Free Republic

British Army sergeant majors are being urged to stop shouting at junior recruits lest they upset their delicate sensibilities. The use of calm, soothing words more in the style of avuncular footballer David Beckham and less like Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in the film Full Metal Jacket has been offered up as an alternative model. In the 1987 film Hartman has responsibility for a bunch of Vietnam recruits who quickly learn just who is in charge at boot camp: Regimental Sergeant Majors (RSMs) have typically always used shouted orders in the same style to enforce discipline and focus attention on the...

Author Sir Salman Rushdie has said he is "pleased" the man who tried to kill him in a knife attack in 2022 has received the maximum possible prison sentence. Hadi Matar, 27, was jailed for 25 years earlier this month for attempted murder after repeatedly stabbing Sir Salman on a New York lecture stage. "I was pleased that he got the maximum available, and I hope he uses it to reflect upon his deeds," Sir Salman told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. The attack left the award-winning writer blind in one eye, with damage to his liver and a paralysed...

When I look at that party’s history I see a consistent and frightening pattern. Southern Democrats owned the slaves, started the Civil War, formed the KKK, opposed passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, and passed Jim Crow laws and the Great Society legislation that decimated the nuclear family. They currently promote the losing side of every 90/10 issue facing America, such as championing MS-13 gang-bangers and Islamic terrorists and placing graphic pornography in K-12 schools. How likely is it that a party would consistently choose actions that are harmful to those they claim to serve? “Once is happenstance,...

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz Merz said that Germany, France, Great Britain and the United States have lifted range restrictions on military supplies to Ukraine - Kyiv can attack positions throughout Russia with long-range weapons This opens the way to the supply of German Taurus cruise missiles

A US tourist was arrested for entering North Sentinel Island, where the inhabitants shun all contact with the outside world. The tourist had carried a coconut and Diet Coke as a "gift" for the Sentinelese people. An American tourist was arrested for entering a restricted island with an isolated tribe carrying a can of Diet Coke and a coconut, Indian police said on Thursday. The 24-year-old man entered North Sentinel Island, part of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands off India's southeastern coast. He wanted to meet the Sentinelese people, who are untouched by the modern world. Numbering around 150, the...

Hate crime hoaxer Jussie Smollett has once again repeated the debunked claim that he was randomly jumped during one snowy night in Chicago six years ago. In an Instagram post on Saturday, Smollett accused the city of Chicago working as part of a conspiracy to discredit his claim of being a victim of a hate crime. “Over six years ago, after it was reported I had been jumped, City Officials in Chicago set out to convince the public that I willfully set an assault against myself. This false narrative has left a stain on my character that will not soon...

Trump’s meeting with Ramaphosa was a long-overdue reality check on South Africa’s hostility, hypocrisy, and dependence on U.S. aid and trade. Nothing highlights the poverty of the media-Democratic mind than its weary use of echo-chamber buzzwords. Once Pravda-like instructions are sent out from DNC operatives, mindless media anchors mouth them in lockstep as gospel. So, it was with the supposed “ambush” when South African President Cyril Ramaphosa met Donald Trump. Trump indeed pressed his guest on a number of issues, from the decades-long targeted killing of white agriculturalists on their farms by black hit teams that have totaled somewhere between...

Video Last week, the combat team of the Givati Brigade, under the command of Division 162, began operations in northern Gaza. The forces eliminated dozens of terrorists and destroyed terror infrastructure, including several booby-trapped buildings and underground tunnels used by Gaza terrorist organizations. During one operation, the forces identified several terrorists who posed a threat. IAF aircraft, in coordination with the Givati Brigade's firepower, eliminated the terrorists in an airstrike. ..... Pics

The Missouri Legislature had once again killed a bill to restore the ability to legally exercise rights protected by the Second Amendment on public transportation. Senator Schnelting has been promoting these bills for years. They make progress, then they are killed by inaction. From mo.gov: On April 10, HB328 passed the House, 106 to 45. HB328 was sent to the Senate. On April 22, the Senate Transportation, Infrastructure and Public Safety committee held a hearing on the bill. On April 24, an “SCS” (Senate Committee Substitute) was passed. No other action was taken on the bill before the Senate adjourned...

