Free Republic

Posted on Mon, Jul. 17 Matera: A southern Italian town revives its ancient cave dwellings By Carol Pucci The Seattle Times (MCT) MATERA, Italy - Nicola Rizzi stands in front of his boyhood home where chickens and ducks used to wander, closes his eyes and smells bean soup and tomato sauce boiling on pots heated by wood fires. He was 11, a survivor in a neighborhood of windowless caves and damp walls, where animals and humans slept side-by-side and half the children born there died, among them three of his brothers and sisters. Mostly though, Rizzi remembers the smell of...

President Joe Biden is moving to surrender to China U.S. patent and trade secret protections on America's COVID-19 vaccines. Two of those vaccines, made by American-based Pfizer and Moderna, employ revolutionary mRNA technology. Specifically, the Biden administration has agreed to support a request by India and South Africa for waivers that would permit members of the World Trade Organization to not enforce laws protecting patents and trade secrets covered under the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPs). "This is a global health crisis, and the extraordinary circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures," declared U.S. Trade...

Sioux Falls, South Dakota; : A third-generation farmer filed a lawsuit today against the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is unlawfully preventing him from farming one of his fields. In 2011, a division of the Department of Agriculture ruled that a small seasonal mud puddle on Arlen Foster’s farm is protected by federal law as a wetland. Even though the federal government has no authority to regulate such puddles, the department is forcing Foster to choose between productively using his field or participating in federal programs for farmers, like crop insurance. “The government lacks the authority to insist that he...

A multimillion-dollar home in Sammamish is at the center of an ongoing investigation, as squatters continue to break in and make the home their own. “The amount of guns, drugs, etcetera that were confiscated out of that place are not for personal use or for any good reason,” Sammamish Police Chief Dan Pingrey said. “I totally recognize how frustrating it is for the neighborhood and it’s just as frustrating for us to be honest with you.” The homeowner lives overseas, but a few people living locally help maintain the home with routine checkups. One of those workers stopped by the...

The New York Times reports that "Pfizer Reaps Hundreds of Millions in Profits From Covid Vaccine." The pharma giant Pfizer earned revenues of $3.5 billion in the first three months of 2021, estimated to generate around $900 billion in profits. All the company had to do was create a safe drug that effectively alleviated the threat of the most deadly virus we've faced in over a century -- one responsible for hundreds of thousands of American deaths and a cost of trillions in economic damage -- and then manufacture and dispense hundreds of millions of doses in the shortest span...

A nightmare facing a couple who purchased a home for cash perfectly illustrates why having the government over-involved in the rental market is a disaster even for people who never meant to lease their property but are plagued by a squatter. A couple who bought a house in good faith, now find themselves mired in California’s labyrinthine tenants’ laws, exacerbated by the new COVID rules. Riverside is a large suburban area located about 50 miles east of downtown Los Angeles – although it’s still considered part of the Greater Los Angeles area. Tracie and Myles Albert, a young couple in...

The increasing encroachment of government regulations, pontificating politicians and the enforcement of Social Justice schemes have led to a loss of understanding of the terms private property and property rights. Once it was understood that the unauthorized entering of private property was a violation to the utmost. The property owner was justified and supported in taking necessary actions to remove the trespasser and secure that land. Today, such ideas in the new America are considered radical, old fashioned, out of touch, and even reprehensible. The homeowner can be arrested for defending against an armed intruder. The intruder can actually sue...

VALENTINE, Neb. – “Land: see Snatch.” On first look, the Biden Administration’s “30 x 30” plan looks like a scheme cooked up by Hedley Lamarr, the main villain from Mel Brooks’ “Blazing Saddles.” However, far from the comedic genius of the late Harvey Korman, the new Federal land grab is a serious threat to private property owners in the United States. And it’s moving fast.. Just a few days into office, President Joe Biden released a flurry of executive orders, among them being through Executive Order 14008, “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad” (86 Fed. Reg. 7,619), which...

Myrick, 37, had worked with Roxy for four years, inspecting commercial and residential properties, before he was laid off from the company in March. Although the dog had been provided by M&M, which covered her food and veterinary bills, she’s lived with Myrick and his wife, ­Joana, since he fetched Roxy from a dog-training facility in Florida. (M&M paid for her training.) But things turned ruff when, not long after the pandemic started, he chose to be laid off rather than pivot and work for M&M as a COVID cleaner without Roxy. He returned his company vehicle, credit cards and...

