Free Republic

“Our democracy’s ideals were false when they were written.” I’ve been struggling with that sentence — the opening statement of the introductory essay to the New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project on the legacy of slavery in America — for a few weeks now. It’s a very strange formulation. How can an enduring “ideal” — like, say, freedom or equality — be “false” at one point in history and true in another? You could of course say that the ideals of universal equality and individual liberty in the Declaration of Independence were belied and contradicted in 1776 by the unconscionable...

Laws that require abortion seekers to wait a period of time between counseling and the procedure can drive up the share of women of having riskier second-trimester abortions, suggests a new study distributed by the National Bureau of Economic Research. What’s more, their abortion costs are likely to go up. Researchers from Texas A&M University analyzed the impacts of Tennessee’s mandatory waiting period (MWP), which was enacted in 2015 and requires that a minimum of 48 hours elapse between in-person counseling and a woman’s abortion. The policy increased the share of Tennessee women getting second-trimester abortions in 2016 by 4.1...

Abstract Mainstream dietary recommendations now commonly advise people to minimize the intake of red meat for health and environmental reasons. Most recently, a major report issued by the EAT-Lancet Commission recommended a planetary reference diet mostly based on plants and with no or very low (14 g/d) consumption of red meat. We argue that claims about the health dangers of red meat are not only improbable in the light of our evolutionary history, they are far from being supported by robust scientific evidence.

FULL TITLE: Doctors Say Facebook’s Decision To Take Down An Anti-Abortion Fact-Check Sets A Dangerous Precedent (barf alert) After Facebook removed a fact-check from an anti-abortion activist’s video, doctors are warning of the dangers of putting politics over evidence when it comes to health care. A team of doctors working with fact-checking group Health Feedback on Aug. 30 determined a video from Live Action founder Lila Rose, which falsely claimed that abortion is never medically necessary, to be inaccurate and misleading. Facebook notified people who had shared the video that it contained false information, and a link to the fact-check...

Wolf depredations on livestock in Idaho reached a record level during the past fiscal year, which ended June 30. From July 1, 2018, to June 30, 2019, Idaho Wildlife Services conducted 264 depredation investigations related to wolf complaints from 136 livestock producers in 17 counties. Of those 264 investigations, 175 involved confirmed wolf depredations, said Todd Grimm, the Idaho state director of Wildlife Services, which is a federal agency that helps solve conflicts between humans and animals. “Last year we had a pretty busy year,” he said during the Idaho Wolf Depredation Control Board’s Aug. 21 meeting. “The cattle guys...

Univision anchor Jorge Ramos should not have been a moderator at ABC News' Democratic debate Thursday, and his line of questioning proved it, according to media reporter Joe Concha. Concha called out Ramos on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Friday for what he said was partisan language intermingled with a question he asked South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg. During the debate, Ramos told Buttigieg that President Trump "called Mexican immigrants rapists and killers, tried to ban Muslims from entering the country and separated children from their parents -- His supporters have chanted 'Build the wall' and 'Send her back'." Ramos...

Today, September 14, is the 1,611th anniversary of the death of Saint John Chrysostom, the great patriarch of Constantinople. St. John perished while on his way to a more distant exile on the shores of the Black Sea in AD 407. Though an outstanding orator and one of the greatest theologians of the early Church, John became embroiled in the religious and political factions in Constantinople. He was particularly known for railing against the excesses of the imperial court, drawing the ire of the Empress Eudoxia, wife of Arcadius, who felt that John’s invectives against immodest and gaudy female dress...

Users find PCs silenced while Microsoft looks into search fix Microsoft seems unable to catch a break with its Windows 10 updates. No sooner than it acknowledged that its CPU usage fix borked desktop search for some, users complained that the patch has also caused audio issues.Released on 10 September for Windows 10 1903 (aka the May 2019 Update), KB4515384 is a security update that included a fix for Cortana's CPU-munching habit. Alas, it turned out that the fix left desktop search a tad broken for some users.While the support page for the update resolutely states (at time of writing)...

President Trump ripped into one of his fiercest critics, claiming she lacked the talent needed to succeed in media. Donald Trump Who the hell is Joy-Ann Reid? Never met her, she knows ZERO about me, has NO talent, and truly doesn’t have the “it” factor needed for success in showbiz and now works for the Comcast/NBC losers making up phony stories about me. Low Ratings. Fake News! Reid released a book in June that described Trump as "The Man Who Sold America." Joy Reid I wrote The Man Who Sold America as a history - just to get it all...

