Free Republic

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- A new analysis is adding fuel to the feud over the proposed Philadelphia 76ers arena on Market East. University of Pennsylvania grad and University of Washington professor Albert Alcoin released a study Thursday showing what he says could be economic consequences to businesses and tax revenue if the arena moves forward. "There are clearly some potential negative impacts on businesses that need to be taken into account," Alcoin said. Alcoin based his analysis on a 2022 study that found there were "little to no tangible impacts of sports teams and facilities on local economies. From there, Alcoin...

Two American medical doctors and a researcher wrote a study picking apart the methodology and key conclusions of two famous Dutch studies that are foundational to the development of modern gender medicine. The Dutch studies, published in 2011 and 2015 in the Journal of Sexual Medicine and Pediatrics, respectively, by Dutch medical doctor Annelou de Vries and two teams of researchers in the Netherlands, tracked dozens of adolescents as they underwent puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries and concluded that patients’ mental health and well-being improved; both studies were used as evidence in support of childhood cross-sex medical interventions and...

In February 2020 when the fight against COVID was ramping up and the CDC was taking measures to address the pandemic, the agency was of course tasked to develop test kits under the Emergency Use Authorization Act. The kits were designed and mass produced for distribution to medical labs across the country. In record time, the CDC was able to develop a plausible kit to deploy. But there was only one problem. Specific flaws within test kits caused a massive flood of FALSE POSITIVES. Those numbers were then used by the Globalist Media to catapult their narrative of PANIC and...

On Independence Day, I spent a lot of time thinking of our Founding Fathers. Not as historical leaders but as regular, everyday men. I thought about what it must have been like for them to live under such tyranny and oppression, their hopes and dreams of something so much better, and their willingness to fight and die to achieve it, all so they could ensure that future generations would never have to experience the things they had. I, also, couldn’t help but notice that the country we live in today bears no resemblance to the one they fought so hard...

A vote cast for Marco Rubio is a wasted, thrown away vote!!! Marco Rubio, objectively, is not ready for prime time!!! He is flawed from the standpoint that he does not do well when questioned, with in depth, probing inquiries. His ears turn beet red, and he sweats under the collar profusely....not the sign of a supposed leader, comfortable in his own skin. Mr. Rubio is also a typical "run-of-the-mill" politician who will sell his political soul to the flavor of moment such as exhibited by his close tie in with the Democrat Party, relative immgration & amnesty (it's called...

The keepers of the Beltway flame don't seem terribly impressed by Hillary Clinton's aloof, unavailable presidential campaign thus far. Meet the Press' Chuck Todd thinks she's engaged in awkward ideological "gymnastics" and failing to connect (via the Free Beacon):videos at link ... The 'Game Change' boys see the relentless drip, drip, drip of the Clintons' financial irregulaties and serial opacity as "quite threatening" to her viability (via Grabien): And what is Mrs. Clinton's favorite refuge when her family's multimillion-dollar slush fund is attracting unwanted attention, new details are emerging about her failures and dishonesty as Secretary of State, and her...

Outgoing Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says the administration's own predictions that the new health care law's online sign-up system would be ready by Oct. 1 were "just flat out wrong." Sebelius told NBC's "Meet the Press" in an interview airing Sunday the health care website's launch was "terribly flawed and terribly difficult." She says that eight-week period was her low point of her tenure. Sebelius last week announced her resignation. She says she wanted to give President Barack Obama enough time to bring in a new health chief.

A former Army historian who chronicled the infamous Battle of Wanat in Afghanistan, where nine U.S. soldiers died after their M4 carbines jammed, tells The Washington Times that his official account was altered by higher-ups to absolve the weapons and senior officers.

White and Hispanic turnout fell from 2004 to 2012, according to a new study by the Center for Immigration Studies based on newly-released U.S. Census data. Had turnout equaled what it was in 2004, 4.7 million more whites would have voted in 2012, of which 4.2 million were not college graduates, according to the study. Obama received five million more votes than Romney. “As Republicans think about how they can expand their voter base, the new data suggest that one of their biggest problems in the last presidential election was that so many less-educated whites sat home,” said Steven Camarota,...

On Friday, I wrote about how Gizmodo's Twitter account was hacked. It turns out that this was Apple's fault. Let's take a step back. Over the weekend, it quickly became clear that the bigger story was how the whole thing started. First, former Gizmodo employee Mat Honan's iCloud account was hacked. The hacker then remotely wiped his iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air, got into his Gmail account, his Twitter account, and finally Gizmodo's Twitter account. When this came to light, I updated my article with a link to Honan's blog: Emptyage. Once Honan regained access to his iCloud account, he...

