Free Republic

A New Mexico restaurant is trying its hand at making a new ketchup recipe specifically for hot dogs. At Year of the Dog in Raton, a lot of their homemade sauces and toppings are from scratch so making a new ketchup seemed like a no-brainer. Mahasin and Naemon Thurman own the gourmet hot dog restaurant. It started as a street cart in Trinidad, Colorado but in 2020 they opened up a walk-up restaurant. The Thurman’s believe ketchup gets a bad rap and wanted to see if they can give the condiment a makeover. Their new ketchup is a bit thicker...

Vernon Jordan, the civil rights activist and Washington power broker whose private counsel was sought both by the powerful at the top levels of government and those in the corporate world, died on Monday at his home in Washington. He was 85.

Merck & Co. will help produce Johnson & Johnson ’s single-dose Covid-19 vaccine, President Biden plans to announce on Tuesday, as the administration pushes to get the shot to the American public at a faster pace. The president is expected to make the announcement while giving an update on the pandemic, administration officials said. The assistance from Merck, a competitor to Johnson & Johnson, will help speed up production after the one-shot vaccine was authorized by the Food and Drug Administration on Saturday. J&J declined to comment. In a statement on Tuesday, a Merck spokesman said the company “remains steadfast...

The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Tuesday over a set of Arizona voting restrictions alleged to be racially discriminatory in a dispute that could set the most important voting rights precedent in nearly a decade. A potentially landmark ruling in the coming months may determine whether a suite of voting curbs working their way through GOP state legislatures across the country will survive legal scrutiny before the pivotal 2022 midterms and the next race for the White House. For the 6-3 conservative-majority court, the case marks a first chance to define the sweep of a key provision of the...

Actress Angelina Jolie has sold a Moroccan landscape painting by British premier Winston Churchill for more than £8million, smashing the previous record for one of the World War Two leader's artworks. The painting, which is called 'Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque', sold at London auction house Christie's for a staggering £8.3million. It was completed after the 1943 Casablanca Conference, where Churchill and Franklin D Roosevelt planned the defeat of Nazi Germany - and was later gifted to the US President as a memento of their trip to Marrakech.

As Gov. Andrew Cuomo faces a third woman accusing him of sexual harassment, America’s first woman vice president Kamala Harris continues to be silent about the scandal. A request to the White House for Harris’s comment on the issue was not returned.

Epic Games just released the first demos for MetaHuman Creator, bringing us one step closer to living in a simulation. The cloud-based app has an intuitive interface, allowing minimally competent users to create ultra-realistic digital humans “in less than an hour, without compromising on quality.”Just as Pro Tools gave burnouts the power to make techno, or PhotoShop let perverts alter celebrity images, soon anyone with a decent laptop will be able to generate a deepfake. It’s gonna be hilarious—at first.MetaHuman Creator was developed for Unreal Engine, a top platform for game design, film effects, and live event production. The package...

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is calling for the state legislature to revoke Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s emergency powers, joining nine Democrats as well as the state’s Republicans in doing so. “The State Legislature,” his Sunday night statement reads, “must immediately revoke the governor’s emergency powers that overrule local control.” Great idea, mayor. But why now?One reason de Blasio lists is Cuomo’s “withholding of information on the deaths of over 15,000 people” in the nursing-home scandal. That fact, you might notice, has been in the media spotlight for weeks now. Even before then, the mayor didn’t seem to think...

Nike vice president has left the sportswear giant days after it was reported that her teenage son had used a credit card in her name to buy limited edition sneakers to then sell on in a lucrative scheme. The company said the departure of Ann Hebert, vice president and general manager of Nike's North America business, is effective immediately and that it plans to announce a replacement shortly. Bloomberg Businessweek last week reported that Hebert's son Joe Hebert, 19, used a credit card in her name to purchase sneakers for his resale company, West Coast Streetwear.

For some QAnon conspiracy theorists, March 4, 2021 is a date circled in red Sharpie on the calendar. The truly devoted believe that, on this special date, Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 19th president of the United States. "Some QAnon followers are borrowing discredited arguments from sovereign citizens in order to yet again move the goalposts,” Travis Week, co-host of the conspiracy-debunking podcast QAnon Anonymous, explained via tweet, “They're absurdly claiming Trump will be inaugurated on March 4, because the U.S. was ‘incorporated’ in 1871 and all Amendments passed after that are invalid.” At the Trump International...

A group of Democratic lawmakers, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey and Rep. Ayanna Pressley, are introducing legislation to end qualified immunity and open up law enforcement officers to civil liability. The doctrine of qualified immunity “for too long has shielded law enforcement from accountability and denied recourse for the countless families robbed of their loved ones,” Pressley said. “There can be no justice without healing and accountability, and there can be no true accountability with qualified immunity.” Pressley first joined former Michigan Rep. Justin Amash to introduce a similar version of the legislation last year as an amendment...