Rubber Duck

After a painstaking investigation into the Trayvon Martin shooting, I have produced a film and written a companion book, both called The Trayvon Hoax: Unmasking the Witness Fraud that Divided America. Only after I started the project did I realize I had stumbled onto the most spectacular case of identity fraud in modern American judicial history. Thanks to the folks at American Thinker for allowing me to reveal it here for the first time. I had originally set out to produce a documentary about the rise of 2018 Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum. The more I looked into Gillum’s success,...

Fox sports analyst and former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw announced his disdain for players like Antonio Brown during an interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review following the wide receiver's tumultuous offseason. Brown may have broken most of the Steelers' wide-receiver records during his nearly decade-long run with the team, but Bradshaw says he would never have thrown to him. "I'm not pulling for him, I can promise you that," Bradshaw said of Brown via CBS Sports. "I cannot emphasize how I cannot stand and have a disdain totally for players like that. I don't want any part of them. I...

Last November, Japan’s Environment Ministry issued a stark warning: the amount of solar panel waste Japan produces every year will rise from 10,000 to 800,000 tons by 2040, and the nation has no plan for safely disposing of it.Neither does California, a world leader in deploying solar panels. Only Europe requires solar panel makers to collect and dispose of solar waste at the end of their lives.All of which raises the question: just how big of a problem is solar waste?Environmental Progress investigated the problem to see how the problem compared to the much more high-profile issue of nuclear waste. We found: Solar...

Joe must go! That was word from MSNBC contributor Anand Giridharadas on Joy Reid's MSNBC show Saturday morning. While acknowledging that Biden is not a guy-in-a-hood racist, Giridharadas accused Biden of being a racist of a more subtle sort: a throwback to the "Mad Men" era, a "Thanksgiving-uncle" racist, and someone who believes "Americaness means whiteness." [snip] Giridharadas opined that Biden would be the wrong person to take on President Trump, whom he accused of being a white nationalist. Giridharadas' concluding words on Biden: "He has to drop out."Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said America can't trust nations like Russia and Iran, comparing their leaders' credibility to that of disgraced actor Jussie Smollett. "I trust Russia and China and Iran and North Korea like I trust a Jussie Smollett police report," Kennedy said. "You can't trust them and they're not going to stop -- they're not our friends. Since President Trump took office, they don't love us anymore, but I think, by God, they respect us now," he added during an appearance on "Your World." Kennedy was responding to former Defense Secretary James Mattis previously saying he...

It is clear to me that in its investigation of more than 400 cases of acute respiratory failure tied to the vaping of certain products, the CDC is doing everything it can to undermine the proven connection between most of these cases and illicit marijuana vape carts, while exaggerating a potential, but completely unproven connection with traditional electronic cigarettes. This was highlighted last Friday with the complete split between the FDA and CDC with respect to their public communications and warnings regarding the disease outbreak.

BOGOTA, Colombia — Thinking up ways our all-encompassing crisis could get even worse has become a grimly popular parlor game for Venezuelans. For years, the go-to worst-case scenario was civil war between the political factions in our country. These days, an even scarier prospect has begun to displace that in the pantheon of Venezuelan nightmares: armed conflict with Colombia. The reason? Venezuela’s increasingly tight alliance with the drug-running guerrilla armies waging war on the Colombian state, which has rattled Bogota so hard it’s now seeking a hemispheric response. On Wednesday, Colombia, the United States and nine other countries invoked the...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciStnd9Y2ak

Last November, Japan’s Environment Ministry issued a stark warning: the amount of solar panel waste Japan produces every year will rise from 10,000 to 800,000 tons by 2040, and the nation has no plan for safely disposing of it. Neither does California, a world leader in deploying solar panels. Only Europe requires solar panel makers to collect and dispose of solar waste at the end of their lives. All of which begs the question: just how big of a problem is solar waste? Environmental Progress investigated the problem to see how the problem compared to the much more high-profile issue...

Several members and supporters of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas have been camping at a historic cemetery since January in hopes of preventing the federal government from building a border wall through the gravesites. Fifty to 150 graves are located at the historic Eli Jackson Cemetery, which is in such a remote location that most Internet maps refer to it by longitude and latitude coordinates.... two supporters of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe diligently watched guard over the area. They did not want to be photographed or quoted “for security reasons,” but they did allow Border Report onto the property and gave...