There seems to have been a full-scale war mob attack there, including an attempt to get to the U.S. Embassy, but no one outside of social media is covering it. We’re all familiar with the old philosophical question asking, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” In other words, do things actually happen if we don’t notice them? For infants, they don’t, which is why peek-a-boo is such a fun game. If they don’t see you, you’re gone, making your visual return magical. But does the same...

French President Emmanuel Macron's office on Monday downplayed an incident in which his wife appeared to push his face away as he arrived in Vietnam to begin a Southeast Asian tour. Video shot by The Associated Press in Hanoi on Sunday evening shows Macron's plane door opening, revealing him. His wife Brigitte's arms then emerge from the left of the open doorway, she places both hands on her husband's face and gives it a shove. The president appears startled but quickly recovers and turns to wave through the open door. She remains concealed by the aircraft body, making it impossible...

President Donald Trump on Sunday blasted Harvard’s secrecy when it comes to the university’s large number of students from foreign countries. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said: “Why isn’t Harvard saying that almost 31% of their students are from FOREIGN LANDS, and yet those countries, some not at all friendly to the United States, pay NOTHING toward their student’s education, nor do they ever intend to. Nobody told us that! “We want to know who those foreign students are, a reasonable request since we give Harvard BILLIONS OF DOLLARS, but Harvard isn’t exactly forthcoming. We want those names...

Michael Ledeen, the controversial national security journalist, scholar and schemer who died at age 83 on May 17 from complications following a stroke, played a significant covert role leading up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, as well as other productions of false intelligence for political ends. Ledeen was featured prominently in The Italian Letter, a 2007 book by SpyTalk Contributing Editor Peter Eisner and Knut Royce, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter at Newsday. Obituaries published this week gave scant attention to the key role Ledeen played in fabricating intelligence to justify the eventually disastrous military campaign to oust...

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) defended the House GOP’s proposed changes to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) on Sunday, arguing that states will better administer food stamp benefits if they have to shoulder more of the costs. “The states are not properly administering this because they don’t have enough skin in the game,” Johnson told CBS’s Margaret Brennan in an interview on “Face the Nation.” The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which the GOP-controlled House narrowly passed early Thursday morning after an overnight session, calls for the federal share of SNAP costs to drop from the current 100...

The National Park Service and its partners will honor those who gave their lives in defense of the country through virtual and in-person programming throughout the National Mall this Memorial Day weekend. If You Go: • The monuments and memorials on the National Mall, including the Korean War Veterans Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, World War II Memorial, are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. • National Park Service rangers and volunteers (easily identifiable by their bright yellow hats and shirts) are on duty at all of the veterans memorials on Memorial Day to answer questions and...

Top Democratic operatives and donors have been hobnobbing in “luxury hotels” while trying to figure out why the party is shedding men and the working class — moves that have liberals have slammed as out of touch. In one instance, liberal super PAC Future Forward hosted a gathering in the Ritz-Carlton resort in wealthy Half Moon Bay, California, to apprise donors on what went wrong in 2024. Prominent figures such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) were reported in attendance. Some of the elite gatherings featured appetizers like short-rib tostones, mini lobster rolls, beef...

At least 11 people were taken to hospitals after a shooting Sunday night in a South Carolina beach town, authorities said. Horry County Police did not give the conditions of anyone hurt in the shooting that happened about 9:30 p.m. in Little River.

President Trump in a new post on Truth Social on Sunday night accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of having gone “absolutely” crazy and said if he did not stop what he was doing, it would lead to the downfall of his country. The social media comments came after Trump had issued some of his toughest comments about Putin earlier in remarks to reporters in New Jersey. “I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY!,” Trump wrote. “He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and...

Kīlauea volcano has erupted with tall lava fountain

Conservative commentator Candace Owens revealed on social media this week that she was allegedly the target of a violent death threat that led to the arrest and guilty plea of New Jersey man, Haim Braverman. Owens took to X and shared details of the alleged ordeal, which began in September of last year following her widely publicized debate with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on Piers Morgan’s show... “My family endured a series of attacks led by deranged zionists,” Owens wrote in her social media post. “On the 21st of that month, we were contacted by the FBI and informed that their...