Free Republic

A Rhode Island bill that would legalize abortion for basically any reason up to birth is awaiting action in a state Senate committee after it passed the House last week. Similar to the new abortion law in New York, state Senate Bill 152 would allow unborn babies to be aborted for basically any reason up to birth, even if Roe v. Wade is overturned, and strike down modest abortion restrictions in the state. Though the bill easily passed the state House, its fate is less certain in the state Senate, the Providence Journal reports. Support for unborn babies’ rights is...

Perhaps American Christians cannot think clearly about homeland security, borders, and immigration for the same reason Americans cannot think clearly about anything else. As Christians we have rich, intellectually credible traditions and frameworks for ethical reflection at our fingertips, and yet, as Americans, we suffer from a historical amnesia. What we need is a historically-attuned theological framework that can lay the foundation for our debates and political deliberations. Without one, we risk acting in ways that contradict the Gospel that we profess. To jump, as we tend to, from Plato and Aristotle to Locke and Hobbes is to ignore crucial...

"Suppose all the information stored on computers everywhere were linked. Suppose I could program my computer to create a space in which everything could be linked to everything." – Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web In 1989 the world’s largest physics laboratory, CERN, was a hive of ideas and information stored on multiple incompatible computers. Tim Berners-Lee envisioned a unifying structure for linking information across different computers, and wrote a proposal in March 1989 called “Information Management: A Proposal”. By 1991 this vision of universal connectivity had become the World Wide Web.

Those same things that make Biden a popular name now could also sink his chances in a Democratic Party that is becoming increasingly intersectional and progressive. Biden's most recent gaffe was his decision to call current Vice President Mike Pence "a decent guy." In the good old days, that might have been seen as a gentlemanly thing to do, something that might win you points for trying to rise above it all. In 2019, those remarks were seen as craven praising of the fiercely anti-LGBTQ Pence. Biden eventually apologized for his remark, but he'll likely run into similar problems with...

A global team of scientists have mapped the developmental pathway of a newborn's life for the first time. The research, published in Nature Communications, could transform our understanding of health and disease in babies. Co-led by the MRC Unit The Gambia at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the new study included lifting the lid on what genes are turned on, what proteins are being made and what metabolites are changing in the first seven days of human life.Newborn babies are the most vulnerable population when it comes to infectious disease. Establishing key pathways in early development could...

A college tennis coach who also served as the personal instructor for former first lady Michelle Obama and her daughter, Malia, was among the 46 people charged by federal authorities in a sweeping college admissions bribery case announced Tuesday. According to the indictment unsealed Tuesday by federal prosecutors in Massachusetts, Gordon Ernst, the women’s tennis coach at the University of Rhode Island, is accused of conspiracy to commit racketeering during the years he served as a tennis coach at Georgetown University. There is no suggestion that Malia, a sophomore at Harvard, was implicated in the scandal in any way. Between...

It is no exaggeration to say that Sergei Bondarchuk’s 1960s adaptation of the Leo Tolstoy novel “War and Peace” is a singular feat of filmmaking that can never be repeated. If it were, a director would have to match the resources at Bondarchuk’s disposal — a virtually unlimited budget, props from Russia’s great museums, thousands of extras from the Soviet army — and engineer sprawling battle sequences using no computer-generated effects. The extraordinary support behind “War and Peace” is apparent in every lavish frame of its seven-plus hours, and it is staggering to witness — even more so in the...

A Massachusetts bill would hide the truth about abortion by stripping the terms “mother” and “unborn child” from the legal definition of pregnancy. The state Remove Obstacles and Expand Abortion Access Act (ROE Act) is similar to a radical new pro-abortion law in New York that legalized abortion for basically any reason up to birth. The Massachusetts bill would expand late-term abortions after 24 weeks for any loosely defined “health” reason, and repeal the state law requiring parental consent for minors. It also would end the state law that requires basic medical care for infants born alive from botched abortions....

Japanese scientists have awakened the cells of an extinct woolly mammoth in an experiment that could one day bring the prehistoric beasts back to life. Researchers from Kindai University in Osaka extracted bone marrow and muscle tissue from a long-frozen beast and injected it into the ovaries of a mouse, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal Scientific Reports. The experiment revived the 28,000-year-old creature’s cells, triggering “signs of biological activity,” according to the researchers. “[It’s] a significant step towards bringing mammoths back from the dead,” Kei Miyamoto, one of the study’s authors, told the Nikkei Asian Review.

