Free Republic

Conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old father of two and founder of Turning Point USA, was shot and killed in broad daylight Wednesday at a Utah Valley University event in what Utah governor Spencer Cox described as a "political assassination." The event marked the first stop of Kirk's "American Comeback" campus tour. Sitting under his signature "Prove Me Wrong" tent, Kirk spoke for roughly 20 minutes before a single shot rang out, reportedly from roughly 200 yards away, as Kirk began to answer a question about transgender shooters. A gruesome video from the event shows a bullet hitting Kirk in...

Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed on Wednesday, pioneered a new model for conservative political advocacy, merging multi-platform media commentary with in-person gatherings and get-out-the-vote drives. Kirk, 31, was a hugely successful political field organizer, TikTok influencer, radio host, nonprofit leader and public speaker all rolled up in one telegenic figure. One minute, Kirk would be on Fox News promoting his friend President Trump’s agenda; the next, he would be on X or Instagram, inviting young people to start conservative groups at their high schools and college campuses. With Turning Point USA, the nonprofit he co-founded in 2012 at...

The signatures of a bubble collision: A collision (top left) induces a temperature modulation in the CMB temperature map (top right). The “blob” associated with the collision is identified by a large needlet response (bottom left), and the presence of an edge is determined by a large response from the edge detection algorithm (bottom right). Image credit: Feeney, et al.(PhysOrg.com) -- By looking far out into space and observing what’s going on there, scientists have been led to theorize that it all started with a Big Bang, immediately followed by a brief period of super-accelerated expansion called inflation. Perhaps this...