Free Republic

At a time when the pandemic has exposed a growing shortage of nurses, it should have been good news that there were more than 1,200 applicants to enter the associate degree program in nursing at Long Beach City College. But the California community college took only 32 of them. North of here, California State University, East Bay isn't enrolling any nursing students at all until at least next fall. Higher education was struggling to keep up with the skyrocketing demand for nurses even before the COVID-19 crisis. Now it's falling further behind. Health protocols are limiting in-person instruction. Nursing teachers...

Kenosha County District Attorney Michael Graveley announced Tuesday afternoon that no police would face criminal charges in the August 2020 shooting of 29-year-old Jacob Blake Jr., which triggered large riots in the Wisconsin town.Blake was shot seven times from behind after an altercation with police who were trying to arrest him on Aug. 23. Blake was wanted on charges that included sexual assault, and his alleged victim called 911 after he came to her residence. He fought police and evaded a Taser, allegedly reaching for a knife inside his car before he was shot. He is paralyzed from the waist...

During the predawn hours on New Year’s Day, Delta Force operators infiltrated a Biden-controlled stronghold in southeast Ukraine near the port city of Mariupol, according to an anonymous White House Source who said President Trump greenlit the operation following a series of telephone calls to US military commanders and to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Even in the bizarre world of QAnon conspiracy theorists, self-proclaimed deep state whistleblower Ryan Dark White has some crazy ideas. Like other QAnon promoters, White, who goes by the alias “John Here to Help” on Twitter, says a cabal of Satanic government bureaucrats is out to get Donald Trump. But he also claims those same nefarious actors have broken through to another dimension, where they discovered a sort of elemental spirit that is essentially the spirit of God, then packaged it into a machine named “Project Deep Space 9.” “It’s the voice of God,” White, 52, said in a 2019...

Top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci has told Newsweek he would be "surprised" if a new, more infectious strain of COVID from South Africa had not arrived in the U.S., even though it has not yet been detected. The South African variant, named 501.V2, has so far emerged in the U.K., Switzerland, Finland, Japan, Australia, Zambia, France, and South Korea. Like a separate new strain first picked up in the U.K., called B.1.1.7, 501.V2 is thought to be better at spreading than past forms of COVID. Although both variants appear to be more transmissible, they are not thought to make...

The usual solemn and joyous occasion that surrounds the Swearing-in Ceremony in the Pennsylvania Senate was anything but on Tuesday. The raucous session began with a dispute over mask wearing that led to the passage of a temporary rule proposed by Senate Democrats to mandate everyone in the chamber have a face covering, which a couple Republican Sens. John DiSanto of Dauphin County and Doug Mastriano of Franklin County had resisted wearing until that point. But that was only a precursor to the real fireworks that the Senate Democrats set off. Pa. Senate GOP leader to deny seating an incumbent...

@realDonaldTrump I hope the Democrats, and even more importantly, the weak and ineffective RINO section of the Republican Party, are looking at the thousands of people pouring into D.C. They won’t stand for a landslide election victory to be stolen @senatemajldr @JohnCornyn @SenJohnThune

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) reportedly told GOP senators that he “won’t judge anybody for their decision” in regards to objecting to the Electoral College vote, which Congress will count on Wednesday, after previously urging them to refrain from doing so.

Country music star and “The Voice” coach Blake Shelton became the latest celebrity to be targeted by cancel culture this week for his new song “Minimum Wage.” Luckily for him, fellow country star Ronnie Dunn of “Brooks & Dunn” fame stepped up with a lengthy defense of Shelton. Dunn wasn’t alone in his support as legendary Red Rocker Sammy Hagar had Shelton’s back as well.

Scroll down and click on IS IT WORTH IT?

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., defended saying “amen and awoman” after his opening prayer in Congress this week after being mocked online. Cleaver told the Kansas City Star said he did not expect to be made fun of for the “lighthearted pun,” which was really just an an attempt to recognize “the record number of women who will be representing the American people in Congress during this term,” he said.

Alex Jones breaks down the CDC’s own death numbers for 2021 to reveal almost no change in the death rates of years past.

WASHINGTON — Republican divisions deepened Monday over an effort to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, as lawmakers weighed their fear of alienating President Donald Trump and his supporters against the consequences of voting to reject a democratic election.With a Wednesday vote looming on whether to certify the election results, the last-ditch bid to deny Biden the presidency has unleashed open warfare among Republicans, leaving them scrambling to stake out a defensible stance on a test that carries heavy repercussions for their careers and their party.On Monday, as Trump ratcheted up his demands for Republicans to try to block Biden’s election,...

I just went to the Fox News web page, and as it loads it has the graphic showing the election results. Which should currently all read zero. Numbers of votes appears - starting around 2 million for each candidate and quickly count down to zero. Here are a few screen shots I captured as it was happening. Maybe it is just a weird web thing - but it seems suspicious to me

The report was due on 12/18/20. Then it got delayed, apparently due to an internal argument as to who would be to blame for foreign interference in our election. Now, what...where is it? Is it going to be a part of tomorrow's events?

Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson made a desperate plea to President Donald Trump on Twitter this week.

With roughly two months to its signature deadline, the Recall Gov. Gavin Newsom petition reached 60 percent of its required signatures by New Year’s Eve, surpassing 911,000 verified signatures. To be added to a ballot, 1,495,709 signatures are needed. The number of signatures already gathered is more than what it took to qualify the Gray Davis Recall A spokesman for the governor said the recall is a misuse of time that could be spent “reopening schools and businesses.” He told Fox 5 San Diego that a recall would “waste $100 million on a special election redo, mere months before a...

More than 70 percent of COVID-19 vaccines are still sitting in freezers in the US — as the country’s disastrous rollout has forced desperate Florida senior citizens to camp out overnight for their shot. Hundreds braved chilly 40-degree temperatures and slept in their cars overnight in Daytona Beach in the mad rush for inoculations, NBC Miami reported.

HARRISBURG — The new session of the Pennsylvania Senate got off to a chaotic start Tuesday, with Republicans refusing to seat a Democratic senator whose election victory has been certified by state officials. Amid high emotions and partisan fingerpointing, Republicans also took the rare step of removing the Democratic lieutenant governor, John Fetterman, from presiding over the session. They apparently did so because they did not believe Fetterman was following the rules and recognizing their legislative motions.

This year's first auction of blowfish, or fugu, has been held in the western city of Shimonoseki in Yamaguchi Prefecture. Shimonoseki is home to the largest market in Japan for the winter delicacy. Over six tons of wild and farmed torafugu were auctioned at the Haedomari fish market early on Monday morning. The auction started shortly after 3 a.m. Buyers and sellers negotiated their deals in the traditional style, by grasping each other's fingers inside a cloth sleeve hidden from other bidders. The highest bidding price was 15,000 yen, or about 145 dollars per kilogram. That's about three-quarters of last...