Free Republic

Move over California and New York, a new state is in contention for the 'most dysfunctional' in America. Illinois is grappling with a string of issues which have triggered a rise in residents departing the state. The state has struggled to add jobs and its public pension debt has ballooned to nearly $150 billion. Meanwhile, its population has declined, hurting tax income.

Jeff Roe, longtime Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) consultant and chief architect of his flailing political operation, resigned Saturday from the super PAC charged with realizing the governor’s increasingly quixotic presidential aspirations. Roe announced his departure hours after a damning Washington Post report on the collapse of Never Back Down (NBD), the super PAC Roe conceptualized to send DeSantis to the White House and usher in a new era of super PAC-driven presidential campaigns. The Post report comes after five senior officials, pre-dating Roe’s departure, left NBD since late November and three others with Roe’s firm were fired. The Post writes...

Obesity is a major risk factor for cardiovascular metabolic diseases and neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia. Long-term exercise improves memory and spatial cognition, reduces age-related cognitive decline, and maintains brain volume, but the mechanisms are not fully understood. A study from Febbraio lab at Monash University reported that voluntary exercise training (VET) improves long-term memory in high-fat diet (HFD)-induced obese mice, increases hippocampal neurogenesis and the expression of the neurotrophic factor BDNF in the hippocampus, and decreases the expression of the inflammatory factor TNF, suggesting that long-term physical activity can prevent obesity-induced cognitive decline. Particularly, their results showed that VET...

“I voted yes tonight to keep the government open, but I’m done normalizing this dysfunction,” Fetterman continued. “This is not entertainment, it’s governance. We must not allow the Freedom Caucus to turn our government into The Steve Wilkos Show.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that House Republicans were in the middle of a “civil war.” Anchor Jonathan Karl said, “You have Kevin McCarthy launching this impeachment inquiry, and he did it just days after saying he would launch an impeachment inquiry without a full vote of the House. He did it anyway. What is going on here?”

“Suppose we got it all wrong and the real crazies are the TV people in nice suits and $300 haircuts?” That’s an observation by Richard Fernandez on Twitter, and he has a good point. There’s a lot of craziness in the air these days. But for the most part it seems to be flowing from the top down, not bubbling up from the bottom. It wasn’t farmers and factory workers who came up with the idiotic COVID responses — nor was it they who originated the more or less criminal idea of conducting “gain of function” research on making dangerous...

Matt Taibbi pointed this out last Friday. There’s currently another round of dueling memos taking place in Washington that is reminiscent of the Nunes-Shiff memo battle you may remember from back in 2018. I won’t walk through all of that again but the gist was that Nunes memo was basically right and Schiff’s memo was clearly wrong. But you wouldn’t have know it at the time from looking at the media coverage, because of course the media took Schiff’s side and presented him as more credible.So here we are once again. Rep. Jim Jordan released a letter last week pointing...

Florida, United States: A Florida man was arrested after he allegedly broke into a room inside his own house to steal a hookah from his roommate, the Lee County Sheriff’s office said. The man identified as Tyler Wesley, 19, was arrested Saturday evening in Fort Myers city of the US after his roommate, Monica, dialled 911 to report him. Security camera footage from inside her room shows the teen trying to cover the camera with a cloth before dropping it and running away. The incident is only the latest in a series of conflicts to which deputies have responded at...

On Tucker Carlson Tonight, the Fox News host discussed the rape and murder of Eliza Fletcher in Memphis, Tennessee. The story has shocked much of the nation, but as Carlson noted, far too many were NOT shocked by it. Leftists on social media went so far as to victim-blame Fletcher, wondering why she didn’t know “the rules” about jogging at that hour in a city like Memphis. Some of the comments were disgusting on their face, but they also betrayed a deeper problem we’re facing as a nation. Law and order have been replaced in many areas of the country...

A WWE anchor has revealed that she is a 'product of rape' after her mom was sexually assaulted by a stranger as she issued a stinging rebuke of Roe v. Wade being overturned. WWE anchor Kayla Braxton tweeted: 'I am a product of rape. My mother was raped by a stranger - to this day, neither of us have any clue who my birth dad is. She chose to have me - clearly - but she did so because she CHOSE to. Not because a law told her she HAD to. It should always be our choice.' The 31-year-old took...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — The White House on Tuesday slammed Florida Republicans over a proposal to ban discussions of sexual orientation or gender identity in the state’s schools. A White House spokesperson weighed in on the legislation, dubbed by activists as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, shortly after a GOP-controlled committee approved the measure. “Every parent hopes that our leaders will ensure their children’s safety, protection, and freedom. Today, conservative politicians in Florida rejected those basic values by advancing legislation that is designed to target and attack the kids who need support the most – LGBTQI+ students, who are already...

