Free Republic

Jan. 28 (UPI) -- Firefighters in Florida said a hazmat team responded to a gas station where a man filling up his boat confused a fishing pole holder for the gas tank. Orange County Fire Rescue said the customer at 7-Eleven in Orlando was attempting to fill up his 18-foot boat about 11:35 a.m. Monday when he accidentally pumped 30 gallons of gas directly into the cockpit. Fire Rescue said the man pumped about $60 worth of fuel into the cockpit and then put another $40 of gas into the actual gas tank. The hazmat team was able to siphon...

The staff, the ad spending, the campaigning -- Michael Bloomberg was going to do all of this to defeat President Donald Trump already. Doing it as a 'candidate' excempts him from limits on PACs and political donations. There is very good reason to believe Michael Bloomberg isn’t actually running for president.Of course, there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. For one, he declared he is. He’s also hired more than 1,000 staff and is still expanding, offering salaries far above campaign averages. This week, he became the first of the declared candidates to have campaigned in all 14 states...

The European Union’s Parliament has rubber-stamped the withdrawal agreement agreed between Brussels and London, a largely symbolic move which means the last administrative hurdle has been cleared before the United Kingdom departs the European Union on Friday night. European Parliament President David Sassoli signed the withdrawal agreement on behalf of its members after the chamber consented to the document Wednesday evening, having voted 621 in favour to 49 against, with 13 abstentions. He said he would give the document to the European Commission for the final administrative work for Brexit to take place on Thursday, before the United Kingdom formally...

Empty Egg Carton: Why have western women stopped having babies? 22 min. video: Empty Egg Carton: Why have western women stopped having babies?

Last week, National Review published an appalling article by Zachary Evans about the recent wave of antisemitic violence against ultra-Orthodox Jews in and around New York City. It claimed to provide context for these attacks but was inadvertently (I hope) an exercise in victim blaming. In response to many readersÂ’ outraged replies, both the ReviewÂ’s editors and several staff members made matters worse by refusing to acknowledge any problem with the article. The worst was this screed by Kevin Williamson accusing critics of reading the article in bad faith simply to attack National Review, as if the only thing at...

The Netflix sitcom The Ranch was once called a “conservative” sitcom, but as it ends its run this month, the series has veered left with an anti-gun message among other virtue signaling fare. When it debuted in 2016, the streaming sitcom starring Ashton Kutcher and Sam Elliott brought reviewers to note that swipes at Barack Obama, support for guns and hunting, love of tractors and cars, and criticism of global warming, made it more conservative than most TV shows. “Me. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of people saying they need an assault weapon to defend themselves, and I’m sick...

On Tuesday, Politico published in-depth exposé on financial ties between the former VP'S younger brother, James, and a high-powered D.C. lobbyist. James and his wife purchased an acre of land in the Virgin Islands for $150,000 in May 2005. A year later, James resold 1/3rd of that acre to Scott Green, a 'national security lobbyist who formerly served a Senate staffer for Joe Biden. Green paid $150,000 for the land, even though tax assessed value was only $38,000. “In effect, James got their money back while keeping most of the land—recouping their investment in just 12 months. Any money that...

A lamentable feature of modern post-Christian life in the West is the inability of many people to form strong, lasting friendships. This observation has popped up with increasing frequency in the secular media, particularly as it relates to the Millennial generation. A recent poll that made the rounds last year indicated that 22% of Millennials who responded said that they had no friends at all, 27% said that they had no close friends, and 30% said that they had no best friends. The article accompanying the poll suggests that social media usage has been a major driver of this phenomenon....

Founded in 1881, The Buffalo News will have its third owner in its nearly 140-year history, thanks to a sale to Lee Enterprises. Spectrum News reports that the sale, for $140 million in cash, includes the Berkshire Hathaway Media Group publications with print and digital operations of 30 daily newspapers and more than 49 paid weekly publications and 32 other print products. Lee has managed the BH Media Group since the summer of 2018. For The Buffalo News, the sale announced Wednesday morning signals the end of a 40-year ownership by Warren Buffett. Lee Enterprises will be the third owner...

Polarization and partisan acrimony are inherent in all organizations. In the famous Federalist Paper No. 10, James Madison regarded factions as inevitable, and stated that people will continue to form alliances with others who are or feel similar to themselves. It has always been puzzling that commentators have tended to regard feminism as if it were a united monolithic movement rather than one divided, as with all other organizations, by passion, interest or ambition. More correct is the analysis by Phyllis Chesler in her book, A Politically Incorrect Feminist, in its discussion of 20thcentury American leaders of the feminist movement,...

