Free Republic

The media have been quick to rubbish Attorney General Merrick Garland for his failure so far to indict former President Trump over the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. They have tarred him with epithets worthy of Trump himself, such as "Merrick the Mild" and "Merrick the Meek." And a host of former prosecutors and law professors have criticized his inaction, saying that Garland needs to indict Trump to vindicate the rule of law. We don't know for certain, but it appears that Garland's Justice Department has yet to convene a grand jury to investigate the affair. Were they...

Russia began a military invasion of the country of Ukraine on February 24, which is still ongoing and prompted started a chain of sanctions against Russia. Google, Meta (Facebook’s parent company), Apple, and many other tech companies are in the process of winding down operations in Russia, mostly due to sanctions enforced by Europe and the United States. Russia now has another problem on its hands: the country is running out of storage for cloud services. The Russian news outlet Kommersant, citing government sources, is reporting that Russia is rapidly running out of domestic data storage for servers and other...

Such actions move us one step closer to blurring the line between ourselves and the authoritarian tyrants we purport to denounce. American institutions are taking anti-Russian sanctions into their own hands, further normalizing a financial social credit system that can ostracize users for holding unacceptable beliefs — a move purported to punish Russia but that actually evokes the authoritarian country’s own system of tracking its citizens’ political views. Visa and Mastercard have suspended operations in Russia over the country’s invasion of Ukraine, blocking “cards issued by Russian banks from working in other countries and block[ing] people with cards issued elsewhere...

1/ Today, we began blocking RT & Sputnik’s YouTube channels across Europe. Since Russia began its invasion in Ukraine, we’ve been focused on removing violative content & connecting people to trusted news & information. An overview of the steps we’ve taken the last few days 👇— YouTubeInsider (@YouTubeInsider) March 1, 2022

Students at the University of Chicago are not happy with Professor John Mearsheimer – and they want the school to “remedy” the “problem” of his comments. Professor Mearsheimer, known for his work on the realist approach to national security issues, has argued that problems in Ukraine are the fault of the West. He gave a speech in 2015 that called the violent 2014 removal of President Viktor Yanukovych a “coup.” He also referred to fighting between two groups of Ukranians in the Donbas region a “civil war.”

Since Putin's devastating invasion of Ukraine began, 300 companies have announced their withdrawal from Russia in protest.Nevertheless, some western companies have continued to operate in Russia undeterred; we identify several dozen companies with particularly significant exposure to Russian markets. In the days since we initially published our list, many of the "remain" companies have responded to public backlash and decided to withdraw, and we are continuously revising our list to reflect these decisions as they are made. The full, current list of companies that have curtailed operations in Russia as well as those that remain, as of March 8, can...

The entire nation state of Russia is getting the “Gab treatment” by Big Tech and the globalist regime.By that I mean they are being systematically purged from the internet all within the span of about a week. Google is blocking their apps. Apple is blocking their apps. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Telegram have banned or limited access to their accounts. Twitter has started “fact-checking” and reducing the reach of their links. YouTube has demonetized their videos. Reddit has “quarantined” the /r/russia community. Namecheap, a domain registrar, has cut off ALL Russian customers. American right wing dissidents are no strangers to...

The West’s severance from Russia became more apparent this week when CNN International, ABC, CBS, and other major news outlets announced they will stop broadcasting in the Eastern European country following its invasion of Ukraine.

KALININGRAD, Russia -- Igor Pleshkov owns a concrete factory in this Russian Baltic Sea exclave encircled by European Union members Lithuania and Poland. As tensions burn red hot between Russia and the West over Moscow’s military invasion of Ukraine, he is worried. “What will come next is hard to say,” he shrugged. “The situation is changing every minute -- for the worse.” Like Pleshkov’s factory, most businesses in the region of about 1 million people, depend on imports for raw materials, spare parts, and equipment. Residents are nervously watching the unfolding political situation and the alarming collapse of the value...

NYC's Met Opera has ousted its star soprano Anna Netrebko over her years-long support of Putin and Russian separatists, and replaced her with a Ukrainian voice, despite her issuing a statement opposing the war in Ukraine. Netrebko, who is Russian, said that she opposes the ongoing war in Ukraine. She has been linked to Putin for years and once said she wished she could have been his 'lover' because she admired his 'strong male energy'. In recent days, the Met has tried to convince her to publicly renounce Putin but she refused, according to unnamed sources cited by the AP....

