Free Republic

Should Amy Coney Barrett recuse herself from California v. Texas, the case challenging Obamacare? Chuck Schumer has called for it: video Schumer argues that Barrett has “clearly said she’d strike down the Affordable Care Act” and has “serious conflicts of interest” regarding the ACA. On the former point, as I have detailed at length, while Barrett in her academic writing has indicated her disagreement with the 2012 NFIB decision upholding the individual mandate as an exercise of the taxing power, she did not give a view on whether she agreed with Justice Antonin Scalia that the whole law should be...

A broad coalition of lawmakers, public interest groups, and grassroots citizens rallied behind Amy Coney Barrett in her first day of hearings today for confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court. According to senators on the Judiciary Committee evaluating her nomination, Barrett handled the first day of hearings with grace, humility, and tenacity. “[Barrett] acknowledged the fact that so much of what the Democrats said today was bunk, and she did it with a smile, and she did it without having to use the word jackwagon or anything close to it,” Sen. Mike Lee of Utah said. “She did it by...

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is reportedly considering making Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo his attorney general if elected president, Axios reported Sunday. Cuomo chairs the National Governors Association, where aides have reportedly started looking at potential replacements for Cuomo if Biden is elected, Axios reported. Democratic donors said Biden and Como’s history of friendship would factor into his consideration for the appointment, the outlet noted. However, Cuomo’s office said he has no interest in serving in a cabinet position, Axios reported. “100% he’s made zero outreach, has had zero conversations about this and has made his desire to...

Well, this was outrageous! Senator Leahy Accuses Judge Amy Coney Barrett of Destroying Healthcare in the US before she has even voted on the issue. Leahy also accused Barrett of hurting women and gays. Again, she is not even on the court yet! And for some reason he brought out a photo of Smokey the Bear… So is Amy Comey Barrett an arsonist, too?

Black employees at Planned Parenthood’s national wing feel that they have been held to a different standard than the organization’s white employees and that they are often expected to work more and given less leeway, an internal assessment obtained by BuzzFeed News found. The assessment, which was commissioned by Planned Parenthood, was presented over a video meeting to Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s (PPFA) employee resource group Network of Black Associates on Wednesday. It was based on interviews conducted over the summer with 64 current and 12 former Black Planned Parenthood employees in all divisions and levels of PPFA. A...

Last week, when President Donald Trump reported his COVID-19 diagnosis and was subsequently hospitalized, White House Physician and Navy physician Sean Conley, DO, provided the press with updates on the president’s illness and treatment. The ensuing media spotlight on Dr. Conley resulted in unfortunate mischaracterizations of DOs that appeared, among other outlets, on CNN and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show. Maddow questioned why President Trump’s care is overseen by an “osteopath” rather than an infectious disease specialist or an internist. CNN pundit Gloria Borger implied that, as an “osteopath,” Dr. Conley is not an “actual doctor.” To set the record straight,...

Judge Amy Coney Barrett initially failed to disclose two talks she gave in 2013 hosted by two anti-abortion student groups on paperwork provided to the Senate ahead of her confirmation hearing to become the next Supreme Court justice. Barrett, President Donald Trump's nominee to succeed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, gave the talks in 2013 in her capacity as a law professor at the University of Notre Dame. The seminar was co-sponsored by the school's Right to Life club and constitutional studies minor, and the lecture was held by the law school's Jus Vitae club. Late on Friday night, hours after...

Uninformed commentary has emerged this morning stating that President Trump has received a medication created with the use of human embryonic stem cells. CLI has reviewed the published information and our conclusion is straightforward: The president was not given any medicines to treat COVID-19 that involved the destruction of human life. No human embryonic stem cells or human fetal tissue were used to produce the treatments President Trump received–period. Let’s look at the facts. The Regeneron therapy given to the president was made in Velocimmune humanized mice, a novel platform that uses genetically modified mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells to...

Many young people are leaving the Church today because Christianity has become too judgmental and alienating for them, said lifelong Methodist and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Clinton made the comment while interviewing social justice advocate and Pastor William J. Barber II of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina, last week on her “You and Me Both with Hillary Clinton” podcast. During the podcast, she argued that "black lives matter" is a “theological statement.” The Church in America, she suggested, needs to “take a hard look at itself and try to figure out how it can be a...

Mitsch Bush backed Green New Deal, Medicare for All in failed 2018 run.. Colorado Democrat Diane Mitsch Bush has backtracked on her past support for Medicare for All and the Green New Deal in an effort to win over voters in a highly contested swing district. When Mitsch Bush ran for Colorado's Third Congressional District in 2018, she pushed for a Green New Deal and Medicare for All. Bush now condemns both policies, removing them from her current platform in order to campaign as a "pragmatic progressive" on the trail. ... The candidate employed similar rhetoric as she backed away...