It’s become apparent that the chemistry in the Eagles locker room is off. Following an ugly 37-10 loss to the Cowboys Sunday, Eagles offensive tackle Lane Johnson spilled on what was going on behind the scenes of the team’s recent struggles. In a postgame interview with NBC Sports, Johnson explained that some of his teammates have been shirking their responsibility.

We often discuss how politicians in Washington DC are wrong in the way they go about doing things. It’s evident by how certain things move way too quickly while other things never move at all. But perhaps a bigger issue isn’t in how they do things but what they set out to do in the first place. Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) had some thoughts about the responsibility of those in Washington DC. He rightly pointed out that making deals isn’t really what was intended. We didn’t vote for our conservative representatives to bend on DACA any more than leftists voted...

A 16-month-old girl who cops said was brutally beaten by her dad on Father’s Day may be losing her brave fight for life, according to her grandmother, who said the child is brain dead. Little Nylah Lewis remained in critical condition Thursday at Maimonides Medical Center with multiple skull fractures and bleeding on the brain — four days after Shaquan Taylor, 19, allegedly pounded on her tiny body during a Father’s Day visit. Relatives said the girl needed a blood transfusion.

When The Post's front page declares: "Republicans are on the verge of ceasing to function as a national party," it's time to ask: How did this come to pass? You can choose from a litany of insurrections, government shutdowns and other self-inflicted wounds. But this year's carnival-like GOP presidential primary makes one event, in retrospect, stand out as a crucial turning point on the road to upheaval: the 2008 embrace of then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be a heartbeat from the presidency. Palin's blatant lack of competence and preparedness needs no belaboring. What's critical is that substantive, serious Republican leaders...

When I think of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, I think of the decadeslong building of the new eastern span, the shameless political grandstanding for a project that ran $5 billion over budget -- and the construction headaches that live on. Brian Maroney, Caltrans' chief engineer for the bridge, sees something entirely different. He sees a visual stunner that delights drivers as they emerge from Treasure Island to gasp at a skyway with twinkling lights curling toward the East Bay hills. He thrills at the experience to the user, especially at night. Most importantly, he sees a bridge that is...

Institutions Worthy of Our Parties: Should the U.S. Switch to a Parliamentary System? Efforts to curb legislative partisanship have weak track records, so maybe we should consider changing the other side of the equation in order to establish a government that can actually get things done. Rick Hasen has a really interesting paper up discussing partisan polarization and the possibility of changing the Constitution to deal with it. (And you should really read Jonathan Bernstein’s response, too.) Hasen starts off by asking whether we should be considering moving toward a more parliamentary style of government. It’s a fair question. We...

The cases before the Supreme Court regarding same-sex marriage are significant far beyond the issue of whether a small sub-section of less than 3% of Americans deserve governmental benefits available to heterosexual married couples, or even whether traditional marriage will be damaged by same-sex marriage. That this issue has even arisen at all is testimony to the dysfunctions of modernity that have radiated throughout the culture and created numerous social problems.

This OWS experiment is fascinating.  It's like being in a laboratory and watching Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies unfold before our very eyes. Just for those of you keeping score at home, here are some of the very latest dispatches from the OWS frontier. Remember, this is what leftism looks like. From the Depravity File: In Manchester NH, a now-tearful occupier (see photo above) has taken to pimping out teenage girls.  (Union Leader)Occupy Madison can't renew its permit because too many people complained about "inappropriate behavior, such as public masturbation, from street protesters."  (The Daily Cardinal)From the Socialism Doesn't Work...

Californians are bummed out. The Golden State's residents rated their quality of life at its lowest mark in almost 20 years, citing the economic downturn and stagnant personal finances, according to a joint UC Berkeley and Field Poll. "Residents are reconsidering the image of the Golden State and showing more ambivalence toward it," said Jack Citrin, a Berkeley political science professor who co-wrote the report. "The changes going on - socially, culturally, economic - have made people here less Pollyannaish about the reality of life here." The poll, based on a telephone survey of 898 registered voters in February, showed...