Free Republic

At Baylor College of Medicine, Dr. David J. Durgan and his colleagues are dedicated to better understand hypertension, in particular the emerging evidence suggesting that disruption of the gut microbiota, known as gut dysbiosis, can have adverse effects on blood pressure. …”Previous studies from our lab have shown that the composition of the gut microbiota in animal models of hypertension, such as the SHRSP (spontaneously hypertensive stroke-prone rat) model, is different from that in animals with normal blood pressure," said Durgan, assistant professor of anesthesiology at Baylor. "This result told us that gut dysbiosis is not just a consequence of...

In a complete reversal of his incessant attacks against the Egyptian government since the 2013 revolution and coup, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has launched a massive media and diplomatic campaign to mend ties with Egypt.Talks scheduled for this week could open the door to closer relations, and help end a battle for control in Libya, where Egypt and Turkey have backed opposing forces.Erdogan’s ruling AKP party recently proposed a parliamentary friendship group with Egypt. But Erdogan finds himself increasingly isolated and facing a severe economic crisis at home. The already weak Turkish Lira approached an all-time low versus the...

One of the jurors who convicted Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd last month defended his participation in a BLM protest last summer in Washington, DC, amid speculation it might be grounds for the cop's appeal. A photo, posted on social media, shows Brandon Mitchell attending an August 28 event to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr's 'I Have a Dream' speech during the 1963 March on Washington. It shows Mitchell, a high school basketball coach, standing with two other men and wearing a T-shirt with a picture of King and the words, 'GET YOUR KNEE OFF OUR NECKS'...

Scientists have discovered a new type of uranium that is the lightest ever known. The discovery could reveal more about a weird alpha particle that gets ejected from certain radioactive elements as they decay. The newfound uranium, called uranium-214, is an isotope, or a variant of the element, with 30 more neutrons than protons, one fewer neutron than the next-lightest known uranium isotope. Because neutrons have mass, uranium-214 is much lighter than more common uranium isotopes, including uranium-235, which is used in nuclear reactors and has 51 extra neutrons. This newfound isotope isn't just lighter than others, but it also...

Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your wrap-up of the week in national politics. I’m Lisa Lerer, your host. Forty years ago, a new president stood before a joint session of Congress and delivered a simple message: “Our government is too big, and it spends too much.” Sitting in the audience, the junior senator from Delaware — a young Joseph R. Biden Jr. — couldn’t possibly have predicted how President Ronald Reagan’s words would come to define politics for generations. But for the decades that followed, Mr. Biden, along with most of his party, would operate in the shadow of Mr....

With all of the cancel culture and history re-writing that's gone on, a longing has started to develop among some conservatives and conservative websites lately for classic works. Examples may include the Iliad, anything by Aristotle or Plato, Moby Dick, Shakespeare, Cicero, Hobbes' Leviathan, Machiavelli, and many others. The thing that I can't understand, is why aren't the Founders included in the category of the classics?

Whatever happened to good ol’ weed? The Devil’s Lettuce? That sweet Mary Jane? Everyone seems to have forgotten about the glories of grass, as evidenced by some netizens who are eating rotten meat to get high. I wish I didn’t have to say this, but please do not try that at home. IFL Science reports that some folks are consuming meat that’s been decomposing for months or even years. I’m talking visible bacteria colonies, funky colors, slimy texture. Decidedly putrid meat. Practitioners call it “high meat” because eating it apparently, well, gets you high. Like this gentleman, for example. (Watch...

The Washington Post gave its readers a clear-eyed view this weekend of how American intel agencies work with sympathetic reporters to smear and discredit political opponents, ignoring a specific explanation from one of the article’s targets of how reporters were being used, and leading to embarrassing corrections in multiple articles (as well as in The New York Times and at NBC News).The story targeted Rudy Giuliani and Wisconsin’s Sen. Ron Johnson, excitedly reporting that they were the targets of Russian disinformation campaigns and had been warned of this by the FBI. Sound familiar? Unsurprisingly, there were a number of problems.First,...

Already harmed by long hours and high illness rates, critical jobs battling the pandemic face a new hazard: bosses who rob their salaries. When a recession occurs, American businesses are most likely to penalise their lowest-wage employees. These establishments often pay less than the minimum wage, require workers to work off the clock, or fail to pay overtime rates. In the most heinous situations, employers fail to pay their workers at all. According to a Center for Public Integrity report of minimum wage and overtime breaches from the United States, employers that hire child care assistants, gas station clerks, restaurant...

