Free Republic

COLUMBUS, Ohio. (WSYX) - A family from Columbus, Ohio is dealing with a horrific tragedy. Their 13-year-old son, Jacob, died after he overdosed on an over-the-counter medicine. The family says their son was trying to copy a TikTok challenge. “I am going to do everything I can to try to make sure another child doesn’t go through it,” Jacob’s grandmother, Dianna Stevens, said.

With lockdowns lifted, Americans are heading for the great outdoors but in doing so some of the country's National Park are becoming overrun with visitors. As a result, the parks and nearby towns are becoming overcrowded with visitors with some even requiring reservations including California's Yosemite National Park and Maine's Acadia National Park. The main reason for such high visit numbers well before the peak summer season is due to a higher percentage of first-timers checking out the nation's natural wonders, according to the Bureau of Land Management after people were forced to endure months of lockdown and strict travel...

...just how bad is the situation? Our new paper shows the outlook for life on Earth is more dire than is generally understood.The research published today reviews more than 150 studies to produce a stark summary of the state of the natural world...Our paper was authored by 17 leading scientists... While the problems are too numerous to cover in full here, they include:a halving of vegetation biomass since the agricultural revolution around 11,000 years ago...about 1,300 documented species extinctions over the past 500 years, with many more unrecorded... Read more: What is a 'mass extinction' and are we in one...

Cdl Müller: It’s no ‘conspiracy theory’ – pandemic is being used to implement ‘questionable measures’ Anyone who does not distinguish between the opportunities and the dangers associated with globalization is denying reality.' May 14, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – In a lengthy interview with the German Catholic newspaper Die Tagespost (published in full below), Cardinal Gerhard Müller responds in detail to the many accusations leveled at him in the last days for having signed Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganó's appeal concerning the corona crisis and the impending dangers of governmental control and abuse.  In light of accusations of fostering conspiracy theories, the cardinal...

March Madness 2020 will be unlike any NCAA Tournament ever. The NCAA announced on Wednesday that both the men’s and women’s NCAA basketball tournaments will be played without fans after consulting with its coronavirus advisory panel. “Based on [the panel’s] advice and my discussions with the NCAA Board of Governors, I have made the decision to conduct our upcoming championship events, including the Division I men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, with only essential staff and limited family attendance,” NCAA president Mark Emmert said in a statement.

President Donald Trump retweeted a post from Fox News’ Brit Hume, Wednesday, which predicted the president will unify Democrats against him. In response to a Washington Examiner article titled, “Calls for unity cannot hide stark cultural differences inside the Democratic Party,” Hume commented, “Good insight here. But there is one unifying factor that will be there in the fall: Donald J. Trump.”

A Cambridge academic has proposed a radical new way to solve climate change – letting humanity become extinct. Patricia MacCormack, a professor of continental philosophy at Anglia Ruskin University, has just released her new book The Ahuman Manifesto, which will officially be launched in Cambridge today (Wednesday, February 5). The book argues that due to the damage done to other living creatures on Earth, we should start gradually phasing out reproduction. But rather than offering a bleak look at the future of humanity, it has generated discussion due to its joyful and optimistic tone, as it sets out a positive...

NEW YORK, NY—A gleeful Joy Behar reported to the audience of The View the startling revelation that Adolf Hitler never voted for Trump, causing the crowd to cheer wildly. "This just in: it seems that Adolf Hitler never voted for Donald Trump!" Behar cried in ecstasy, causing the crowd to begin screaming in rapturous joy. "Shove that in your pipe and smoke it, bad orange man! Ha! You can't even get an evil Nazi dictator to fall for your shenanigans."

On the morning of Aug. 17 at around 11:20 a.m., a woman slipped off a cliff in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia, and plummeted to her death. Just a short time later, as helicopters still swarmed overhead, visitors treading in her steps at the scenic Diamond Bay Reserve at Vaucluse flooded social media with photos, according to News 7. The victim — a 27-year-old from Sydney who has yet to be identified — was sitting on a ledge to be photographed by a friend, a witness to the accident told the Wentworth Courier, a local publication. When she stood up,...

Argentine bishops have joined those from Spain and Peru in voicing their support for Pope Francis, following Archbishop Viganò’s claims that the Vatican knew about abuse allegations involving Archbishop McCarrick.The Argentine bishops’ conference (CEA) said their statement, published on August 30 on the Argentine bishops’ news site, AICA, was in response to “ruthless” attacks against the pontiff.“We share your pains and hopes,” the letter said, explaining that it was written to express “fraternal and filial” closeness to the Pope.“We know what you can say with St. Paul: ‘That is why I endure this test. But I am not ashamed, because...

