Free Republic

Scion to a cheeseburger empire, former prosecutor, Tom Sianis... won Democratic Party backing despite having few years of experience... (he also handles legal affairs for Billy Goat Tavern). Divorce attorney Corri Fetman, 54, and public defender Tim Leeming... remain in a race that would have been perfect material for the late Mike Royko, a nationally syndicated columnist. Fetman made headlines a decade ago after commissioning a billboard featuring a scantily clad woman — Fetman herself — “Life’s Short. Get A Divorce” before an alderman ordered it taken down. It drew torrents of publicity for Fetman and an offer to pose...

After months of secret negotiations, a shadowy Russian bilked American spies out of $100,000 last year, promising to deliver stolen National Security Agency cyberweapons in a deal that he insisted would also include compromising material on President Trump, according to American and European intelligence officials. The cash, delivered in a suitcase to a Berlin hotel room in September, was intended as the first installment of a $1 million payout, according to American officials, the Russian and communications reviewed by The New York Times. The theft of the secret hacking tools had been devastating to the N.S.A., and the agency was...

I was scheduled to be on CNN this week to debate another commentator about evangelicals and President Trump, but due to breaking news, the debate was cancelled. Had I been on the air, I planned to make this point: With all respect to our president, and with my appreciation for the good things he has done, he did not die for my sins, and I have not staked my soul’s salvation on his reputation. That distinction belongs to Jesus the Messiah, and to Jesus alone. Why the need to state something that is so totally self-evident? It’s because evangelicals are...

With a seeming rise in the occurrence of snow days, blizzards and icy travel, the common belief that climate change isn’t happening comes as no surprise. Scientists stress that locally wintry weather conditions are not indicators of changes in climate, and weather conditions in one part of the world are not representative of what’s occurring globally. “It’s like saying, 'if everyone around me is wealthy, then poverty is not a problem,'” Peter Frumhoff, the Union of Concerned Scientists science and policy director and chief climate scientist, told CNN. Scientists point to hard data, including temperature measurements on land and water...

The Fairy Investigation Society, dedicated to tracking down modern accounts of the Little People, must rank as one of the strangest British organisations ever to come into being. SIMON YOUNG tells the story of this curious enterprise through five key episodes – from a Fairy Census to a tabloid scandal – in its eccentric and largely forgotten history.1. SLEIGH AND CRAUFURD MEET (1927)It was the kind of moment over which flies queue up for wall space. Two of the most eccentric men in Britain in one room – and they had come to talk about fairies. On the one...

Who are you to judge what they do with that cash?Don’t just buy them a sandwich from Pret. They’re not four. They have the right to spend their money as they choose – and it is their money, once given. Don’t just give to people performing, singing, or accompanied by a cute dog. Buskers deserve a wage too, of course. But homeless people are not your dancing monkey and they shouldn’t have to perform to earn your pity. Don’t second-guess whether people are “really” homeless. Those who think begging is a shortcut to easy money should try humiliating themselves daily...

Trump's base in 2016 was defined not by race or class, but by belief in God. Evangelical Christians and Catholics came together and pushed Trump to the win, in defiance of the media, academia, Hollywood, the professional class, elite Republicans, the Democrat masses, libertarians, and self-professed moralists. Both the pope and many prominent Protestant leaders expressed antagonism toward Trump, so this mass of religious voters defied their church elders as well. This was nothing less than stunning. It was perhaps one of the great revolutions in America's religious history. Rather than a serious study of this event, we have had...

Just in time for the holidays, some pet owners shared the most festive photos of their pets dressed up in adorable Christmas costumes, while others decided to dress up themselves and pose with their pets for festive portraits.

It's the largest country in the world, and these bizarre new snaps reveal some of Russia's stranger goings on. People from all over the country have spotted the weirdest things they've seen in Russia in a hilarious online gallery.

The perfect storm-more ways than one. Destroyed island. Room for 3 million people. Close local jails in the CONUS-think Rykers island. Puerto Ricans will stay home to run the system, including their troublemakers. Pay everyone the going SOUTH American wage. Think of the $$ saved. Get rid of the Prison Industrial Complex. You know it's out there. Trump the dealmaker. Laid off prison guards become cops. FBI gets downsized. Working vacations in San Juan. Vanity?

WEST COLUMBIA, S.C. A hungry, slightly inebriated man knew just what to do when he stopped by a South Carolina Waffle House early Thursday only to find the restaurant’s staff snoozing: He cooked up his own meal, snapping selfies along the way. He told WIS that he wouldn’t normally have gotten behind the grill. "I give all the credit to my old friend vodka," Bowen said.

Revisiting one of the unintended consequences of the Protestant Reformation. Five-hundred years ago yesterday, on October 31, 1517, a Catholic monk named Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of a German church, thereby launching what would come to be known as the Protestant Reformation.  Whatever else can be said of him, Luther unwittingly initiated something else that is often overlooked.  “The Reformation produced one logical if unexpected result,” explains European historian Franco Cardini: “a definite boost to the positive evaluation of Islam, and therefore to the birth and development of an often conventional and mannered pro-Islamic stance”...

Calling all Freeper Motorheads! Have y'all ever owned a vehicle that you could just swear was possessed on some level? Was there some puzzling quirk that vexed you, and seemed to defeat every attempt to remedy? Let's talk vehicles that seemed to be possessed.

This is kind of strange and I really don't know what to make of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yYm3yNrxT4 It does not appear to be fake or just a part of a longer video but I'm not ruling that out. I can't even tell what the point of the video is really supposed to be, she never says in the video what she is actually talking about or why she made it. Did I miss something? .

Weird weather and climate warming are two separate things, but a Stanford team is linking them. Using math, powerful computers and historical records, research led by Noah Diffenbaugh found that climate change has boosted the odds of extreme heat, drought, punishing rainstorms and retreating sea ice. “The odds of hitting record-setting level of extremes have been made greater by climate warming,” caused by human emission of greenhouse gases, said Diffenbaugh, a professor of Earth system science at Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences. In the past, scientists typically avoided conflating individual weather events and climate change, citing the...

"Eating wood and leaves has become my habit now," Butt was quoted as saying. Lahore - A man in Pakistan's Punjab province has been surviving on fresh leaves and wood for the last 25 years and has never fallen ill. Mehmood Butt, 50, who hails from Gujranwala district in Punjab province, started eating on leaves at the age of 25 as he had no work and could not afford a basic meal. "There was too much poverty in my family. Everything was beyond limit and it was very difficult for me to get a meal, so I thought it is...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ1eZqenaDw Quinn's Call to Action for the Men of Antifa Duration: 3:36

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ1eZqenaDw Quinn's Call to Action for the Men of Antifa Duration: 3:36

<p>Howard Strickling’s phone was always ringing. First it might be Jean Harlow, panicking that William Powell had gotten her pregnant. Then it might be a security guard, informing him that he’d removed a belligerent Spencer Tracy from yet another bar. Once it was Marlene Dietrich, distraught after discovering John Gilbert’s dead body.</p>