Free Republic

What we are witnessing in east Africa and across much of the Middle East right now is hard to believe. 360 billion locusts are eating everything in sight, and UN officials are warning that this plague of “Biblical proportions” could get many times worse over the next several months. Desert locusts can travel up to 93 miles a day, and each adult can consume the equivalent of its own weight in food every 24 hours. These voracious little creatures are traveling in absolutely colossal swarms that are up to 40 miles wide, and they continue to push into new areas....

The fire ravaged state of New South Wales in Australia received much-needed torrential downpours that doused active fires, reducing the total number by a third, as The Guardian reported. The number of active fires dropped from more than 60 to 42 in just one day. Authorities in New South Wales warned of flash flooding on Australia's east coast and in Sydney. However, they were happy to welcome the rain, which was the most recorded in over a year, according to Australia's Bureau of Meteorology, as the BBC reported. "It was fantastic to wake up to much-needed rain this morning!" Sydney's...

Texas investigates a THIRD potential US coronavirus case as second suspected victim is hospitalized in LA and doctors monitor SIXTEEN people who came into contact with Patient Zero in Washington State. Health officials in Brazos County on Thursday said they are investigating a suspected case of the deadly new coronavirus. The person possibly infected, who has not been named, recently traveled to Wuhan - the Chinese city where the disease originated. They have been isolated in their home after health care providers recognized their symptoms as consistent with the coronavirus. So far only one US case of the virus has...

AUSTIN, Texas (Jan. 1, 2020) – Today, a law went into effect that exempts precious metals stored in the Texas Bullion Depository from certain taxes. Enactment of this law takes another step toward the everyday use of gold and silver in financial transactions in the Lone Star State and sets the stage to undermine the Federal Reserve’s monopoly on money. Rep. Giovanni Capriglione (R-Keller) sponsored House Bill 2859 (HB2859). Under the new law, “Precious metals are exempt from taxation if they are held in a commercial depository in this state.” HB2859 serves as the enabling legislation for a state constitutional...

WASHINGTON, D.C.—In a landmark decision, the U.S. Supreme Court bench handed down a ruling Thursday approving the death penalty for people who comment on articles without reading them. In the highly publicized case, State of Texas v. Wilbur, state authorities had found internet user Edward Wilbur guilty of posting a comment on a story linked on his Facebook page, a news story Wilbur “had clearly never read.” While most of those convicted under Texas’ recent state law banning commenting on news stories or opinion pieces without reading them get off with a few months of community service or a stiff...

ComicBook.com reports that CBC edited out Donald Trump's cameo from the 1992 movie. And people watching it were quick to report the suspicious omission on social media. Some were outraged, and the snowflakes were thrilled.

EGYPT 2000 BC: Drills were used that turned 500X faster than today's power drills and bored into granite rock with ease. Dentists worked with cement fillings, dental bridges, and inserted artificial teeth. Doctors performed pregnancy tests, determined the sex of an unborn child, fed nourishment through tubes, fitted artificial legs and hands; and used anesthetic and sophisticated instruments to perform bone and brain surgery? Mysterious moving walls, automatically flashing lights and lamps that shone century after century, non-stop? A detailed map of Antarctica dating back thousands of years, without ice! A 400 ft pyramid was found on the seabed. 44...

Many of you are aware that I'm afflicted with stage four cancer, and that I have chosen the alternative healing route instead of conventional treatments. Well, I've gone further downhill since I informed FR of my condition some months back. I'm now going to require outside assistance to manage the pain. I know nothing about hospice, except that they come into the home to help patients with pain, et cetera. What I don't know is what the potential risks exist when using such a service. Will they report back to Big Brother about what they saw in your gun closet?...

The illegal immigrant population is as high as 29.5 million, far more than the 11 million accepted by experts and the government, according to an explosive new report from three Yale University experts. “Our results lead us to the conclusion that the widely accepted estimate of 11.3 million undocumented immigrants in the United States is too small. Our model estimates indicate that the true number is likely to be larger, with an estimated 95 percent probability interval ranging from 16.2 to 29.5 million undocumented immigrants,” said their report published by PLOS One, an academic journal. The authors from Yale School...

