Free Republic

Pennsylvania’s initial doses of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine will go into the arms of school employees and child care workers. The state is expecting to receive an initial batch of 94,000 doses of this new vaccine this week. It will be reserved to launch an educator vaccination initiative intended to get schools and child care centers back open for in-person instruction. Gov. Tom Wolf, along with members of the COVID-19 Vaccine Joint Task Force, plan to hold an 11 a.m. news conference on Wednesday to share further details about this effort. Wolf indicated at a Tuesday news conference that...

WASHINGTON — Tea party favorite Sen. Rand Paul said Tuesday that the nation's illegal immigrants should be able to become citizens eventually, but amid a furor from conservative activists on the explosive issue he quickly sought to make clear that, while they would not be sent home, they couldn't get in line in front of anyone else. What he doesn't support, the Kentucky Republican said, is amnesty or a new pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants already in the country. He said he simply believes they should be able to stay in the country on what...

More than 40 people arrested in Los Angeles County for curfew violations during last summer's mass protests have alleged in a new lawsuit that the curfews were an unconstitutional and coordinated tactic by the county, several local cities and their police forces to stifle legitimate political speech against police violence. The lawsuit alleges a slate of violations of the protesters' constitutional and civil rights, assault and battery, false imprisonment, negligence and the intentional infliction of emotional distress, and calls the curfew a "tool of oppression" used by government actors to suppress the truth and shore up false narratives about American...

Guess she’ll have to take the bus. Funding for a rail project near House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s California district that Republicans denounced as wasteful was removed Tuesday from President Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus bill. The Senate parliamentarian ruled the $140 million appropriation wasn’t allowed under the so-called Byrd rule that polices unrelated items in budget reconciliation bills. Republicans singled out the rail project as an example of unrelated “pork” in the bill, which is being rammed through Congress without Republican support using special rules that allow a simple majority vote in the Senate. On Tuesday, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.)...

"A statement from Biden read: "I have accepted Neera Tanden’s request to withdraw her name from nomination for Director of the Office of Management and Budget......."

Gov. Gavin Newsom urged schools across the state to take a more aggressive stance in getting students back into classrooms, saying $2 billion in grants for districts to reopen should be enough to address lingering anxiety and roadblocks. “We have the capacity to get these kids safely back to in-person instruction,” Newsom said Tuesday at a Palo Alto news conference. “It’s about the children. It’s about their emotional well-being.” “No one is naive about that and that’s exactly why yesterday we announced the $6.6 billion commitment with the legislature ... to provide support for districts that need more sanitation, need...

Gov. Gavin Newsom urged schools across the state to take a more aggressive stance in getting students back into classrooms, saying $2 billion in grants for districts to reopen should be enough to address lingering anxiety and roadblocks. “We have the capacity to get these kids safely back to in-person instruction,” Newsom said Tuesday at a Palo Alto news conference. “It’s about the children. It’s about their emotional well-being.” “No one is naive about that and that’s exactly why yesterday we announced the $6.6 billion commitment with the legislature ... to provide support for districts that need more sanitation, need...

Amid a burgeoning recall effort and ugly poll numbers, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has now become the butt of jokes on NBC's "Saturday Night Live." Newsom is the first judge introduced and is welcomed with the brutal line, "He's hated by every single person in California except those 10 people he had dinner with in Napa that one time." When asked how how things are going in California, Newsom (played by Alex Moffat) replies, "Teeth: white, bodies: tight, COVID: pretty bad."

House Democrats on Tuesday introduced a revamped version of a major bill aiming to get the country on the road to carbon neutrality by 2050. “Today’s introduction of the CLEAN Future Act promises that we will not stand idly by as the rest of the world transitions to clean economies and our workers get left behind, and that we will not watch from the sidelines as the climate crisis wreaks havoc on Americans’ health and homes," said House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) in a statement. The latest edition of the legislation, introduced by Pallone and...

ST PAUL, Minn. — Minnesota sheriffs issued more firearms permits in 2020 than in any other year, a newly-released state report shows. It matches up with a nationwide trend, which some experts attributed to the pandemic and to civil unrest after the killing of George Floyd. A report from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) shows that more than 96,000 permits were issued last year, the most since permits became legal in 2003 and nearly twice as many as were issued in 2019.

