Free Republic

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) downplayed concerns from some House Democrats about reviewing the Iowa congressional race that was won by six votes. The House Administration Committee, led by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), is considering hearing Democrat Rita Hart’s challenge against Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ election victory that was certified by the state of Iowa. Pelosi told reporters that the House has the ability to overturn contested elections and said that Democrats whose races were narrowly contested would do the same as Hart. “I would say to them, if you lost by six votes, would you like to bring your case...

Reporters aren’t in the practice, obviously, of being particularly tough on President Biden. But at his first press conference as president this afternoon, Cecilia Vega of ABC News politely nailed him to the wall on a key failure of his border policy. -snip- In evading this reality throughout the press conference, Biden resorted to a haze of misrepresentations, and inadvertently exposed the senselessness of his own policy. He said that the reason even more family units aren’t being returned is that Mexico can’t take more of them. Again, if it’s okay to send migrants back into Mexico, it makes no...

Update 6:40 p.m.: Reddit CEO Steve Huffman announced that Aimee Challenor is no longer employed by the company, saying "we over-indexed on protection" and that Reddit had failed its own standards in this case.Dozens of Reddit pages have gone private in protest over the social media company's decision to censor criticism of an employee who hired her father, a child rapist, to run a political campaign Major forums like r/music, r/fitness, and r/coronavirus, which each have millions of users, have closed, along with hundreds of smaller forums. They are protesting a Reddit decision to ban users who mention Aimee Challenor,...

The church of Saints Peter and Paul was built in 1893, but closed by the Bolsheviks in 1933, who tuned it into a cinema. The presence of Catholics in Novgorod dates back to the 9th century. New legal obligations: ministers of worship who study abroad must undergo "re-education" upon returning home. Concerns among Buddhists, Protestants and Catholics. Educational institutions must also receive a special "educational certificate" from state bodies.Moscow (AsiaNews) - After 25 years of official requests, the church of Saints Peter and Paul in Novgorod, the ancient city in the north of Russia, 200 km from St. Petersburg, has...

Octopuses have alternating periods of "quiet" and "active" sleep that make their rest similar to that of mammals, despite being separated by more than 500 million years of evolution. During their active periods of sleep, octopuses' skin color changes and their bodies twitch, according to a report in the journal iScience, and they might even have short dreams. "If they are dreaming, they are dreaming for up to a minute," says Sidarta Ribeiro, a neuroscientist at the Brain Institute at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte in Brazil. It's been clear for awhile that octopuses can change color...

Google is turning over user data to US law enforcement, even when requests for that come without a warrant, in the form of requests that are not court-ordered. That emerges from information shared with the LA Times by an anonymous Google user, who said they were notified about this in an email from the tech giant, who said the request came from the Department of Homeland Security, without including the request itself in the email. When this Google user asked to see the document, it turned out to be an administrative subpoena issued by the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE),...

Manila (Agenzia Fides) - Because of the emergency linked to Covid-19, this year, Catholics will not be able to celebrate the rites of Holy Week and Easter in presence. Coronavirus infections continue to increase, particularly in Manila and the neighboring provinces. According to information sent to Agenzia Fides, on March 21, the Philippine government announced the ban on all gatherings in the capital and in the provinces of Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna and Rizal. This measure was made compulsory from yesterday until April 4, Easter Sunday. Head of State spokesman Harry Roque said all types of gatherings including celebrations of religious...

John Matze, the co-founder and former CEO of free speech platform Parler, is suing the company for wrongful termination and the alleged theft of his 40% ownership of the company. Matze was ousted shortly after Parler’s trouble following the Jan 6 riot at the US Capitol. In the lawsuit filed at the Clark County District Court, in Nevada, Matze is seeking “millions in compensatory damages.” The suit alleges that Parler’s main funder, Rebekah Mercer, the daughter of conservative billionaire Robert Mercer, and other board members, engaged in a scheme to steal his ownership in the company he founded. We obtained...

Vatican declaration 'lacks pastoral care'ANTWERP, Belgium (ChurchMilitant.com) - A Belgian bishop apologized to all who feel that the Vatican's recent reaffirmation of the sanctity of Christian marriage and the inadmissibility of blessing homosexual unions, saying of gay couples: "Their pain is mine today." Writing as a "bishop and theologian," Bp. Johan Bonny of Antwerp on March 17 wrote an op-ed for the Flemish-language De Staandard in reference to the declaration by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that ruled out any blessings for same-sex couples as "illicit" and "unlawful." In response to the directive, Bp. Bonny wrote...

Russia has proposed its strategic Arctic shipping route as an alternative to the Suez Canal after a 400-meter cargo ship got stuck in the canal, blocking one of the world’s key shipping routes and sparking fears of a rise in oil prices. “If you get icebound, we have icebreakers, well to break the ice,” Rosatom added, attaching an article on Rosatom icebreakers rescuing a cargo ship trapped in the ice in late December and early January. While sailing the Northern Sea Route cuts about 40% of the distance between China and European ports compared with taking the Suez Canal, traffic...

