. A portrait of Tyre Nichols is displayed at a memorial service for him on Jan. 17. The five Memphis Police officers fired in the death of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man who died three days after a traffic stop earlier this month, were behind bars on Thursday. Last week, the five officers — Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith —...

The Treasury Department has denied a House Republican request for information on Biden family suspicious financial transactions.Earlier this month Representative James Comer (R-Ky.), the chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, had requested reports on activity by the Biden family that was deemed as suspicious. The letter, which was sent to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on January 11th, was rebuked on Wednesday. The Treasury Department’s reasoning was that it needed more information from the committee and the reason behind its request, and what it plans to do with the information...

Southwest Airlines (LUV) reported a loss for the fourth quarter, as the company took an $800 million pretax hit to earnings due to the computer system failure that led to the airline’s holiday travel meltdown. "Due to the operational disruptions in late December, which resulted in more than 16,700 flight cancellations, we incurred a fourth quarter pre-tax negative impact of approximately $800 million (or approximately $620 million on an after-tax basis), which resulted in a fourth quarter 2022 net loss,” Southwest CEO Bob Jordan said in a statement. Overall for the quarter, Southwest lost $220 million resulting in an adjusted...

South Carolina GOP Rep. Ralph Norman says that the Republicans are working on a legislative plan to shrink the size of government. "We have got to present the American people a plan," Norman said on Wednesday's edition of the "Just the News, No Noise" TV show. "Financial security is national security, and we're not on a course where we can can maintain that trajectory. It has got to be changed, and people realize that." While Rep. Norman was one of the 20 Republicans who voted against House Speaker Kevin McCarthy during the election for that position earlier this month, he...

With the recent passage of AB 2098, California took a highly controversial step in barring doctors from offering “false information” on Covid-19 and related subjects. The law is an extension of Democratic efforts to block or censor “misinformation” and “disinformation” in society from social media to medicine. However, this effort involves direct government action. As will come as little surprise to many on this blog, I opposed the measure as unconstitutionally vague and a threat to free speech. Nevertheless, Judge Fred Slaughter (C.D. Cal.) in McDonald v. Lawson held that this statute was likely constitutional and rejected a motion for...

At midnight Tuesday, AT&T's DirecTV cut Newsmax's signal, immediately shutting the network off from more than 13 million customers of the satellite service, DirecTV Stream, and U-Verse. This is the second time in the past year AT&T has moved to cancel a conservative channel, with DirecTV deplatforming OAN in April. Despite Newsmax being the 4th highest-rated cable news channel in the nation, a top 20 cable news channel overall, and watched by 25 million Americans on cable alone, according to Nielsen, DirecTV said it was taking the step as a "cost-cutting" measure and would never pay Newsmax a cable license...

It is unbecoming of an adult to speak publicly about Disney theme parks, but I lament the demise of Splash Mountain. The log flume coaster, which featured characters from the controversial 1946 film Song of the South, was one of the most popular features of Disney's American parks, and revitalized a previously quiet corner of Disneyland. Yesterday, on its final day, a massive crowd stood shoulder to shoulder outside the attraction, waiting one last time to descend into its famous briar pit.

America set a new record last month–and it’s nothing to be proud of. Over 250,000 illegals were encountered at the border in December, the highest number ever recorded. It was the 10th month in a row that illegal encounters had exceeded 200,000. And these figures don’t include the ones who got away from Border Patrol. This shocking milestone was hardly noticed, even by conservative media. When the news broke Friday evening, it didn’t make the front page of Fox News, Breitbart, Daily Wire, or the Daily Caller. Conservative Twitter ignored the numbers and the issue was soon forgotten. It certainly...

