Free Republic

While some depict the Bible’s Passover meal and Jews’ Exodus from Egypt as a fable, archeological and other evidence squares with the Bible’s account.Tonight begins Passover, or Pasach, celebrated worldwide by Jews. As recounted in Exodus 13:3-10, this ritual meal marks their ancestors’ escape from Egyptian captivity.About three weeks earlier, Christians celebrated Easter to commemorate Jesus’ Resurrection. Judaism and Christianity share not merely monotheism, but also recount their miraculous foundations as history.Together they form the moral foundation for Western culture, a foundation that is collapsing, in part due to post-Enlightenment critiques of the historicity of these religions. But, as a...

San Francisco has long been feared to be falling into a doom loop, a situation where taxpayers leaving the crime-ridden city results in lower tax revenues leading to cuts in services and rising taxes, making it even less desirable to live in. It can be especially devastating when a community's essential businesses, such as grocery stores, decide to leave. San Francisco experienced this last year when Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)-owned Whole Foods Market Inc. shut down its flagship store in the city after being open for just over a year, citing employee safety concerns. Nearly 570 emergency calls were reported from...

Want more food deserts in San Francisco?Here's how you get more food deserts in San Francisco.According to Reason magazine:The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is considering a remarkable policy that would allow people to sue grocery stores that close too quickly.Earlier this week, Supervisors Dean Preston and Aaron Peskin introduced an ordinance that, if passed, would require grocery stores to provide six months' written notice to the city before closing down.Supermarket operators would also have to make "good faith" efforts to ensure the continued availability of groceries at their shuttered location, either through finding a successor store, helping residents form...

NBC News, or, as Greg Gutfeld aptly calls the mainstream media outlet, “Nothing But Crap,” recently outdid even itself in promulgating misleading information. A weekend report strongly implied that Florida is a veritable hellhole from which residents are fleeing at a remarkable rate. The outlet claimed that “a perfect storm of soaring insurance costs, a hostile political environment, worsening traffic, and extreme weather” had caused people to abandon the Sunshine State in droves.And they based that claim on interviews with “more than a dozen recent transplants and longtime residents who left the state in the past two years.” More than...

After being strung up on charges by President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ), a 71-year-old great-grandmother may be thrown in jail because she walked around the Capitol for a few minutes on Jan. 6, 2021.Rebecca Lavrenz was convicted on four counts Thursday after just three days of jury deliberation for entering the Capitol on J6. Lavrenz entered the building through an open door around 2:43 p.m., according to the official statement of facts.Lavrenz told The American Spectator‘s Jack Cashill that she “felt that if those doors [on the east side of the building] opened I was supposed to go...

<p>That's according to the 2024 USA Wealth Report put out by investment migration consultancy Henley & Partners and New World Wealth, which finds there are now more Americans applying for residence and citizenship-by-investment programs than citizens of any other country. Over the past five years, inquiries from the U.S. about these programs have increased by 500%.</p>

…….. Every four years, as Americans gird themselves to choose a president, there's talk, mainly among Democrats, of leaving the country. I'm off for Canada if unacceptable candidate X wins! And every four years, the promised exodus fails to materialize. It's mostly just therapeutic venting. This time is different. The alarm over Trump's potential triumph in November is far starker than the fears stoked by past presidents. "A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable," a recent Washington Post headline warned. The Atlantic devoted an entire issue to the authoritarian horrors in store for America "If Trump Wins." Every four years or...

A noticeable trend is emerging as people pack their bags and relocate, with a clear pattern of migration from Democrat-controlled cities to Republican-leaning havens. The top destinations for those seeking greener pastures include Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tampa, Orlando, and Sacramento, signaling a shift in residential preferences. Conversely, the cities experiencing an exodus are predominantly from Democratic strongholds – San Francisco, New York City, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and Chicago. What’s driving this migration pattern?

“The Law of God Is Good and Wise” (Exodus 20:1-17) “The Law of God is good and wise”: So we just sang in the hymn. But is it? Is the Law of God really good and wise? I mean, yes, it does set God’s will before our eyes. And yes, it does show us the way of righteousness. However, the Law does doom us to death when we transgress. And we do transgress. A lot. So is the Law of God really all that good and wise? Really, when it dooms us? When it damns us? If so, what good...

