Free Republic

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot reflects on her first two years in office on WTTW's Chicago Tonight. "About 99 percent of it, Lightfoot said. "Look at my predecessors. Did people say that Rich Daley held tea sessions with people that he didn't disagree on? Rahm Emanuel was a polite guy who was a uniter? No. Women and people of color are always held to a different standard."

Experimental setup. As a beam of beryllium comes in from the left, the deuteron Trojan horse intercepts it at the target and delivers its neutron soldier. This allows the decay products of the beryllium and neutron reactions to be captured by a curved array of six detectors on the right. Credit: Hayakawa et al. There is a significant discrepancy between theoretical and observed amounts of lithium in our universe. This is known as the cosmological lithium problem, and it has plagued cosmologists for decades. Now, researchers have reduced this discrepancy by around 10%, thanks to a new experiment on...

SARS-CoV-2. The woo-woo virus. People who can think and follow a line of reasoning should have a shot at considering the questions: Did researchers actually discover the virus? Did their proof fall short? DID RESEARCHERS DO ENOUGH TO PROVE THE CORONAVIRUS EXISTS IN THE FIRST PLACE? If someone says that, during the full moon three weeks ago, the moon suddenly turned gold, and then a strange squadron of giants passed across it, on their way to the ocean, do you think it might be a good idea to find out whether, three weeks ago, there was a full moon? Might...

VIDEOLike many of you, I thought that the prosecution of the Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg was politically motivated as a way to "get" President Donald Trump. However, the calm words of New York Attorney General Letitia James convinced me of the absolute professionalism of the authorities in the Empire State. As you can hear for yourself, James is definitely not obsessed with "getting" Trump.

What the mighty Jesuit Karl Rahner would say, said, about suppressing Summorum PontificumJesuit Fr. Karl Rahner was an immensely influential theological guru of a couple of generations of clerics and theologians. He is the darling, venerated oracle of the catholic left and modernists.Here is a quote from Karl Rahner. Given the rumors about changes to or suppression of Summorum Pontificum, this quote should be picked up and circulated widely. Hat tip to my correspondent.From Karl Rahner’s Studies in Modern Theology (Herder, 1965, pp. 394-395) under the subtitle:A Distinction: Legal and Moral Norms[…]Imagine that the Pope, as supreme pastor of the...

Dr. Mallika is offering her best advice, but as always, consult your personal doctor before making any decisions about your personal health. Cindy asked on Facebook, “Because of the reported side effects of the J&J vaccine, why don’t they just give that one to men only and offer women one of the other choices?” Some countries are limiting the use of the J&J vaccine to people over 60 since the rare blood clots have been seen in younger adults, mostly women. The J&J vaccine now has a warning label but no specific age or gender restriction here in the U.S....

The United States Supreme Court ruled, Thursday, that two “Republican-backed ballot restrictions” in the state of Arizona do not violate the Voter Rights Act of 1965, opening the door for voter restriction measures nationwide, and spelling trouble for the Department of Justice’s lawsuit, announced earlier this week, challenging new measures just passed in Georgia.“The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday endorsed two Republican-backed ballot restrictions in Arizona that a lower court found had disproportionately burdened Black, Latino, and Native American voters, handing a defeat to voting rights advocates and Democrats who had challenged the measures,” Reuters reported. “The 6-3 ruling, with...

Please stop talking about “White” people and “Black” people. Millions of us just don’t care what color you are. This racist nonsense is destroying America. Please stop your virtueless virtue signaling by posting emojis of an upraised Marxist fist in honor of a holiday that ironically stands for American freedom rather than the bondage of communism. Please stop your smug self-elevation and feigned deprecation of pretending that just because you’re white, you are somehow “privileged.” Please stop your “humble” self-flagellation of “repenting for distant uncles and aunts (white) who lived in Tulsa” during a time of riots that they, and...

A judge has ruled that dozens more documents about Ghislaine Maxwell's personal affairs should be made public, including some that could reveal more about her finances and her relationship to the Clintons. Judge Loretta Preska said that unsealing the documents would not impact Maxwell's right to a fair trial in November as her lawyers have claimed. Among the documents which will be made public in two weeks' time will be Maxwell's efforts to quash requests from Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who sued Maxwell for defamation, to obtain her financial records.

