Free Republic

Leave it up to the working stiffs in the gardening department at Harvard to figure out how to send the campus protestors packing. How do you handle antisemites who won't get off your lawn? Well, leave it to the woikin' stiffs in hardhats at Harvard University to figure this one out. They turned the sprinklers on. Doing routine maintenance gardening work just like the union contract says meant they had to turn the sprinklers on to maintain the grass, with the programmed switch going off at 2:00 a.m. just like it was supposed to do. Snowflakes ran running. Who knew...

Explanation: Located some 3 million light-years away in the arms of nearby spiral galaxy M33, giant stellar nursery NGC 604 is about 1,300 light-years across. That's nearly 100 times the size of the Milky Way's Orion Nebula, the closest large star forming region to planet Earth. In fact, among the star forming regions within the Local Group of galaxies, NGC 604 is second in size only to 30 Doradus, also known as the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Cavernous bubbles and cavities in NGC 604 fill this stunning infrared image from the James Webb Space Telescope's NIRCam. They...

The Color Revolution is restless. Beginning in the former Soviet republics in the early 2000s, it moved along the coast of North Africa with the so-called Arab Spring in the 2010s, and, into the current decade, has spread further. The ostensible purpose of Color Revolutions—named after the Rose Revolution, Orange Revolution, and Tulip Revolution in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan, respectively—is to replace authoritarian regimes with Western liberal democracies. American and European intelligence services are often heavily involved in these revolutions, with ambitions not only to spread modern ideologies but also to undermine geopolitical opponents. The West’s favored methods of supporting...

The Iranian attack on Israel seems a historic blunder. It opened up a new chapter in which its own soil, thanks to its attack on Israel, is no longer off limits to any Western power. Details of the recent limited Israeli retaliatory strike against Iranian anti-aircraft missile batteries at Isfahan are still sketchy. But nonetheless, we can draw some conclusions. Israel’s small volley of missiles hit their intended targets, to the point of zeroing in on the very launchers designed to stop such incoming ordnance. The target was near the Natanz enrichment facility. That proximity was by design. Israel showed...

Communist societies have a long history of imprisoning political dissidents in psychiatric wards. One of the more insidious features of Marxism’s manipulation of language is its stigmatization of opposing points of view as some form of mental disorder. Opposition to “gay marriage” is said to be a “sign” of homophobia. Distrusting Islamic terrorists who celebrate 9/11 and shout, “Death to America,” is a “symptom” of Islamophobia. Wanting the federal government to secure our borders and enforce existing immigration law “reveals” underlying xenophobia. Not wanting biological men to force their way into ladies’ locker-rooms and showers suggests that a person “suffers”...

For a decade, progressive Democrat activities have damaged communities and destroyed lives, but the rich and powerful let it go...right up until it affected them personally. I’ll preface my commentary with the obvious: All of the “mostly peaceful” protests by our “college educated” on campuses nationwide that are clearly pro-Hamas and aimed at Jewish students are wrong, illegal, and all involved should either go back to the classes their parents and taxpayers are funding or be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But why the sudden sanctimonious outrage from the media and pundit class, billionaire donors,...

This is not a confirmed report, but it comes from a reputable source with contacts deep within the Hague. As Jews wake up to the reality that the Democrat party has broken its decades’ long implied promise to protect the Jews from another Holocaust, Joe Biden may be doubling down on an effort to placate the Hamas wing of the Democrat party. According to an Israeli reporter who has highly placed contacts at the Hague, the International Criminal Court (“ICC”) is planning to arrest senior Israeli officials, something it would do only if it had the Biden administration’s permission. Caroline...

"Such an inquiry is needed to protect shareholders, including TMTG’s retail investors," Nunes says. Devin Nunes, CEO of the Trump Media & Technology Group, is asking House committee leaders to investigate the potential "unlawful manipulation of DJT stock." In a letter to the committees, Nunes pointed out that DJT [the initials for Donald J. Trump] has appeared every day since April 2 on Nasdaq’s "Reg SHO threshold list," which he said is "indicative of unlawful trading activity." The concern follows Trump Media & Technology Group, whose flagship product is social networking site Truth Social, began being traded late last month...

Explanation: How did a star form this beautiful nebula? In the middle of emission nebula NGC 6164 is an unusually massive star. The central star has been compared to an oyster's pearl and an egg protected by the mythical sky dragons of Ara. The star, visible in the center of the featured image and catalogued as HD 148937, is so hot that the ultraviolet light it emits heats up gas that surrounds it. That gas was likely thrown off from the star previously, possibly the result of a gravitational interaction with a looping stellar companion. Expelled material might have been...

Voting with your feet and fleeing the policies of the Democrat left? Now, there’s a fine for that. When does the tarring and feathering start? You didn’t vote for this garbage, but your useful idiot neighbors did, so now you’ve decided to pack up and head to a state with lighter tax burdens (still a burden, but nonetheless more doable), where the government isn’t prioritizing “trans-ing” your child behind your back and threatening to sever the parental relationship if you get in the way; where prosecutors won’t come after you if you’re forced to defend yourself (or others, as in...

