Free Republic

The crime wave sweeping across the country is the direct result of a years-long campaign by George Soros to bankroll the election of far-left district attorneys committed to undermining law and order. Over the past six years or so, Soros has poured tens of millions of dollars into the campaigns of DA candidates... ... Soros can circumvent individual contribution limits by funneling money through the PACs he has set up for this purpose, which generally go by the ironic name of “Safety and Justice.” ... Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner received $1,700,000 from Soros. Chicago DA Kim Foxx, who treated Jussie...

It seems there is suddenly a movement in media to silence anyone who speaks out against George Soros—and, specifically, his funding of radical prosecutors seeking to change the criminal justice system by simply ignoring certain crimes. This happened to me personally this week while I was being interviewed on Fox’s Outnumbered. When I brought up Soros’s plan to get pro-criminal, anti-police prosecutors elected across the country, two of the show’s participants interrupted me and forcefully asserted that Soros was not involved. ... Soros’s plan to elect these prosecutors has been well documented ... There are plenty of specific examples of...

HISTORY OF WRITING The invention of "writing" was around 3300 BC. Richard Overy, editor of The Times Complete History of the World, stated in "The 50 Key Dates of World History" (October 19, 2007): "No date appears before the start of human civilizations about 5,500 years ago and the beginning of a written or pictorial history." Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson stated in the Cosmos TV series (2014, natgeotv.com, episode 10, "The Immortals"): "It was the people who once lived here, around 5,000 years ago, who first started chopping up time into smaller bite-size portions of hours and minutes. They call...

PBS’ Masterpiece has released the first trailer for Les Misérables, the upcoming six-part event adaptation of Victor Hugo’s classic novel, set for premiere on Masterpiece in 2019. A co-production from Lookout Point and BBC Studios, the drama stars Dominic West as Jean Valjean, David Oyelowo as Javert, Lily Collins as Fantine and Adeel Akhtar and Olivia Colman as Monsieur and Madame Thénardier.

Officials told residents of a small Colorado community not to drink or shower in tap water Thursday because one of the town’s wells may have been contaminated with THC, marijuana’s intoxicating chemical. No illnesses have been linked to the water in Hugo, a town of about 730 people some 100 miles southeast of Denver, said Lincoln County Public Health Director Susan Kelly. THC was detected in tests conducted with field kits, although other field tests were negative, sheriff’s Capt. Michael Yowell said. More definitive laboratory tests were underway, he said. …

Pondering Gravitational Wavesby Paul Gilster on February 11, 2016 "Einstein would be beaming," said National Science Foundation director France Córdova as she began this morning's news conference announcing the discovery of gravitational waves. I can hardly disagree, because we have in this discovery yet another confirmation of the reality of General Relativity. Caltech's Kip Thorne, who discussed black hole mergers way back in 1994 in his book Black Holes and Time Warps, said at the same news conference that Einstein must have been frustrated by the lack of available technologies to detect the gravitational waves his theory predicted, a lack...

I was reading a post-mortem on the delicious Sad Puppies/Hugo nominations imbroglio last week when an interesting point came up. George R.R. Martin, the "Game of Thrones" chappie, wrote on his Not a Blog that Sad Puppies commenters on his blog should lose the Social Justice Warrior, or SJW moniker. Because courtesy. >>>Let's not throw around insults, or charges of misogyny and racism, please. And Puppies, sad or happy, if any of you feel inclined to reply, please avoid the term "Social Justice Warriors" or SJWs. I am happy to call you Sad Puppies since you named yourself that, but...

"....The controversy over the Hugo Awards contains elements of a good dystopian science fiction story. Unfortunately, the media brat-fit over the successful effort to rescue escapist fantasy literature from its political pursuers comes not from the pages of Brave New World but from Slate,Salon, and Entertainment Weekly.Like sports, video games, and cake baking, science fiction strangely finds itself in the crosshairs of ideological killjoys. Perhaps it was only a matter of time and space before the genre obsessed with time and space became a culture-war battlefield.“To many of the people involved in this industry, politics and message trump entertainment or...

This is the era in which we are all being drafted in the Culture War. It doesn’t matter if you’re secular or religious, political or apolitical, frat boys or geeks, hipsters or bros. Nobody gets to be neutral or sit on the sidelines, because we’ll all be expected to make our obeisance to the latest politically correct opinion handed down to us by a Twitter mob. By now, we know the basic ingredients of a typical skirmish in Culture War 4.0. It goes something like this: a) a leftist claque starts loudly pushing the “correct” Culture War position onto b)...

President Nicolas Maduro's government said on Thursday it had taken over warehouses around Venezuela crammed with medical goods and food that "bourgeois criminals" were hoarding for speculation and contraband. The socialist government says businessmen and wealthy opponents are trying to sabotage the economy to bring Maduro down, while also seeking to make profits from hoarding, price-gouging and smuggling across the border to Colombia. Critics say 15 years of failed policies of state intervention are to blame for the OPEC nation's widespread shortages, high inflation and apparently recessionary economy. They accuse nouveau riche officials and military officers of illegal business practices....

