Free Republic

(CNN)Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden sounded an alarm Wednesday about GOP moves to limit voting access, saying his "single greatest concern" is that President Donald Trump will "try to steal this election." But, the former vice president said, he is "absolutely convinced" the military would escort Trump from the White House if he loses the election but refuses to leave office. Asked by Trevor Noah on "The Daily Show" if he's ever considered what would happen if Trump would not leave the White House if he loses, Biden responded, "Yes, I have." Biden pointed to Trump's history of spreading...

Jim Jones’ sinister grip on San Francisco How the Peoples Temple cult leader ensnared Harvey Milk and other progressive icons “Season of the Witch,” the new book by Salon founder David Talbot, tells the story of the wild and bloody birth of “San Francisco values.” The following excerpt – Part 1 in a three-part series -- recounts one of the darker dramas before the ultimate triumph of those values. Jim Jones, the strange and charismatic leader of Peoples Temple, proved a master at politically wiring San Francisco in the mid-1970s. The driven preacher had begun his climb up the political...

Midnight, 19 May 1961. A crisp frost had descended on Turin’s city centre which was deserted and deathly silent. Well, almost. Two brothers, aged 20 and 23, raced through the grid-like streets (that would later be made famous by the film The Italian Job) in a tiny Fiat 600, which screamed in protest as they bounced across one cobbled piazza after another at top speed. The Fiat was loaded with dozens of iron pipes and aluminium sheets which poked out of windows and were strapped to the roof. The car screeched to a halt outside the city’s tallest block of...

The Economist magazine recently observed that in the 40 years following World War II, "America and Europe seemed to be growing more like one another in almost every way that matters." Demographically, economically and politically, the United States and Europe seemed to be converging. Then, around the middle of the 1980's, the U.S. and Europe started to diverge. The American work ethic shifted, so that the average American now works 350 hours a year — 9 or 10 weeks — longer than the average European. American fertility rates bottomed out around 1985, and began rising. Native-born American women now have...

He’s been called a modern-day Rip Van Winkle of the Ozarks. Widely reported is the story of an Arkansas man who 19 years ago was involved in a truck accident and has been in a coma ever since. Within the past few weeks he’s started talking and it’s clear he doesn’t know what’s happened during all those years. He thought, for example, that Ronald Reagan still occupied the White House. Subsequent coverage indicates the original story was somewhat inaccurate. He hadn’t been in a coma all these years, but only for the first three months after the mishap. Since then,...