Free Republic

Historic Big Boy No. 4014 Steam Locomotive to Tour the East Coast Union Pacific Railroad, founded by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862, unveiled its plans today to celebrate the United States, its amazing history and the people behind its unparalleled success story with two new locomotives and the first Big Boy steam tour to the East Coast in honor of America’s 250th anniversary. Big Boy, the world’s largest operating steam locomotive, will journey to Philadelphia for Fourth of July, with stops planned in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania. Our nation’s origin will be celebrated with a beautiful No....

Seventeen years ago, then-President Barack Hussein Obama’s Department of Justice launched a witch hunt against four Connecticut police officers who’d been rooting out illegal alien fraud. The four East Haven Police Department officers — Jason Zullo, John Miller, David Cari, and Dennis Spaulding — “were branded as criminals, their lives and families torn apart,” according to the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund (LELDF). But they weren’t criminals — they were “committed, decorated professionals engaged in the unglamorous work of enforcing the law in a community plagued by fraudulent vehicle registrations, gang activity, and illegal enterprises.” Years later, Spaulding is now...

Dancing, singing popular song based on Rabbi Nachman of Breslov's saying: "The world is a narrow bridge, and the main thing is to have no fear."

Let me start by saying there is a lot of misleading information circling current events, some of it by what CTH considers very dubious alt-right voices. I suggest just to be leery of “exclusive” insider information. There are motives and angles that are not obvious and would not be comfortable for those who follow events closely. [As an example, the election/voting information -connected to the Intelligence Community- and recently outlined by John Solomon, is not new. What Solomon is rehashing is the background information exposed by Catherine Engelbrecht and True the Vote surrounding Chinese involvement in prior elections (Konnech etc.)....

President Donald Trump has waived the Jones Act for 60 days to mitigate supply disruptions resulting from conflict in the Middle East. This raises a fundamental question: why do policymakers regularly suspend this law during emergencies yet leave it in place the rest of the time?The Jones Act is an antiquated 106-year-old law officially known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 that places draconian restrictions on the use of ships to transport goods within the United States. According to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, the waiver allowing the use of foreign vessels to transport goods “will allow vital...

For 15 years the FBI was engaged in a landmark investigation into the largest Islamic-based charity in the United States, called The Holy Land Foundation. The organization was operating as a front for Muslim terror groups, funneling cash from western countries to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, until they were finally put on trial in 2008. Convicted leaders were known as the “Holy Land Five,” and included Shukri Abu Baker, Ghassan Elashi, Mufid Abdulqader, Abdulrahman Odeh, and Mohammad El-Mezain. Among the documents seized from these individuals during the investigation was a strategic paper drafted by senior Muslim Brotherhood operative...

One of the many obnoxious characteristics of present-day liberal elitists that makes them so detestable is their deep superiority complex, their Sophomania, their delusional belief that they are intellectually---as well as morally---superior to everyone else, particularly conservatives whom they see as Neanderthals. They truly believe they have a monopoly on intelligence and morality. Camille Paglia put it well: “Many highly educated, upper-middle-class Democrats regard themselves as exemplars of ‘compassion’ (which they have elevated into a supreme political principle) yet they routinely assail Trump voters as ignorant, callous hate-mongers.” This smug Sopjomania of theirs, combined with their self-righteous stance, is something...

One often hears Democrat politicians decrying the lack of common civility abroad in the land these days. In so doing, they generally blame Normal Americans—largely but not exclusively Republicans—for that failing. But how often do we see the Normal American owners or managers of restaurants or other public accommodations, kick Democrat politicians or functionaries out of their establishments because their presence “makes them feel unsafe” or might be “perceived as a lack of support for the community that makes up the majority of our team.” I can’t recall any instance of that happening, ever. That’s not surprising. Normal Americans aren’t...

San Francisco’s streets have seen their fair share of oddities — but a gun-toting man with a pet duck riding in the backseat of a purple Ferrari may take the cake. Police arrested 51-year-old Brian Currier on Monday after he allegedly waved a gun at a pedestrian, authorities said. The flamboyant gunslinger then barricaded himself inside his apartment in the luxe Nob Hill neighborhood, prompting an hours-long standoff, according to cops. Neighbors told The San Francisco Standard that Currier was a local curiosity, often spotted zipping around in his flashy purple Ferrari with his duck, Daisy, like a loyal sidekick....

Sen. Ron Johnson's plea came after Just the News earlier this week disclosed declassified documents showing Chinese intelligence gained access to multiple states' voter registration data and conducted some voter influence efforts. The intelligence agencies chose to keep that information quiet because spy agency analysts opposed Trump and his policies. The chairman of the Senate's most powerful investigative panel is urging President Donald Trump to declassify and make public any U.S. intelligence showing China's efforts to gain access to American voter registration data or to use measures to influence voters dating back to 2020. "I wish they briefed the American...

