Free Republic

A study by researchers in California who examined more than 48,000 adult patients who were diagnosed with COVID-19 from January 2020 through October 2020 shows that lack of exercise in the years prior to them contracting COVID-19 made them more likely to be hospitalized or die of the illness. “Patients with COVID-19 who were consistently inactive had a greater risk of hospitalization, admission to the ICU and death due to COVID-19 than patients who were consistently meeting physical activity guidelines,” the researchers from the Department of Family and Sports Medicine, Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, Fontana wrote in the study, which...

Texas land commissioner and member of the Bush political dynasty, George P. Bush, told Dallas radio host Mark Davis today that he is considering a primary challenge against incumbent Attorney General Ken Paxton. This isn’t the first time Bush has indicated contemplation of such a run. Last year, after improper use of office allegations were levied at Paxton by members of his executive team, a spokesman for Bush said the land commissioner was “keep[ing] all options open.” But Thursday’s radio spot was the first time the land commissioner himself acknowledged the possibility. “There have been some serious allegations levied against...

Elsewhere overseas, public opinion in Japan is still highly against holding the Summer Olympics. And, in the U.S., researchers say they’ve made a troubling discovery about a lack of exercise and COVID-19 cases. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is under investigation for his handling of the coronavirus. Brazil's Senate launched a probe into how the president handled the pandemic. The investigation could result in referral of possible wrongdoing to law enforcement, according to Reuters. The federal response to the pandemic will be looked into in addition to the probe. Medical systems around the country have struggled to keep up with the...

Guatemala’s president is blaming the Biden administration’s “confusing” messages ​for creating the crisis at the US border — the second leader to make that claim after Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador made similar remarks in March. “I believe that in the first few weeks of the Biden administration, messages were confusing. They were compassionate messages that were understood by people in our country, especially the coyotes, to tell families, ‘We’ll take the children,'” President Alejandro Giammattei said Tuesday during an interview on MSNBC. “And children can go, and once children are there, they will call their parents,” he continued.

Former Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst has been arrested on a charge of domestic violence in Dallas, according to police. Dallas police responded to a disturbance call just after 5 p.m. Tuesday in the 3300 block of West Mockingbird Lane, not far from Dallas Love Field Airport. A woman at the scene told officers that she was assaulted by a man she knew, police said in a news release. -snip- Dewhurst was lieutenant governor of Texas from 2003-2015, and before that served as the state’s land commissioner. He ran for U.S. Senate in 2012 but lost to Ted Cruz. In...

The United States Coast Guard confirmed Wednesday that one body has been recovered and the search for at least 12 other crew members continued one day after a 129-foot lift boat capsized amid turbulent waters in the Gulf of Mexico. The Coast Guard, along with the help of several good Samaritans, helped rescue six people from the dangerous waters of the Gulf of Mexico Tuesday after the Seacor Power capsized about 8 miles south of Port Fourchon, Louisiana. The lift vessel had 19 members on board at the time. Of the six victims rescued, four were saved by private boaters...

Denmark on Wednesday became the first country to stop using AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine altogether over a potential link to a rare but serious form of blood clot. The decision will push back the scheduled conclusion of Denmark's vaccination scheme to early August from July 25, health authorities said. But that new timeline assumes it will start using the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, whose rollout in Europe has been delayed over similar clotting concerns and the use of which Denmark has suspended. That shot comprises around a third of the country's total contracted supply. Results of investigations into the AstraZeneca-associated blood...

Ruth Madoff is finally living in style again — sharing a $3.8 million waterfront mansion in Connecticut with a former daughter-in-law’s family, The Post has learned. Just hours after the prison death of her widely reviled husband — infamous fraudster Bernie Madoff — Ruth declined to come to the door at the sprawling, four-bedroom house in the swank Lucas Point section of Old Greenwich.​ SNIP Publicly available records suggest that Ruth, 79, moved into the house in September. Before that, she was living in virtual exile in a rented, 989-square-foot townhouse on the other side of the tracks in Old...

'What they're actually doing is they're telling the person what to say' James O'Keefe's Project Veritas on Wednesday released the second installment of its undercover video investigation of CNN, and it reveals how the network instructs those its reporters are interviewing what to say

WASHINGTON — President Biden’s top intelligence chiefs have yet to determine how people first became infected with COVID-19, but they say they haven’t ruled out the possibility that it escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China.

