Free Republic

Ignoring a deadline that ended more than three decades ago, the Virginia Senate and state Assembly voted today to ratify the pro-abortion Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution. The vote happened just days after the U.S. Department of Justice said the ERA is dead because the 1982 deadline set by Congress has passed. The ERA would amend the U.S. Constitution to guarantee equal rights for all born citizens no matter what their sex is. Though the intent seems good on the surface, pro-life leaders long have warned that abortion activists would use the amendment to destroy the limited...

RICHMOND, Va. (WWBT/AP) - Fearing a repeat of the deadly violence that engulfed Charlottesville more than two years ago, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam declared a temporary emergency Wednesday banning all weapons, including guns, from Capitol Square ahead of a massive rally planned next week over gun rights. [snip] Virginia law enforcement officials have been criticized for their planning and response to a deadly 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville that involved heavily armed protesters. One woman was killed and several more were injured when a car plowed into a group of counter-protesters. Northam’s declaration will also ban items like helmets...

A famous TikTok star with 1.7 million followers and who goes by the name Nurse Holly has been getting inundated with scorn for the past few days on social media for daring to state the most obvious and commonsensical of medical truths: abstinence “best” prevents STDs. In the recent TikTok video, Nurse Holly employs some flashy captions to relay a rather simple message. “The best way to prevent STDs is waiting for sex until marriage. Just the truth,” she says in the video. Though the video has since been deleted, people on social media have still been sharing it on...

ARLINGTON, Va. - The Navy’s newest destroyer may fire a not-yet-to-be fielded Conventional Prompt Strike conventionally-armed missile engineered to hit anywhere on earth within an hour, service program managers said. The weapon, now being considered by Navy weapons developers for the emerging USS Zumwalt, will bring new attack options to the stealthy destroyer being prepared for combat as soon as 2021, Capt. Kevin Smith, Zumwalt-class destroyer Program Manager said Jan. 15 at the Surface Naval Association Annual Symposium. “This would be the perfect platform for Conventional Prompt Strike,” Smith said. The Conventional Prompt Strike weapons program, which emerged [in] the...

A dark money organization tied to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said Tuesday that it will spend over half a million dollars on ads targeting 2020 presidential candidates Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden. Ocasio-Cortez has been an outspoken critic of dark money, which refers to the practice of using cash to influence an election, by funneling it through nonprofit groups that are not obligated to disclose their donor lists. The group in question, Organize for Justice, is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization and falls under that same purview. They've set aside $500,000 for the Democratic primary and will use the funds to...

Relatives of U.S. paratroopers deployed to Kuwait earlier this month, amid heightening tensions with Iran, have been receiving “menacing” messages on social media, prompting an alert this week from the U.S. Army to family members of service members, according to reports. The 82nd Airborne Division out of Fort Bragg, N.C., reminded family members to limit who is able to see social media posts after some received pro-Iranian messages that in one message warned them to “Go back to your country," according to The Military Times. “Families have reported instances where they have received unsolicited contact with some menacing messaging,” Lt....

Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley laid out a sweeping indictment of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., arguing that her impeachment strategy backfired and gave Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the upper hand. "The delay now seems largely driven by a desire to preserve the image of Pelosi as a master strategist despite a blunder of the first order," Turley wrote in a column titled, "Pelosi's Blunder: How the House Destroyed its Own Case for Impeachment." His comments came as Pelosi prepared to transmit articles of impeachment to the Senate, roughly a month after the House approved them. She initially...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) – Kentucky officials are inviting a Planned Parenthood clinic to apply for a license to perform abortions. Procedures at the Louisville clinic had been halted under Kentucky’s previous governor, Matt Bevin, in early 2016. If Planned Parenthood’s license is approved for the Louisville clinic, it would become only the second abortion provider in the state. Bevin and the Republican-controlled General Assembly had moved in recent years to enact restrictions on abortions. But Bevin lost his reelection bid to Democrat Andy Beshear in November.

A new undercover video exposes a campaign staffer for Bernie Sanders saying supporters of President Donald Trump are Nazis who should be put in gulags for re-education. The new video from Project Veritas reveals that a paid Iowa Field Organizer for the Bernie Sanders Presidential Campaign, Kyle Jurek, says cities will burn if President Trump wins re-election, and calls for the mass murder of anyone who opposes a socialist revolution. “In Nazi Germany, after the fall of the Nazi Party, there was a s—-ton of the populace that was f—— Nazified,” says Jurek. “Germany had to spend billions of dollars...

*Note: Originally, this report indicated a 78% decrease in abortions between 2018 and 2019 based on Missouri DHSS numbers. After this report was published, it was discovered that there was a mistaken entry on the 2018 DHSS chart used for this report. That DHSS chart inadvertently entered the total number of abortions on Missouri women, instead of the number of abortions that took place in Missouri in 2018. Operation Rescue made corrections to this story after the accidental error on the DHSS chart was discovered. (View chart with mistake; View chart with actual numbers.) The actual decrease in abortions is...