Who Loves Most? ( or least?) Posted on March 3, 2021 by billrandles There is a vignette in the Gospel which illustrates a very critical point about Loving God. It answers the question why some come to love God and others do not seem to have capacity to love him. And one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee’s house, and sat down to meat. And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee’s house, brought an...

President Biden on Tuesday said he was withdrawing Neera Tanden’s nomination to be White House budget director. Biden presented the white flag as Tanden’s idea and the White House released a letter from her saying she wanted to drop out. Tanden faced increasingly long odds at confirmation due to her past mean tweets about senators, including swing-voting Republicans and even some Democrats. Biden said in a statement that he “accepted Neera Tanden’s request to withdraw her name from nomination for Director of the Office of Management and Budget.” “I have the utmost respect for her record of accomplishment, her experience...

Pope Francis sends a letter marking the start of a jubilee year to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the canonisation of Saint Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows. By Vatican News staff writer On the anniversary of his death on 27 February 1862, Pope Francis sent a letter marking one hundred years since the canonisation of Saint Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows. Canonised by Pope Benedict XV, Saint Gabriel died at the young age of 24, at Gran Sasso in Italy. In his letter, addressed to Bishop Lorenzo Leuzzi of Teramo-Atri, Pope Francis wrote that "this event showed that...

California’s high poverty rate, low wages and frayed public safety net require a new “social compact” between workers, business and government, according to a report by a blue-ribbon commission that highlights the state's widening inequality. “Too many Californians have not fully participated in or enjoyed the benefits of the state’s broader economic success and the extraordinary wealth generated here, especially workers of color who are disproportionately represented in low-wage industries,” the report says. Unlike similar reports published by nonprofit and business groups in recent years, the California report does not mainly focus on commonly cited forces of economic disruption, including...

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., continued his war of words Tuesday against former President Donald Trump, calling his CPAC speech "boring" and lambasting one of Trump's staunchest supporters, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., as being "smug" during his address to the conservative weekend audience. "I thought the first time we had heard Donald Trump speak, it would be shocking," Kinzinger told CNN's "New Day" of Trump's address, the first made after he left the White House. "He could have given that speech in September. "No new ideas," he continued. "To me, it looked like someone that just needed his monthly dose of...

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas: “… for so long, and we have already begun to implement. We are progressing every single day. I don’t have a particular timeline, but all I can do is communicate, both to the American public, and to the individuals seeking protection, that we are working around the clock seven days a week to make that time frame as short as possible, but they need to wait. But they need to wait with a particular goal in mind. We are not saying, don’t come, we are saying, don’t come now, because we will be able to...

Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom has called Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott's decision to reopen state businesses and end all mask mandates during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic "absolutely reckless."

Feb. 26—Carbon County commissioners aren't keen on a plan to toll bridges along Interstate 80 to fund construction projects. Commissioner Chris Lukasevich on Thursday said Pennsylvania residents already pay the highest gas tax in the United States, and feels that state should better use existing funds. Commissioners Wayne Nothstein and Rocky Ahner also question the move, which would allow tolls on the Interstate 80 bridges over the Lehigh River at the Carbon-Luzerne county line for up to 30 years. Ahner worried about the average commuter, who has to pay the toll each way to go to work every day. "It...

More than 600 years ago, someone intricately folded, sealed and posted a letter that was never delivered. Now, scientists have digitally "unfolded" this and other similarly locked letters found in a 17th-century trunk in The Hague, using X-rays. For centuries prior to the invention of sealed envelopes, sensitive correspondence was protected from prying eyes through complex folding techniques called "letterlocking," which transformed a letter into its own secure envelope. However, locked letters that survive to the present are fragile and can be opened physically only by slicing them to pieces. The new X-ray method offers researchers a non-invasive alternative, maintaining...

Republicans could be poised for massive gains in the state of Florida thanks to the upcoming redistricting process that the GOP is set to control in the state. “FLORIDA: if you thought things couldn't get worse for Dems...it can. FL could be the GOP's biggest redistricting weapon of 2021,” Cook Political Report editor Dave Wasserman said on Twitter. “FL is poised to gain two seats.