Free Republic

In the end we always take the land

Explanation: If you could stand on Venus -- what would you see? Pictured is the view from Venera 14, a robotic Soviet lander which parachuted and air-braked down through the thick Venusian atmosphere in March of 1982. The desolate landscape it saw included flat rocks, vast empty terrain, and a featureless sky above Phoebe Regio near Venus' equator. On the lower left is the spacecraft's penetrometer used to make scientific measurements, while the light piece on the right is part of an ejected lens-cap. Enduring temperatures near 450 degrees Celsius and pressures 75 times that on Earth, the hardened Venera...

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III on March 12 directed the Defense Department to “take steps to rescind any directives, orders, regulations, policies, or guidance” that doesn’t line up with President Joe Biden’s Feb. 4 memorandum that charged multiple U.S. government organizations with championing and safeguarding the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+) individuals by April 15.

Climate czar John Kerry was caught not wearing his mask while reading a book on an American Airlines flight in lieu of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) mandate requiring masks on flights. The photo, which was first posted by conservative outlet the Tennessee Star, shows the former secretary of state wearing his mask hanging off one ear as he reads a book in first class. Fox News confirmed the photo's authenticity with the passenger, who wished to remain anonymous.

This is certainly an unwelcome surprise. Cabrera’s Bar, in the small Texas town of Granjeno along the Rio Grande River, is quickly becoming an impromptu shelter for illegal immigrants — and without the consent of the bar’s owner. Lupe Cabrera, the owner of the bar, told National Review, “When I go in the mornings, sometimes I go to do some work, there’s people in the bathroom; they hide in the bathrooms. “Me and my brother own a trucking company, too. They’ll hide in the trucks.”

Rep. Steve Scalise, the minority whip in the House, is urging his fellow Republicans to vote against the Dream Act that protects young illegal immigrants from deportation because it would worsen the situation at the US border where unaccompanied children are overwhelming federal facilities. The Louisiana Republican sent a memo to House GOP members Wednesday that blasted President Biden’s “open borders and lax enforcement” and argued that Republicans should not be providing “amnesty” to undocumented immigrants, Fox News reported. “The bill would only worsen the flow of illegal immigrates to the U.S.,” Scalise wrote to his colleagues. Rep. Steny Hoyer,...

[Catholic Caucus] “Humanae Vitae” Farewell. Here Comes the One Who Will Celebrate Its FuneralPublished as received. The author of the commentary, Thibaud Collin, is a professor of philosophy at the Collège Stanislas in Paris and has written important essays on “gender” theory, same-sex marriage, and political secularism. His latest book, from 2018, is entitled: “Le mariage chrétien at-il encore un avenir?”The starting point for his reflection is the appointment of Philippe Bordeyne, 61, moral theologian, rector of the Institut Catholique of Paris, as president of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, replacing PierAngelo Sequeri.The...

A new study that looks at the presence of coronavirus antibodies in nearly 62,000 life insurance applicants found that... the number of asymptomatic or undiagnosed coronavirus infections in the U.S. may have been twice as high as the official tally of cases overall. The findings, published Tuesday in the journal JAMA Network Open, indicate that there were millions more asymptomatic and undiagnosed people than experts had realized... SARS-CoV-2 can cause moderate to severe cases of COVID-19. ... But in many people, an infection can come and go while causing minimal or no discernible symptoms. Researchers have long suspected that the...

Wow Netflix is taking heat after a graphic and disturbing episode of "Paradise P.D." aired featuring a cartoon character Jesus shilling for the NRA and engaging in a threesome. As highlighted by Newsbusters, season three episode "Trigger Warning" features a "gun-wielding Jesus" and "turns into a porno." The season's fourth episode addressed gun control and legislation by "ridiculing white male gun owners for using guns as a replacement for testosterone." "Paradise's police chief confesses to needing a gun to get an erection and the head of the NRA says the initials stand for 'Nards Removed Association,'" the outlet notes. "The...

Tanzania’s President Dr John Pombe Magufuli has died at the age of 61, the Vice President Samia Suluhu Hassan has announced. In a televised speech on TBC , the Vice President announced that the President died of a heart condition on March 17, 2021, at about 6pm at Mzena Hospital in Dar es Salaam where he was admitted on March 14. The Vice President said Magufuli was first briefly admitted to the Jakaya Kikwete Cardiac Institute on March 6, but was subsequently discharged. But he was rushed to hospital again on March 14 after feeling unwell. She announced that the...