Newt Gingrich ends his White House dream today with his political committee facing a mountain of debts -- owing about $4 million to scores of businesses and campaign workers around the country who fear they will never get paid. Campaign watchdogs said the size of Gingrich's debt is extraordinary -- and could have been avoided if the candidate and his team had been more disciplined. "He was reckless in running up these bills, especially in the last month or so of the campaign when it was quite clear that Mitt Romney would be the nominee," said Craig Holman, a government...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Tuesday pushed back against reports that the Fed had lent banks $7.77 trillion or more during the financial crisis, saying they contained "egregious errors and mistakes." Bloomberg Markets Magazine last month published an article called "Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion Undisclosed to Congress." The article was widely referenced by other news organizations, including the New York Times. The Bloomberg article said the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion as of March 2009 to rescuing the financial system when all guarantees and lending limits were added up. While Bernanke did not...

Yesterday it was the Arab League... today it is the country which arguably has the biggest oil reserves in the world - Russia. And they both are very pissed at what is increasingly seen by the word as an unholy oil crusade, headed by Sarkozy, but with the US and UK not far behind. Per Reuters, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Monday likened the U.N. Security Council resolution supporting military action in Libya to medieval calls for crusades. Well, when your gasoline is $9/gallon a crusade surely sounds like the politically responsible thing to do. Especially if in the...

This is an angle that would benefit Patriots in further exposing, fronting and confronting; - Obama's declaration that the Constitution is fundamentally flawed - This statement alone makes him a "fundamentally flawed" candidate for president of the United States of America. What The Constitution Is - And Isn't.The constitution is a relatively simple agreement on the basics of ordering and structuring American society. It does NOT guarantee a "perfect society" only the pursuit of a "more perfect union". It does not guarantee the government will wipe your butt for you from cradle to grave. Nothing is free - more government...

WASHINGTON - Sen. Jeff Sessions said he'll vote against the $700 billion bailout of the financial industry tonight because it was cobbled together too quickly without enough public input and leaves too many questions unanswered. ~snip~ Also Wednesday afternoon, the phones were ringing nonstop in the office of Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala. Both senators' offices say calls from constituents are overwhelmingly urging them to vote against the legislation. Shelby, the top Republican on the Senate banking committee, did not participate in negotiations on the bailout and has called Paulson's proposal "fundamentally flawed." He will also vote "no" tonight.

Recently, two lengthy immigration studies were released that made headlines across California for their unbelievable claims made by the authors on the impact of illegal immigration in our state. These so-called immigration experts at the Public Policy Institute of California and the Immigration Policy Center came to the misguided conclusion that illegal immigrants living in California actually help American workers earn higher wages, and break fewer laws than other demographic groups in our state. When asked about his conclusions, the co-author of one of the reports, Ruben Rumbaut, told a newspaper that he hoped his work would "reduce prejudice" ----...

WASHINGTON - Federal prosecutors counted immigration violations, marriage fraud and drug trafficking among anti-terror cases in the four years after 9/11 — despite no evidence linking them to terror activity, a Justice Department audit found Tuesday. Overall, nearly all of the terrorism-related statistics on investigations, referrals and cases examined by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine were either diminished or inflated. Only two of 26 sets of department data reported between 2001 and 2005 were accurate, the audit found. Responding, a Justice spokesman pointed to figures showing that prosecutors in the department's headquarters for the most part either accurately...

A congressional panel is calling for an investigation and hearing into reports that applicants for green cards, work visas and other immigration documents were not properly screened against the U.S. terrorist watch list. Employees at the National Benefits Center in Lee's Summit, Mo., said they did not know that a simple key stroke would have allowed them to fully check the background of applicants against the terrorist database, according to the report first published by the Daily Bulletin this past week. That report was based on federal documents obtained by the newspaper and interviews with employees at the Missouri center....

NEW YORK The most widely used electronic-voting systems all have flaws that can be addressed relatively easily, but few states and counties have actually implemented recommended security measures, researchers concluded Tuesday. Even the printing of paper records widely seen as a countermeasure to hacking and other attacks on ATM-like touchscreen machines does little good if audits aren't routinely and automatically performed, researchers said. While California and 11 other states require audits in addition to paper trails, more than half of the 26 states requiring paper records don't do so. The report, based on interviews with elections officials and analyses of...

Republican political strategists had harsh criticism for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign team in the wake of a special election that saw all of his measures go down to defeat. After an election in which five key advisers have already been paid more than $900,000 for their work, they said the governor should now be asking what he got for his money. "I think the governor would want to audit how the money was spent," said longtime Republican political strategist Ken Khachigian. "Was anybody raising their hand and saying, 'Maybe we shouldn't be doing this?' " As Republicans came to grips...