Free Republic

Explanation: Magnificent spiral galaxy NGC 4565 is viewed edge-on from planet Earth. Also known as the Needle Galaxy for its narrow profile, bright NGC 4565 is a stop on many telescopic tours of the northern sky, in the faint but well-groomed constellation Coma Berenices. This sharp, colorful image reveals the galaxy's boxy, bulging central core cut by obscuring dust lanes that lace NGC 4565's thin galactic plane. NGC 4565 itself lies about 40 million light-years distant and spans some 100,000 light-years. Easily spotted with small telescopes, sky enthusiasts consider NGC 4565 to be a prominent celestial masterpiece Messier missed.

Heated debates have erupted across the West, triggered by the sudden rise of an ideology that seeks to remove the significance of biological sex in society and replace it with the vague and scientifically vacuous concept of “gender identity.” This shift is often justified by highlighting the existence of so-called “intersex” conditions, more accurately termed disorders/differences of sexual development (DSDs). Proponents argue that because approximately one in every 5,500 individuals (0.018 percent) is born with sexual anatomy that may appear sexually ambiguous or opposite to their sex at birth, this means that biological sex is a “spectrum” and that male...

Portland, Oregon, has earned its reputation as America’s most radical city. Its public school system was an early proponent of left-wing racialism and has long pushed students toward political activism. As with the death of George Floyd four years ago, the irruption of Hamas terrorism in Israel has provided Portland’s public school revolutionaries with another cause du jour: now they’ve ditched the raised fist of Black Lives Matter and traded it in for the black-and-white keffiyeh of Palestinian militants. I have obtained a collection of publicly accessible documents produced by the Portland Association of Teachers, an affiliate of the state...

Conservative commentators’ red carpets are rolled out for independent presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy Jr., whose name recognition is off the scale thanks to the accident of his birth. But whether Glenn Beck, Megyn Kelly, Ben Shapiro, and others who have loaned him their microphones of late, wanted to experience a little glow from the relics of Camelot or, more likely, sought to shift votes away from President Joe Biden, it is very clear this election year that hyping RFK Jr. in any way is something no one on the side of freedom in America should be doing. The son of...

Editor’s Note: The group quota regime advances and guards its power through lawfare—the weaponization of our legal system against political enemies. John Eastman has been relentlessly targeted by the regime’s lawfare campaigns for the supposed crime of advising Donald Trump on the legal issues of the 2020 election. Yet even Eastman’s mistreatment pales in comparison to the regime’s hounding of President Trump himself.In this analysis, Dr. Eastman brings a lawyer’s perspective to the political prosecutions of the former president, contrasting Trump’s treatment to that of Hillary Clinton, the regime’s favored candidate—whom Trump defeated even despite egregious malfeasance by the Clinton...

During a conversation with "Kill Tony" comedian Tony Hinchcliffe on Wednesday, podcast host Joe Rogan discussed his view of the political ramifications of the prosecution of Donald Trump. "What's scary is how many Democrats are willing to allow this kind of stuff to happen. A lot of them are aware of it," Rogan said. "Especially if you wanted to look at past presidents with the same scrutiny... Imagine if, when Obama got into office, he decided to prosecute Dick Cheney and George Bush for crimes against humanity... Even what Obama did -- during the administration, they dropped a drone on...

It is past time for the media and Democrats to drop the ruse of Biden’s “neutrality and admit that they are terrified of the will of the people in November and so are conniving to silence them. The five criminal and civil prosecutions of Donald Trump all prompt heated denials from Democrats that President Biden and Democrat operatives had a role in any of them. But Joe Biden has long let it be known that he was frustrated with his own Department of Justice’s federal prosecutors for their tardiness in indicting Donald Trump. Biden was upset because any delay might...

It is hard to believe that eighty years have passed since American, British, and Canadian troops landed at Normandy and fought their way across fortified beaches covered in German mines and barbed wire fences. What a nightmare it must have been to overcome such soggy, uneven terrain while enduring heavy fire from gun emplacements secured upon hills and steep cliffs. It must have felt like being dropped off in Hell and navigating through a gruesome Jell-O of blood, sand, smoke, explosions, and whirring bullets. There were no timeouts. There were no “safe spaces.” There was nowhere to hide. You either...

On this the eighty-year anniversary of the D-Day landings, I am haunted by what this nation has become. On this day eighty-years ago, in the largest combined naval, air, and land operation in history, 154,000 Allied troops, including 71,000 American soldiers, landed on the beaches and in the marshlands of Normandy. Within the first twenty-four hours, American forces suffered 3,393 killed or missing and 6,603 wounded. Thus began the liberation of continental Europe in a war that the United States had thrust upon it by the feckless efforts of others at appeasement and compromise with those who for years made...