For those concerned with becoming a victim of today’s raging “Cancel Culture,” there is a rather simple solution: be born perfect. Actually, be born perfect, live a perfect life, and never run afoul of the unwritten, constantly changing, and haphazardly enforced rules determined by an anonymous committee of self-appointed social media scolds. Or, maybe it is not so simple. It is easy to make light of the obviously impossible standards liberals have set for acceptable thoughts, speech, and actions; to the point where liberals now are cancelling one another. Nevertheless, beyond this absurdity lies a less obvious and quiescent trait...

The SMART Tire Company (STC) has released details of an airless bicycle tyre that is constructed with a casing made from nickel titanium alloy and developed in conjunction with Nasa. The Metl bicycle tyre is said to be designed for road, gravel, mountain and ebike applications, and the technology the tyre is based on was first used by Nasa for the wheels on martian and lunar rovers.

Source: Townhall Media/Julio RosasWell, that didn’t take long. Merely 50 days into the Biden Presidency our southern border is overwhelmed by massive hordes of illegal aliens from Central America, as invited by the weak, inept Biden.Horrific car crashes are being caused by the smuggling of illegal aliens in vans. For those traveling on foot, a sea of destitute children stretches far into the southern horizon. On Monday, a mere 30 miles from the Mexican border, a high-speed red pickup truck caught the eye of the Texas highway patrol, which then followed the truck for it to pull over.Every American would...

"They secretly recorded the telephone call, mischaracterized its contents to the news media and then attempted to destroy the recording." Okay, so the Washington Post ran fake quotes from a dishonest leaker. So how did all of the other media outlets "confirm" the fake quotes? It's unrealistic so many sources would be wrong about the same thing. It's more likely competing newsgroups spoke with the same anonymous person or people, which leads to uncomfortable questions about whether the media were intentionally manipulated and whether this is a regular occurrence. Glenn Greenwald notices this looks a lot like the political op...

As founder of the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL.org) we led the effort to reform Virginia’s concealed handgun permitting system in 1994. Previously it was near impossible to get a CHP in much of Virginia and when they were issued they usually went to white businessmen while women and minorities received the runaround. The Clerk of Court is a key individual in the CHP permitting process. Culpeper is currently charging the maximum fee of $50 to obtain a concealed handgun permit. In contrast the Orange County Circuit Court and other jurisdictions only charge $15. Marshall Keene has pledged to reduce...

Russia's ambassador to Washington has been recalled to Moscow for "consultations" to determine how to move forward with relations with the U.S., the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement Wednesday.Why it matters: The news came hours after an interview aired in which President Biden agreed that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a "killer" and pledged to hold the Kremlin accountable for interfering in the 2020 election.Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova did not provide specific reasons for the recall of Ambassador Anatoly Antonov, but she said relations with the U.S. "are in a difficult state, which Washington has brought...

The fault doesn’t lie with the universities. The fault lies with horribly performing public K-12 schools — a result of protecting teacher unions from competition. Hoping that colleges can make up for this damage is irresponsible.

A federal judge in Texas on Thursday ruled unconstitutional a national moratorium the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has instituted for most residential evictions to help curb the spread of the coronavirus. Siding with a group of landlords and property owners challenging the evictions freeze, U.S. District Judge J. Campbell Barker in Tyler, Texas, ruled the CDC exceeded its authority under the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. “The court concludes that the federal government’s Article I power to regulate interstate commerce and enact laws necessary and proper to that end does not include the power...

State officials have recorded 21,000 confirmed COVID-19 deaths in Illinois since the outset of the pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention listed 19,893 deaths through the end of February in Illinois where COVID-19 was listed among multiple causes. Of those deaths, about 1,830, or 9.2 percent, had COVID-19 listed as the sole cause of death. That percentage is higher than it was in September 2020 when the rate was about 6%. But a county coroner is calling for a full audit after reviewing some of the deaths in his county. “My concern is, I’ve reviewed several cases, (of...

Let Israel hope in the Lord: for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption. And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities. (Psalm 130:7-8)Israel is a microcosm of the entire human race.What is true of her, is true also of the human race, thus this Psalm is Her cry, and is a promise for her future. On a personal level it applies to all of us, but Israel is in view here. Every experience in this Psalm is the experience of Israel. It is she who cries “Out of the depths”, time and again....