Offshore outsourcing can be a traumatic event for employees -- both for those who lose their jobs and for those who survive. It's HR's job to figure out the real impact it's having on employees -- a task that may benefit from new technology. President Donald Trump became a harsh critic of the H-1B program during his campaign for president and invited IT workers who had trained visa-holding replacements to speak at campaign rallies. Trump promised to make changes to the H-1B program, and his administration is now denying roughly one in five of the H-1B visas sought by IT...

Shortened title. Full title: Abortion Activist’s Bill Would Make Men Contact Police When They “Release Sperm From Their Testicles” Missing the whole point of pro-life legislation and the basics of science, two Georgia lawmakers are planning to introduce bills that would force men to report to police when they “release sperm from their testicles” and other nonsense requirements. State Reps. Dar’shun Kendrick, of Lithonia, and Park Cannon, of Atlanta, are pro-abortion Democrats who oppose a Georgia pro-life bill that would ban abortions once an unborn baby’s heartbeat is detectable. In protest, they are writing bills to “highlight the differences in...

I am Gerald Eastman, The Last (Boeing) Inspector. You can find more about me here and throughout this site. I have been fighting the Boeing/FAA fraud noted above since January 11th, 2002, when I was explicitly faced with the fact that this fraud was put in place and directed by Boeing Management by my QA supervisor of the time. My QA supervisor was just the most honest of several corrupt Boeing QA supervisors I had had at that point. QA supervisors at Boeing were the same as similarly corrupt Boeing Manufacturing Management. Both focused on achieving cost and schedule goals...

The new survey of 2,000 Americans, conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Travelex, confirmed that Americans are much more likely to give themselves over to their travel experience fully when they’re alone. Specifically, half of the survey respondents (50 percent) said they’d be more willing to talk to locals while traveling alone, and another 46 percent said they’d be more spontaneous when unaccompanied. Over half (57 percent) also said they are much more likely to go out of their comfort zone when traveling solo. But it’s not without its drawbacks, it turns out. Safety is the chief concern Americans have...

Let's wrap up this Freepathon today!!

The number of children enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP — two government health plans for the poor — fell by nearly 600,000 in the first 11 months of 2018, a precipitous drop that has puzzled and alarmed many health policy analysts, while several states say it reflects the good news of an improving economy. Enrollment in the two programs decreased by 599,000 children in the 48 states from which the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, has data from December 2017 to November 2018, the last month for which numbers are...

Another day, another celebrity going off the deep end on Twitter. Zachary Leeman reports that "Actress and Democrat activist Alyssa Milano sent out what was arguably the most bizarre tweet on International Women’s Day." Bizarre? Sure. But let's not forget "nonsensical," and for those who are concerned with such matters, "valor-stealing from the genuinely intersectional." That's a thing, or at least it is now. The former Charmed star tweeted, in full, "I’m trans. I’m a person of color. I’m an immigrant. I’m a lesbian. I’m a gay man. I’m the disabled. I’m everything. And so are you, Kirk. Don’t be...

The U.S. Senate voted by a 54-45 margin on Tuesday to confirm Paul Matey to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. With Matey’s confirmation, the Third Circuit shifts to a 7-6 majority of Republican appointees, making it the first court of appeals in the nation to see its composition switch under Trump, who has been clear on his goal to remake the federal judiciary with conservative judges. Trump previously appointed Stephanos Bibas and David Porter to the 14-member court of appeals. On Monday, after a vote to close debate on the Matey nomination was split on party...

Boeing making a more extensive software change to the flight-control system in the 737 MAX pior to Ethiopian tragedy than industry officials initially anticipated.

Attorney Michael Avenatti announced Tuesday that he was no longer representing adult film star Stormy Daniels, cutting ties with a client who had propelled him into the national limelight. In a statement posted to Twitter, Avenatti said he had informed Daniels "in writing" last month that his firm was terminating its representation of her "for various reasons that we cannot disclose publicly due to the attorney-client privilege." "This was not a decision we made lightly and it came only after lengthy discussion, thought and deliberation, as well as consultation with other professionals," Avenatti added. "We wish Stormy all the best."...