Private property rights and personal responsibility saved the Plymouth colony from the edge of extinction and laid the economic foundation for a free and prosperous nation. It is widely known that the early Pilgrims came to the New World to escape religious persecution. What is lesser known is that their spiritual adventure was also a commercial enterprise. Today’s self-identified democratic socialists like to claim real socialism has never been tried in America, but they need to brush up on their history. The Pilgrims did try it — and it failed. In the early 17th century, King James I chartered a...

Portland’s descent into blue-haired, gender-confused madness is something new in America. The city’s criminal justice system tolerates vandalism and assaults by communist thugs, while punishing normal Americans who dare to protect themselves. Street commie antics in Washington, D.C. last weekend suggest this political rot is spreading. If we give anti-American Portlandesque district attorneys a bit more time, the scoundrels may turn a blind eye to more violent crimes as well. The arsonists are practicing. Chile provides an example of how this could go. In the early 1970s, under the Marxist president Salvador Allende, Chile’s criminal justice system began ignoring crimes...

many of today’s young people neither understand nor respect the importance of property rights in a free society.. ... Philadelphia .. at least 30 police officers have been injured in the violent unrest, while dozens of people have been arrested for rioting or vandalism. Mobs have descended on Walmart and rushed out carrying TVs, while other agitators ransacked Footlocker for new sneakers. The full number of businesses ravaged by the destruction is increasing and still being tallied. ... This latest outbreak simply adds to the thousands of businesses, from Chicago to Minneapolis and beyond, that have been rioted, ransacked, burned...

While a decision in Google v. Oracle isn’t expected for a few months, the justices’ pointed questioning at the Big Tech giant indicates Google broke the law to get ahead. Michael J. PappasBy Michael J. Pappas OCTOBER 14, 2020 The Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Google v. Oracle on Oct. 7. The case involves several legal issues, all of which boil down to one principal question: Did Google cheat and steal its way to the top? 

While a decision on the case isn’t expected for a few months, the justices’ pointed questioning at the Big Tech giant points to...

Officials from the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) knocked down giant white letters spelling “TRUMP” on the hillside of someone’s private property on Tuesday, citing it as a “life and safety issue.” “This was a life and safety issue because there were concerns about distracted driving,” Chief Public Information Officer for Caltrans Lauren Wonder said.

Bill Clinton’s land management rules and other liberal policies paved the way for future debilitating wildfires ... Zybach warned of potential disastrous wildfires shortly after Clinton signed a slate of rules in the mid-1990s that drastically reduced logging and road creation on federal lands. ... Shortly before leaving office in 2001, Clinton limited the ability of the United States Forest Service to thin out a dense thicket of foliage and downed trees on federal land... created a ticking time bomb ... “If you don’t start managing these forests, then they are going to start burning up. Thirty years later, they...

On the fifth anniversary of the notorious spill of 3 million gallons of heavily contaminated acid mine water from the Gold King Mine in southwestern Colorado, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the State of Utah announced an agreement that ends the state’s lawsuit. Neither the EPA nor the contractors involved at the Gold King spill site are entirely off the hook for their alleged missteps that resulted in downstream damages. Lawsuits filed by the Navajo Nation, the State of New Mexico, and a group of Navajo farmers and ranchers have been consolidated, and discovery is proceeding, with a projected...

The government does a lot that is absurd, foolish, and wrong, but the last thing we should cut is the state’s role in protecting our lives and property. The government does a lot that is absurd, foolish, and wrong, but the last thing we should cut is the state’s role in protecting our lives and property.

A Virginia sheriff has apologized to a black pastor who was arrested for pulling a gun on a group of white neighbors as they allegedly assaulted and threatened to kill him.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Thursday that no one in the state can be evicted for not paying rent due to the coronavirus until August 20. "New York State will extend the moratorium on evictions for those facing COVID-related hardship for an additional 60 days - until August 20," he tweeted. "The No. 1 issue that people talk to me about probably is rent, and fear about being able to pay their rent, and this just takes that issue off the table until August 20," he said at his daily coronavirus briefing. Cuomo also said officials will ban any...

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has filed a lawsuit against Walton County in Florida, and their Sheriff’s Office, for threatening to arrest him and his neighbors if they use their private beaches. Huckabee teamed up with several other residents to file a federal complaint over a county ordinance that closed all beaches, including the ones on private property, which they contend stops them from “being able to use or even set foot in their own backyards.” The lawsuit was filed on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida and argues that their constitutional rights are...