Free Republic

California regulators have blocked @SpaceX launches because they disagree with @elonmusk 's politics. This is a blatant violation of the First Amendment and a gross abuse of power, even in increasingly totalitarian California

It’s been obvious for years that China has a Potemkin economy, kept alive by slave labor, market bubbles, and government underwriting. it can’t last forever. The latest grim forecast about the economy comes from Peter St Onge, an economist with a much deeper fund of knowledge about and understanding of the Chinese economy than I could have in a thousand lifetimes.The biggest hint that the Chinese economy was in trouble was the demise of Evergrande, a massive property developer in China. The bankruptcy was huge, with the company’s assets valued at a probably inflated $245 billion and debts of $300...

In response to a criminal complaint filed by a nonprofit, an Ohio judicial panel on Saturday decided not to issue arrest warrants for former President Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance after they spread false claims about Haitian migrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. During his debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, last month, Trump, the GOP nominee, repeated a claim that Haitian migrants in Springfield were "eating the pets." Vance, a U.S. senator from Ohio, has also spread the false claim. Meanwhile, ABC News moderator David Muir fact-checked Trump during the September 10...

Portions of the San Fernando Valley will get an extra set of eyes to help fight crime, as 100 automated license plate readers are going up in the northwest area. Earlier this year, L.A. Councilmember John Lee allocated $500,000 to purchase, install and maintain the cameras to help combat crime in the Valley. The ALPR cameras assist law enforcement in tracking and recording license plates as they pass through, to narrow the search for vehicles tied to crimes. The system then uses optical character recognition to compare the plates with hot vehicles of interest. Data stored can also help connect...

With a month to go until the election, the 'Deep State' is now going full throttle to make sure Harris is elected...First, they have ensured Jack Smith has put the "lawfare" attacks against Trump back in the headlines. There was absolutely no reason to open the sealed documents in the case before the election. Second, the delay in the dockworkers strike is huge. It keeps the economy from being damaged before the election, and keeps Biden and Harris from having to do anything about it. Another huge win for the democrats--as I am sure Deep State pressure was involved in...

City leaders, along with law enforcement officials gathered to announce the launch of a program that will install 100 license plate reading cameras in the San Fernando Valley that authorities believe will help police track criminals down. Officials said that some neighborhoods north of Rinaldi Street in Porter Ranch have some of the highest crime rates in the city, which is why several cameras have already been installed in the area. “Last year, the Devonshire District reported that homes north of this very street experienced a 103% jump in home burglaries,” District 12 Councilman Jon Lee said at the event....

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) is calling on Big Tech to censor alleged election misinformation, conveniently ignoring his own history of propagating the debunked Trump-Russia collusion narrative. Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff is now demanding that major tech companies take aggressive action to combat the spread of so-called “misinformation” and “disinformation” ahead of the 2024 election. However, Schiff’s sudden concern about election integrity rings hollow given his prominent role in spreading one of the most damaging political conspiracy theories in recent memory — the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. In a letter sent this week to the CEOs of Meta, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok,...

Tyranny results, and there are too many indicators out there of a totalitarian police state in our midst. It's an unfortunate reality that millions of Americans lack convictions founded in logic, reason, and history, instead relying on feelings as their primary touchstone. They seek out misinformation sources that aligns with their emotional needs, codifying deep divisions in their political leanings. The Kamaa Harris campaign's minimal information tactic reveals another divide we have glossed over too much: how to make sense of the information available. The Harris campaign is mining a vein they call 'joy,' which I call disinformation, curated especially...

WASHINGTON — Ron Wyden, Oregon's senior U.S. senator, introduced legislation Thursday that would overhaul the U.S. Supreme Court and "restore public trust" in the institution, his office said in a statement. The "Judicial Modernization and Transparency Act" would make a number of significant changes to the highest court and the federal circuit courts beneath it, including an overall expansion of the court itself. "The Supreme Court is in crisis and bold solutions are necessary to restore the public trust," Wyden said.

An FBI whistleblower has issued a chilling warning to the American people while testifying before U.S. Congress. Veteran FBI staff operations specialist Marcus Allen was called a witness during the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government hearing on Wednesday. During a powerful and emotional statement to his fellow Americans, Allen urged “brothers and sisters of all faiths” to “pray” and stock up on food, water, guns, and ammunition. Fighting back tears, he also advised citizens to connect with “three to four friends in your neighborhood and promise to come to each other’s mutual aid.” Allen issued the...

