Free Republic

OKLAHOMA CITY—An Oklahoma judge agreed to step down Friday after she was caught sending hundreds of texts from the bench while overseeing a murder trial in the killing of a 2-year-old boy, including messages that mocked prosecutors and were sprinkled with emojis. District Judge Traci Soderstrom also agreed to not seek judicial office again in Oklahoma under a proposed settlement agreement filed with the Oklahoma Court on the Judiciary. She had faced removal from the bench over accusations that included gross neglect of duty, oppression in office, lack of proper temperament, and failure to supervise her office. Judge Soderstrom had...

The hubris here is actually quite stunning. A group of Mayors from sanctuary cities are requesting that all taxpayers in the USA support them as they try to cope with the impact of mass illegal alien arrivals. They created themselves as “sanctuary cities” for illegals, now they want everyone to pay for it.WASHINGTON (AP) — The mayors of Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles and New York are pressing to meet with President Joe Biden about getting federal help in managing the surge of migrants they say are arriving in their cities with little to no coordination, support or resources from...

Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon is dead on arrival after its second-weekend box office collapsed to just $9 million. Apple Studios dropped a reported $200 million into this prestige flick and at least another $60 or $70 million to promote it. Thus far, after two weekends, it has grossed just $41 million domestic and $85 million worldwide. The problem is the 60 percent drop between weekend one and weekend two. That tells you the all-important word of mouth is pretty awful. The sycophants in the entertainment media will likely claim Flower Moon took a dive because...

President Joe Biden’s recent claim that gay people "can be married in the morning and thrown out of a restaurant" in the afternoon was rated by the fact-checking site PolitiFact as "mostly true" on Friday. During the White House "Pride Month 2023" event on June 10, Biden gave a speech in support of the LGBTQ community. One particular point that drew backlash was his claim that restaurants kick gay people out on the basis of their sexual orientation. "When a person can be married in the morning and thrown out of a restaurant for being gay in the afternoon, something...

In the aftermath of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), the 16th biggest bank in the country, many are left wondering what went wrong. Both current and former employees have stated that the bank’s support of remote work is a contributing factor. Axios reports that current and former employees of Silicon Valley bank have mentioned the bank’s support of remote work as a contributing factor to its recent collapse. SVB stood out in the banking sector for its commitment to remote work. “If our time working remotely has taught us anything, it’s that we can trust our employees to...

Reports are coming out that Kevin McCarthy has moved into the Speaker’s office. This is despite reports that 10-15 GOP Congressmen and women are not expected to vote for him on the first ballot tomorrow. Kevin McCarthy has a lot of baggage to overcome to win the Speaker of the House. He famously questioned in a phone call released by MSNBC whether those who protested the stolen election in 2020 could have their Twitter accounts removed. At the same time, McCarthy said that the only discussion that he would have with President Trump is to encourage him to resign. This...

Researchers at Boston University have created a version of the coronavirus that is five times as transmissible as the original Wuhan strain and 80 times as deadly. The research combined the spike protein from the highly transmissible Omicron variant of covid with the original Wuhan strain and tested it on mice. Eighty percent of the test subjects died. Those conducting the experiment speculated that the resulting new variant "would probably not be as deadly with humans as it was with the tested mice because the mice were especially bred to be highly susceptible to covid. Basically, their immune systems were...

Newly-released drone footage shows excavators starting work on digging the foundations for the £440 billion megacity The Line in Saudi Arabia. The project was launched by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and will be part of the vast desert complex of Neom, which will also feature an artificial ski resort, an octagonal floating port city, flying elevators, a swimming lane for commuters and robots and AI to serve its future residents. the skyscraper will run from the Gulf of Aqaba, through a mountain range, and then extend along the coast into a desert 'aerotropolis,' the Wall Street Journal reported. The...

Some of the music of my life to open up this week. Here I am your currently sober drunk host embarking on a journey of media excellence... Joe Biden's Department of Homeland Security with a "Disinformation Board"? The 21st Century Hi-Tech Fairness Doctrine. It's time for a Drive-By Media Update this song from 40 years ago one of many provocative tunes that hit the world of Contemporary Christian Music courtesy of Steve Taylor and this one's for you F. Chuck Todd... The Drive-Bys gave us 69 days of Ukraine in all of our orifaces and now they want abortions... But...

Governor J.B. Pritzker enjoys a “comfortable lead” over a group of largely unknown Republican primary challengers who have yet to make much of a name for themselves, according to a pollster who touts his firm as the “most accurate polling company in Illinois.” “We released a poll before the 2020 election and before the 2018 election, and we got Pritzker’s election four years ago,” Victory Research pollster Rod McCulloch said. “I think we were 1.2% off.” “We were right on the money on the Fair Tax in 2020, and the Trump vs Biden race, just 1% off,” he said. The...