Sean Penn on the Death of Hugo Chavez: "I Lost a Friend" Despite his criticisms of the United States, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez did have supporters in Hollywood, including Sean Penn, who mourned Chavez's death Tuesday. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez dead at 58 "Today the people of the United States lost a friend it never knew it had," Penn said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. "And poor people around the world lost a champion. I lost a friend I was blessed to have. My thoughts are with the family of President Chavez and the people of Venezuela." Chavez,...

Mr. Castro: 'Ello, I wish to register a complaint. (The owner does not respond.)Mr. Castro: 'Ello, Miss?Owner: What do you mean "miss"?Mr. Castro: (pause)I'm sorry, I have a cold. I wish to make a complaint!Owner: We're closin' for lunch.Mr. Castro: Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this Hugo what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique.Owner: Oh yes, the, uh, the Venezulian Red...What's,uh...What's wrong with it?Mr. Castro: I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. 'E's dead, that's what's wrong with it!Owner: No, no, 'e's uh,...he's resting.Mr. Castro: Look, matey, I...

Well folks, proud anti-American Hugo Chavez has finally bought it. The right has been resilient down there -considering- yet the VP who's recently taken charge of affairs is not just a Marxist but a Sopranos-style thug who's reportedly managed executions of Chavez opponents in the past, so any expecting a more just and uncorrupted democratic process are probably in for some disappointment... Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez dead at 58... VENEZUELA DEPLOYS ARMY AND POLICE... Fears of spiralling violence... Venezuela Expels American 'Spies'... Socialist Leader 'Amassed Private Fortune of $2 Billion'... Penn: 'I Mourn a Great Hero'.. h/t Drudge

The Venezuelan Minister of Correctional Services, Iris Varela, has announced on her Twitter account the expulsion of a French citizen known as Frédéric Laurent Bouquet, December 29, 2012 Mr. Bouquet (photo) had been arrested in Caracas on June 18, 2009, with three Dominican nationals in possession of an arsenal. In the apartment he had acquired, forensic police seized 500 grams of C4 explosives, 14 assault rifles including 5 with telescopic lenses, 5 with laser sighting and one with a silencer, special cables, 11 electronic detonators, 19,721 cartridges of different calibers, 3 machine guns, 4 hand guns of different calibers, 11...

PARIS: Victor Hugo was a miserly money-grubber, poet Rimbaud "a monstrosity", and Verlaine "a worthless human being" - such are the verdicts on 19th-century French literary lions found in long-forgotten police files recently published in Paris. Even more startling than the unflattering portraits, says Bruno Fuligni, an employee at the National Assembly, or French parliament, who discovered the dust-covered files and compiled them into a book, is the vigour and thoroughness with which the most revered writers of that era were spied upon by snitches and secret police. "Beyond criminals and political figures, there are files on writers and artists....

It was a year marked by the long awaited immigration reform (that 0 couldn't or never meant to deliver) the visit by Pope Benedict XVI, the "accidental" death of Oswaldo Paya, hurricane Sandy striking eastern Eastern Cuba suffered the worst hurricane damage in perhaps 50 years in Hurricane Sandy. Hundreds of thousands of homes were wrecked .( + attendant cholera and dengue fever)

With both presidents facing tight re-election fights, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez gave a surprise endorsement to Barack Obama on Sunday - and said the U.S. leader no doubt felt the same. "I hope this doesn't harm Obama, but if I was from the United States, I'd vote for Obama," the socialist Chavez said of a man he first reached out to in 2009 but to whom he has since generally been insulting.

Energy: Oil is rising sharply from two disasters in the Caribbean region — one, a fierce storm, and the other a massive blast at the world's second-largest refinery in Hugo Chavez's Venezuela. Only one was perfectly preventable. When the strongman cracked the whip on Venezuela's oil industry in 2003, firing 20,000 experienced oil managers from state-owned Petroleo de Venezuela (PDVSA) to break a strike he admitted he had provoked, he insisted that merit didn't matter anymore, only political loyalty. "There will be no more meritocracy," he told his cheering red-shirts. That philosophy has been laid out in all its glory...

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has spent much of his career praising the socialist ideas of famed atheists such as Karl Marx and Fidel Castro. Now in the thick of a prolonged battle against cancer, however, the leftist leader is drawing inspiration from a spiritual leader: Jesus Christ. Chavez has been praying for divine intervention during increasingly infrequent appearances on television, holding up a crucifix while vowing to overcome his illness. He says living with cancer has made him "more Christian," talk that has spurred speculation that cancer might cut short his bid for re-election in October....