Free Republic

A California stay-at-home mom was devastated to learn that a succulent she has taken care of for two years is made out of plastic. Caelie Wilkes said in a Facebook post that she received the plant as a gift and worked hard to nurture and protect it, making sure it received enough water and plenty sunshine. She even washed the spongy leaves.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) attacked Chief Justice John Roberts and issued a warning to the Court in a statement released by his spokesman Justin Goodman Wednesday afternoon in response to Roberts rebuking Schumer for threatening Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh at a pro-choice protest rally in front of the Supreme Court building Wednesday morning while inside the justices heard arguments on a Louisiana abortion law case, June Medical Services LLC v. Russo. Schumer had screamed his threat, “I want to tell you, Gorsuch! And I want to tell you, Kavanaugh! You have released the whirlwind, and you...

(Reuters) - Wall Street was set for strong declines at the open on Thursday as the fast-spreading coronavirus led California to declare an emergency, while airline stocks were hammered by crippled travel demand. The S&P 500 had ended 4% higher on Wednesday, as Joe Biden’s surprising lead in the Democratic primaries distracted traders from the widening spread of the pathogen in the United States. The benchmark index has recouped nearly half of its losses from its worst week since the 2008 financial crisis, but is still about 7.5% below its record close on Feb. 19. Fears about economic growth resurfaced...

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) attacked Chief Justice John Roberts and issued a warning to the Court in a statement released by his spokesman Justin Goodman Wednesday afternoon in response to Roberts rebuking Schumer for threatening Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh at a pro-choice protest rally in front of the Supreme Court building Wednesday morning while inside the justices heard arguments on a Louisiana abortion law case, June Medical Services LLC v. Russo. Schumer had screamed his threat, “I want to tell you, Gorsuch! And I want to tell you, Kavanaugh! You have released the whirlwind, and you...

HSBC has evacuated parts of its Canary Wharf headquarters after a worker tested positive for coronavirus. The bank's research department was cleared this morning and will now undergo a deep clean as staff work from home. The employee is believed to have fallen ill at the weekend after returning from an affected area overseas before receiving the positive test. It is the first case of COVID-19 in one of London's major financial institutions. The banking giant employs around 10,000 people at its Canary Wharf headquarters and 40,000 people across the UK. An HSBC spokesperson said: "We have been informed that...

TRIPOLI - Three thousand camels have been walked out of Libya’s capital Tripoli in an overnight evacuation after the port where they arrived came under artillery fire. The camels left Tripoli’s port shortly after midnight on Wednesday, and were herded along a highway leading west to the city of Zawiya, some 45 km (30 miles) away, where they arrived on Thursday morning, according to a local merchant. A Reuters reporter saw about 20 camel herders whipping the camels into line as they left central Tripoli, with some camels trying to search for food along the side of the road. Security...

A new California law intended to force employers to hire workers as employees rather than treat them as contractors is killing freelance jobs across the Golden State and leaving those contractors in limbo. Assembly Bill 5 (A.B. 5), which took effect January 1, was drafted in response to Dynamex Operations West Inc. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles, a landmark court case that established a three-pronged test to determine whether companies are correctly classifying employees and contractors. That test says that contractors must control their workload, not perform work within the business's primary scope of operations, and be "customarily engaged"...

In this episode, we interview the writer and director Matthew Rosen to learn to riveting, but little known story of Philippine president Manuel Quezon attempting to save 10,000 Jews from Hitler's slaughter.

“Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house: Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel” (Proverbs 5:8-9 KJV).

At least some journalists and scientists appear finally to be admitting that many people promoting the theory that humans are causing a climate crisis have been wildly exaggerating the likelihood the most extreme climate harms will occur. Prior to the of the release of the Fifth Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the purported human causes of climate change, researchers developed four different scenarios, referred to as, “Representative Concentration Pathways” (RCPs), to describe how carbon emissions might change through 2100. The most extreme of these scenarios, RCP8.5, projected a 500 percent increase in the use...