Is the blue state exodus from California, New York, and Illinois making red states like Florida, Texas, and South Carolina more liberal? Studies suggest the answer is no. South Carolina is one of the beneficiaries of a blue state exodus. But contrary to popular theory, South Carolina Is Still Ruby Red. Fed up with pandemic restrictions, Sandy Zal uprooted her family from Schenectady, N.Y., three years ago and moved here because of its Republican tilt. She and her husband named their new company Freedom Window Tinting, a nod to South Carolina’s ethos. The Zals are part of a migration wave...

Director John Carpenter had two films, “Escape From New York” and the less popular “Escape From LA.” Carpenter’s vision of a dystopian future with Manhattan as a prison island, filled with criminals and Los Angeles as a just a weird, dystopian area filled with gangs and sleazebags. Apparently, Carpenter read George Orwell with a splash of Franz Kafka in writing these films which are sadly becoming a reality. Like John Carpenter foretold, both California and New York are leading the nation in outmigration. BAD crime, high taxes, insane politicians and droves of illegal immigrants are making living in those state...

Like they tell us about relationships in Facebook, the U.S. economy is a bit complicated. Yes, the Biden administration is pushing the idea that happy days are here again. On the other hand, the growth is happening in some places and not in others. Some places are happier than others. It goes like this: Nearly every week, a fresh round of strong economic data elicits a celebratory statement from the Biden administration. Most of the best-performing states, however, voted in favor of former President Donald Trump, a new ABC News analysis found. An examination of key economic measures -- including...

Legal experts analyzed what they called "breathtaking" civil penalties against former President Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, former Trump Organization Comptroller Jeffrey McConney and ex-CFO Allen Weisselberg – warning other corporations based in the Empire State may realize they could suddenly be put out of business by the state on a political whim. New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron found Trump liable for more than $350 million in damages in the fraud suit brought against him and his company by New York State Democratic District Attorney Letitia James. Trump Sr., the Trump Revocable Trust and Trump Organization...

We are once again being reminded why the once prosperous state of California is falling into a budgetary black hole and bleeding residents at an increasing rate. (Though to be fair, some of those losses are being made up for by an army of illegal migrants who use up even more resources.) The Democrats who run the state can’t seem to help themselves, and they keep going back to the well with failed ideas to increase state revenue. The latest chapter in this ongoing story comes to us from Stephen Green at PJ Media. It appears that members of the...

“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as "bad luck.” ― Robert HeinleinAfter nearly two centuries of uninterrupted economic and population growth, California has hit a pothole in the road. There had been...

"The Great Escape" was released in 1963. I'm sure that you all remember the great motorcycle scene starring the late Steve McQueen. Well, I hear that there is a new version of the movie coming out featuring Governor Kathy Hochul of New York. She won't be riding a bike over the fence but is clearly driving a lot of people out of the state. The Big Apple is getting lean and leaner. Check this out: New York’s population plunged more than any other state in the country over the past year, according to sobering new statistics – as fed-up lawmakers...

California is a beautiful place, and when you remember that I'm speaking as an Alaskan, that's really saying something. But it's undeniably true, and it's easy to see why, once upon a time, California was the destination of choice. The once-Golden state has a wide variety of landscapes, from deserts to mountains to farmlands to beaches. The climate is salubrious and it's almost always possible to go a few miles to find temps that suit you; I remember working in the Santa Clarita Valley in 2007-2009, and on weekends when the Santa Anas blow like a blast from an oven...

California is, without a doubt, one of the most naturally blessed places in the world. The idea of the American Dream was invented there, and during the 50s and 60s, it became the embodiment of America’s optimistic spirit. Its image was surfers, suburbs, and Silicon Valley. San Francisco was one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and Los Angeles was Tinseltown–the place where dreams are made. New York City may have been the place where if you made it there, you could make it anywhere, but California was the place where you could lay in the sun in...

At first, the ads seemed like a pandemic-era curiosity, a niche political pitch playing on the red state, blue state divide. “Escape liberal hell,” counseled one sales video from a Boise, Idaho, real estate agent. “Here are seven reasons conservatives flock to Idaho.” “Time is not on your side, flee the city NOW before the coming collapse!” read another ad for 5 acres in Moyie Springs, Idaho, listed for $259,000 by a Sandpoint, Idaho, company called Black Rifle Real Estate. (Motto: “Ready. Aim. Move.”) The idea that people would pick up and move solely for politics has seemed like a...

New York’s Finest continue to bolt from the job at an alarming rate, according to new data obtained by The Post — and some cops worry the exodus will only get worse because the city plans to cancel the next five Police Academy classes, shrinking the nation’s largest police force to the smallest its been in decades.