The National Archives has missed the House Oversight Committee’s deadline to comply with requested documents related to President Joe Biden’s classified document scandal, according to the committee’s spokesperson. On January 10, the committee demanded the National Archives hand over records detailing the interactions between Biden’s attorneys and the Justice Department on or before January 24. “The National Archives has not produced the requested documents to the Committee at this time,” the committee spokesperson told reporters Tuesday. “Chairman Comer’s request still stands and anticipates moving forward with a transcribed interview with NARA’s general counsel soon.”

“Please, contribute $10 or whatever you can spare today to help me respond to Republicans’ baseless attacks on my ability to hold them accountable. This isn’t the end of my fight for truth, accountability, and our democracy.”

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer will use the first State of the State address of her second term to call for policies to reduce gun violence and increase funding for law enforcement, according to excerpts of the speech reviewed by MLive.In the annual address Wednesday, Whitmer will urge the legislature to require universal background checks for all firearms sales and send her legislation mandating safe storage of weapons.

The rookie quarterback who has surprised NFL observers by guiding the San Francisco 49ers to the NFC Championship says his Christian faith has given him peace and confidence amidst the spotlight. Rookie Brock Purdy started the season as the 49ers' third-string quarterback but became the starter in early December due to a string of injuries, guiding his team to an undefeated December. On Sunday, he led his team to a 19-12 victory over rival Dallas in the playoffs and into an NFC Championship game at Philadelphia. The winner goes to the Super Bowl. Purdy, who played at Iowa State, is...

How many times have you heard President Joe Biden or Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) berate the Trump tax cuts as “a giveaway to the rich?” Biden and congressional Democrats now want to let expire major planks of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, former President Donald Trump's signature domestic achievement, particularly the incentives for American businesses to invest more here at home. We now have incontrovertible evidence that after five years since they took effect, the Trump tax rate cuts of 2017 raised revenues over this time period. For full disclosure, I should note...

Joe Biden was named in an email found on Hunter Biden's laptop discussing a 25 million-ton gas deal with China, DailyMail.com can reveal exclusively. In October 2017, Hunter and his uncle –Joe's brother Jim Biden – were brokering a multi-million dollar deal to supply gas from Louisiana to the country on behalf of their business partners, Chinese energy giant CEFC. At the time Joe Biden had finished his term as vice president and had yet to announce any plans to run for president in 2020. A Louisiana-based lawyer on the other side of the deal wrote in an October 27,...

Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna gave a press conference Sunday in which he announced the Lunar New Year celebration shooting suspect had allegedly used a “semiautomatic assault pistol” to shoot and kill ten people Saturday night.

Vice President Kamala Harris was let out of the bunker recently and had the same results: utter disaster. It’s a revolving cycle of failure. We have a president and vice president who are wholly unqualified for their positions. Joe Biden has previously tasked Kamala with being the point person for increasing COVID vaccination rates and border security. She failed at both, which isn’t shocking.

BOSTON (AP) — The daughter of U.S. Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts was arrested during a protest Saturday night on Boston Common and later charged with assault after a police officer was injured. In a statement on its website, the Boston Police Department said the 23-year-old was expected to be arraigned in Boston Municipal Court. Clark, the House Democratic whip, said in a tweet that her daughter, Riley Dowell, had been arrested. “I love Riley, and this is a very difficult time in the cycle of joy and pain in parenting,” Clark wrote. “This will be evaluated by the legal...

HERMAN, WI (AP) — A company that operates a southern Wisconsin wind farm is investigating what caused part of a wind turbine and its blades to plummet to the ground, leaving debris strewn across a field. No one was injured Wednesday night when the blades and top portion of a wind turbine collapsed in Dodge County, near the town of Herman. The turbine, which is part of the Butler Ridge wind farm, stands about 400 feet above the ground, according to the National Weather Service. Mark Dietrich, whose father owns the property where the collapse occurred, told WISN-TV that a...

Antifa has gone to war in Atlanta and, as happened in 2020 during the BLM and Antifa riots, some in the media want to downplay what’s happening. It’s harder this time, though, especially given that Antifa announced in advance that it intended to go to war.