South by Southwest, the annual tech, film and music conference in Austin, will proceed as planned despite concerns about coronavirus, Austin public health officials said during a press conference on Wednesday. "It's important for us to remember at this stage that we're actively evaluating mass gatherings on a daily basis," said Mark Escott, the interim medical director and health authority for Austin Public Health. "Right now there's no evidence that closing South by Southwest or other activities is going to make this community safer. We're constantly monitoring that situation." The organizers behind SXSW, which is scheduled to take place from...

... Biden is a moderate compared to Sanders, but he is notably to the left of previous Democratic standard-bearers. To describe Biden as a moderate without this context is to ignore the specifics of his agenda and the leftward shift in Democratic Party politics it represents. Consider Biden's health care plan. Although he has criticized Medicare for All, the fully government-run system favored by Sanders, Biden has proposed a significant expansion of the Affordable Care Act that his campaign estimates would cost $750 billion over a decade, nearly as much as the original bill signed by President Barack Obama. Although...

WASHINGTON - - While Super Tuesday left Democrats with a pair of front-runners President Donald Trump believes he can define and defeat, there are still some private worries in the White House. There is concern that the Democrats’ messy nomination contest may end up producing an emboldened version of the very man who once worried Trump so much as a foe that it led to the president’s impeachment. That would be Joe Biden. Trump and his team have spent the last year trying to lump the Democratic contenders together as left-wing radicals. Biden’s working-class appeal and more pragmatic policy approach...

Williams College suspended a male student based on his failure to pursue a relationship with a female student after “kissing and touching” her, according to a lawsuit against the private school. Both the unnamed Hispanic student “John Doe” and his accuser “Sally Smith” are foreign students. She accused him of sexual misconduct not because he acted without her consent, John claims, but because he was “culturally insensitive” after their amorous encounters. Adjudicators misrepresented the evidence in the record, ignored Sally’s messages to John expressing positive feelings about their first amorous encounter, and didn’t even correctly apply the “preponderance of evidence”...

A 'heroic' Chinese doctor who was punished for sounding the alarm over the coronavirus outbreak before it spread has been awarded by Beijing after he died of the deadly disease. Dr Li Wenliang, 34, lost his life to the killer infection last month having contracting it from a patient. His death caused an uproar among the country's social media users who criticised their government of controlling freedom of speech and trying to cover up Dr Li's passing.

“Complete transformations” happen so fast these days that it is helpful to set Thursdays aside to recall the roots of some of today’s popular technologies and ideas.The Origin of Texting DevicesFor example, few people today know the proper way to set a formal dinner table.The correct placement of the texting device is below and slightly to the left of the butter plate.And it seems that every decade or so people forget that really bad ideas create bubbles: that result in a really bad economic downturn when they burst. Yet they continue to fall for really bad ideas.Just a few random...

I went to my radiation and chemo treatments scared to death. Good old Greg Allen drove me there and back and I will give him a gold star for his efforts. I had a lot of pain holding my arms back while in the infernal radiation machine that whirled about me shooting left over parts of the Little Boy bomb at my cancer. Yet the good meds the doc gave me kicked in and the pain did not last very long after I got out the radiation's grip and put my arms down. Then 30 minutes later I was in...

Pacific Gas & Electric worker Juan R. Cavazos testified Tuesday that he knew something wasn’t right when accused killer Kori Ali Muhammad slowly walked past his truck, staring at his fellow PG&E employee Zackary Randalls.

(Posted on Facebook last time and after a good sleep I wanted to say this to all the FReepers who prayed for me.) I went to my radiation and chemo treatments scared to death. Good old Greg Allen drove me there and back and I will give him a gold star for his efforts. I had a lot of pain holding my arms back while in the infernal radiation machine that whirled about me shooting left over parts of the Little Boy bomb at my cancer. Yet the good meds the doc gave me kicked in and the pain did...

RALEIGH, N.C. — A man who gave a fiery speech for gun rights two years ago in Greensboro won the Republican primary in North Carolina’s lieutenant governor’s race Tuesday night. Mark Robinson, who was seeking his first elected office, topped eight other candidates, likely winning the primary without a runoff and shocking pundits. He spent less than other candidates – one a state senator who put half a million dollars into his own campaign – and he didn’t have the statewide platform or political experience of others. “We’re not pretentious. I’m not spreading a political message. I’m spreading a message...