Free Republic

LEBANON, TN — In an attempt to right the ship amid financial struggles and grow its customer base, restaurant chain Cracker Barrel announced it will be rebranded as Hispanic, Black, and Cracker Barrel. The company's decision to rebrand came after several difficult years for the business as it continued to wrestle with a variety of obstacles, including inflation, an aging clientele, and an apparent lack of people across the country in need of rocking chairs or old-timey home decor and crafts that were popular a century ago. "We need to cast a wider net for customers," said Cracker Barrel CEO...

At the behest of a Republican governor, a renowned interventional radiologist in perhaps the most conservative state in the nation has resigned from its Board of Medicine because he publicly opposed gender-related medical interventions for minors. Last year, Mark Gordon, the Republican governor of Wyoming, confirmed Casper radiologist Dr. Eric Cubin to serve on the state's Board of Medicine, which mainly grants and renews the licenses of Wyoming physicians and physician assistants. Cubin was then reconfirmed earlier this year for a term that was scheduled to end in 2028, the Cowboy State Daily reported. Likewise earlier this year, Wyoming lawmakers...

Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon wasn't a big hit when it was released in Japan, but when it won a Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival it opened the floodgates for Japanese cinema into the cinemas and film festivals of the west. No less than Ed Sullivan wrote that "the direction, the photography and the performances will jar open your eyes," and within a year films by Mizoguchi and Ozu joined Fellini, Bergman and Rossellini in the art houses. It took barely ten years from Hiroshima and Nagasaki and VJ Day for Japan to go from vicious, possibly subhuman enemy...

The 77th World Health Assembly HAS adopted a substantial package of amendments to the International Health Regulations. We the People have suffered a stunning defeat. The battle continues. Unfortunately, this is an enormous loss for “We the People” and a substantial victory for the evil forces that support the system of pharmakia. The recently adopted amendments will facilitate an enormous global build up of the Pharmaceutical Hospital Emergency Industrial Complex which seeks to trigger ongoing “pandemic emergencies” that will be made even worse by “relevant health products.” Article 1 “relevant health products” means those health products needed to respond to...

The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) rescinded an award for actor Robert De Niro on Wednesday, after he made an appearance outside of the trial of former President Donald Trump this week. De Niro made his appearance on behalf of President Joe Biden's presidential campaign on Tuesday, and blasted Trump as someone who would "never leave" the White House if he makes a return in November, and will be a "dictator for life." A spokesperson for the NAB said the group rescinded his Service to America Award because his recent political activities have taken away from the charity works the...

On Tuesday, Harvard officials announced that the university would adopt a formal stance of ideological neutrality on political events and other controversial issues. The decision comes after months of tumultuous campus protests over the war between Israel and Hamas. Earlier this month, a faculty-led working group published a report that strongly recommended adopting a neutral stance on topics that do not directly concern the university itself. "The university has a responsibility to speak out to protect and promote its core function. Its leaders must communicate the value of the university's central activities. They must defend the university's autonomy and academic...

Argentine authorities are working with El Salvador, a pioneering nation in bitcoin adoption, aiming to boost cryptocurrency adoption in Argentina. High-ranking officials from Argentina's National Securities Commission (CNV), the country's securities regulator, met with El Salvador's National Commission of Digital Assets on May 23 to discuss the use of cryptocurrencies, according to an official announcement by the CNV. The talks focused on El Salvador's experience in adopting bitcoin and its regulatory framework. "El Salvador has emerged as one of the leading countries, not only in the use of bitcoin, but it has also stood out in the world of crypto...

America's most insane occupational licensing law is about to get a whole lot better. Louisiana is the only state in the country that requires florists to be licensed by the government. A bill that is now on the way to Gov. Jeff Landry's desk sadly won't change that fact, but it will eliminate the mandatory test that prospective florists in Louisiana must pass before being allowed to earn a living by placing different types of flowers together in an arrangement. Going forward, obtaining a florist license will require only the payment of a fee to the state. The bill cleared...

Just when you think the media’s smear campaign against conservative Supreme Court justices can’t get any more despicable, they find a way to prove you wrong. On Wednesday, Rolling Stone magazine’s Andrew Perez published a hit piece against Justice Amy Coney Barrett that amounts to nothing more than a dud for Democrats’ war on SCOTUS. The “scandal,” according to the outlet, is that Barrett’s husband is representing Fox Corporation — Fox News’ parent company — in an ongoing defamation case involving one of its local stations. “The defamation case was filed by Lavell Redmond, an Illinois man who was convicted...

Democrats and their allies in the liberal media launched a smear campaign against Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito earlier this month in an effort to prompt his recusal from upcoming cases related to former President Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 protests. Jodi Kantor, running lead on the initiative for the New York Times, failed to land a decisive blow with her May 16 flag story, which the Washington Post had years earlier wrote off as a nothing-burger. Meatless, but desperate for results, Kantor found another flag to concern-monger about: the "Appeal to Heaven" flag, also known as the Pine...

