Free Republic

According to Apple, the premiere episode of Masters of the Air, the "sequel" to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, was the most-watched debut ever on their streaming platform. Which is proof that there's a robust audience for these technically cutting-edge but dramatically old-fashioned World War Two dramas, produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblin and Tom Hanks' Playtone. It's hard not to see the appeal in a world full of moral equivalence and antiheroes so compromised they'd be called villains in a different era. None of these shows deny that war is hell; they go out of their way (with the...

President Trump just notched a legal win that may shed some light on the bizarre decision made by the judge in the Big Fani dismissal case. In a moment that felt suggestive in a “wink and a nod” kind of way, Judge McAfee not only granted Trump a substantial triumph but also opened the door for rectifying his own unjust ruling by approving Trump’s appeal request in Georgia. It appears as if McAfee wanted to wash his hands clean and defer to a higher court, almost as if he was encouraging Trump’s team to seek an appeal and give Big...

Back on July 23, the Obamas’ personal chef Tafari Campbell “disappeared while paddleboarding in the waters of Edgartown Great Pond on Martha’s Vineyard.” The death of the 45-year-old was “ruled an accident,” but troubling questions failed to float away.Campbell had posted videos of himself swimming laps, so it was strange that an able swimmer perished in eight feet of water, in a pond for the most part half that depth. Several reports mentioned another paddleboarder who saw Campbell go under. According to the Daily Mail, the observer was a 26-year-old female who worked for the Obamas, but the eyewitness remained...

The pre-print for this study, prior to the peer review process, came out late last year. It showed, in a nutshell, that more COVID-19 shots correlated to a greater risk of contracting COVID-19.But the COVIDians predictably, in eternal denial as is their nature, pounced on the fact that the initial paper was a pre-print. They dismissed it for not being peer-reviewed, which is often described as the “gold standard” stamp of approval by The Science™.Mind you, the corporate state media expresses no such criticism of pre-print studies that say what they want them to say about the alleged efficacy of...

Taking the real historic phenomena of fasting girls who claimed they could survive without food that were reported throughout Ireland after the Great Irish Famine, an adaptation of a novel “The Wonder” is available on Netflix. The brief plot summary is an English nurse, Mrs. Elizabeth Wright, played by Florence Pugh, is hired to watch over a fasting girl, Anna O’Donnell, in Ireland. Mrs. Wright was with Florence Nightingale at Scutari during the Crimea War. An Irish reporter for the Daily Telegraph, Mr. William Bryne, shows up at the village to do his own investigating. The story has the typical...

The Petitions of the Week column highlights a selection of cert petitions recently filed in the Supreme Court. A list of all petitions we’re watching is available here.This week, we highlight cert petitions that ask the court to consider, among other things, whether to revive two federal gun restrictions struck down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.Both cases arise under the federal firearm statute, 18 U.S.C. § 922. Enacted by Congress in 1994, Section 922(g)(8) criminalizes gun ownership by anyone subject to a domestic-violence restraining order. Another provision enacted in 1986, Section 922(o)(1), bars the possession...

Key points: 1. Musk has ordered a freeze on changes to Twitter code as of noon Thursday, October 27, per Twitter employees. No code checkins are allowed. 2. On Thursday, October 27, Twitter product leaders showed Tesla software engineers (brought in by Musk) the company code. These Tesla engineers are reviewing the code in preparation for a confidential briefing for Musk early next week. 3. Twitter software engineers are locked out of the code, other than a few exceptions personally approved by Musk.

The far-left Daily Kos pumped out over 3,000 words to “review” My Son Hunter, even though the author flatly admitted to not having seen the movie, an amazing abandonment of the standard orchestration of a “hit-piece,” which requires writers to at least have a modicum of understanding of the subject their piece intends to “hit.” Here, the singularly-named Daily Kos staff writer “Hunter” (we assume no relation), instead opted for full-blown freakout. Rather than watch (and then bash) the film, the author instead started with “Movie review: ‘My Son Hunter‘ is a soft-porn conspiracy flick for weird conservative incels” for...

The Biden administration wants Israel to review its “rules of engagement” during military operations in Judea and Samaria after the killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh, three Israeli and US sources briefed on the call told Barak Ravid of Axios on Wednesday. US pressure for Israel to review the guidelines is unusual, but comes as the Biden administration faces pressure to do more to ensure accountability in Abu Aqleh's death. The rules of engagement define the circumstances under which Israeli soldiers can use live fire. Abu Aqleh, an American-Palestinian Arab, was shot dead on May 11 while covering...

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation took the next step toward replacing and charging tolls on as many as nine bridges Monday, but motorists won’t pay to use the bridges until 2023 at the earliest. PennDOT announced it has selected three firms to submit proposals for finishing the design of the nine bridges and propose whether to bundle them together under one contract, replace them individually or a combination of the two. The department’s goal is to turn the bridges over to private firms to design and replace them, then maintain them for 30 years with the tolls covering the costs....