In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, (9th Cir., March 18, 2021), the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Washington state school board's dismissal of a high school football coach who insisted on prominently praying at the 50-yard line immediately after football games. The long-running high-profile case was before the 9th Circuit for the second time. (See prior posting.) The court issued a Summary of its decision along with the opinion, saying in part: The panel held that the record before it and binding Supreme Court precedent compelled the conclusion that the District would have violated the Establishment Clause...

In 2004, Boris Johnson, now the UK’s Prime Minister, famously wrote: “If I am ever asked, on the streets of London, or in any other venue, public or private, to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am, when I have done nothing wrong and when I am simply ambling along and breathing God’s fresh air like any other freeborn Englishman, then I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it. "If I am incapable...

On Thursday Georgia Governor Brian Kemp (R) signed a sweeping bill that overhauls his state’s election laws that includes new restrictions on mail-in voting. The legislation was pushed through Georgia’s House and Senate after Kemp and the crooked Secretary of State handed Georgia over to the Democrats in TWO separate elections. Because of mail-in ballots, ballot drop boxes, no signature checks and ballot harvesting, the Democrats took control of the White House and flipped the Senate blue. Kemp finally signed new election laws that would require a photo ID in order to vote by absentee ballot and it would limit...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is once again calling for reform of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) Section 230 – as he once is again appearing before a US Congress committee. Zuckerberg’s testimony on Thursday before the House Energy Committee revealed that Zuckerberg is proposing replacing automatic immunity from prosecution for user generated content with platforms like his own demonstrating that they have implemented “adequate” moderation and censorship systems. He said that these systems would be used for “identifying unlawful content and removing it.” The thought behind this seems to be to convince critics that tech giants are doing everything to...

New photos reveal several cheat sheets used by President Joe Biden during his Thursday press conference — including one with the headshots and names of reporters he planned to call on. The president also used notes to assist with facts about US infrastructure, a policy area Biden is focusing on during his first months in the White House. “The United States now ranks 13th globally in infrastructure quality — down from 5th place in 2002,” read one bullet point. But despite having the answers in front of him, Biden still slipped up, saying America ranked 85th in the world in...

The Chinese regime is taking on foreign apparel and footwear brands amid global fallout over its genocide against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region. Undeterred by growing international condemnation over its human rights abuses, Beijing is pressing companies to reverse their position on Xinjiang by way of boycotts. The regime has dredged up past statements made by companies—some up to two years old—to distance themselves from sourcing materials from the northwestern Chinese region over potential forced labor abuses. It hopes to stoke nationalist fervor and encourage a nationwide boycott. The outrage from Beijing followed days after the...

A former psychiatry professor at Yale University is suing the Ivy League school, alleging that she was fired because of her mental health diagnosis of President Donald Trump, whom she had never met. Dr. Bandy Lee, who previously worked as an affiliated faculty member in the psychiatry department of Yale’s medical school, on Monday filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the university, reported student newspaper the Yale Daily News. She demands reinstatement and compensation for damages, including “economic losses” and “emotional distress.” Lee has been questioning the mental health of Trump since 2017, when she became the editor of “The...

Doubts about the omnipotent oracular-ness of "America's Doctor" are starting to spread... and not just among the extreme-right-nazi-anti-vaxx-COVID-deniers (that constitute anyone who ever raises any doubts about any aspect of Biden/Fauci's public health policy).The coronavirus pandemic has been a great tragedy, there can be no doubt about that. But, as Scott Atlas recently noted, it has also exposed profound issues in America that now threaten the very principles of freedom and order that we Americans often take for granted.First, I have been shocked at the enormous power of the government, to unilaterally decree, to simply close businesses and schools by...

Joe Biden’s first press conference since inauguration was littered with lies and confusion. One of the most hateful and dishonest remarks he made was that his predecessor Donald Trump was starving children at the border — inside Mexico. Joe Biden: “The idea that I’m gonna say, which I would never do, that if an accompanied child ends up at the border we’re just gonna let him starve to death and stay on the other side — no previous administration did that either, except Trump. I’m not gonna do it.” Of course, the media did not push back on anything Joe...

Diversity, Inclusion and Equity policies have shown that they have failed the test dramatically. Rather than provide a better environment for students. This initiative is undermining other areas of education that could greatly benefit students from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Evidence from a 2018 study shows that in the North American case, the percentage of enrolled students per ethnic groups have been fairly consistent from 1990 to 2015. The researchers, suggest more diversity instead of changing the approach. Is that really a wise choice considering the record that shows such diversity efforts are mostly ineffective? The question to ask then are...