Free Republic

On this date in 1573, 19-year-old Frantz Schmidt — heretofore only an apprentice to his father’s craft — conducted his first solo hanging. As the body of the thief hung there, his father or perhaps another established Scharfrichter stepped forward and ritually slapped the teenage hangman three times, announcing his successful passage into the ranks of Germany’s master executioners. “Leinhardt Russ of Zeyern, a thief. Executed with the rope at the city of Steinach. Was my first execution.” Those words begin Meister Frantz’s remarkable diary* of 361 hangings, beheadings, breakings-on-the-wheel, drownings, and burnings — as well as many other sub-capital...

On this, the second day of the abortive 1832 June Rebellion in Paris, police inspector Javert is faux-executed — and mercifully released — by his longtime quarry Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo’s classic Les Miserables. Hugo’s monumental novel is structured by the implacable policeman’s pursuit of Jean Valjean, an absconded ex-con with a heart of gold. Fate brings them together accidentally at the barricade of the (historical, but now forgotten) student uprising — Javert to spy on the student revolutionaries, who unmask him, and Jean Valjean to keep an eye on his adoptive daughter’s idealistic lover. Jean Valjean’s timely contribution...

Back in 2016, The Guardian ran a glowing piece for the 40th anniversary of the publication of Richard Dawkins’s influential book The Selfish Gene, which argued that organisms (like humans) are merely the vehicles that genes use to survive and propagate themselves. The author of the piece, evolutionary biologist Adam Rutherford, wrote that the book’s fame would last forever, for “as long as we study life, it will be read.” Yet even in 2016, Dawkins’s selfish gene model had begun to come under attack from other scientists. Since then, the cracks in the theory have grown. Leading the charge against...

Just the News is reporting that the January 6th Committee rebuffed repeated efforts from a Secret Service agent to refute the false story related by Cassidy Hutchinson alleging a violent episode with Trump in the presidential limousine during the Capitol riots. The J6 Committee staff repeatedly delayed the testimony of the agent to disprove the widely reported allegation. Rep. Barry Loudermilk, the chairman of the House subcommittee that is investigating the Jan. 6 riot, has obtained a transcript of the driver’s interview that was conducted months after he first offered to testify. However, it turns out that committee staff were...

Ingram Spencer was a straight talking Calvinist libertarian candidate for the United Australia Party who disappeared into prison after two of his progressive opponents complained to police about what he said. He has not reappeared. In my interview with him he said: "Freedom of speech is not just another one of our freedoms. It is the freedom that all of our freedoms come from ,,,,,,, the government's role is to enable it's citizens to make decisions for themselves ....... In (the state of) Victoria, (people) are taught that questioning the government narrative is disgusting and something that only criminals do...

Longtime readers of mine are familiar with my overwhelming disdain for Paul Krugman, the Opinion section ultra-hack at The New York Times. I've lost count of how many columns I've written about this partisan lapdog. Krugman fancies himself a genius's genius because he once won a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. That's a Nobel-adjacent prize — he's not a laureate. Still, it's quite an achievement in his chosen field. It doesn't mean he knows anything outside of that chosen field, however. For most of the past two years, I've been writing about Krugman's stream of finger-wagging articles telling the...

The current Lawfare persecution of President Trump is not the first recent instance of a good man being done over by leftist usurpation of Western justice. Cardinal George Pell was falsely imprisoned on the testimony of one disturbed young man for an alleged sex crime supposedly committed when about twenty witnesses said that George Pell was actually in front of his church greeting parishioners after a mass. The High Court Of Australia overturned the conviction 7-0. This 78 year old man of God spent 13 months in prison. To Australia's eternal shame.

At some point in the first weeks of June 1155 — nobody knows the exact date, but it precedes June 18 — the Roman authorities disposed of Arnold of Brescia. For a decade the tongue of a fragile new Roman Republic, Arnold was a student of the cutting-edge theologian (and castrated romantic) Peter Abelard. Arnold held the temporal pretensions of the Vatican invalid, a theology sublimely according with the popular revolt that from 1143 overturned Rome’s overweening princes and even slew a pope in a melee on the Capitoline. The Senate long forsaken was re-founded by this new Republic and...

Rebel News reporter Avi Yemini called out Victoria Police for their handling of “protected species” pro-Palestine protestors. Mr Yemini joined Sky News Australia host Andrew Bolt to discuss his treatment as a reporter covering pro-Palestine protests in Melbourne. “In what world can you go up and act like that violently in front of police?” he asked. “Not only do they not intervene, they literally tell you they witnessed a crime and they just let it happen. “There is no other place where that happens.”

80 Years Ago Today June 4, 1944: The U.S. Fifth Army Liberated Rome. Two days later,June 6, 1944: The Normandy D-Day invasion by the Allies begins, including the United State. One week later,June 13, 1944: The "Pacific D-Day", Battle of Saipan, begins. This is the naval bombardment, followed by invasion on June 15, involving 535 ships with 127,000 troops. All 3 were major military engagements in which the U.S. was a major participant in (especially the Battle of Saipan). All were going on at practically the same time, and different parts of the world. All three were victories.