Widespread illiteracy and the ignorance it produces represent an existential threat to the United States today. But it was not always this way. And it can be fixed. Fortunately, neither the cause of this crisis nor the solution to it is a mystery—at least to anyone who has studied the issue. To blame for this dangerous phenomenon are socialist “educators” going back to the mid-1800s. In particular, it was their quack methodologies ostensibly aimed at “teaching reading” to children. The answer to the illiteracy crisis is simple, though: America must go back to what worked for thousands of years and...

One of the charges Democrats have leveled against Trump is that the White House improperly put the transcript of his call with the Ukrainian president on a special server used to protect highly classified information. Yet Democrats are doing the very same thing, conducting impeachment depositions inside a SCIF, improperly using a classified system to restrict access to nonclassified information not just to the public but to members of Congress. Talk about hypocrisy. Let’s be clear: There is nothing wrong with holding hearings behind closed doors as long as there is due process. During the Nixon impeachment much of the...

It isn’t supposed to be this cold in October. The official start of winter is still almost two months away, and yet the weather in much of the western half of the country right now resembles what we might expect in mid-January. All-time record lows for the month of October are being set in city after city, and this extremely cold air is going to push into the Midwest by the end of the week. Temperatures in the heartland will be up to 50 degrees below normal, and unfortunately about half of all corn still has not been harvested. Due...

Meteorologist Paul Dorian: "Perhaps the most amazing temperature recorded in this unusual cold spell for the western US took place earlier today in the remote observing station of Peter Sinks, Utah...the unofficial overnight low temperature there of -43.6 ºF is pretty amazing for this time of year and perhaps the lowest temperature ever recorded in the Lower 48 during the month of October. Nearby Salt Lake City, Utah provided some supporting evidence of the extreme cold as it set a low temperature record of 14 ºF for the date and records there go all the way back to 1874.

I'm posting the painting of the attack on 'ol Baghdadi just in case no one else has. Everyone really ought to save this to their computer. It's that good.

* Content at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/mexico-cannabis-full-legalisation-war-drugs-andres-manuel-lopez-obrador-a9158186.html?fbclid=IwAR03OU1eNQPMgHdaq1_RffEQYuQ3q_fBJOotOZIoflDlkkfKWfMLzhb1O4Y Cannot be posted to Free Republic. *

Billionaire George Soros, who has spent his fortune promoting leftwing politicians, media, and organizations, said over the weekend that he hasn’t failed in his lifelong quest to put socialism in place in the United States, but has been impeded by his opposition, including President Donald Trump. “Between the election of President Trump and Britain’s ongoing debate over Brexit, the billionaire philanthropist George Soros recognizes that populism is on the rise and that his brand of liberal democracy is faltering,” said Michel Martin, host of All Things Considered on taxpayer-funded National Public Radio (NPR). Soros also has supported NPR, including $1.8...

We are two-thirds along the way to a new American Civil war—at least, that’s what almost 70 percent of voters questioned by Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service poll believe. When asked to express on a scale from 0 to 100, how far we are on our way to the brink of a civil war, the mean response was 67.23. This conclusion features in the second Civility Poll by GU Politics this year released on Wednesday. The Battleground Civility Poll is the second component of the bipartisan Battleground Poll. The survey found a generally held belief in over...

Austin (WBAP/KLIF) – In the wake of the release of a secret recording showing the Texas House speaker in a negative light, Dennis Bonnen will not seek reelection. The Texas Tribune reports that as of today, over 30 House Republicans have either called for the speaker’s resignation or had stated they no longer supported him. Bonnen has been under fire for months over allegations he planned to target sitting republicans in 2020. In a statement, Bonnen said in part, “It is clear that I can no longer seek re-election as state representative of district 25, and subsequently, as Speaker of...

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom has approved some of the strictest gun laws and gun seizure powers in the U.S. Friday, signing into law 15 different pieces of gun legislation. Newsom has reinforced a “red flag” law that enables educators, employers and co-workers to inform on gun owners and request that a restraining order be placed on them — if they are believed to be a danger to themselves or society, according to the Associated Press. The bill was deemed to be to extreme even for Newsom’s predecessor, former Gov. Jerry Brown, who was also an enthusiastic advocate of gun...

Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force.. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it. In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical...