Free Republic

Vacation Bible School has been a beloved summer pastime for children across America for generations. Boys and girls look forward to a week of Bible stories, interactive songs, arts and crafts and of course, Hydrox cookies and fruit punch. What’s not to love about VBS? Honestly, the only people who could be remotely offended by Vacation Bible School would be a bunch of godless, heathen atheists. And that brings me to an incident that occurred at Fort Sill in Oklahoma. Military leaders ordered soldiers to remove a banner promoting Vacation Bible School at the base’s Frontier Chapel. The banner, which...

Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for AMERICA: For those in Authority in Government, Family, Military, Business, Healthcare, Education, Churches, and the Media. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. (1 John 5:14)Forum threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind.

Police in rural central India forced local residents who were not vaccinated against the Chinese coronavirus to wear placards bearing a skull and crossbones — a universal symbol of danger — this week, Reuters reported Thursday. Police officers in the Niwari district of Madhya Pradesh state decided to enforce the sign-wearing as a way to encourage local villagers to receive a Chinese coronavirus vaccination. Officers learned which villagers were not vaccinated against the Chinese coronavirus and assigned them skull and crossbones signs to wear on their person. The signs included additional text reading, “Do not come near me, I am...

Many Marylanders are already over this cicada emergence. But, some families are making the best of it — including a Maryland family that enjoyed the insects on pizza. Anything is good on pizza, right? In a TikTok video, Alyssa Lighter and her family fried up some cicadas, adding a sprinkle of Old Bay and topping them on a pizza. The video shows each child trying it and their reactions. Lighter said her 7-year-old was the first to want to try a cicada. So the rest of the family got on board. The kids thought it tasted like ham or normal...

723 new deaths reported by the Centers for Disease Control following COVID-19 vaccination... The CDC holding an emergency meeting of advisers next Thursday regarding 226 cases of heart inflammation... Vaxx makers Moderna and Pfizer expect to make coronavirus vaccines available to children 5 to 11 by September... Police in Calgary, Alberta Canada continuing to move against churches trying to operate in spite of coronavirus restrictions... The Sun newspaper in the UK reporting that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is delaying easing of coronavirus restrictions... Two 'fully vaccinated' guests on a Royal Carribean cruise ship testing positive for COVID-19... In Oregon...

THE CRISTEROS: They Died for God, Country & Christ the KingDriving northeasterly for a few minutes, about a mile out of town, the cars suddenly veered to the side of the road and rolled to a stop at El Puerto de Santa Teresa, a nondescript stretch along the primitive roadway that would develop into the Sombrerete-Chalchihuites Highway.Forced from their seats, the prisoners – Catholics: one priest and three laymen – stumbled from the cars on that August 15, 1926, forced down a parched slope of dirt, a graveyard of flora in the arid plateau’s xeric shrubland dotted with skeletal clumps...

As the left vainly tries to deceive Americans into accepting the toxic reign of identity politics, they are forced time and again to contort American history and falsify heroic stories from our past because a truthful telling would reveal the mendacity of their narrative and the bankruptcy of their agenda. The forgotten tales of two Americans—both named James—are the perfect reminder of why. Born in the 18th century, James Forten worked odd jobs along Philadelphia’s waterfront to support his mother and sister after his father died. By 1781, he was fifteen and old enough to volunteer to join the Continental...

On this date in 1782, Col. William Crawford was burned to death by Delaware Indians after being captured leading a punitive expedition to Ohio’s Sandusky River. Originally an Atlantic coast peoples — “Manhattan” is a Delaware word, although “Delaware” itself isn’t — the Delawares or Lenape had with other native peoples removed to an Ohio territory supposed to be reserved against white settlement. It was the fruit of a deal that kept them on the British side (or at least, off the French side) in the Seven Years’ War. But staying out of it would be a nonstarter during the...

Happy Friday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. I’m leading a jam-making and drum circle retreat this weekend. For myself. Now that I’ve put that out in the universe that’s probably how my weekend is going to feel. It’s OK, a little weirdness can often be a good thing. There are too many weeks where the news seems like it’s the same five stories over and over. Very few of them good, I might add. It’s kind of refreshing when the occasional bit of the unexpected shows up. The Democrats are generally a hive mind. Dissension in the ranks isn’t tolerated...

Tensions ran high at the Loudoun County School Board meeting on Tuesday evening, following a Virginia judge’s decision to reinstate an elementary school teacher suspended for refusing to call transgender students by their preferred pronouns. Earlier, Circuit Judge James E. Plowman Jr ordered the school district to ‘immediately reinstate’ Tanner Cross as a physical education instructor at Leesburg Elementary School. Cross was suspended for speaking out at a board meeting in late May against a proposed policy that required teachers to use transgender students’ preferred pronouns and names. On June 1, Cross filed a lawsuit against the district’s superintendent Scott...

On Tuesday, an upstate New York school board meeting almost descended into a brawl after a school board member called a father an “a**hole” and tried to punch him. On the same day, an English teacher at a private New Jersey prep school announced she would resign due to “the hostile culture of conformity and fear that has taken hold of our school.” Also on the same day in Virginia, a teacher encouraged parents, students, and teachers to revolt against the ideology that is creeping into her school district. These episodes and many others like them illustrate how Marxist critical...

Jack Phillips, a Colorado baker whose decision not to bake cakes for same-sex weddings ended up taking him before the US Supreme Court, has told his story in a book about his profession, his Christian faith, and his belief that religious freedom benefits everyone. “My canvas is a cake. I hope to create messages that help people celebrate different events,” he said, explaining that he and his wife discussed their design standards in light of their Christian faith at the very beginning of the cakeshop. “In our case, we drew our lines in the sand way back before we opened...

Pope Francis chides traditional-minded seminarians and priestsAccording to Pope Francis, "rigidity" is a bad word. For the duration of his papacy, he has browbeaten Catholics trying to follow Church law, all while giving comfort to those who hate the Church and Her rigid teachings. The pope continued this trend in a speech he gave on Thursday to seminarians at the Pius XI seminary in Ancona, Italy. There, he called rigidity one of the "manifestations of clericalism" and "a perversion of the priesthood." He went on to say, "When I find a seminarian or a young priest who is rigid, I...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - Several members of Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church are requesting Father Christopher Rhodes be removed as its priest. Rhodes is assigned to three primarily Black Catholic churches in the West End — Saint Augustine, Christ the King, and Immaculate Heart of Mary. On Tuesday, Immaculate Heart members told WAVE 3 News the church is being run by Rhodes with no input from the congregation. They also said several parish leaders had been removed. “We are a West End poor Catholic African American Church,” a member of Immaculate Heart said. “We feel as if we have...

Japanese researchers behind the new work... wanted to know how space radiation affects fertility in mammals. Radiation can damage the DNA within cells, causing mutations... Environments on Earth with heavy radiation exposure can cause defects in the offspring of animals. Space radiation in particular has been a major concern for countries like the U.S. and Japan that have sent many astronauts on lengthy missions into low Earth orbit. Farther space destinations are also on the horizon. NASA and other space agencies are developing systems that could support humans on monthslong journeys to other solar system destinations such as the moon...

Democratic lawmakers have been keeping the pressure on President Joe Biden to cancel $50,000 in student debt per borrower. Biden just told a top Democrat to keep the calls coming. Student Debt Crisis, an advocacy organization, led an event on Wednesday to urge Biden to take action on the $1.7 trillion student-debt crisis. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren - two leading lawmakers on the issue of debt cancellation - joined the event and said they had met with Biden on the issue and told him they'd be unrelenting in their push to get student debt...

Michigan attorney Matthew DePerno, on behalf of plaintiff William Bailey, files a motion [pdf available here] with Judge Kevin Eslenheimer for reconsideration of prior rulings given the nature of new evidence discovered by the legal team in Antrim County. The 42-page brief contains new findings within the data forensics of the county. Two larger items include the remote log-on of the system by someone anonymous who was not at the election office. The implication is that the system was connected to the internet; and the user did not have to enter identifying credentials for their entries. The second larger item...

Cells contain machinery that duplicates DNA into a new set that goes into a newly formed cell. That same class of machines, called polymerases, also build RNA messages, which are like notes copied from the central DNA repository of recipes, so they can be read more efficiently into proteins. But polymerases were thought to only work in one direction DNA into DNA or RNA. This prevents RNA messages from being rewritten back into the master recipe book of genomic DNA. Pomerantz's team started by investigating one very unusual polymerase, called polymerase theta. Of the 14 DNA polymerases in mammalian cells,...

The Pentagon has announced a $150 million package of military assistance to Ukraine as Russia kept a close eye on U.S. forces preparing to train with their Ukrainian counterparts as well as in the lead up to the debut summit between U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. The package is part of the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative first established in 2016 and the Defense Department said Friday it will include "training, equipment, and advisory efforts to help Ukraine's forces preserve the country's territorial integrity, secure its borders, and improve interoperability with NATO," the 30-nation Western military alliance...