"Evil is a make-believe concept we've invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans." A progressive young American couple was killed in an Islamic State-claimed terrorist attack last month while on a bike trip around the world. Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan, who were both in their late 20s, quit their jobs in 2017 to embark on a trip around the world. Austin, a vegan, and Geoghegan, a vegetarian, decided that they're were wasting their lives working. "I’ve grown tired of spending the best hours of my day in front of a glowing rectangle, of coloring the best years...

Crocodile tears are flowing from Democrats and their allies in the Democrat Media Industrial Complex (DMIC) over the Trump administration’s enforcement of immigration laws signed by then-President Bill Clinton in 1997, followed by then-President Barack Obama’s decisions and policies. Immigration laws are a function of every country on the planet. Otherwise, why have borders? Which is something Democrats would apparently prefer not to have — or enforce. Because they want a recurring wave of new underclass voters, dependent upon the state for all their needs. Illegal aliens fit that description perfectly. The latest salvo in the immigration imbroglio stems from...

A Nevada sheriff says the man who ran into the flames at the Burning Man festival’s signature burning ceremony has died. Pershing County Sheriff Jerry Allen says the man ran through a human-chain of security officers at about 10:30 p.m. Saturday (Sept. 2) during the Man Burn event at the counter-culture festival. The sheriff says the man was rescued by firefighters and later died at the UC Davis hospital burn center in California. About 70,000 people are attending the art and music celebration in the Black Rock Desert, about 100 miles (161 kilometers) north of Reno. The nine-day event culminates...

80 sheep committed suicide in front of their astonished shepherd in Turkey on July 12, 2017. The weird incident occurred in the mountainous region of Muradiye in the south-east of the country.80 sheep commit suicide in Turkey. via Haber7 As the shepherd Ercan Ozer explains, one sheep first jumped off a cliff and then all the other 79 followed. The sheep owner tried to stop the crazy animals in vain only saving a small part of his herd.The shepherd cannot explains the suicide phenomenon and argues the sheep were not scared and were not in danger.The reason behind the new...

EDITORPope Francis speaks during his general audience in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican March 15. (Credit: CNS/Paul Haring.)If all you had to go by in judging Catholic reaction to Pope Francis were press treatments and social media, you'd think it's an all-or-nothing war between devoted supporters and fanatical critics. In the trenches, however, what you find is a spirit of root enthusiasm and loyalty, tempered with a critical edge on specific points depending on what's most important to a particular person. Share: Saturday, Romans awoke to find a provocative image staring out from their neighborhood newsstands. On the...

Poll Shows Clinton Leading Trump by 6 Points in Florida Statement of Methodology: This survey of 500 likely Florida general election voters was conducted between August 1 and August 3, 2016, and is based on live telephone interviews of adults who indicated they were likely to vote in the November 2016 general election for president. Each area’s quota and demographic information -- including race and age -- was determined from previous like elections and 2010 Census data. Samples of both standard landline and cell phones were called using a probability-proportionate-to-size method, which means that the phone numbers assigned to each...

Radical Islam: Omar Mateen could not have been more clear or more emphatic about his motivation for killing 49 people and wounding 53 others at an Orlando gay nightclub. [snip] Yet when Gallup surveyed the public about the attack, just 29% of Democrats said that it was an act of Islamic terrorism.

Defense officials told Fox News that 11 Green Berets from Fort Carson in Colorado Springs were involved in a climbing training exercise Thursday on 14,259-foot Longs Peak, but a few of them had trouble continuing. The group ended up spending the night. Rocky Mountain National Park spokesman Kyle Patterson said they're helping one another climb to the summit of Longs Peak and that rangers are helping as needed. Two soldiers got altitude sickness, and the other soldiers decided to spent the night on the mountain, 10th Special Forces group spokesman Lt. Col. Sean Ryan told ABC News. “No one is...

Award-winning author Joyce Carol Oates came under intense fire from social media users on Sunday after tweeting that she has only heard “puritanical & punitive” things about the Islamic State and wonders whether there is anything “celebratory & joyous” about the terrorist group. "All we hear of ISIS is puritanical & punitive; is there nothing celebratory & joyous? Or is query naive?"

The Black Lives Matter movement at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) is officially being challenged by a new rival campus group, the UCSB White Student Union (WSU). In response to a series of “black-out” demonstrations last week at UCSB and college campuses nationwide calling for “solidarity with Mizzou” black students, the UCSB WSU decided to form its own antithetical “White Student Walk Out” calling for “solidarity” with white students. “Join us as we walk out of our classes at 12:30 PM to show solidarity for our brothers and sisters of European descent,” the Walk Out event description reads....