Free Republic

Before she was the second woman ever appointed to the Supreme Court and the “Notorious RBG,” Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a wife, mother, and frustrated lawyer who dreamed of leaving her mark on the world. On the Basis of Sex, a suitably inspiring biopic despite its narrative unevenness and occasional reliance on schmaltz, seeks to show audiences the origin story of a cultural icon. The story follows Ginsburg (a quietly ferocious Felicity Jones) from her days as a first-year student at Harvard Law School to her graduation at the top of her class at Columbia to her time as a...

If it wasn’t for capitalism, Joe Kennedy, the congressman, might be tending bar at J.J. Foley’s in the South End. Not that there is anything wrong with tending bar at the Boston establishment. It was and is a fine bar, one that I used to regularly frequent when I worked for the Boston Herald, which was then conveniently located around the corner. It was a clean, welllighted place. Former Boston Mayor Ray Flynn of South Boston was a regular, along with fellow politicians, Boston cops, firefighters, working men and, of course, reporters.

I received my Academy screener of "Vice" -- Adam McKay's intermittently black comic biopic of Dick Cheney --- just a few days before its Christmas opening and watched it almost immediately, even though I knew I would hate it. I did. It had exactly the retrograde, conformist Hollywood politics I expected. What I didn't expect was that it would be an aesthetic jumble and quite boring. Nevertheless, "Vice" led the pack of Golden Globe nominations with six and is an early favorite for the Best Picture Oscar. So unfortunately, due to the biased state of our educational system, this could...

FULL TITLE: 'My credibility is sort of shot': Former NASA engineer behind the viral YouTube glitter-bomb video admits some of it was faked   Mark Rober, the former NASA engineer who built a glitter bomb package that explodes after it has been stolen, has admitted that elements of his viral video were faked.Two of the so-called "thieves" filmed stealing the box were actually in on the prank.Rober said they were roped in by a friend of a friend, who offered to place the package on their porch.The YouTuber has re-edited the video and apologized to viewers.   It is one...

On Saturday's AM Joy, during a discussion on now disputed reports that a seven-year-old girl was suffering from dehydration when she died recently in Border Patrol custody, host Reid brought up the issue of Border agents disposing of water. Here's Reid: "One of the issues was dehydration. We're going to show you some video ... but there is video of Border Patrol agents dumping water on the ground -- water that was meant to be left for migrants. This is from a Tucson-based aid group." Speaking with Democratic Senators Mazie Hirono and Jeff Merkley, Reid posed: "What do you know...

Margaret Atwood is working on a sequel to “The Handmaid’s Tale,” the most popular and influential feminist novel ever written. Her sequel, titled “The Testaments,” opens 15 years after the conclusion of “The Handmaid’s Tale” and is narrated by three women, according to a statement released by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday on Wednesday. In a note to readers, Atwood wrote, “Everything you’ve ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything! The other inspiration is the world we’ve been living in.” “The Testaments” will be published on Sept. 10, 2019, with a...

Full title: The Dick Cheney Dossier: Inside Adam McKay’s Searing Exposé of D.C.'s "Ultimate Gamesman" in 'Vice' It's the eve of the midterm elections, and Adam McKay is feeling optimistic about the Democrats' prospects of taking back the house. Still, the SNL writer turned Oscar-winning filmmaker insists he is not throwing a results-viewing party with his Hollywood friends, even as I spot an assistant carrying supplies from Whole Foods into his West Hollywood offices. Instead, McKay, looking like a college professor with a corduroy jacket and scarf, says he is planning to hang out at his house with his wife,...

Vice, a sprawling, star-studded $60 million gamble from Annapurna Pictures that will hit theaters Christmas Day (think 200 location shots and 200 speaking parts, including five-time Oscar nominee Amy Adams as Lynne Cheney, newly minted Oscar winner Sam Rockwell as George W. Bush, Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld and Tyler Perry as Colin Powell). Written by McKay, Vice chronicles the rise of Cheney from his days in the Nixon administration, where he made an alliance with a hawkish Rumsfeld, to his eight-year reign in the White House during which he ran a shadow government under Bush's nose. In typical McKay...

Matthew Shepard was savagely killed in Wyoming in 1998 at the age of 21 and went on to became a symbol on anti-gay violence in the US. After being robbed by two men, he was repeatedly beaten and tied to a fence in near freezing conditions. A cyclist found him after 18 hours. Six days later he died. His parents cremated the body and kept the ashes, worried that a final resting place would be vandalised. But now he will finally be laid to rest. The remains will be interred inside the crypt of Washington National Cathedral on 26 October,...

Baldwin is the latest high-profile actor to join the project, which is scheduled to begin shooting in two weeks. Robert De Niro, Deadpool 2 breakout Zazie Beetz and Glow actor Marc Maron are already on the call sheet. Phoenix is set to portray the DC Comics villain in a film that is more moderately budgeted and darker than the studio’s other DC-based movies that make up its shared universe. The project is also described as more of a dark character study than a crime thriller, with Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy as the tonal watchwords. Baldwin has been...