One of my favorite songs from the early 90's

BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn. (AP) - Daunte Wright became a father while he was still a teenager, and seemed to relish the role of a doting young dad, his family and friends said. A family photo shows a beaming Wright holding his son, Daunte Jr., at his first birthday party. Another shows Wright, wearing a COVID-19 face mask and his son wearing a bib with the inscription, "ALWAYS HUNGRY."

The Senate is renting the Veterans Memorial Coliseum at the state fairgrounds for its audit of Maricopa County’s election results. They will store the ballots there and provide security. This is costing more money than originally intended because of the actions of the county’s Board of Supervisors. Because of these additional costs, the Arizona media is attacking the Senate. Tucson.com reported: "Just days after outlawing counties from taking outside grants to run elections, the state Senate is now accepting private donations to complete its audit of the 2020 election. Senate President Karen Fann, R-Prescott, said the cost of the review...

Current practice in the United States is to administer two doses of Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines three to four weeks—which is the interval the drugmakers used in their clinical trials...drugmakers chose this interval "to rapidly prove efficacy in clinical trials," not because they were trying to assess "the optimal way of using the vaccines to quell a pandemic." And while this "three- or four-week follow-up is safe and effective, there is no evidence it optimizes either individual benefit or population protection..." "A single dose of an mRNA vaccine is 80% effective and durable for 12 weeks," whereas the full two-dose...

TAMPA — Transportation planners are preparing to use new technology to try to solve an old problem — traffic crashes and congestion on Interstate 4 between Tampa and Orlando. The state Department of Transportation is designing a corridor management system that will relay real time information directly to motorists about congestion, accidents, work zones, weather warnings and even end-of-the-traffic-back-up locations on I-4 and alternate routes. The idea behind so-called connected vehicle technology is to improve traffic flow on the interstate and east-west alternatives without adding new lanes or acquiring new right of way. On Wednesday, Hillsborough’s Metropolitan Planning Organization —...

When Modesti Cooper returned home to Houston in July 2019 after more than a decade overseas with the United States military, she moved into her dream house on the corner of Nance and Grove streets in Houston’s Fifth Ward. She’d bought a parcel of land and designed the home from scratch in her downtime while touring from Kuwait to Afghanistan to Iraq. It was a relief to finally move in. “It’s a calm, cool, nice area,” Cooper says. “Besides the traffic, there’s no violence, no noise. It’s so quiet, it’s unbelievable. I had rockets and mortars and missiles blown over...

Explanation: This supernova shock wave plows through interstellar space at over 500,000 kilometers per hour. Near the middle and moving up in this sharply detailed color composite, thin, bright, braided filaments are actually long ripples in a cosmic sheet of glowing gas seen almost edge-on. Cataloged as NGC 2736, its elongated appearance suggests its popular name, the Pencil Nebula. The Pencil Nebula is about 5 light-years long and 800 light-years away, but represents only a small part of the Vela supernova remnant. The Vela remnant itself is around 100 light-years in diameter, the expanding debris cloud of a star that...

Racial prejudice is as old as mankind. It is one of the dark sides of man that we tend to decrease the value of others in order to raise ourselves. And at some point in history, prejudice found a faithful servant in science. Scientific theories and arguments were used to support the inferiority of other races, thereby legitimising crimes committed throughout history and all over the world. They were used in the United States to justify slavery and the Indian wars, as well as later for the sterlisation of disabled people. The emergence of eugenics as an ‘applied science’ culminated...

Once again the Democrats are off to the racists. Every time they can’t explain their position on some public policy issue, they accuse Republicans and conservatives of being racist. Look no further than the state of Georgia. Almost two weeks ago, Gov. Brian Kemp signed SB 202 into law. It was an election reform bill that Democrats effectively branded as “racist,” “voter suppression” and “anti-civil rights.” The law expands early voting for primary and general elections, includes more voting on Saturdays and Sundays, and requires voter ID. Only in the world of radical liberalism can more of an opportunity to...

Coke got woke, and now they’re gonna go broke. I don’t know why these companies literally can’t stop themselves from jumping into social and political issues. It’s like, you make fizzy sugar water, shut up. But much like sports and Hollywood, these progressive corporate commies just can’t stop themselves from giving their unsolicited two cents. Everyone’s a friggen activist nowadays. And it’s not like going “woke” is this super-profitable gig for most companies and sports franchises. Hollywood is quite literally circling the drain as we speak – there are more people in my living room right now than actual viewers...