MADISON - Republican lawmakers aren't the only ones examining Wisconsin's presidential election. A New London man has been making copies of ballots in some communities as he conducts his own review of an election Joe Biden narrowly won. "Our intention is to have true and honest elections. You hear all kinds of rumors and we want to dispel some of those if they're not true," Peter Bernegger said when asked about his endeavor. Bernegger declined to say what his plans are but said he would announce them in the coming weeks. Recounts in Dane and Milwaukee counties and more than...

For a program broadcast on a taxpayer-funded network, much of its contents seemed one-sided, even for PBS. It also ignores underlying political currentsA recent PBS special on end-of-life care raises important policy and philosophical questions about a subject many Americans avoid. But the special, entitled “When My Time Comes” and hosted by former NPR host Diane Rehm — who wrote a book with the same title last year — offers a troubling set of answers.Rehm came to the end-of-life issue from personal experience. Her first husband, John Rehm, died in 2014 after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. The...

When Modesti Cooper returned home to Houston in July 2019 after more than a decade overseas with the United States military, she moved into her dream house on the corner of Nance and Grove streets in Houston’s Fifth Ward. She’d bought a parcel of land and designed the home from scratch in her downtime while touring from Kuwait to Afghanistan to Iraq. It was a relief to finally move in. “It’s a calm, cool, nice area,” Cooper says. “Besides the traffic, there’s no violence, no noise. It’s so quiet, it’s unbelievable. I had rockets and mortars and missiles blown over...

We’re trying to think of something nice to say about 2020. OK, here goes: Nobody got killed by the murder hornets. As far as we know. That’s pretty much it. In the past, writing these annual reviews, we have said harsh things about previous years. We owe those years an apology. Compared to 2020, all previous years, even the Disco Era, were the golden age of human existence. This was a year of nonstop awfulness, a year when we kept saying it couldn’t possibly get worse, and it always did. This was a year in which our only moments of...

Strong performances and character development balance out the soapy sex and romance nicely, creating a thoroughly bingeable and enjoyable series.Prepare to swoon over Netflix’s new Regency romance, filled to the brim with dashing rogues, charming innocents, gorgeous costumes, and scandals galore. “Bridgerton” follows a well-tread story, where the naive virgin and the brooding bad boy pretend to be in love in order to achieve their individual goals, only for genuine interest and affection to grow from the ruse. However, with likable characters, gorgeous production design, and a mysterious writer documenting the characters’ every move in deliciously scandalous fashion, the clichéd...

President Trump's campaign said it scored two victories Monday in its effort to contest results in several key battleground states, as Michigan state legislators agreed to hold a hearing into election irregularities while a federal appeals court expedited proceedings to consider Trump's legal challenge in Pennsylvania. The developments were announced by Trump campaign senior legal counsel Jenna Ellis, who said the GOP-led Michigan House would hold its hearing at 9 a.m. on Wednesday. "We are grateful to Michigan House lawmakers for not rushing to certify inaccurate election results," Ellis told Just the News. "We are confident they will share the...

While we often discuss expansion into the Solar System as a step leading to interstellar flight, the movement into space has its dark side, as author Daniel Deudney argues in a new book. As Kenneth Roy points out in the review that follows, it behooves everyone involved in space studies to understand what the counter-arguments are. Ken is a newly retired professional engineer who is currently living amidst, as he puts it, “the relics of the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.” His professional career involved working for various Department of Energy (DOE) contractors in the fields of fire protection...

The left's war on history continues. With little pushback from the government, mobs of roving leftists are toppling statues all across the country. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is now calling for a "review" of statues in the United States so that leftists can continue their war on history in an official, government-approved manner. "I would say, rather than tearing down and defacing, why don't we just have a review," Pelosi told The Washington Post during an interview on Thursday. Did Pelosi have a "review" before unilaterally deciding to remove four portraits of former House speakers from the Capitol...

Toilet paper from China wouldn’t even have been a product to contemplate in the before-times. Back when people could buy goods and services, in exchange for paper representing currency. Amazon could fulfill any order any time. Back in the before-times. Then came the lockdowns in response to the CCP coronavirus pandemic, and life as we knew it ceased. Lots of people engaged in panic shopping. Toilet paper was, inexplicably, one of the first products to experience shortages, and it’s still not fully back in stock on store shelves two months later. Some folks got out ahead of the curve and...

The Hunt is 1 hour and 29 minutes of satire. I was in a theater, so I contained the laughing out loud to smirking, chuckles and the occasional knowing side glance at my companion. This is a fun movie. If you wish to see a training film, this is not it. There are quite a few guns in the movie. If you wish to criticize their use, you will find plenty to criticize. I do not expect satire to be realistic. If you want political commentary that eviscerates the Woke left and political insanity… there is plenty in this movie.It...