Free Republic

Vladimir Putin's police state has become so repressive that a popular joke from Soviet times has resurfaced and been repurposed for those Russians today who dare to acknowledge the truth about the autocratic regime they are living under. It tells the story of two FSB (successor of the KGB) agents who are having a beer after work. The first one, Ivan, says to his colleague, 'Tell me, Dmitry. What do you really think about Putin?' and Dmitry replies, 'The same as you do.' Ivan thinks for a moment and says: 'In that case, it is my duty to arrest you.'

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer secretly recorded Trump discussing payments to a former Playboy model who said she had an affair with him. The president’s current personal lawyer confirmed the conversation and said it showed Trump did nothing wrong, The New York Times reported Friday. ABC News and The Washington Post confirmed the report as well. Citing lawyers and others familiar with the recording, The Times said attorney Michael Cohen made the recording two months before Trump’s 2016 election. The newspaper said the FBI seized the recording during an April raid on Cohen’s office amid...

BANGKOK — A Belarusian escort with close ties to a powerful Russian oligarch said from behind bars in Bangkok on Monday that she had more than 16 hours of audio recordings that could help shed light on Russian meddling in United States elections. The escort, Anastasia Vashukevich, said she would hand over the recordings if the United States granted her asylum. She faces criminal charges and deportation to Belarus after coming under suspicion of working in Thailand without a visa at a sex-training seminar in the city of Pattaya. Ms. Vashukevich, who described herself as close to the Russian aluminum...

GANGNEUNG, South Korea (AP) — The first notes of Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” had just played when Gabriella Papadakis suddenly became aware that people were about to see a whole lot more of her shape than she had planned. The French ice dancer’s glittering emerald costume at the Olympics had come unhooked at the neckline and later in the routine her left breast was exposed live on television. When the clasp became unhooked, the 22-year-old Papadakis was more worried about holding up her outfit than making sure her twizzles and rhumba were in sync. Her swinging short program with...

Sorry, everybody. We’re just not that special. In more than five decades of scanning the heavens, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has found no sign of alien life. Yet now two American astronomers, in the scientific equivalent of a back-of-the-envelope calculation, are estimating that over the course of its history the universe has seen at least half a trillion technologically advanced species. Remember, 420 billion intelligent civilizations is the “pessimistic” estimate. But sadly—or happily, depending on your view of aliens—it doesn’t make us any less alone.

A picture is worth 1,000 words or so we’re told. Here are a few: despicable, appalling, predatory and unprofessional. That barely hints at the disgusting behavior Reuters is displaying in its quest to use a crotch photo of a 17-year-old girl to make money. We thought we had seen it all, so to speak. Perez Hilton, who has turned all things sleazy into a business model, was smacked down by society for posting a revealing photo of singer/actress Miley Cyrus. After Hilton’s lame defense of showing an up-skirt photo of the girl who he has previously called a “Disney Whore"...

In a media marketplace heavy on celebrity news, stories are interesting, but pictures reign supreme. Want proof? Just look at the price tags. The past few years have seen an explosive rise in the prices paid for exclusive celebrity photos. Driven by the public's desire for the nitty-gritty of celebrity life and celebrities' moves to control--and profit from--their images, the photos on our list are testament to a maturing market worth tens of millions. In Pictures: The Most Expensive Celebrity Photos In Forbes' list of the 10 most expensive celebrity photos, we surveyed top-priced photos sales in the United States...

Just lately (noticeably since the US election result) there seems to be an awful lot of anti-British sentiment on here (there always was a little but I put that down to a handful of xenophobic kiddies) What I would like to know is do most Freepers now share the low opinion that some (many) on here seem to have of our nation or is it just a small (but very vocal) minority of morons? I've enjoyed this forum (for the relatively short time that I've contributed) and have always liked Americans in general, but I now find myself reconsidering my...

Talk-radio titan Rush Limbaugh is being investigated for allegedly buying thousands of addictive painkillers from a black-market drug ring. The moralizing motormouth was turned in by his former housekeeper - who says she was Limbaugh's pill supplier for four years. Wilma Cline, 42, says Limbaugh was hooked on the potent prescription drugs OxyContin, Lorcet and hydrocodone - and went through detox twice. "There were times when I worried," Cline told the National Enquirer, which broke the story in an edition being published today. "All these pills are enough to kill an elephant - never mind a man." Cline could not...