Free Republic

Oklahoma passed legislation this week offering protections to drivers caught in riots who unintentionally kill or hurt rioters. In addition, the bill increases penalties for people who block roadways during a demonstration, KHOU reported. Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) signed House Bill 1674 into law on Wednesday, the outlet continued: The measure says drivers will not be held liable if they flee the scene of a riot and injure or kill individuals if they think it was necessary to protect themselves from serious injury or death. The bill also states the driver must exercise “due care” when the injury or death...

A group of Republican senators on Thursday spoke in front of the Supreme Court in opposition to court-packing, a response to legislation Democrats introduced at a press conference last week to do just that. Sens. Ted Cruz., R-Texas, Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., railed against court-packing as an effort to “rig” the Supreme Court and pleaded with President Biden to buck “crazies” in his party who support the idea. “Packing the court and tearing down the institutions that protect our rights is fundamentally wrong,” Cruz said. He said the court-packing plan would “destroy judicial independence.” “They’re trying to...

The CEO of Rumble, a platform which is taking on YouTube as an alternative, said that the platform was seeing “tremendous growth.” Rumble’s monthly user count has gone from 1.6 million users in 2020 around the US election time to 31.9 million by the end of the first quarter of 2021. The CEO Chris Pavlovski launched the platform back in 2013 with an aim to provide “video creators a way to host, manage, distribute and monetize their content.” The company believes in providing small creators “equal opportunity” for expressing themselves freely and giving them the same set of tools that...

bicameral group of legislators is questioning why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends children as young as 2 wear masks. The CDC first recommended that children aged 2 years or older wear masks in March 2020, advice that many states based their masking rules on. In January, President Joe Biden signed an executive order that all airports, trains, and many buses follow the CDC’s masking recommendations. “The implementation of these recommendations has had serious consequences for some Americans. Multiple parents of young children have been removed from flights, and in some instances, permanently banned, from future travel...

Nevada’s Secretary of State, Barbara Cegavske, announced on Wednesday that there is no evidentiary support for the GOP’s claims that there was widespread voter fraud in her state.The Daily Mail reported yesterday:Nevada’s Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske revealed Wednesday she found no evidence to support the state GOP‘s claim of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 general election.‘[W]hile the NVGOP [Nevada GOP] raises policy concerns about the integrity of mail-in voting, automatic voter registration, and same-day voter registration, these concerns do not amount to evidentiary support for the contention that the 2020 general election was plagued by widespread voter...

“Woke” academics have taken to attacking almost everything that’s traditional in our culture. Math and science are denounced for their “whiteness,” and Shakespeare has to be replaced by writers from “marginalized groups.” Now, it’s music that is on the chopping block. As reported in The Post Millennial, “woke” professors at Oxford University are advocating a ban on the use of sheet music as well as an end to the curricular focus on classical European composers—lest the institution continue to be complicit in “white supremacy.” In response to international Black Lives Matter demonstrations, a faculty board aims to overcome “white supremacy,”...

Ali vs Frasier. Trump vs Biden. Lindell vs. Kimmel.That last great battle hasn’t happened yet, at least not in person. But it will. Next week, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell will go on the Jimmy Kimmel Live show on Wednesday to settle the differences they’ve had this week. It should be fun for the audience, who is lucky enough to all be receiving MyPillows to take home, as well as for those of us watching on television.This will be the first episode of the show that I’ve ever seen. I’m probably not alone among conservatives who consider the disgraceful social justice...

Click here to read the full articleSec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken has autho­rized U.S. diplo­mat­ic out­posts around the world to fly the Pride flag on the same flag­pole as the U.S. flag at their embassy or con­sulate show­cas­ing sup­port for LGBTQ rights.This was not allowed under Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump — or any oth­er pres­i­dent, for that matter.Accord­ing to For­eign Pol­i­cy,In a con­fi­den­tial cable reviewed by For­eign Pol­i­cy and sent to diplo­mat­ic posts around the world, Blinken gave author­i­ty for diplo­mats to fly the Pride flag before May 17, which marks the inter­na­tion­al day against homo­pho­bia, trans­pho­bia, and bipho­bia, as well...

If you didn't know already, we have bad news - the plastic recycling industry is severely under-performing. Only 9 percent of plastic waste ever produced has been recycled. Around 12 percent has been burnt, leaving 79 percent of all plastic ever produced still out there in the world. While we work out how to be less reliant on these materials, researchers have also been investigating how to reuse one of the most common types of plastic – polyolefin – by turning it into fuel. "Single-use plastics impose an enormous environmental threat, but their recycling, especially of polyolefins, has been proven...