The reigning NBA champion OKC Thunder will not make the traditional White House visit prior to its road game against the Washington Wizards on Saturday. A team spokesperson told The Athletic that a "timing issue" prevented the visit from happening. OKC had a road game against the Brooklyn Nets on Wednesday. “We have been in touch with the White House and we are appreciative and grateful for the communication we have had, but the timing just didn’t work out,” the Thunder said in its statement shared with The Athletic.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul became the latest blue-state leader to lament the flight of wealthy tax-paying residents to Republican-led tax havens like Florida, Alaska, Wyoming and Tennessee, calling millionaires who stayed in the Empire State to fund its massive social services net “patriotic.” With Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declaring his jurisdiction a “free state” for transplants wishing to leave liberal policies and taxation behind, blue states like New York, Illinois and California are squeezing and at times pursuing natives who emigrate to financially greener pastures — while at the same time, some governors are blasting conservative voters as inauthentic...

A man in Florida for a bachelor party humiliated his friend by stealing all the women they met at Miami Beach bars, then stabbed the pal after he became "agitated" and confronted him, cops say. Olajuwon Dickerson, 32, of Massachusetts, is charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon after attacking the victim while partying with him and two other friends, according to an arrest affidavit obtained by Law&Crime.

There is little good to be said about war, even when the fight is one of good vs. evil. Lives lost, property, cities and infrastructures destroyed, and billions of dollars spent are among the tragic outcomes of war. Even when freedom and democracy ultimately triumph over tyranny and oppression, the cost of war is high for everyone involved. For Americans, one positive aspect of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran is the strong position in which Americans find themselves in regard to our energy independence. While gas pump prices are predictably seeing some spikes, the strong U.S. position in regard to...

Republicans cheered “colorblind” meritocracy—but in practice, affirmative action shifted opportunity from white voters to Asians, leaving the party’s base unprotected. This is part one of a three-part series examining the Republican Party’s race-neutral ‘colorblind’ strategy and its effects on its core voters.For decades, white Americans have voted Republican in large numbers. They donate, they volunteer, they show up in midterms. They defend the Constitution, talk about free speech, wave the flag without embarrassment. They are, by every measurable standard, the party’s backbone. And yet, if you look closely, something strange has happened. The Republican Party has built an entire political...

Word is that things are a little rough down in Cuba right now. In my post of February 23, I reported that Cuba had become the first nation in the world to achieve the climate activists’ Holy Grail of “Net Zero” carbon emissions. I had looked around for news of the big celebration of Cuba’s achievement, but I couldn’t find any mention of it. If I had understood things correctly — and I think I had — Net Zero was supposed to deliver abundant and much cheaper electricity from the free wind and sun, lowering everybody’s energy costs, creating jobs,...

"I can tell the entire internet has doomer fatigue." — Catturd on X. The mysterious financial repo markets — which practically no one outside of banking understands (and even some banking insiders don’t) — are going wonky again like they did in September 2019, just before You-Know-What sucker-punched the world with lockdowns, stolen elections, and fake vaccines. Half of America still hasn’t got its head straight. . . and here we go again. The private equity outfits, like giant BlackRock, are wobbling so hard that they had to “gate redemptions” — meaning, investors can’t pull their money out of funds...

In 2005, anti-liberty/gun cracktivists were having a hard time. They were losing at the ballot box and having little luck disarming the American public in state legislatures and the Congress. The public had long ago caught on to their common and never-ending lies, so they hit on a new strategy: lawfare. They would sue gun manufacturers for the third party, illegal and negligent acts of others who misused their lawful products. Sure, that flew in the face of basic principles of tort law—you can’t sue people for the acts of others about which they have no knowledge or ability...

Cyber espionage is one of the unconventional methods recommended for achieving global dominance in the 1999 book Unrestricted Warfare by People’s Liberation Army (PLA) colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. They state that America, though far more powerful than China, is vulnerable to asymmetric warfare, which has “greater destructive force” than military action. Like other asymmetric strategies, cyber warfare blurs the boundaries between war and peace as well as between military and civilian domains. Consequently, covert attacks continue without formal declarations of war: research and technology are stolen from universities, corporations, and leading institutions; sensitive networks and grids, both military...

Under the pressure of extreme energy prices, the ideologically driven miscalculations of the EU -- and Germany in particular -- are revealing their fatal, destructive magnitude. Europeans must do everything in their power to make the Strait of Hormuz navigable again. The Hormuz crisis threatens to become a catastrophe for Europeans. No region is as dependent on oil and gas supplies as Europe, while the United States can operate from a comparatively sovereign position of energy self-sufficiency. Precisely for this reason, Europeans should have a vital interest in securing the Strait of Hormuz militarily in order to safeguard their energy...