Free Republic

“To some,” CNN tweeted Friday, “Ashli Babbitt, who was killed in the Capitol riot, was a terrorist. To others, she’s a martyr and seen as a recruiting tool.” Twitter’s legion of blue-check Leftist propagandists immediately protested that other “terrorists” are seen as martyrs as well. Never-Trump former Bush consultant Matthew Dowd likened Babbitt to Hitler, who was responsible for the murder of twelve million people in Europe, and actor Terry Kinney likened her to Mohamed Atta, who was partially responsible for the murder of nearly three thousand people on September 11, 2001. In their indignation, however, they ignored the fact...

According to CNN, the Biden administration is moving to make gender change surgery available through Veterans Affairs hospitals starting as early as this summer.The previous policy made other gender transition services available through the VA, including hormone treatments and counseling. The surgery would be available to active duty and reserve personnel as well as those eligible through their VA benefits.In 2018, the Defense Department counted 14,700 transgender military personnel currently serving or in the reserves. It’s unknown how many soldiers would opt for what’s known as “gender transition” surgery.Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough will announce the change in policy at...

If Inspector Clouseau and Dr. Joseph Mengele had a love child, it would be Dr. Anthony (“I am science, hear me roar”) Fauci, who fumbled his way through a pandemic he helped create and whose misleading, self-serving and contradictory pronouncements between baseball games, magazine photo-shoots and talk show appearances contributed to the deaths of millions. Leading the pack of Fauci’s unindicted co-conspirators is Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook. Facts, as Ronald Reagan would say, are stubborn things. They do not change. So when Facebook went from banning and nuking posts and posters asserting that the China virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute...

[Catholic Caucus] Archbishop Minnerath Looks for the Fly in the OintmentDijon Archbishop Roland Minnerath is denigrating the Fraternity of Saint Peter (FSSP) to justify their unjust eviction from his archdiocese.In an unsigned June 17 statement, Minnerath recalled that the first FSSP-priest was received into Dijon Archdiocese in 1998 with the – illegal – clause that he had to co-preside “from time to time” in the New Rite so that there would be “no watertight separation” between the “two rites.” Presenting “co-presiding” as a sign of unity is inadmissible because every priest is free to co-preside or not.Minnerath who came to...

KUALA LUMPUR, June 17 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The United Nations climate chief said on Thursday a "significant amount of work" remains to be done ahead of November's COP26 summit in Britain, with developing nations warning issues of finance and vaccine inequity could derail a successful outcome. At the end of three weeks of mid-year climate talks, held online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Patricia Espinosa called on countries to overcome their differences and work together in the remaining months before the key COP26 negotiations in Glasgow. She said governments had "engaged effectively," despite the challenges of virtual working, and...

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. Now, Thomas Jefferson University researchers provide the first evidence that RNA segments can be written back into DNA, which potentially...

The criminal case for political donor Ed Buck will head to an evidentiary hearing on Tuesday at 10 a.m. Buck, 66, faces federal charges for allegedly giving drugs to a man who died at his West Hollywood apartment after being lured across state lines for prostitution. He faces nine felony counts in Los Angeles federal court, plus state charges of running a drug den. The federal case will proceed first. An evidentiary hearing happens after a formal criminal complaint has been issued by a prosecutor. The purpose of this hearing is to prevent unreasonable arrest and detention by evaluating whether...

Or should his title be chief of navel-gazing operations? Someone should tell Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michael Gilday that he has just one job – to manage and deploy the ships of the United States Navy in such a way to guarantee our freedom of the seas and to deny the enemy the use of those seas to attack the United States, sending enemy fleets to the bottom of those seas if necessary in time of war. He is a military warrior. He is not a social justice warrior. Diversity to him, if I may be so bold as...

WASHINGTON, D.C.—In a recent press conference, Jen Psaki announced that President Biden would be taking a new approach to spontaneous, yet completely reasonable questions from the press: he will simply drone strike those who ask them. “The President should not be obligated to deal with the threatening and dangerous pressures of answering simple, straightforward questions from our press,” stated a fiery Psaki. “The Pentagon has now given him the resources to retaliate against these journalists swiftly and with extreme prejudice.” It did not take long before President Biden was able to put his drones to use. “President Biden, do you...