Not long ago, it was considered gauche on college campuses to provide comparisons to Hitler. Students would shout, “Godwin’s Law!” and cancel the conversation like an insufficiently woke Instagram influencer. But in the era of President Trump, which some would have you believe has ushered the Third Reich into the fifty states, politically liberal students have suddenly found renewed interest in comparing modern affairs to Nazi practice. For them, however, this is a double-edged sword. For, when the topic of Nazism arises on campus, a question quickly follows many cannot answer—a question of morality. Shared Experience Morality is inescapable. Spend...

The two were in a room at Bellaire High School with four other students but no adult Tuesday afternoon when the 16-year-old took a semi-automatic pistol out of his waistband and pulled the trigger, killing 19-year-old Cesar Cortes, said Lt. Greg Bartlett. The suspect, whose name wasn’t released, fled the scene after the shooting and was arrested about 3 1/2 hours later, authorities said. He was charged as a minor with manslaughter, according to the Harris County District Attorney’s Office. District Attorney Kim Ogg said that based on evidence gathered so far, the shooting does not appear to have been...

SOUTH CAROLINA, USA — South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster and other pro-life advocates gathered Wednesday to fight for the so-called "Heartbeat Bill." Senators will be debating the bill that would ban almost all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. The bill passed the House last year and went through a lot of changes during senate committees this past fall. With a new session comes a renewed push from supporters of the bill, but some lawmakers say it won't pass. South Carolina's senators poised to debate one of the most broad-sweeping abortion bans in the country. Anti-abortion advocates gathered today in...

Florida lawmakers moved forward with a bill Wednesday to require parental consent before an underage girl has an abortion. The legislation passed the state Senate Judiciary Committee in a 3-2 vote Wednesday, just a day after Gov. Ron DeSantis publicly announced his support, according to the Miami Herald. A similar bill currently is before the state House. Florida Senate Bill 404, sponsored by Sen. Kelli Stargel, R-Lakeland, would require a girl under 18 to have at least one parent’s permission before going through with an abortion. The bill includes exceptions for medical emergencies and allows a judge to grant permission...

West Virginia lawmakers are advancing a bill to protect babies who survive abortions from infanticide. The West Virginia House Health approved the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, or House Bill 4007, in a voice vote, WV Public Broadcasting reports. Democrat Del. Danielle Walker opposed the bill. Lawmakers on Wednesday voted 93-5 in favor of the measure and it now moves to the Senate. The legislation would require abortionists to provide reasonable medical care to a baby who survives an abortion. It requires physicians to “exercise the same degree of reasonable medical judgment to preserve the life and health of...

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) called for the recusal of four Democrat presidential candidates from the impeachment process against President Donald Trump on Wednesday after Speaker Nancy Pelosi signed the articles. Blackburn said in an emailed statement: Tomorrow, one hundred United States Senators will be sworn in to serve in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump. Four of those Senators must recuse themselves for their unparalleled political interest in seeing this President removed from office. These four Democrats, Senators Bennet, Klobuchar, Sanders, and Warren, cannot sit in judgment of the very President they seek to replace. To participate in this...

January 16 2020 Thursday of the First Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1 1 Sm 4:1-11 The Philistines gathered for an attack on Israel. Israel went out to engage them in battle and camped at Ebenezer, while the Philistines camped at Aphek. The Philistines then drew up in battle formation against Israel. After a fierce struggle Israel was defeated by the Philistines, who slew about four thousand men on the battlefield. When the troops retired to the camp, the elders of Israel said, “Why has the LORD permitted us to be defeated today by the Philistines? Let us fetch...

A woman with dementia who went missing six days ago was discovered alive Wednesday in her snowbound sports utility vehicle in Northern California, authorities said. A search helicopter flying over the remote, mountainous community of Butte Meadows spotted a vehicle matching the description of the SUV owned by 68-year-old Paula Beth James, the Butte County Sheriff’s Office posted on Twitter. The helicopter landed and two searchers hiked to the vehicle, finding James inside, the sheriff’s office said. The SUV was described as being buried in the snow. She was taken to a hospital and was last listed in stable condition.

Oklahoma State Senator Nathan Dahm proposed a new license plate that would feature President Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” and the slogan he’s now using, “Keep America Great.” The plates would be unique to Oklahoma. “This is a great way that people can support America and support those ideas of keeping America great,” Dahm said.Dahm says the beauty of the plate is that it’s a specialty. If you don’t want it, you don’t have to buy it.

California’s governor has restarted a project to build a giant, underground tunnel that would pump billions of gallons of water from the San Joaquin Delta to the southern part of the state. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration on Wednesday issued a Notice of Preparation for the project, which is the first step in the state’s lengthy environmental review process. Last year, Newsom halted a similar project that would have built two tunnels for the same purpose. The new project will have only one tunnel, and it will carry less water. State officials don’t know how much it will cost. The tunnel...