Free Republic

Apple appears to be interested in acquiring the Pac-12 Conference's primary media rights package instead of a solely digital one. Currently, ESPN and Fox are the current holders of those rights, which are set to expire after the 2023-2024 season. The two companies pay a combined $250 million per year for those rights. Back in December 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple was having "preliminary" conversations with Pac-12 in an effort to bring sports to its Apple TV+ streaming platform. Those discussions have reportedly continued through the first quarter of 2020. In a report published on Tuesday discussing...

Watch it before YouTube censors it.

I have assembled a comparison of President Washington's first Inaugural Address in 1789 with Donald Trump's equivalent: https://freedom-demokrasi-and-civilised-humanity.com/2020/05/01/washington-and-trump/ Who was the better communicator? Which president was more democratic?

Andrew Cleckley Funeral Home was overwhelmed and ran out of room for bodies, which were awaiting cremation, and used the trucks for storage, a second law enforcement source said Wednesday. At least one of the trucks was unrefrigerated, according to one law enforcement official. One source said the bodies were put on ice. The Department of Environmental Protection issued two summonses to the owner of the funeral home for a foul odor.

Amid the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, Gilead Sciences’ experimental remdesivir has emerged as the most promising candidate against the deadly pathogen. But its patent in China has also drawn some unexpected confusion. The Chinese pharma BrightGene has successfully copied remdesivir, the company said in a disclosure (PDF, Chinese) to China’s Nasdaq-style Star market on Wednesday. What's more, the Suzhou-based firm said it has already mass-produced remdesivir's active ingredient and is in the process of turning it into finished doses. The company’s stock jumped 20% at the news, hitting the daily price move cap allowed on the exchange. BrightGene doesn’t seem to...

People in Ivy League towers really need to come back down to earth. Harvard law professor Elizabeth Bartholet has taken residence in that tower and looks down on us lowly homeschoolers. Her recently published anti-homeschooling screed absurdly claims: “This homeschooling regime poses real dangers to children and to society…homeschooling is a realm of near-absolute parental power.” Well, who should be in power? The child? The State? Well, according to the professor…yes and yes. She believes that the government’s desire to indoctrinate, I mean educate, children supersedes parental rights. Children, according to Bartholet, essentially belong to the State (that’s slavery) and...

WASHINGTON — At the time, it seemed mildly noteworthy, but not particularly unusual: then-Vice President Joe Biden, traveling to China on an official visit, had brought his son Hunter Biden along. And when the two appeared in public together in Beijing during the 2013 trip, there were all the typical trappings of a mini-family vacation tacked on to a business trip. With Hunter's daughter Finnegan in tow, the Biden men sipped tea in a Confucian-style teahouse, leafed through books at local shops and treated themselves to mid-afternoon ice cream. But years later, Biden’s trip to Beijing is coming under new...

Dirty money is piling up in Los Angeles. In the last three weeks, federal agents made three seizures that each netted more than $1 million in suspected drug proceeds. The reason, according to the city’s top drug enforcement official: The coronavirus pandemic has slowed trade-based money laundering systems that drug trafficking groups use to repatriate profits and move Chinese capital into Southern California. With storefronts closed, supply chains in disarray and the global economy in peril, these complex schemes are hobbled and cash is backing up in Los Angeles, Bill Bodner, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s...

"Blessed are you when men cast insults at you, and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, on account of Me. Rejoice, and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you" (Matt. 5:11-12). The sacrifices you make for Christ’s sake in this life will be abundantly compensated for in Heaven. God's promise for those who are persecuted for His sake is that their reward in heaven will be great (Matt. 5:11). Jesus said, "Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or...

WHO guidelines for sex education recommend that children aged 0-4 be taught about “masturbation” and “gender identity.”The World Health Organization’s ‘Standards for Sexuality Education in Europe: A framework for policymakers, educational and health authorities and specialists’, advises children be taught about sexually pleasuring themselves and transgenderism before they’ve even fully learned to talk.The WHO advises that children aged 0-4 are given “information about enjoyment and pleasure when touching one’s body… masturbation.”Toddlers are also to be encouraged to “gain an awareness of gender identity” and given “the right to explore gender identities.”In the ages 4-6 bracket, educators are urged to “give...

Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn (Ret.) is awaiting his fate. The former national security advisor pled guilty to lying to federal investigators about his contact with Russia's U.S. ambassador Sergey Kislyak in 2017 but has since signaled his intention to withdraw that plea. And this week's new exculpatory evidence revealed that Flynn may have been "framed" by the FBI. The unsealed documents reveal that FBI agents were less interested in information on Kislyak, and more interested in getting Flynn in trouble. The seemingly damning notes were written by former FBI general counsel James A. Baker. #FLYNN docs just unsealed, including handwritten...

Our tune today is We've Come A Long Way Together by Gene Autry (1939). THE WESTERNER https://thewesterner.blogspot.com/

The allegation of sexual assault leveled against former Vice President Joseph R. Biden is starting to cause headaches for Democrats running in competitive down-ticket races that will decide which party controls Congress. The North Carolina GOP on Thursday said Cal Cunningham, a Democrat running for the Senate, is trying to sidestep Tara Reade’s charge that Mr. Biden pinned her up against a wall and sexually assaulted her in 1993. Mr. Biden, who was a senator then, is now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. “His handling of Tara Reade’s allegations is just further evidence that Cal Cunningham has no core convictions...

The Wuhan Institute of Virology, part of the China Academy of Sciences, has applied to patent the use of Gilead Sciences’ remdesivir to treat the current coronavirus outbreak. The company has partnered with Chinese health authorities to run a Phase III clinical trial to assess remdesivir for treatment of the virus. The drug was originally developed to treat the Ebola virus, but wasn’t effective. Preclinical assays have suggested that the drug might be effective against the coronavirus, 2019-nCoV, as was published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). The drug was given to a U.S. patient for compassionate use...

A 2018 video of former FBI Director James Comey is circulating again after the Department of Justice released bombshell documents that appear to show the FBI was planning a perjury trap for President Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn. In the clip, MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace asks Comey who went around protocol to send FBI agents directly into the White House to interview the retired general in January 2017.“I sent them," Comey reveals.“[S]omething I probably wouldn't have done and maybe gotten away with in a more organized investigation,” he added. Devastating flashback clip of Comey just aired on @marthamaccallum show....

Beans aren't inherently gassy, it is damaged protein from over-cooking that causes the unintended effects. Minimize cooking damage by most efficiently processing beans. It takes a cheap "corn mill" and a pressure-cooker. Cracking un-washed beans in a kind of dry grain mill for "meal" not "flour", then washing them after cracking, soaking in hot water for a short time, then pressure cooking. The taste is like potatoes, the most gas-prone person won't experience the unpleasant effects. The cheapest, steel-plate (vs. stone), "meal" (vs. "flour") mill, that will process whole corn, dried whole hominy (softer than corn), and brown-rice-meal (great for...

On Newsmax TV’s “Spicer & Co.,” David Stockman, the head of the Office of Management and Budget under President Reagan and the “father of Reaganomics,” said President Trump is “the victim of malpractice by his doctors.” Stockman says the American population is actually three countries – those under 16 who have suffered only five deaths from Coronavirus but suffer an average of 44,000 deaths per year from other causes; those from 16 to 64, and those over 64, who experience the highest death rate by far. “What we should be doing is keeping the schools open, the commerce open, the...

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who did not issue a stay-at-home order for her state, was surprised with a parade in her honor as residents praised the Republican's leadership during the coronavirus pandemic. Video footage posted on the governor's Twitter account shows fire trucks blaring their sirens and people honking from their cars as Noem walks out of what appears to be the governor's mansion in Pierre. The woman filming her tells the governor, "It's a parade for you! Wave to them!" and Noem waves as she appears to get a little emotional. "I am so blessed to serve the...

Former national security advisor and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and then hired new lawyers who moved to withdraw his plea, has had his “bombshell” moment, according to some. According to others, there was not much to see here other than routine FBI tactics. On Wednesday night, the documents that Fox News host Maria Bartiromo’s sources promised would “exonerate” Flynn dropped. When they did, conservatives said that the documents were proof that the FBI entrapped and even “set up” Flynn. Bartiromo said the documents represented a “confirmed setup.” How much is enough?...

The CCP virus was not manmade or genetically modified, U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the head of the U.S. intelligence community (IC), said the community “concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified.” The office did not say how it came to the conclusion. “The IC will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan,” the office said in...