Recently, researchers at State University of New York determined that descendants of immigrants to the United States typically lost the ability to speak their mother tongue by the third generation. Something similar, but far more serious, seems to be happening with Christians in an increasingly post-Christian culture. Each successive generation is losing the understanding of, not to mention the will to live by, Christian sexual morality. Two years ago, a Pew Research survey found that half of American Christians think casual sex is “sometimes or always” morally acceptable. The slight silver-lining in that survey was that evangelical Protestants were by...

The Chronicle of Higher Education published an astonishing list of 195 colleges and universities, both public and private, that will require all students to receive the COVID-19 vaccination to attend classes on campus in the fall. It would be astonishing if no students challenged this requirement based on the status of the vaccine alone. According to the FDA, the vaccines for COVID-19 are still considered investigational:This guidance describes FDA’s current recommendations regarding the data and information needed to support the issuance of an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) under section 564 of the FD&C Act (21 U.S.C. 360bbb-3) for an investigational...

The two things I enjoy reading the most are report cards for either of my boys with straight-As, or a Democrat-friendly puff-piece in a major publication gone horribly wrong.Since report cards aren’t due for another three weeks, I guess we’ll just have to make do today with Sarah Baxter’s clueless revelation that Joe Biden isn’t up to the job of being president — and that he’s basically turned the job over to an appointee who didn’t even need Senate consent.Hell, Baxter’s Times (of London) article even puts “President Klain” right up top in the headline.“President… WHO?” I hear you ask.Before...

On this date in 1948, SS man Dieter Wisliceny was hanged in Bratislava for his role in the destruction of European Jewry. The Hauptsturmfuhrer joined the Nazi party in 1933 and became one of Adolf Eichmann‘s key lieutenants* implementing the Final Solution in the occupied east. The porcine Wisliceny himself seems to have been more of an opportunist than anything else — a washout theology student who got in with the Nazis on the upswing and happily enriched himself shaking down Jews who were trying to avoid deportation from his fiefs in Slovakia, Hungary or Greece, generally without providing much...

The Biden administration is considering using private firms to track the online activity of American citizens in order to get around the Fourth Amendment and other laws that protect Americans from unreasonable searches and seizures and surveillance. The report says that the Biden administration wants to monitor “extremist chatter by Americans online” but can’t do so without a warrant, and thinks private firms can get around the legal restrictions. Federal authorities “can only browse through unprotected information on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook and other open online platforms,” according to CNN. The plan being discussed inside DHS, according...

According to a federal official and a source familiar with the procedure, the US Food and Drug Administration is likely to approve Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 12 to 15 by next week, allowing many to get vaccines before the start of the next school year. The announcement comes a month after the organisation discovered that its shot, which is already approved for those aged 16 and up, still offered security for the younger generation. The federal official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the FDA's decision, stated that the department planned to extend its emergency...

With the number of Ohioans starting the COVID-19 vaccination process at a low point, Gov. Mike DeWine said he was concerned that those not getting inoculated are being lulled into a “false sense of security.” “We have seen the number of vaccines go down dramatically,” DeWine said Monday. The Ohio Department of Health reported that as of 6 a.m. Monday, only 5,564 Ohioans had at least started the vaccination process in the previous 24 hours and that 9,147 had completed it during the same time frame. “The number is very low, the lowest we’ve seen it,” he said. “With that...

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Monday that he expected no Republicans would support President Biden's sweeping infrastructure package, indicating GOP lawmakers are open to a roughly $600 billion bill. "I think it's worth talking about but I don't think there will be any Republican support — none, zero — for the $4.1 trillion grab bag which has infrastructure in it but a whole lot of other stuff," McConnell said in a press conference in Kentucky.

School officials say they’re “aware” of a video of a teacher with his hand down his pants during a virtual classroom session of a Bowmanville high school last week. The nine-second clip, which has been viewed by the Toronto Sun, shows the screen of an Apple laptop logged into a virtual classroom for St. Stephen Catholic Secondary School in Bowmanville. One of the participants’ video boxes, labelled with the name of a current St. Stephen teacher, shows a man holding a smartphone and balancing an Xbox One controller on his leg, his hand in motion down the front of his...

A Christian pastor in the United Kingdom was arrested by police after a member of the public reported him for the “homophobic” comment of saying that marriage was between a man and a woman. Pastor John Sherwood was accused of making "homophobic" comments when he preached outside Uxbridge Station. His arrest was handled unpleasantly that the elderly man complained he was bruised and treated "shamefully," The Daily Mail reported. A video clip shows the elderly pastor being confronted by police and forcefully handcuffed before being led away.