Far left Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) unveiled a new campaign plan Tuesday. She must have come up with this idea while sitting through hours of sham impeachment testimony in the US Senate. Warren’s plan calls for the creation of a Justice Department task force to investigate and prosecute corruption and immigration “violations” committed by the Trump administration. This plan is hatched while the Democrats/media excuse the Biden corruption entirely. Warren threw red meat to her fascist followers. She is promising to persecute Trump officials.

The "whole world needs to be on alert" to fight the coronavirus, the head of the World Health Organization Health Emergencies Programme has said. Dr. Michael Ryan praised China's response to the deadly outbreak, saying: "The challenge is great but the response has been massive." The WHO will meet on Thursday to discuss whether the virus constitutes a global health emergency.

Fox stonewalls pro-life group from running ‘abortion survivors’ ad on Super Bowl Sunday The pro-life group claims the network gave them the ‘runaround’ for six months. January 28, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – The pro-life group that created the powerful abortion survivor TV ad played at the March for Life last week is calling out Fox Sports Network for stonewalling them and refusing to approve their ad to run in a slot on Super Bowl Sunday this coming weekend.  Faces of Choice, a new non-profit whose ad featuring 14 survivors of abortion was shown at the March for Life, say they...

The union that handles every shipping container that crosses West Coast docks is bracing for bankruptcy. It’s a rare prospect for a bargaining group, and it’s rattling organized labor nationally. (snip) But a $94-million federal jury award Nov. 4 to ICTSI Oregon Inc., a cargo terminal operator, has forced union leaders to warn that a filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection may be ahead.(snip) A Chapter 11 filing would force the union to disclose details of its finances and operations, a disagreeable prospect for an intensely private organization.

A widely shared article on social media inaccurately claims Canada is the source of the 2019 coronavirus outbreak in China.Zero Hedge, a blog with a track record of publishing false information, said in a Jan. 26 story that the coronavirus is part of a Chinese plot to develop a bioweapon. The article was republished from a website called Great Game India."Last year a mysterious shipment was caught smuggling Coronavirus from Canada. It was traced to Chinese agents working at a Canadian lab," the story reads. "Subsequent investigation by GreatGameIndia linked the agents to Chinese Biological Warfare Program from where...

The question phase of the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump kicks off at 1 p.m. ET Wednesday with senators getting their first chance to weigh in formally on the six days of opening arguments they’ve sat silently through. The 100 senators will still have to keep quiet, however, and only submit their questions in writing to Chief Justice John Roberts. Sworn in as “impartial” jurors in the trial, the senators will direct their questions to either the House impeachment managers or to Trump’s defense team. Roberts will read the questions aloud and he can identify the questioners, like what...

For three years, Democrats accused the president of having stolen the 2016 election. Now, they maintain, he is trying to steal the 2020 election. In reality, it was Hillary and members of the Obama administration (and probably Obama himself) who tried to steal the 2016 election and it is Pelosi, Schiff, and Nadler who are trying to steal 2020. Pelosi, Schiff, and Nadler are using the power of their offices to erase the 2016 election, steal the 2020 Presidential Election, and damage Republican senators in purple states enough to flip the upper chamber to Democratic Party control. Running on the...

As China attempts to contain the spread of a new coronavirus that has left more than 100 people dead, rumors and disinformation have spread amid the scramble for answers. Some of the speculation has centered on a virology institute in Wuhan, the city where the outbreak began. One fringe theory holds that the disaster could be the accidental result of biological weapons research. But in conversations with The Washington Post, experts rejected the idea that the virus could be man-made. “Based on the virus genome and properties there is no indication whatsoever that it was an engineered virus,” said Richard...

No, the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV), is not related to the popular refreshing Mexican beer brand called Corona. But that’s not stopping people from searching Google to apparently try to double check. Google Trends released data showing that around late January, there was a marked spike in searches for the terms “beer virus” and “corona beer virus.” Jan. 25 showed the height of the spike in searches for the term “beer virus,” as searches rose to a value of 100 on Google Trends indicating a peak in popularity. For the term “corona beer virus,” it peaked at a value of...

SYDNEY, Jan 29 (Reuters) - A team of scientists in Australia said on Wednesday they have successfully developed a lab-grown version of coronavirus, the first to be recreated outside of China, in a breakthrough that could help combat the global spread of the illness. The researchers at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne said they would share the sample, which was grown from an infected patient, with the World Health Organization and laboratories around the world. A laboratory in China had successfully grown the virus but had released only the genome sequence, not the sample itself,...