Free Republic

It’s a killer birthday gift. The legal defense fund for Luigi Mangione reached more than $1 million in donations Tuesday, with droves of starry-eyed supporters pitching in to help the alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO assassin on his 27th birthday. “Happy 27th Birthday to the man, the myth, the legend. You are so loved. May you stay healthy and strong and keep the fighting spirit inside you,” one anonymous fan wrote while donating $27 on Mangione’s birthday. “This is my 7th donation, and I will keep donating as long as I need to. You are fighting for your life, but know there...

Anti-meat eaters are gonna have a cow. Fast foodies are just finding out that Wendy’s much-fabled “T-Rex” isn’t a mere myth but, instead, a hulking hot commodity on the restaurant’s top-secret menu. “Nine patties,” raved virtual chowhound @JoeOhEats before struggling to wrap his mouth around the dinosaur-esque sandwich. “Pure cow,” continued the Chicago-based content creator between messy bites of the greasy, goopy grub for more than 1.2 million TikTok viewers. It may be a feast for the eyes, but it’s likely torture on the tummy.

In April 1948, Deir Yassin was an Arab village of about a thousand residents. It was captured then by Jewish forces seeking to break the siege of Jerusalem during the war for Israel’s independence. Most of the fighting was done by the underground soldiers of the Irgun and Lehi, with assistance from the Haganah, the official fighting force of the Jewish establishment. A truck-mounted loudspeaker blaring a warning for residents to flee the village fell into a trench that had been dug by villagers. The result was a bloody house-to-house battle with a high death toll. That much everyone agrees...

Stone pillars, moon’s 18.6-year cycle and ancient structures tell a story.. The major lunar standstill northern moonrise is visible between Chimney and Companion rocks once per month for a period of about 24 months, every 18.6 years.. To archaeo-astronomers, the stone pillars that give Chimney Rock National Monument its name and the structures there built by ancestral Puebloan people send a message. .... And something did happen at the monument Tuesday night: The moon rose between Chimney Rock and Companion Rock, demonstrating a rare celestial occurrence called the major lunar standstill. The event occurs monthly over the course of about...

The Y chromosome, which contains the male-determining gene in humans and other mammals, is degenerating in the human species and may cease to exist after a few million years. This would lead to extinction unless humans evolve a new sex gene. How the Y chromosome, the “Male Gene,” works Female humans, along with other mammals, have two X chromosomes, while males have just one. This is paired with a much smaller Y chromosome in men. The X chromosome contains around nine hundred genes, which carry out lots of tasks unrelated to sex, and the Y contains far fewer genes (55)...

Is Genesis a record of true history, given by God, or was it written by men trying to answer the questions that plague our world? An article I saw recently [from the Biblical Archaeology Society] makes the latter claim—that Genesis is just a compilation of etiological myths finally written down by the biblical authors. Now, what is an “etiological myth”? The article answers this way: “The creation stories in Genesis served to provide answers to why the world was the way it was, such as why people wear clothes and why women experience pain during childbirth.” So according to this...

Legion of the Damned: Did Boudicca's curse cause 6,000 of Rome's fiercest warriors to vanish without trace? Over the course of its ...1,000-year history, Ancient Rome gave rise to many extraordinary stories which live on to this day. ...No wonder Hollywood has always loved Rome, whose ...sheer spectacle have given rise to great epic movies from Ben-Hur to Gladiator. Mystery: The unexplained disappearance of the 6,000 legionaires from Ninth Legion in Scotland is the inspiration behind two competing filmsYet the latest movies... comes not from the heart of Rome, but from a remote northern province...we now call Scotland, but which...

A principal goal of Stark Realities is to “expose fundamental myths across the political spectrum” — and few myths are as universally embraced as the notion that US participation in World War II lifted the American economy out of the Great Depression. This myth is dangerous not only because it leads citizens and politicians to see a bright side of war that doesn’t really exist, but also because it helps foster a belief that government spending is essential to countering economic downturns. That belief, in turn, has helped propel us to a point where the national debt now exceeds $34.6...

The Gods of Political Correctness dictate that all religions are of equal worth; that there are “…three great Abrahamic religions,” and “The Arabs are Semites too, so they can’t be anti-Semites.” All three of these sacred cow clichés need to be slaughtered on the altar of truth. While Christianity and Islam are both offshoots of the Jews and took from them the concept of having one’s own holy writ, their self-definitions as new faith communities were radically different. The Koine Greek language narratives that Christians append to their version of the Hebrew Bible purport to be a continuation of Jewish...

The far-left welfare queens at NPR are now claiming “conservatives” are spreading a “myth” about illegal aliens voting, even though Democrats are openly pushing to allow illegal aliens to vote. “Conservatives are warning about noncitizens voting. It’s a myth with a long history,” reads the NPR headline. Oddly enough, NPR fails to notify its readers of this NPR story published less than 15 months ago: “New York City will allow 800,000 noncitizens to vote in local elections.” That law was blocked (thankfully) in June. Nevertheless, “11 towns in Maryland and two in Vermont … allow illegals “the right to vote...

