Free Republic

The taxpayer-funded National Public Radio (NPR) put its left-wing bent on full display when it did cheerleading for President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion economic equivalent of a sugar binge. Enjoy the high, America. NPR Chief Economics Correspondent Scott Horsley slapped an absurd headline on his latest piece: “Biden's $1.9 Trillion Rescue Plan Set To Turbocharge U.S. Economy.” Horsley, notorious for acting like a stenographer for former President Barack Obama, embraced his new pro-Biden schtick. He pivoted off the coronavirus vaccine rollout to quip how “[t]he U.S. economy is about to get a shot of its own.” The Heritage Foundation saw...

The World Health Organization said countries should not stop using AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine amid fears about people who received the jab developing blood clots. In a Friday briefing, WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris said no causal link had been established between the British drugmaker’s “excellent” shot and the blood clot cases that have emerged in Europe. “It’s very important to understand that, yes, we should continue to be using the AstraZeneca vaccine,” Harris said. The WHO’s expert vaccine advisory committee is nevertheless reviewing the reported blood clots, which have led nearly a dozen countries to suspend or delay their distribution of...

Portland Police Bureau officers and riot teams appeared to ignore the storming of the U.S. federal courthouse in their city on Thursday night. Videos show Antifa smashing windows, spraying graffiti, and setting fires. Portland police were nowhere to be seen in the footage.

A large crowd gathered outside the federal courthouse in downtown Portland for a protest against police violence. The demonstration began around 8:30 p.m. outside the courthouse on Southwest Third Avenue and Main Street, shortly after the fence surrounding the courthouse was taken down for the first time since last summer. When the courthouse doors were being boarded up, tensions between people and federal officers there erupted. This started a chain reaction of civil unrest and destruction Thursday night, leading authorities to deploy tear gas. Shortly after 9 p.m., independent journalists tweeted images of smashed windows, burning flags, and walls of...

Patrick Ewing, minutes after coaching Georgetown to a thrilling victory over rival Villanova in the Big East tournament, said he was annoyed by the security measures he has encountered this week at Madison Square Garden -- the hub of his Hall of Fame NBA playing career. The Hoyas' 72-71 upset of the top-seeded Wildcats on Thursday was perhaps the most meaningful victory of Ewing's coaching career. The former New York Knicks star said after the game, however, that he has been "getting stopped" and "accosted" at Madison Square Garden. ...

Scientists have long theorized that supermassive black holes can wander through space—but catching them in the act has proven difficult. Now, researchers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian have identified the clearest case to date of a supermassive black hole in motion. Their results are published today (March 12, 2021) in The Astrophysical Journal. “We don’t expect the majority of supermassive black holes to be moving; they’re usually content to just sit around,” says Dominic Pesce, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics who led the study. “They’re just so heavy that it’s tough to get them...

About 1 in 5 Americans say they lost a loved one to COVID-19, according to a new poll, as Thursday marked the one-year anniversary of the pandemic. The poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that about 3 in 10 Americans are still worried about themselves or a family member being infected with the contagious bug.

Writing in the Washington Post, CNN anchor Fareed Zakaria admits Joe Biden’s border crisis and the wider issues with asylum in America are “out of control.” The tone of the article is nothing less than scathing, as American liberals come to grips with the massive numbers flooding the borders after being invited by Biden and the left. Zakaria even goes so far as to say the Trump administration’s policies were “practical.” He writes: Nearly 180,000 people have arrived at the southern border or tried to cross illegally in 2021, more than double as many as in the first two months...

When it comes to diversity, inclusion and representation, Hollywood is far from where it needs to be, but we are seeing progress. However, there are many blind spots that have been overlooked and cracks in the foundation that are growing bigger and bigger each day. If it doesn’t fix them, the industry will have more problems than it can repair — one of them being the undervaluing of Black-led projects. McKinsey & Company released a study about the film and TV industry that is both not that surprising but is very eye-opening when it comes to the work that needs...

Bill Gates wants you to know that adverse reactions from vaccines, even those that result in death, is an acceptable price to pay to be protected from COVID. I wonder if the family of Kassidi Kurill feels the same way that Bill Gates does after watching her die an excruciating death from vaccine-induced liver failure. We are coming up on over a quarter million of adverse reactions to the COVID-19 vaccine from Moderna and Pfizer, and at this point, we need to be asking ourselves if it is worth it for a virus that has a 99.9% recovery rate. If...