Levine Cava tweeted her support of a Russian flight ban in the U.S. during the State of the Union. “Miami-Dade County stands firm in its support of President Biden’s decision to ban Russian aircrafts from U.S. airspace, including Miami International Airport. My administration is ready to work with the federal government to aid the Ukrainian people however we can,” she tweeted. On Monday, the mayor also ordered all county department directors to review all county contracts to ensure that none are connected to Russian business interests of any kind. “As the world continues to monitor Russia’s continued aggression against Ukraine,...

MOSCOW, March 3 (Reuters) - Russia has decided to stop supplying rocket engines to the United States in retaliation for its sanctions against Russia over Ukraine, Dmitry Rogozin, head of the state space agency Roscosmos, said on Thursday. "In a situation like this we can't supply the United States with our world's best rocket engines. Let them fly on something else, their broomsticks, I don't know what," Rogozin said on state Russian television. According to Rogozin, Russia has delivered a total of 122 RD-180 engines to the U.S. since 1990s, of which 98 have been used to power Atlas launch...

Ruling Class laptop war-hawks commence a dangerous new weaponization of money. Among the cognoscenti of the Western capitals of politics and finance, the chorus screams unanimously for ever-escalating economic sanctions against Russia. Lost amidst the cacophony of those calling for a historic financial bloodletting is a dispassionate and careful analysis of the potential peril of such unprecedented collective actions. Specifically, for the first time ever, the powers of the Western World align to purposefully and willfully destroy the currency of a major power – and not just any power, but the most armed nuclear force on earth. The decision to...

Russian natural-gas giant Gazprom, oil-producer Lukoil and leading bank Sberbank are all penny stocks based on their trading on the London Stock Exchange, as the local market was shut for a third day. Sberbank SBER, -87.43%, which had assets of over $500 billion at the end of 2021, was trading for 3 cents a share in afternoon action. The European Commission on Wednesday approved the resolution plan for its Croatian and Slovenian arms that will be sold. Its Austrian and Czech operations will be wound down, with depositors compensated up to €100,000. Lukoil LKOD, -96.03%, Gazprom OGZD, -84.21%, and Rosneft...

Google's YouTube said Tuesday that it would block Kremlin-backed media outlets RT and Sputnik from Europe following similar bans by Facebook and TikTok. "It’ll take time for our systems to fully ramp up. Our teams continue to monitor the situation around the clock to take swift action," Google's video streaming service said in a statement. YouTube's ban — following an announcement from the European Commission that it wanted to remove these Russian media outlets from the EU — would apply within the European Union and the U.K

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) once again defended Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), saying that removing the embattled Wyoming Republican as House Republican Conference chair will hurt the GOP at the ballot box. “Expelling Liz Cheney from leadership won’t gain the GOP one additional voter, but it will cost us quite a few,” Romney wrote on Twitter.

LeBron James tweeted a photo of a police officer who was present when Ma’Khia Bryant was shot, with the caption, “You’re Next.”The officer has been identified as officer Nicholas ReardonYOU’RE NEXT ⏳ #ACCOUNTABILITY pic.twitter.com/NnBfz9zdWq— LeBron James (@KingJames) April 21, 2021Outrage to the basketball star’s tweet was swift:Narrative Commitments + Retribution > Facts + Effectual ReformsThis is a recipe for savagery, not #Accountability https://t.co/hx0reKLoaC— Kmele (@kmele) April 21, 2021LeBron James is now sharing a picture of the Columbus police officer who shot the woman wielding a knife and attacking another woman.With zero regard for facts, he’s solely focused on dividing the...

New York City health officials won a big victory Wednesday when a federal judge upheld a regulation requiring some chain restaurants to post calories on menus and menu boards. U.S. District Judge Richard Holwell rebuffed a challenge from the New York State Restaurant Association, an industry trade group that argued that the rule violates the First Amendment by forcing restaurants to "convey the government's message regarding the importance of calories." The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene believes the regulation, which takes effect Monday, will help the city achieve its goal of reducing obesity. The judge agreed. "It seems reasonable...

In the Middle Ages, alchemists sought to turn common metals into gold. Today some doctors and scientists seeking to prevent and treat obesity in the United States are attempting an equally difficult transformation. They want to change people, their willpower, their lifestyles, their metabolism, even their DNA to make it harder to gain weight and easier to lose it. However, transforming people with drugs, weight-loss surgery, genetic engineering, hypnosis and other extreme steps is not the answer to obesity, because people are not the problem. The problem is the food industry, which provides us with the calories we consume but...