Nearly two-thirds of Americans conceal their political opinions on contentious issues in public, according to a new Populace Research/YouGov survey. Most Americans, 58%, said they cannot express their private opinions publicly, and 61% admit to “self-silencing” their political views, according to the survey. At the same time, Americans publicly claim to have higher trust in our institutions than they do in private. Only 36% of Democrats publicly said that they trust the government to tell the truth, but only 5% agreed with the statement in private, according to the survey. Similarly, 42% of Democrats publicly report that they trust the...

Ned Ryun has written a new book, American Leviathan, and I was fortunate to get my hands on an advance copy. If you don’t know Ned, he’s the founder of American Majority and Voter Gravity, grassroots organizations that specialize in fighting the culture war at the local level and electing America First conservatives. On cable news channels and in his writing, he’s an eloquent defender of the Constitution, limited government, and the American Republic as the Founding Fathers intended. I highly recommend that you read American Leviathan and share it with friends — especially friends who struggle to see clearly...

Editor’s Note: The thought police at Google immediately slapped a restraining order on this editorial — as they now do with everything we publish about “climate change” to punish us for not toeing the line. Here is the notice we received from them:What do the climate activists really want? Do they have nothing more in mind than a noble crusade to prevent the burning sky from falling on us? Or is the global warming scare just another piece of the revolution? It’s of course the latter. We know this because they’re constantly telling us it is. The most recent admission...

Special Counsel Jack Smith has filed superseding indictments against former President Donald Trump, despite a federal judge previously ruling Smith was unlawfully appointed to pursue. Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) has sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding to know who authorized this new indictment. In July, Judge Aileen Cannon ruled that Smith was unlawfully appointed to his prosecution of Trump for attempting to overturn the 2020 Election. As Fox News described, the prosecutor filed a new, amended indictment into a separate probe, which Rep. Gaetz suggests has even less legal validity in his letter. "It is unclear what...

This November’s election will determine whether the U.S. remains a viable constitutional republic or becomes a one-party state.The election of 2024 will be epochal for the United States. It will be as impactful on the course of the nation as the election of 1860 and the ensuing Civil War. This November’s election will determine whether the U.S. remains a viable constitutional republic or becomes a one-party state. If Vice President Kamala Harris wins, the result will be the realization of President Obama’s intent, voiced in his famous 2008 remark, to “fundamentally transform” the United States. Thus, the election is important...

The following is an excerpt from RealClearPublishing's new book by Joseph B. Sweeney, "Dangerous Injustice: How Democrats Weaponized the DOJ to Protect Biden and Persecute Trump." Examples of the Democratic Party’s corruption of the American justice system for political means can be traced back to at least former President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Continuing and escalating throughout Trump’s presidency, and after, the aggressive weaponization of federal law enforcement against Trump reached the unimaginable when on August 8, 2022, thirty Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents, armed and authorized to use deadly force, raided the home of the former president...

“As long as Columbia continues to invest and to benefit from Israeli apartheid, the students will continue to resist” The radical, anti-Israel mob has returned to the campus of Columbia University, after taking the summer off. Despite having months to prepare for this, the school looked like it was caught flat-footed, as protesters picked up right where they left off last spring. What are these people going to have to do before authorities take them seriously? As Columbia resumes classes, student activists vow to carry on with protests against Israel Columbia University resumed classes Tuesday with students sunbathing and eating...

Kamala: I will direct the DOJ to censor "misinformation and hate" online

The current unifying theme among a set of people who regard themselves as progressive, liberal, mainstream, respectable, and so on, is a spectacular punishment fetish. Arrest them arrest them arrest them arrest them, they helpfully explain about people who disagree with them about anything, ever. See, for an easy example of the discipline fetish, this quite popular reader-generated “diary” post from a few days ago at Daily Kos, arguing that Tulsi Gabbard’s “Quiet Skies” designation is a proper use of the state security apparatus against a domestic enemy: It seems to this reader that our intelligence services are merely doing...

Your long-held suspicions are confirmed, according to a report: Your phone really is listening to you. A marketing firm whose clients include Facebook and Google has privately admitted that it listens to users’ smartphone microphones and then places ads based on the information that is picked up, according to 404 Media. Cox Media Group, the television and radio news conglomerate, admitted in a pitch deck to investors that its “Active Listening” software uses artificial intelligence to “capture real-time intent data by listening to our conversations,” according to the report. “Advertisers can pair this voice-data with behavioral data to target in-market...