Democrats have already made it clear that they will stop at nothing – nothing – to prevent Donald Trump from winning in November. So, we aren’t surprised to read reports that President Joe Biden might declare a “climate emergency” this year in hopes that it gooses his reelection odds. Never mind that such a declaration would put the U.S. right on the path to a Venezuela-style future. Late last week, Bloomberg reported that “White House officials are weighing whether to declare a national climate emergency several months out from the 2024 election.” Bloomberg goes on to report that: White House...

On Friday, left-wing talk show host Bill Maher predicted that this year’s Democratic National Convention (DNC) would witness a repeat of the infamous riots that plagued the 1968 gathering. Breitbart reports that Maher, on his HBO show “Real Time,” compared the anti-Vietnam protests of the 1960s to the ongoing anti-Israel protests on college campuses across the country today. The upcoming 2024 DNC will be held in Chicago, the same city that hosted the 1968 DNC. Maher reflected on his memories of the 1968 DNC and the violent protests that overshadowed the convention’s nomination of then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey, saying that...

As Columbia University’s most prominent alum, former president Barack Obama would seem to have a moral obligation to speak about what is arguably the most visible outbreak of antisemitism on American soil in his lifetime. I refer here to the occupation of Obama’s alma mater by Hamas-supporters who have been openly threatening Jewish students, chanting “Kill all Zionists,” and shouting racial slurs like “pig.” As I sat down to write this, five days into the protest, Obama had said not a word. By contrast, Obama was tweeting about the August 2017 Antifa/white nationalist brouhaha in Charlottesville, Virginia before the day...

Are you aware that there have been two near-catastrophes at major American airports (DC Reagan and NY JFK) where airplanes were cleared to cross runways as another airplane was taking off? A runway collision on takeoff is almost by definition the deadliest form of airline disaster, since two or more airplanes, at least one fueled up for the coming journey, collide at takeoff speed, likely engulfing them in fireballs. That is how the deadliest airline disaster in history, happened in Tenerife, killing 583 people. The first incident took place last Thursday, April 18, at Reagan National Airport when the tower...

Explanation: What created this giant X in the clouds? It was the shadow of contrails illuminated from below. When airplanes fly, humid engine exhaust may form water droplets that might freeze in Earth's cold upper atmosphere. These persistent streams of water and ice scatter light from the Sun above and so appear bright from below. On rare occasions, though, when the Sun is near the horizon, contrails can be lit from below. These contrails cast long shadows upwards, shadows that usually go unseen unless there is a high cloud deck. But that was just the case over Istanbul, Türkiye, earlier...

Over the weekend, we saw a continuation of the projection from the fascist far left, which has taken an increasingly dangerous tone. At this point, there should be no doubt that they know what they are doing and that they probably take charges of hypocrisy as a badge of honor. No group of people could go on like this, being completely unaware of exactly what they are doing. The question becomes, how do we convince many of those in the middle that the threats cited by them are born of the left? You’ve no doubt heard the unending barrage of...

Rainer Zitelmann's book, How Nations Escape Poverty, is particularly interesting for American veterans who served as G.I.s in Vietnam or for those who may have lost their fathers or family members in the conflict. The irony of history is that the communists initially won — however, upon establishing their socialist regime across Vietnam, they came to realize what a huge mistake they had made. Today, young Vietnamese in particular admire the USA and capitalism, as Zitelmann’s book shows. He asked the Vietnamese which economic systems they admire and which they reject. According to the survey data, people in Vietnam have...

One has to wonder from the USSC arguments the other day. Legal experts said the Biden administration was "on the ropes" in Tuesday’s oral arguments at the Supreme Court in a case questioning whether a Jan. 6 rioter can be charged with a federal "obstruction" crime, which carries implications for former President Trump. On Tuesday, Jeffrey Green, lawyer for Joseph Fischer – who is one of more than 300 people charged by the Justice Department with "obstruction of an official proceeding" in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol – argued that the federal statute shouldn’t apply and that...

This weekend at Columbia and Yale, student demonstrators told Jewish students to “go back to Poland.” A Jewish woman at Yale was assaulted with a Palestinian flag. And an Orthodox rabbi at Columbia told students to go home for their safety. Demonstrators on these campuses shouted: “Say it loud and say it clear, we don’t want no Zionists here.” In one chant at Columbia, the protesters were heard saying “Go Hamas, we love you. We support your rockets, too.” and “We say justice, you say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground.” These campus activists are not simply “pro-Palestine” protesters....

On March 19, former Trump aide Peter Navarro was in rare form as he gave a fiery speech about Nancy Pelosi’s House Select Committee on the January 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol (the J6 Committee). Navarro boldly called out an “unprecedented assault on the constitutional separation of powers.” He gave hope, saying “I will gather strength from this: Donald John Trump is the nominee.” After concluding his powerful oration, Navarro stepped away from the microphone and surrendered himself to the federal Bureau of Prisons to serve his four-month sentence. Navarro is the just one victim of the J6...