Free Republic

...I realized in March 2020 that Americans were doing masks wrong. People were constantly taking the same mask off and then putting it on again after it had spent time in pockets, purses, car seats, and backpacks, or just been dangling under their chins. In my OCD imagination, I could see the cross-contaminants grow and fester. This is especially true for healthy, normal children who are grubby disease vectors. I was right. Parents in Florida sent five kids' masks and one adult mask to a lab at the University of Florida. The results were scary and disgusting, for the masks...

Men, like nations, think they’re eternal. What man in his 20s or 30s doesn’t believe, at least subconsciously, that he’ll live forever? In the springtime of youth, an endless summer beckons. As you pass 70, it’s harder to hide from reality. Nations too have seasons. Imagine a Roman of the 2nd. century contemplating an empire that stretched from Britain to the Near East, thinking: This will endure forever. Forever was about 500 years, give or take. France was the thing in the 17th and 18th centuries. Now the land of Charles Martel is on its way to becoming part of...

For the past six months, this liberal Dream Team has been hard at work on their big report to help the federal government work with corporations to squash news they call 'disinformation.' Most people haven’t heard of the Aspen Institute. Others maybe recall some mention of their annual Aspen Ideas Festival. A few more might somewhat remember a minor political dust-up from 2020 when Michael Bloomberg, who was blowing money on a doomed bid for president at the time, had to grovel and beg forgiveness for simply stating the facts on crime at an Aspen conference five years prior. The...

“Then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with wrath, and his facial expression was altered toward Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego. He answered by giving orders to heat the furnace seven times more than it was usually heated. And he commanded certain valiant warriors who were in his army to tie up Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego, in order to cast them into the furnace of blazing fire” (Daniel 3:19-20). Persecution is the world’s futile attempt to silence the voice of godly integrity. King Nebuchadnezzar was a brilliant and powerful man who had built an enormous empire by bringing entire nations under his control. Yet...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem Psalm 97Psalm 97 1 The Lord reigns, let the earth be glad; let the distant shores rejoice. 2 Clouds and thick darkness surround him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. 3 Fire goes before him and consumes his foes on every side. 4 His lightning lights up the world; the earth sees and trembles. 5 The mountains melt like wax before the Lord, before the Lord of all the earth. 6 The heavens proclaim his righteousness, and all peoples see his glory. 7 All who worship images are put to shame,...

Like a lot of other Americans, I have been shocked in recent weeks at the number of businesses that cannot find workers. My daughter and I stopped at a fast-food restaurant here in South Bend, Indiana, two weeks ago on our way home from Chicago. After waiting 40 minutes in the drive-thru line, the beleaguered employee at the window handed us our food and apologized profusely. "I'm so sorry. We are way understaffed," he explained. "I have to close the store." This was 5:30 on a Saturday evening. How much money did that particular store lose, having to close for...

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- In 1934, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) administration had been in office for one year. The Attorney General, Homer Cummings, was a strong proponent of national gun laws, which, he contended, could get around constitutional constraints by using the power to tax.The Justice Department crafted a bill to create the National Firearms Act of 1934.It was a major piece of legislation, arguably the first time the Federal Government had significantly infringed on the right to keep and bear arms, protected by the Second Amendment.Attorney General Cummings was asked to testify before the powerful Ways and Means Committee in...

It’s not expensive or difficult to produce large numbers of untraceable firearms in the United States. Whether for private use, sale on the criminal market or arming violent extremists, it’s actually startlingly cheap and easy to mass-produce firearms that police can’t track — what are often called “ghost guns.” For just over $2,000 I can buy a machine — not much bigger than a desktop laser printer — that will do the trick. If I’m feeling handy, I can get it done with just simple power tools. As I discuss in a recent journal article about ghost guns, it’s perfectly...

There have been four wild developments on Wednesday and in recent days which will have major impacts on the future of the Iranian nuclear standoff. 1. Ahmedinejad ‘reveals’ who Mossad recruited within Iranian intelligence to steal nuclear secrets Former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has told Iran International that the Mossad recruited the highest-ranking Iranian counter-intelligence official in charge of catching Israeli spies in order to steal the Islamic Republic’s nuclear secrets. The January 31, 2018, raid altered the region’s geopolitics, leading to the US withdrawing from the JCPOA nuclear deal and setting the International Atomic Energy Agency into a years-long...