In the days leading up to the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion in America, pro-choice advocates claimed hundreds of thousands of women had died from illegal abortions. Because of this, several lawmakers voted to decriminalize abortion prior to Roe, and even today, some lawmakers are hesitant to outlaw it because of this lie. These statistics were invented by the same people who would profit from the procedure’s legalization. False Claim #1: 5,000-10,000 women died annual from illegal abortion before Roe. FACT: These statistics were made up. The real number was a mere fraction of this. Abortionist Bernard...

Beto O’Rourke is running to replace Ted Cruz. Literally. Sweat pours off his lean, 6’ 4”-frame as the El Paso Democrat jogs along the southern bank of the Trinity River surrounded by 300-odd supporters and curious voters jogging along with him. Incredibly, they have shown up at 8 a.m. on a Sunday to join him for a double shot of politics and cardio. In between panting breaths, O’Rourke explains to me the origins of this novel campaign event, which has him running several miles under the Texas sun, stopping in the middle to take questions and lingering at the end...

Netflix has set Jennifer Aniston to play the U.S. president, and Tig Notaro her first lady in First Ladies, a political comedy being written by Notaro and Stephanie Allynne, based on their original pitch. This one’s not your usual White House comedy. First Ladies is a political comedy about America’s first female President and her wife, The First Lady. When Beverly and Kasey Nicholson move into the White House, they’ll prove that behind every great woman… is another great woman. Pic’s produced by Notaro, Allynne, Aniston, and Adam McKay, Will Ferrell, Jessica Elbaum and Betsy Koch for Gloria Sanchez Productions....

As Twitchy told you last night, CNN revealed how a ragtag group of high school students were able to put together a massive national protest in a matter of weeks: View image on Twitter View image on Twitter CNN ✔ @CNN How the Parkland students pulled off a massive national protest in only 5 weeks https://cnn.it/2Gf2ynI 1:01 AM - Mar 27, 2018 1,651 885 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy Not that anyone was really wondering, of course. CNN ✔ @CNN 27 Mar How the Parkland students pulled off a massive national protest in only 5...

Editor’s Note: This story contains spoilers for the film Black Panther. Black Panther’s Wakanda is a near-utopic vision of how a country could look; perhaps the best depiction of Afrofuturism ever captured on film. There were thriving and ideological-diverse cities surrounded by expansive and bucolic countrysides. There was modern technology perfectly weaved in to cultural tradition, a melding that was symbiotic instead of antagonistic. And while I didn’t see this happening during the movie, I’m sure Wakanda has amazing bottomless brunches. Unfortunately, a present-day attempt to recreate Wakanda would be unrealistic. Mainly because we’re roughly 20,000 years behind Wakandan tech....

The latest mass shooting, which claimed 17 lives at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, was a horrible tragedy. But that's no excuse for the flurry of stories parroting a gun control advocacy group's false claims about school shootings. In the immediate wake of the shooting, headlines starting appearing at major news sites: "There have already been 18 school shootings in the US this year" — ABC News "18 school shootings in 45 days — Florida massacre is one of many tragedies in 2018"—CNBC "18 school shootings in US in 2018"— AFP "U.S. averages a school shooting every 2.5...

What to make of the career of Jann Wenner, who is selling the magazine he founded, Rolling Stone, capping a remarkable career in publishing? In the Age of Trump, we are instructed to admire successful businessmen, those who have, as the president likes to put it, “built a great company.” Wenner is nothing if not that. In 1967, he borrowed $7,500 from his family, including his future in-laws, about $50,000 in contemporary terms. Wenner is a child of privilege (he was a few years behind Maureen Reagan at the Chadwick School) and that loan was nothing to sniff at, but...

The University of Cincinnati attempts to draw connections between the amount of anger an individual exhibits, and their political preferences. “The motorist tailgating you on the highway might be doing more than just getting you upset — they could also be influencing your political views,” Koester wrote. Salerno, an assistant professor of marketing, and a second professor from University of Manitoba, came to this bizarre conclusion upon “multiple studies that included more than 1,000 participants.”

We are all going to have to just accept that Hilary Clinton is not going away. Especially now that her life story will be forever memorialized in an American Girl book. The book is called "A Girl Named Hillary: The True Story of Hillary Clinton," and is sure to be a lovely read. The book description explains: "The A Girl Named series tells the stories of how ordinary American girls grew up to be extraordinary American women. It took a lot of determination, courage, and confidence to become the first woman to be nominated for president by a major political party. A...

The movie Zuckerberg is a highly credible character, a computer genius located somewhere on the autistic spectrum with minimal to non-existent social skills. But that’s not what the man is really like. In real life, Zuckerberg was studying for a degree with a double concentration in computer science and – this is the part people tend to forget – psychology. People on the spectrum have a limited sense of how other people’s minds work; autists, it has been said, lack a ‘theory of mind’. Zuckerberg, not so much. He is very well aware of how people’s minds work and in...