I’ve said it here. I’ve mentioned it on the Triggered Podcast. I want a COVID relief bill. I want relief checks for working families. In fact, I want huge checks for these families since Democrats torpedoed multiple efforts to get a deal done last year. Liberals wanted to better their chances of winning the election. That’s the Democratic Party. Screwing working families for political gain. With the election over, NOW Democrats can get something done for America’s working class, so they drafted this $1.9 trillion bill…that does none of that. I know, what’d you expect, right? It’s a $1 trillion-plus...

Hydroxychloroquine should not be used to prevent or treat COVID-19, the World Health Organization (WHO) advised this week. The anti-inflammatory drug was once touted by former President Donald Trump, who said he was taking the treatment to prevent contracting coronavirus last spring. A panel of WHO experts found that the drug has no meaningful effect on deaths or hospitalizations due to coronavirus. They added that it may even increase the risk of adverse effects. With high certainty, "the guideline development panel made a strong recommendation against the use of hydroxychloroquine for individuals who do not have covid-19," the panel wrote...

A group of theologically conservative United Methodists has announced the creation of a new denomination once the United Methodist Church officially separates due to its long-standing debate over homosexuality.The Wesleyan Covenant Association and the 17-member Transitional Leadership Council released a statement on Monday morning announcing the creation of the Global Methodist Church.According to the statement, the theologically conservative denomination will not be officially launched until the UMC General Conference, scheduled for 2022, passes a separation measure known as the Protocol for Reconciliation and Grace through Separation.The Protocol, which will be up for debate at the General Conference, involves allowing conservative...

Dr. Rachel Levine's nomination to be assistant secretary of Health and Human Services is being hailed as "historic" by Democrats and the media, solely because Levine is transgender. That's crazy. Her own sexual identity should be irrelevant. What's needed, especially during the pandemic, is competence. Levine lacks it. As Pennsylvania health secretary, Levine was in charge of the state's COVID-19 response. She told the Senate panel on Thursday that the pandemic was her "urgent and primary focus." What the record shows is that she failed miserably, costing Pennsylvanians their lives. Pennsylvania ranks a dismal 45 out of the 50 states...

The American Conservative Union (ACU), the organization behind the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), is “seriously considering all options,” ACU President Matt Schlapp told PJ Media on Monday after ACU’s general counsel sent a letter to Hyatt protesting the company’s decision to breathe new life into a conspiracy theory regarding the CPAC stage.Leftist detractors strained to find a Nazi symbol related to CPAC, and they seized on the shape of the main stage. Leftists claimed that the stage was an inverted Odal rune, symbol some Neo-Nazi groups use.Dear @HyattAre you okay with Nazi symbols being used on your properties? Because...

States around the country are reporting a significant decline in the number of students enrolled in public school because of the coronavirus pandemic, leaving experts and educators concerned about the trend, and its potential long-term consequences. A notable number of students seem to have simply fallen off the grid, not showing up for online or in-person instruction, their whereabouts unknown by school officials. Given the chaos caused by the pandemic, and the lack of data, it is difficult to truly determine the exact magnitude of the problem, which seems to be disproportionately affecting already vulnerable student populations – among them...

First, there was Maher Bitar, a Palestinian-American and anti-Israel BDS activist, whom Biden has appointed to be the senior director of intelligence programs at the National Security Council. In this key intelligence role, Maher Bitar will be ideally situated to learn, for example, about American collaboration with Israel on moves to stop Iran’s nuclear program. Why should we assume Bitar would not try to limit that collaboration, or to alert others about these moves, or to try to influence policy by focusing on international criticism of Israel’s “settlement building,” in an attempt to manufacture an unnecessary crisis between the allies,...

The Biden administration’s decision to publish the intelligence report on Jamal Khashoggi’s death in late 2018 was as predictable as it was destructive to U.S. national security and to the security and stability of the Middle East. It was predictable for two reasons. First, this is Obama’s third term. And in Obama’s first term he played a central role in overthrowing Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the anchor of the U.S.’s alliance system in the Sunni Arab world in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood, the ideological anchor of every Sunni terror group in the world. Obama’s consistent policy for eight years...

BOSTON (AP) — Six Dr. Seuss books — including “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” and “If I Ran the Zoo” — will stop being published because of racist and insensitive imagery, the business that preserves and protects the author’s legacy said Tuesday. “These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong,” Dr. Seuss Enterprises told The Associated Press in a statement that coincided with the late author and illustrator’s birthday. “Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure Dr. Seuss Enterprises’ catalog represents and...