Everything in Geneva went swimmingly between Joey and Vlad. And if you don’t believe me just ask the acting President himself. He said his meeting with Vlad went “pretty good.” Well, I suppose - if by “pretty good” you mean “train wreck.” Whoops, no more trackThe degree to which the summit was a disaster became evident when Putin emerged for his press conference — alone with a forum all to himself. (The Biden Team did not want to do a joint presser so held their own)Putin fielded softball questions from Russian news agencies, but he also welcomed hostile questions from...

NASA is working to resolve an issue with the payload computer on the Hubble Space Telescope. The computer halted on Sunday, June 13, shortly after 4 p.m. EDT. After analyzing the data, the Hubble operations team is investigating whether a degrading memory module led to the computer halt.

The remarks were given on a Zoom teleconference session that was obtained by The Intercept. The meeting was hosted by the group No Labels, a big money operation co-founded by former Sen. Joe Lieberman that funnels high-net-worth donor money to conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans. The call included several billionaire investors and corporate executives, among them Louis Bacon, chief executive of Moore Capital Management; Kenneth D. Tuchman, founder of global outsourcing company TeleTech; and Howard Marks, the head of Oaktree Capital, one of the largest private equity firms in the country. The Zoom participant log included a dial-in from Tudor...

It’s beyond any reasonable dispute that the slack-jawed old pervert staggering through this punchline presidency is getting more senile by the day. All the while, his cackling understudy is biding her time everywhere but at the border, getting huffy at being questioned, and generally failing at a job historically assigned to morons as a role where they could do little damage. The only people who dig their hep jive – yeah, go on and believe the 79 percent approval numbers among people now paying $5 a gallon for unleaded – are the talking tubers of cable news. But even the...

On Wednesday, members of the House Intelligence Committee received a classified briefing with U.S. Navy and FBI officials on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), which some of the lawmakers have said may represent a threat to national security. The briefing came in advance of the release of a highly anticipated report, which looked at more than 100 instances of what have been classed as unidentified aerial objects observed by the military. Foreknowledge of Wednesday’s briefing was first learned of by CNN, who noted that UFOs have recently become an issue that government officials have struggled to remove “from the world of...

VIDEOHe's smart. Not dumb like everybody says. Oh, and is there something in it for him from a certain country he mentions?

From the way we work to the way we shop, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought about a multitude of changes across all aspects of our lives. One of these changes revolves around the way we pay for the goods we purchase. Cash is no longer king. Contactless payments are at an all-time high and more Americans than ever are relying on their credit and debit cards to purchase goods and services. While this transition to a more convenient and sanitary form of payment has been a long time coming, the stranglehold that credit card companies currently have on this sector...

A new powerful new documentary called "The Streets Were My Father" features three Chicago men, two Hispanics and one Black, who grew up without fathers. All three did hard time for serious offenses, including murder. The film, with no narrator, just lets the men talk. None blames "systemic racism." All concede they made bad choices, but choices nonetheless. All talked about the pain they felt growing up without a father figure to instruct, scold, guide, motivate and instill confidence and direction. I highly recommend it. In Barack Obama's first book, "Dreams From My Father," he talked about the hole in...

This is an excerpt from The Natural Mother of the Child: A Memoir of Nonbinary Parenthood, in which nonbinary transmasculine author Krys Malcolm Belc explores how the experience of gestational parenthood—conceiving, birthing, and breastfeeding his son Samson—eventually clarified his gender identity. In this excerpt, Belc writes to his partner Anna about raising their three young children. … There are things I miss. Before Michigan, before testosterone, sometimes people in Philadelphia would look at me and Samson and know he was mine, think I made him, and they would call him beautiful. No one says that anymore; now they say You’re...

New York City officials are ready to move nearly 8,000 homeless residents out of some 60 hotels and back into congregate shelters, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Wednesday, as the city continues to see record-low COVID infections. 'It is time to move homeless folks who were in hotels for a temporary period of time back to shelters, where they can get the support they need,' de Blasio said at his daily press briefing. 'In shelters is where we can provide support, a variety of services and the pathway out of shelter and into a better life,' he said.

It really takes some balls to, er, I mean guts, to show your face again after being caught on a company Zoom call pleasuring yourself. Most people wouldn’t do it, but then most people wouldn’t feel the need to drop trou in the middle of a work event and take care of business, then actually do it in that same room. If people did, they’d likely be smart enough to leave the room with the camera attached to the computer on which they’d just been talking to everyone they work with only moments before the frisky coffee break. Then again,...