Toward the end of Vice President Mike Pence's resounding defeat of Sen. Kamala Harris in Wednesday night's vice presidential debate, the two officials tussled on the pending Supreme Court nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett and the despicable deluge of anti-Catholic bigotry her nomination has unleashed. Harris, one of the leading arsonists during the well-orchestrated 2018 character assassination of then-Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh, tried to mollify wary voters in advance of Barrett's own impending confirmation hearings. "Joe Biden and I are both people of faith," Harris hectored, "and it's insulting to suggest that we would knock anyone for...

Cardinal Cupich on "Fratelli tutti": ‘Children of the same earth' The Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago reflects on Pope Francis's new Encyclical, saying the Pope asks us to "rethink how we live together on this cosmic speck of dust we call earth". By Cardinal Blase CupichThe Lakota phrase mitakuye oyasin is often used at the end of a speech by an elder. It simply means, “we are all related, we are all relatives.” It expresses an understanding of human existence as belonging to a people who share a common heritage and destiny. And, in stark contrast to radical individualism, it reminds tribal...

(CN) — In an effort to pull Christian voters away from President Trump, Joe Biden launched a new ad campaign Thursday tailored around the former vice president’s Catholic faith and values. “In a stark contrast to Donald Trump, who tear gassed protesters to pose for a photo op with a Bible in front of a church, the ads depict how Biden’s faith is deeply connected to his life story and commitment to public service and illustrates why Biden is the clear moral choice in this election,” the Biden team said of the rollout, making reference to the president’s controversial June...

Something doesn’t add up. With all that we know about how extreme and radical Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are, please help me understand the rationale behind those who claim to be Christian, conservative or pro-life and can vote for the Democrat Party anymore. It’s one thing to say Donald Trump is personally offensive and you’re not going to vote in this election. But to say Trump is so offensive that you’re willing to abandon your convictions and faith, and endorse a candidate whose policies are diametrically opposed to all you claim to believe in and value seems to be...

The Supreme Court on Thursday declined to act on a Trump administration request to reinstate a rule mandating that abortion-inducing drugs be taken in the presence of a doctor Instead, the justices returned the case to a federal trial court in Maryland and gave the judge there 40 days to rule on the administration's request. The administration is expected to ask the judge to either lift or narrow an order he entered in July that suspended a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rule requiring women to take abortion pill in the presence of a doctor. U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang,...

The COVID panic gripped the country for months, inspiring Americans to hide in their homes. But very quickly, we saw how fear and hysteria destroyed our country. The economy took a nosedive, with many deadly, unintended consequences. Yet today, many months later, some Democrats want to prolonged and increase their lockdowns. Now, thousands of medical and public health experts are demanding an end to this nonsense once and for all.[snip] But despite the fact the time has long passed for every state to reopen, dictators like Andrew Cuomo of New York and Gavin Newsom of California continue their abuse policy...

Kamala Harris exposed for refusing to prosecute priests credibly accused of sex abuse The accusations come along with news that Harris had received campaign funds from lawyers representing the San Francisco Archdiocese October 8, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Victims of clerical sex abuse testify that Kamala Harris repeatedly refused to release church records on abusive priests while she was district attorney of San Francisco.  The claims come amidst allegations that Harris’ previous political campaigns received substantial donations from law firms and lawyers representing the San Francisco archdiocese.  “Many of the law firms and lawyers who were representing the archdiocese on a variety...

This week, President Donald Trump extolled the cutting-edge coronavirus treatments he received as “miracles coming down from God.” If that’s true, then God employs cell lines derived from human fetal tissue. The emergency antibody that Trump received last week was developed with the use of a cell line originally derived from abortion tissue, according to Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, the company that developed the experimental drug. The Trump administration has taken an increasingly firm line against medical research using fetal tissue from abortions. For example, when it moved in 2019 to curtail the ability of the National Institutes of Health to fund...

Over four in 10 American Christians believe the Bible is “ambiguous” on abortion, according to the Cultural Research Center of Arizona Christian University.The findings, released Tuesday, are part of the CRC's American Worldview Inventory 2020 survey.Conducted by CRC Director of Research George Barna, a noted evangelical pollster, the report found that 44% of respondents said they believe the Bible “is ambiguous in its teaching about abortion,” while 34% said “abortion is morally acceptable if it spares the mother from financial or emotional discomfort or hardship.”Barna said in a statement that the findings on opinions about abortion were part of a...

When Francesca joined a group of friends on a fact-finding visit to a cemetery in Rome last week, she was not prepared to find a small, white cross with her name on it. The friends had learned through Facebook that a woman from Rome who had an abortion had later discovered her name on a similar cross in the sprawling Flaminio Cemetery on the northern outskirts of the capital city. Francesca, a 36-year-old body movement instructor who asked that her last name not be published, had an abortion in September 2019 after learning her fetus had a fatal heart malformation...