Do you trust your doctor anymore? Honestly? I don’t mean Dr. Anthony Fauci. How can anybody trust him, with all the prevarications, constant shifts in policy and deceptions, not to mention hiding American taxpayer support for gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Virology Lab and other aspects of the doctor’s dark past revealed in great detail in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s book? I’m talking about your own personal doctor, the man or woman who has been your friend and trusted counselor for years, maybe decades. How do you feel about that person? Has it changed? What many are perceiving as a...

hospital in Nassau County, New York, was forced to close its emergency department this week due to staffing shortages as a result of the state's COVID-19 vaccination requirement. Mount Sinai South Nassau said on Monday that it would temporarily close the ER in Long Beach after all other options for staffing were exhausted. Thus, patients who are in need of emergency services will be directed to the hospital's main campus in Oceanside, located roughly five miles away. The travel time could take up to 25 minutes in traffic, according to WABC. The hospital said that an ambulance will be stationed...

My Jewish father was an old country lawyer who believed deeply in fairness and justice for all living people, so I was curious what he thought about the Nazis. It was spring of 1977, and the American Nazi Party had announced their intention to hold a July 4th rally in the town of Skokie, a predominantly Jewish community in Illinois. Not surprisingly, the town of Skokie had sought an injunction to ban the rally, and the Nazis had, ironically, sought the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to fight the injunction. The subject at the family dinner table...

One of the easiest things to predict about the end of Donald Trump's presidency was that anti-Trump journalists would eventually feel a heated rush of nostalgia about their heroic crusade to keep democracy from dying. But it came earlier than expected. Alexander Nazaryan of Yahoo News wrote a piece for the Democrat-endorsing website The Atlantic that was originally headlined "I Miss the Thrill of Trump." He unintentionally caused laughter when he wrote: "Covering the administration was thrilling for many journalists, in the way that I imagine storming Omaha Beach must have been for a 20-year-old fresh from the plains of...

Absolutely arrogant. For Timothy P. Schmalz, an Ontario-based sculptor, that’s really the only way to describe the renewed push to tear down statues that commemorate people who are now deemed out of step with modern morals. When a Confederate figure gets toppled in the U.S., or a prime minister who was part of brutal treatment of Indigenous people is destroyed in Canada, it says more than just disagreeing, Mr. Schmalz said. It’s a claim that we would have known better, acted otherwise. And that’s the hubris. “When one destroys or puts a Confederate statue in a museum, out of sight,...

The lead editorial of the New York Times Sunday declares that the Republican Party will die with President Donald Trump’s defeat in the November election. Under the headline “R.I.P., G.O.P.: The Party of Lincoln had a good run. Then came Mr. Trump,” the Times editorial board argues: Of all the things President Trump has destroyed, the Republican Party is among the most dismaying. “Destroyed” is perhaps too simplistic, though. It would be more precise to say that Mr. Trump accelerated his party’s demise, exposing the rot that has been eating at its core for decades and leaving it a hollowed-out...

ALBANY NY (WRGB) - New York State living up to its promise to help other states as they deal with large numbers of COVID-19 cases. The state is helping to supply a coronavirus testing site in Saint Petersburgh, Florida. The announcement was made by Governor Cuomo Wednesday. Joined by St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman, the governor announced the site at the Pinellas Community Church will provide Floridians with up to 500 tests per day. New York is sending thousands of test kits to make this happen, along with masks, PPE, hand sanitizer and ventilators. In addition to the items being...

During a press conference on Monday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, boasted about the lowering rate of novel coronavirus cases in the state while seemingly taking a jab at the faithful. “The number is down because we brought the number down,” he told reporters Monday. “God did not do that. Faith did not do that. Destiny did not do that.” “A lot of pain and suffering did that,” the Democrat continued. “That’s how it works. It’s math. And if you don’t continue to do that, you’re going to see that number go back up. And that will be...

The Progressive believes in precisely two things: his own magnificence and the constructive power of brute force. In combination, they lead him naturally from the role of pestiferous busybody to brutal dictator. Where the productive man dreams of the things he might create if only left alone by his fellows, the Progressive dreams of the world he could create if only the lives and property of his fellows were at his disposal. The roots of his pathology lie in that oldest and most destructive of all human vices, the desire for the power to rule over other men. As naked...

Former FBI attorney Lisa Page sues DOJ, FBI for publishing her text messages Page says leaking her messages to the press was 'not only wrong, it was illegal'; David Spunt reports from the Justice Department. Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page is suing the FBI and Department of Justice, alleging that the government's publication of her salacious text messages with anti-Trump ex-FBI agent Peter Strzok constituted a breach of the Federal Privacy Act. In the complaint filed Tuesday, the 39-year-old Page said she suffered numerous damages because of the disclosure, including a "permanent loss of earning capacity due to reputational damage"...