Propagation of myths has consequences. Let us examine a couple and see where they have led. Myth 1. The State of PalestineThis so-called state is like Brigadoon, with two exceptions: a. It never appeared. b. It refuses to go away. Neither a country nor a state of Palestine has ever existed. The Kingdom of Judah is named after Judah, the fourth son of Jacob and Leah. The Kingdom of Judah was formed after the death of King Solomon, when the ten northern tribes of Israel rebelled against Solomon’s son, Rehoboam. The two southern tribes, Judah and Benjamin, remained loyal to...

A coalition of 1,609 scientists from around the world have signed a declaration stating “there is no climate emergency” and that they “strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy” being pushed across the globe. The declaration does not deny the harmful effect of greenhouse gasses, but instead challenges the hysteria brought about by the narrative of imminent doom. The declaration, put together by the Global Climate Intelligence Group (CLINTEL), was made public this month and urges that “Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific.” CLINTEL is an independent foundation that operates in...

The film Oppenheimer has made a lot of noise in the run-up to the anniversaries this month of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — and not just from Christopher Nolan’s bombastic soundtrack. As happens every year, these anniversaries prompt debate over the the decision to use atomic weapons, and whether they were necessary to end the war with Imperial Japan.The film itself seems timed to influence those debates. As Axios reported over the weekend, it has at least stirred controversy in Japan, although perhaps not exactly as its producers intended:“Oppenheimer” has generated backlash in Japan, for what critics argue...

Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) said Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that he was “angry” former President Donald Trump is putting the country through “angst and tumult” over his classified documents indictment. Romney said, “I’m angry. The country is going to go through tumult as a result of one thing, President Trump didn’t turn over military documents when he was asked to do so. All he had to do was hand them in. I’m sure his counsel told him, hand the documents in, particularly when the subpoena came. But for some reason, he decided not to. He held onto them. Why?...

The largest mob lynching in the South was of Italians.The 1891 lynching of 11 Italians in New Orleans, after a roundup of over 1,000 Italians, grew out of an internal conflict among Louisiana Democrats and was praised by progressives of the era.“These sneaking and cowardly Sicilians, the descendants of bandits and assassins,” the New York Times editorial board railed. “Lynch law was the only course open to the people of New Orleans.”Future Louisiana Gov. John M. Parker, who helped organize the lynchings, described Italians as “just a little worse than the Negro, being if anything filthier in habits, lawless, and...

We keep hearing about the need for a conversation about race, specifically a conversation about the misery the black community experiences from being oppressed by the systemic racism of the white people of the United States. The endless conversation hasn’t done much beyond harming race relations, but maybe there is some systemic racism in the United States. Let’s look at three examples of systemic racism that are oppressive to black Americans. The first is affirmative action for black students applying to college. Was there ever a time when it made sense to admit a student to an elite school based...

On March 18, the New York Times published a bombshell story . In the article, Peter Baker, the New York Times's chief White House correspondent, detailed how Ben Barnes, a Republican political operative, undertook a secret trip in fall 1980 with his political mentor, former Texas Gov. John Connally, to the Middle East. They met with the region’s leaders in an attempt to contact the Iranian government, which was holding over 50 Americans hostage. The message that Connally wanted to convey to Iran was simple — that Iran should delay releasing the hostages until after the presidential election. Keeping the...

On March 17, people throughout the world celebrate St. Patrick’s Day as a festive occasion. There are parades, singing, dancing, and toasting, yet how many of the celebrants know why we pay tribute to the man behind the big event?Each month we receive a publication from The Voice of the Martyrs ministry that educates people on persecuted Christians. Why do they feature someone like the legendary Irishman? Why do they mention uncomfortable words like “slavery, suffering and smuggling of children” in connection with this famous figure?In these exciting days of history when reports of revival are surfacing as we repent...

In the middle of the 19th century, an archaeologist discovered fragments of multiple clay tablets in what is modern-day Iraq. Translated, the cuneiform writing on these and other tablets subsequently found revealed the “Enuma Elish,” the Babylonian account of the creation of the world. The Enuma Elish starts with formless chaos and water. The waters divide into a god and a goddess, who have children who are also gods. War breaks out between mother and father, and between mother and children. Ultimately, the offspring of the first two gods create human beings to be their servants. Other ancient cultures have...

The “Ghost of Kyiv” is a myth, Ukrainian officials admitted over the weekend. After several news outlets last week identified the legendary, mysterious, hero fighter pilot as a 29-year-old dad recently killed in battle with the Russians, military officials acknowledged Saturday that there was no such person. “The ghost of Kyiv is a superhero-legend, whose character was created by Ukrainians!” Ukraine’s Air Force Command wrote on Facebook. The reputed hero had been credited with taking out as many as 40 Russian aircraft until he was shot down March 13 while battling an “overwhelming” number of enemy forces, the Times of...