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) was met with boos while attending a Juneteenth celebration on Saturday in Milwaukee, Wisc., WDJT reported. According to WDJT, the Republican senator was heckled by crowd members while speaking to reporters. At one point during the video, a bystander can be heard saying "We don't need you out here." The resistance to Johnson comes after the lawmaker issued a statement objecting to making Juneteenth a nationally recognized holiday earlier this week. “Last year, a bill was introduced to celebrate Juneteenth by providing an additional paid holiday for 2 million federal employees at a cost of $600...

The U.S. Department of Justice is targeting West Virginia for prohibiting transgender girls and women from participating in public school sports. Saying the law “hinders equal athletic opportunities for girls by creating an additional hurdle for participation,” Aria Vaughan, a trial attorney with the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, said the new law also discriminates against West Virginia student-athletes on the basis of sex and gender identification, in the statement filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of West Virginia. “The State cannot point to any valid evidence that allowing transgender girls to participate on...

WILTON MANORS, Fla. (AP) — A driver slammed into spectators Saturday at the start of a Pride parade in South Florida, injuring at least two people. Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis confirmed the crash occurred Saturday evening at the Stonewall Pride Parade in the nearby city of Wilton Manors, WSVN-TV reported. WPLG-TV reports that the driver of the truck was taken into custody. Authorities did not immediately give details about the victims’ injuries or say whether they believe the crash was intentional. Photos and video from the scene showed Democratic U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz in tears while in a...

For the Catholic Church in the US, the past few decades have not been good. Thousands have deserted the pews already out of disgust at paedophile priests, cover ups and other manifestations of gross hypocrisy. Bishops for years kept themselves busy moving paedophile priests from parish to parish, diocese to diocese – all the while, presumably, allowing these priests who raped little boys and girls to receive communion. At the same time, countless lay Catholics have been denied access to the Eucharist for "sins" such as remarrying after divorcing an abusive or adulterous spouse. One now-notorious US priest, when challenged...

Even police departments are feeling the squeeze of the U.S.’s historic ammo shortage, a crunch that began last year amid the COVID-19 pandemic, ratcheted up during the Black Lives Matter-led demonstrations last summer, and has not let up since. Police from Detroit to Florida to Illinois have all reported struggling to acquire ammunition for basic police work like range-training exercises. Chief John Blair of the Taylor Police Department in Michigan recently said his officer’s firearm proficiency is tested three times a year, but one test had to be canceled because of the ammunition shortage. The COVID pandemic also cut down...

Connect the dots. How do you think they will get this technology inside you?Now you know why Bill Gates is so interested in the mRNA gene therapy. https://youtu.be/sL2I8Fqu9HI

Circuit Paul RicardFirst Grand Prix1971Number of Laps53Circuit Length5.842kmRace Distance309.69 kmLap Record1:32.740 Sebastian Vettel (2019)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has launched a multistate public health investigation after at least 12 people were exposed to a dog, imported from Azerbaijan by a rescue group, that tested positive for a rabies variant. The dog was among a group of 33 canines and one cat that arrived at Chicago O’Hare International Airport on June 10. None of the other animals have tested positive, but all are considered to have been exposed... ...According to testing by the CDC, the dog was infected with rabies before it arrived in the United States. Other animals in the shipment...

It’s pretty definitively summer now, and if the coming of summer doesn’t fill you at least with some residual, school’s-out-tinged joy, then I suppose all I have to offer you is pity. Summer should also mean something else to anyone with a pulse: the 1989 B-52 song “Love Shack.” That song famously references a gigantic Chrysler, and I think it’s time we accurately determined which Chrysler the B-52s are singing about. I got me a Chrysler, it seats about twenty... ... Hop in my Chrysler, it’s as big as a whale And it’s about to set sail I got me...

A growing number of Republican lawmakers are refusing to say that the Jan. 6 insurrection was actually an insurrection. Nearly two dozen GOP House members voted against legislation this week that would award Congressional Gold Medals to police officers who defended the Capitol that day, in part because it describes the mob of then-President Trump’s supporters who were trying to stop Congress from ratifying the 2020 election results as “insurrectionists.” “They were protesting. And I don’t approve of the way they protested, but it wasn’t an insurrection,” said Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.).“My goodness. Can you imagine what a real insurrection...