Navy Seal Author and Historian Matt Bracken comes back on the podcast to discuss his new book Doomsday Reef, insanity of the escalation with Russia, Israel, how the United States will tear itself apart if the grid goes down and much more. Video is 1h 12m 38s

Explanation: What if you saw your shadow on Mars and it wasn't human? Then you might be the Perseverance rover exploring Mars. Perseverance has been examining the Red Planet since 2021, finding evidence of its complex history of volcanism and ancient flowing water, and sending breathtaking images across the inner Solar System. Pictured here in February of 2024, Perseverance looks opposite the Sun and across Neretva Vallis in Jezero Crater, with a local hill visible at the top of the frame. The distinctively non-human shadow of the car-sized rover is visible below center, superposed on scattered rocks. Perseverance, now working...

“called employees who don’t accept notions included in CRT, such as the existence of ‘White privilege,’ a ‘poison to culture and climate,’ and criticized equality in favor of equity”. Nancy Dome is a DEI trainer who works for Epoch Education, an organization that trains teachers and school administrators. Dome reportedly frowns upon people who object to the concepts taught in Epoch’s training sessions, such as white privilege. In one training video that is apparently no longer available to the public, she allegedly suggested that the American flag is becoming a symbol of hate. Isn’t this the natural progression of the...

The rich are not like the rest of us. Whether that adage is true or not, it is becoming increasingly clear that leftists do not think as we do. They are not like the rest of us. I am reminded of the very nice lady who brought her billing statement to our office, insisting that there was an error. She could not possibly owe anything, she said. At first, I thought she might be right, so I went over the entire record of the account with her, line by line. After each item, she agreed that the running total was...

Is there a such thing as double-entry bookkeeping at the Federal Emergency Management Agency? Or do they spend on migrants like there's no tomorrow? According to the Miami Herald, FEMA, which got its budget topped up extra to the tune of billions just a year ago, is once again running out of money: With a grim storm forecast ahead, the nation’s top disaster responders are in danger of running out of cash at the peak of hurricane season — again. The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Disaster Relief Fund is on pace to run dry by August. Without congressional action, that...

Explanation: Why does Comet Pons-Brooks now have tails pointing in opposite directions? The most spectacular tail is the blue-glowing ion tail that is visible flowing down the image. The ion tail is pushed directly out from the Sun by the solar wind. On the upper right is the glowing central coma of Comet 12P/Pons–Brooks. Fanning out from the coma, mostly to the left, is the comet's dust tail. Pushed out and slowed down by the pressure of sunlight, the dust tail tends to trail the comet along its orbit and, from some viewing angles, can appear opposite to the ion...

Photo by Matt Cohen via Flickr.Among the amusements of New York Attorney General Letitia James, when she is not honoring her campaign promise to destroy Donald Trump, is harassing and financially bankrupting Peter and Lydia Brimelow and their VDARE Foundation, located in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. Peter and Lydia made the disastrous mistake of registering their foundation in very blue New York state and have been suffering the consequences ever since. Letitia as the “defendant” in a costly legal case is demanding all kinds of confidential information from the Brimelows, charging them with running a white nationalist outfit that should...

The Global Warming Policy Foundation 2024 American speaking tour is now set for next week. Dr. Benny Peiser, Director of the GWPF, and I will be speaking at three events on June 11, 12 and 13 on the topic of “Europe’s Net Zero Rebellion, European elections, and the coming U.S. reckoning.” My piece is the “U.S. reckoning,” while Benny will cover the backlash against Net Zero currently beginning to boil up in Europe. The June 11 and 12 events are public and all are welcome to attend. On June 11 we will appear for a luncheon event at the Texas...

“It’s almost as if the principals (prosecutors and judge) were performing for their political audience — with a wink, a nod and a stage whisper (“watch this!”) as they ignore yet another fundamental element of American due process.” — Jack DeVine on “X”. The ninnies of Bidenworld seem to not understand that by subjecting Mr. Trump to a kangaroo court they’ve made him the kind of outlaw that Americans revere above every other archetypal hero. He’s the new American Robin Hood, the people’s outlaw — with “Joe Biden” relegated as the wicked Sir Guy of Gisbourne, master of foul play...

The New York Times reports Hillary Clinton saying that if Trump wins the 2024 election “we may never see another actual election.” Nancy Pelosi tweets: “This moment is a somber one for America. Trial by a jury of peers is a fundamental principle of democracy, which must be respected.” Really ladies, do women of your experience and wisdom really think like that? You think that Trump could stop elections in the United States -- even if he wanted to? And surely you both know that trial by jury started way before anyone thought of modern democracy, let alone “Our Democracy?”...

Explanation: Magnificent island universe NGC 2403 stands within the boundaries of the long-necked constellation Camelopardalis. Some 10 million light-years distant and about 50,000 light-years across, the spiral galaxy also seems to have more than its fair share of giant star forming HII regions, marked by the telltale reddish glow of atomic hydrogen gas. The giant HII regions are energized by clusters of hot, massive stars that explode as bright supernovae at the end of their short and furious lives. A member of the M81 group of galaxies, NGC 2403 closely resembles a galaxy in our own local galaxy group with...