Following Thursday’s House passage of a Democrat gun control bill, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) introduced a ban on 205 “assault weapons.” The legislation, called the “Assault Weapons Ban of 2021,” is co-sponsored by 34 Senate Democrats. It would also ban ammunition magazines holding more than ten rounds. Feinstein’s ban would allow current owners of “assault weapons” to retain possession of them, but if the gun is transferred, a person must undergo an FBI background check before receiving the firearm. Her “Assault Weapons Ban” also bans bump stocks, which have been illegal since March 26, 2019. Feinstein announced her ban stating:...

US President Joe Biden on Thursday signed into law a $1.9 trillion (€1.6 trillion) coronavirus relief package bill, following its approval by Congress. One of the largest US federal aid packages since the Great Depression in the 1920s, the bill includes, among other things, funds earmarked to help schools reopen, to speed along vaccine production and distribution, and to help struggling state and local governments. It also provides $400 billion in direct payments of $1,400 each to most Americans and extra provisions for low-income families, including adjustments to a child tax credit that increases it from $2,000 to as much...

A new study shows that extreme black holes could break the famous “no-hair” theorem, and in a way that we could detect. According to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, black holes have only three observable properties: mass, spin and charge. Additional properties, or “hair,” do not exist. Andriy_A / Shutterstock Identical twins have nothing on black holes. Twins may grow from the same genetic blueprints, but they can differ in a thousand ways — from temperament to hairstyle. Black holes, according to Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity, can have just three characteristics — mass, spin and charge. If those values...

Several Democratic members of New York’s congressional delegation, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and veteran Rep. Jerry Nadler, joined Friday in calls for Gov. Andrew Cuomo to resign amid a now-half-dozen allegations of sexual misconduct, as well as the lingering nursing home coronavirus scandal. “This week, the second sexual assault allegation and the sixth harassment allegation was leveled against Governor Cuomo,” said Ocasio-Cortez (D-Bronx/Queens) in a joint statement with Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-Bronx/Westchester), a fellow member of the progressive “Squad.”

Aza, an amateur Arabist who had been brought up to believe that the Koran was linguistically inerrant, said that he began to have doubts about Islam after detecting a number of linguistic errors in the Koran. When a Christian gave him a copy of the New Testament in Kurdish, Aza, who is of part-Kurdish heritage, broke down emotionally after reading it. “God speaks my language!” he exclaimed, overwhelmed by the fact that the Word had not only become flesh in Jesus but also was written in his own mother tongue. Keen to reach out to Muslims with the gospel, Aza...

They are assuring us that we don't have to be concerned about "inflation" because they have everything under control. Do you believe them? The value of the U.S. dollar has been steadily declining for a long time, and most Americans have grown accustomed to having the cost of living rise at a faster pace than their paychecks do. But over the past 12 months an enormous paradigm shift has begun. Instead of devaluing our currency a little bit at a time, now our leaders are going "full Weimar". Our money supply is growing at an exponential rate, and this is...

Israel and Jordan don’t have a cold peace, they have a jittery peace. The fragility of one of Israel’s most important regional allies – with whom security ties are often described as a cornerstone of regional stability – was underscored by a series of apparent tit-for-tat diplomatic price-tag attacks over the last 24 hours. On Wednesday, Israel prevented Hashemite Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah from visiting the Temple Mount. Jordan in retaliation refused on Thursday to authorize Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flight path to the United Arab Emirates, causing the trip's cancelation. It's the latest diplomatic skirmish in a 26-year...

CNN’s White House correspondent John Harwood said Friday on “New Day” that President Joe Biden’s speech on the coronavirus pandemic conveyed empathy which “all Americans have been missing” in their president. Harwood said, “I think a spiking the football is the last thing that President Biden wanted to do. What was notable about the speech was the appeal to universal values. It was striking in the way that the president conveys empathy in unadorned language, trying to appeal to the common experiences that all Americans have been missing during this pandemic. Appealing to them for assistance.”

THIRD WEEK OF LENT MARK 12:28–34 Friends, in today’s Gospel, the Lord says that the second greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. Love is not primarily a feeling or an instinct; rather, it is the act of willing the good of the other as other. It is radical self-gift, living for the sake of the other. To be kind to someone so that he might be kind to you, or to treat a fellow human being justly so that he, in turn, might treat you with justice, is not to love, for such moves are tantamount to...

National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd called Department of Homeland Security claims of a program to vaccinate Border Patrol agents “smoke and mirror.” The issue of front-line agents came to the forefront on Tuesday when Texas Governor Greg Abbott demanded they receive COVID-19 vaccinations “this week.” Responding to an inquiry from Breitbart Texas, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials said a COVID vaccination program is underway for the 64,000 front-line employees. Brandon Judd, in his capacity as president of the National Border Patrol Council, called the plans “smoke and mirrors.” “There is no higher priority than the health and...