As everybody but the New Guinea tribesmen who ate Joe Biden's uncle knows by now, Donald J Trump has been found "guilty on all counts" - a quintessentially American expression because, of course, the multiple-counts racket is one of the many perversions of judicial norms that have long disgraced the US courthouse. Just twenty-four hours ago, my friend John Hinderaker was writing: Experience has given me a lot of faith in the basic fairness of juries. Late yesterday, he remembered - oh, yeah, I've been here before: It is very much like the lawsuit that Michael Mann brought against Mark...

[BOISE] – Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador joined a 19-state coalition asking the Supreme Court to declare unconstitutional the efforts of California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Rhode Island to dictate the future of American energy policy. Those five states have brought unprecedented litigation against the nation’s most vital energy companies for an alleged “climate crisis,” and are demanding billions of dollars in damages. As litigation proceeds in their individual state courts, California and the others threaten to impose ruinous penalties and coercive remedies that would affect energy and fuel consumption and production across the country. “It’s not a new...

We have already seen how diversity, equity, and inclusion policies get people killed when it comes to criminal justice policies. Now, we may be investing in a future where we see how it gets people killed in the operating room. Several faculty members at the University of California, Los Angeles, blew the whistle to journalist Aaron Sibarium that UCLA’s medical school has been admitting students who do not reach the expected academic requirements because the students instead reach DEI requirements. Dean of Admissions Jennifer Lucero blew up on one admissions official for questioning the subpar qualifications of a black student...

The European Union just passed a directive requiring ESG mandates for European businesses. ESG, of course, stands for environmental, social and governance standards. Or in the fine print — definite corporate action concerning climate change; social justice; and diversity, equity and inclusion. Basically, it’s applied Marxism without all the goofy theories — tyranny with nuance, we could call it. The EU Council approved what it called the “corporate sustainability due diligence directive” on Friday. Under the new rules, companies “will have to take measures to prevent, identify and mitigate any adverse impact on human rights or the environment,” the council...

California Democrats are racing to reverse a new $25-an-hour healthcare worker minimum wage law going into effect at the end of the week after the governor’s office estimates it would cost the state $4 billion annually. The news of the costs isn’t new. In fact, it was projected by legislative analysis and ignored by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), who signed the law in October. Now, as it gets ready to go into effect, lawmakers are looking for ways to delay it. California’s budget deficit has grown in years and now stands at a hefty $45 billion. Newsom’s office projects the...

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation chair Martin Gruenberg announced last week that he will resign his post following revelations that the agency was awash in sexual harassment under his leadership. The news came as a blow to some of the same congressional Democrats who championed the #MeToo movement, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) pushing Gruenberg to stay in his post and deny Republicans "a veto over bank policy." In 2017, Warren called for the immediate resignation of her former colleague, Sen. Al Franken (D., Minn.), after a photo surfaced of him groping a female radio host. The year after, Warren...

United States District Judge Aileen Cannon recently rejected special counsel Jack Smith's request to place a gag order against former President Donald Trump. On Friday, Smith's team asked Cannon to modify Trump's conditions of release to prohibit him from making "statements that pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents participating in the investigation and prosecution of" the classified documents case against Trump. Smith's team claimed the gag order was "necessary because of several intentionally false and inflammatory statements recently made by Trump that distort the circumstances under which the Federal Bureau of Investigation planned and executed...

As Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has pushed school choice initiatives, leading to a spike in charter and private school enrollments, public schools are shutting down. Across the state, public school enrollment is declining. Duval County Public School District, the sixth-largest school district in Florida and 20th largest in the country, is now considering campus closures due to dramatic dips in their enrollment. Broward County Public Schools, Florida’s second largest school district, has evaluated plans to close up to 42 campuses over the next few years. Miami-Dade county has also experienced a substantial decline in enrollment rates. Of the roughly...

After taking the stage in a housedress and, at one point, swinging his cane like a baseball bat at a Massachusetts holiday weekend screening of Jaws, Richard Dreyfuss went on to deliver a rant described by attendees as transphobic, sexist and homophobic. “This was disgusting,” posted one attendee on the Facebook page of The Cabot theater in Beverly, Massachusetts. “How could the Cabot not have vetted his act better. Apparently (I found out too late), he has a reputation for spewing this kind of racist, homophobic, misogynistic bullcrap.” The incident occurred on Saturday night prior to the film screening. In...

Hunter Biden used Joe Biden's appearance at a Sandy Hook memorial service to arrange a meeting between his dad and his Chinese business partners, new texts reveal. The messages come from a fresh tranche of documents released by Congress on Wednesday, given to them by IRS agents who investigated the First Son. On December 12, 2017 Hunter wrote on the Chinese messaging app WeChat to Liu Yadong, a top executive at Chinese oil giant CEFC, to arrange a meeting with his father. 'Can you meet this evening early,' Hunter wrote. 'My father will be in New York also and he...