The EU's drugs regulator has said that blood clots should be listed as a "very rare" side effect of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine. The European Medicines Agency said in a statement that it had found a "possible link" between the jab and clots. But it added that the benefits of the Covid-19 vaccine outweighed the risks. Out of more than seven million people who have received the jab in the US, eight people developed rare blood clots, including one person who died. Earlier this month, the EMA made the same recommendation for the Covid-19 vaccine produced by Oxford-AstraZeneca....

Microsoft has released the first public preview of Linux GUI applications on Windows 10 – so we wasted no time in taking it for a spin around the block. The ability to run GUI applications on Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 is not new – enthusiasts have been able to run them via separately installed X server utilities for years – but the arrival of official support is still something of a game changer. The official support is more ambitious and better integrated than the various unofficial approaches.The preview comes via the Windows Insider Program, by which developers and enthusiasts...

There is an upside to the media's extreme closeness to Democrats. They can tell us how Democrat insiders really feel about their chances to pass legislation. On Thursday, Politico signaled that not one, not two, but THREE major bills were doomed to fail in Congress.The first major bill that seems doomed is the H.R. 1 bill for federalizing elections, as you can see in "Black Democrats urge party to shift its voting rights push."

NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image using its left Mastcam-Z camera. Mastcam-Z is a pair of cameras located high on the rover’s mast. This is one still frame from a sequence captured by the camera while taking video. This image was acquired on April 22, 2021. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS The small rotorcraft’s horizons were expanded on its second flight. NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter successfully completed its second Mars flight on April 22 – the 18th sol, or Martian day, of its experimental flight test window. Lasting 51.9 seconds, the flight added several new challenges to the first, which took place on...

NASA's STEREO-A and ESA/NASA's SOHO spacecraft detected a coronal mass ejection, or CME, leaving the sun on April 17 at 12:36 p.m. EDT. This CME did not impact Earth but did move toward Mars, passing the planet in the late evening and early morning hours of April 21 and 22. NASA tracks such solar eruptions because solar eruptions can trigger particle and radiation events that pose a risk to astronauts and sensitive spacecraft electronics. The CME was a relatively slow one, traveling between 1.5 and 1.8 million miles an hour (700 and 800 kilometers per second). It caused no issues...

The unification of Italy in the 19th century was at first greeted with enthusiasm, but this soon evaporated among the Sicilians. Namely, the island was poor and many Sicilians felt the central government neglected them just as badly as foreign rulers had, and things got even worse when Mussolini’s Fascists rose to power in the 1930s. Italy’s entry into World War II on the Axis side caused even more resentment, and a Committee for the Independence of Sicily was founded in April 1942. When the American-led Allied invasion of the island occurred in July 1943, the island became the scene...

SpaceX launched its third crew to the International Space Station an hour before sunrise Friday, recycling a rocket and spacecraft for the first time. The Crew-2 mission, the first involving a European, blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 09:49 UTC (5:49 am Eastern Time). "Endeavour launches once again - four astronauts from three countries on Crew-2, now making their way to the one and only International Space Station," announcer Gary Jordan said to loud cheers and applause. Liftoff of Falcon 9 and Dragon! pic.twitter.com/g6Oi8qwU2Y — SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 23, 2021 The Crew Dragon entered orbit a...

Please review the CDC mask guidelines at your convenience. It lays out when, where, and how we're supposed to wear masks for totally unarguable sciencey reasons. At no point does it say you should mask up while on a conference call. Yet that's what Joe Biden did on Thursday during a video conference with other world leaders, even after getting both his jabs. If you were wondering why Democrats are so uninformed about the 'rona, wonder no more. It may very well be because this is their intellectual superior. Just a hunch. They say a picture is worth a thousand...

U.S. forces in Africa are keeping a watchful eye on China, worried Beijing is getting closer to establishing a network of military and naval bases across the continent. "We know the Chinese desire a network of bases around the globe," the head of U.S. Africa Command, General Stephen Townsend, told lawmakers Thursday, adding, "My concern is the greatest along the Atlantic coast of Africa." China established its first military base in on Africa’s east coast, in Doraleh, Djibouti, in 2017, raising concern among U.S. military officials who described the Chinese facility as being “right outside our gates” of the U.S....

Welcome back to Day 94 of the Harris* Occupation! Since we all need a breather from it, this post will be Chauvinism free! Lots of crazy to unpack this week, so let's get to it: 4/13 - So Congress Is Actually Talking About Paying Reparations To The Descendants Of Slaves. I Say Go For It, With A Few Conditions.He does have a point 4/14 - The Many Dangers of the Equality Act"Equality" has many definitions in their dictionary. In some cases it's a means to project their racism, but in this case it's a cover for anti-Christian bigotry. 4/15 -...

US Navy Admiral William H. McRaven, one of the most decorated US commanders, delivers one of the best motivational speeches you will ever hear.