On this date in 1850, five Cayuse were publicly executed in Oregon City for the Whitman Massacre. Beginning in earnest in the 1830s, Anglo settlement in the Oregon Country presented for the native inhabitants of the Pacific Northwest the same Hobson’s choice that had confronted tribes further east long before: resist or accommodate. The New York-born couple Marcus and Narcissa Whitman* were two of the most notable figures among the hundreds, and then thousands, of settlers pouring into the territory every year. In 1836, they founded on the banks of the Walla Walla River a Christian mission to the nomadic...

Will Zelenski be the President in Ukraine in 30 days or will he be removed. Zelinski has crossed the line with just about everyone with his alleged nervous breakdown and tanturms. He is removing Ukrainian government officials and military personnel who he feels are too close to the USA out of spite. He is also screaming at his generals saying no one told him how bad the military situation is, and getting worst. Zelenski is still demanding that the Ukrainian military defend every inch of land and he has ordered his generals to continue pushing everyone into the frontlines of...

On this date in 1966, the Congo’s last civilian Prime Minister and three former cabinet officials “walked unfalteringly to the gallows in the main square”* of Kinshasa and were hanged before a crowd a hundred thousand strong as Lt. Gen. Joseph-Desire Mobutu consolidated his ruinous Zairian dictatorship. A cycle of weak governments and nationwide chaos had befallen the resource-rich former Belgian Congo in the early 1960’s after the CIA eliminated the leftist Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. Evariste Kimba was, when the cycle ended in the fall of 1965, the most recent man to succeed to Lumumba’s title — though hardly...

Romania’s wartime fascist dictator Ion Antonescu was shot on this date in 1946. An army officer who worked his way up to the brass via his exploits in the Second Balkan War and then in World War I, Antonescu emerged as a major nationalist politician in the interwar period. He was the elite political figure who allied with Corneliu Codreanu‘s Iron Guard movement. Antonescu became the Defence Minister in a a far-right government, was temporarily shouldered out of the state by King Carol II‘s coup, and then re-emerged as the leading alternative when Carol’s government was undone by the tectonic...

This week, former President Trump was found guilty on 34 counts of trying to conceal "hush money" payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels after the 2016 election. Normally, the statute of limitations would have prevented the case from being brought, but New York state law was modified to allow this prosecution of Trump. Considering that Daniels accepted payment for agreeing to a perfectly legal Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) yet still went on to make defamatory charges against Trump it seems clear that nothing was "hushed up." Eight years ago the Federal Elections Commission decided that since the payments were made after...

On this date in 1996, Saudi Arabia beheaded four Muslim militants for a car bomb attack on the Office of Program Management for the Saudi Arabian National Guard (OPM-SANG) military facility at Riyadh, killing five U.S. nationals and two Indians. All four prisoners were Sunni veterans of the Afghan War against the USSR, but they were beheaded in great haste, the Saudis having refused U.S. investigators permission to interview them. The Kingdom’s Interior Ministry remarked at the time that the executions ought to assure that “such repulsive acts would not be repeated.” This fanciful aspiration was conclusively nullified 25 days...

Sen. Joe Manchin is registering as an independent, according to a person familiar with the matter — a move that is sure to stoke speculation he could run for Senate or governor without a party affiliation this fall. A longtime Democrat, Manchin’s decision comes ahead of a deadline for filing as an independent in West Virginia. He’ll have several more weeks to decide whether to run for his Senate seat or mount a bid for his old job as governor. The move is no guarantee he will run for either office, however. Manchin previously announced he would not run for...

The guilty verdict against former President Donald Trump reached by a Manhattan jury on Thursday could ultimately be reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court, legal experts said. Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in an unprecedented verdict against the presumptive Republican presidential nominee just months before the 2024 election. The verdict is likely to be appealed by Trump’s legal team, however, and experts say the final decision in Trump’s hush-money trial could come down to a ruling from the highest court in the land. Attorney Roger Severino, who is the vice president of Domestic Policy...

Blexit activist Madeline Brame shredded President Joe Biden’s “black this, black that” rhetoric Wednesday on Fox News, warning it won’t “play” well for the president come this November. Brame appeared on “Jesse Watters Primetime” to discuss Biden’s recent speech at Morehouse College and her appearance at Trump’s Bronx rally last week. Following a clip played back of Biden’s speech addressing HBCU graduates, Fox host Jesse Watters asked Brame whether Biden’s speech tactics, regarding the alleged attacks on black voters, sink in with the Democratic key voting bloc. “Just sitting here listening to that, I feel like vomiting,” Brame stated. “For...

Former Democratic Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich stated Thursday on Fox News that black voters, one of the Democratic Party’s key voting blocs, will “rise up” and instead support former President Donald Trump following his guilty verdict. Blagojevich appeared on “Jesse Watters Primetime” to discuss the verdict. A New York jury found Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts for alleged falsified business records. A judge previously sentenced Blagojevich to 14 years for trying to sell then-president-elect Barack Obama’s Illinois Senate seat, and Trump commuted it in 2020. Watters asked the former governor about his thoughts on the former president’s case....