Progressivism is billed as many things. But its foundational brand is devotion to supposedly “scientific” principles to improve the human condition. That Enlightenment project demands greater social welfare expenditure and therapeutic education to “improve” human nature itself. And all this can sometimes require necessary force. But inherent in such 20th-century hubris is the concession that there will be lots of collateral damage in reordering society. When imposing abstract, but uncompromising theories onto the otherwise unenlightened people, eggs will have to be broken to bake the new omelet. And from what we have seen in the last few months, the progressive...

"Am I the only one who quit singing along everytime they play a Springsteen song?"

John Kerry, the US special envoy on climate, is predicting that the shift to a green economy would entail “a bigger economic transformation” than the Industrial Revolution, according to a report. “​​The fact is we’re looking at the creation of the largest market in the history of the world,” he said ​Monday, according to Fox Business. “This will be a bigger economic transformation that is right there at our disposal — bigger than the Industrial Revolution if we will start to seize it, and there are millions of jobs to be created​,” Kerry said at an event with the ​​European...

Bobby Foole And His Little God Of Gold. By JAG July 1, 2021 "The fact is", said Bobby Foole, "I truly LOVE sin and evil and I hotly crave to practice both of 'em." "I understand", replied Harris Dookins, Foole's philosopher counselor. "Moreover", added Foole, "I crave to be my own God because I don't want my Creator telling Me what I can and cannot do." "So you do know there is a God that created you?", asked Dookins. "Of course I know that, but I am determined to suppress that knowledge and put it out of my mind." "So...

The Students for a Free Tibet (SFT- India) today staged a vivid demonstration where an activist pretending to be the Chinese President Xi Jinping laid in a ‘bloody’ bathtub with a sign that read ‘Nothing to Celebrate’. “This right here symbolizes millions of people murdered and butchered by Chinese Communist government. We have this clear message saying that there’s nothing to celebrate over the CPC’s 100 years,” SFT Director Rinzin Choedon spoke to Phayul at the protest site. Rinzin also noted that the recent video of Potala Palace in Lhasa captured by a distressed Tibetan woman infuriated her, “We know...

Iowa's high court said Wednesday that the state may refuse to allow Planned Parenthood to conduct sex education programs funded by federal grants, reversing a judge's ruling last year that found the law unconstitutional. The Iowa Supreme Court found the 2019 law passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature is constitutional, rejecting Planned Parenthood of the Heartland's complaint that the law violated its right to equal protection and that the law served no rational legitimate government interest. State court Judge Paul Scott ruled in May 2020 that Planned Parenthood would likely prevail at trial on its equal protection claim and he blocked...

EXCLUSIVE: Former Trump senior adviser Jason Miller is launching a new social media platform on July 4 to declare "independence" from Big Tech, billing it as a "cancel-free zone" focused on free speech, with "superior technology" that he says will "be the envy" of Silicon Valley. The platform is called "GETTR," which Miller, the CEO of the company, told Fox News evolved from the idea of "getting together." GETTR is officially launching on Sunday, July 4 at 10:00 a.m. ET, but the platform is already in the App Stores.

[Catholic Caucus] The Pachamama as a monstrance: Guadalajara, MexicoIf I had read in a dystopian novel about the Neo-Church that instead of a monstrance they would use a pagan image, I would have thought, 'This author is exaggerating! Who would ever think of or do such a thing?'July 1, 2021 (Stilum Curiae) – Dear friends and enemies of Stilum Curiae, it is really true that truth is stranger than fiction. If I had read in a dystopian novel about the Neo-Church that instead of a monstrance they would use a pagan image, I would have thought, “This author is exaggerating!...

LSU gymnast Olivia Dunne, who checks in with over 1.1 million Instagram followers and 3.9 million TikTok followers, might end up being the biggest winner in the Name, Image, Likeness sweepstakes that officially went into law across over a dozen states at midnight Thursday morning. And Dunne was sitting there, ready to cash in without jeopardizing her college scholarship. “NIL rules change tomorrow… let’s get to work,” Dunne tweeted Wednesday, knowing she was about to make a life-changing fortune when the clock struck midnight. Sports business reporter Darren Rovell has predicted that Dunne could sign deals this week worth $100k,...

Former President Bill Clinton and the Democrat establishment on Thursday contradicted Vice President Kamala Harris’s staffers who “feel treated like s***’ and work in an “abusive environment.” The internal “frustration” is directed at Tina Flournoy, Harris’s chief of staff, who White House staffers say has a “reputation” for being “extreme” and for “refusing to delegate and second-guessing other staffers.”

Lumber futures on Chicago Mercantile Exchange plunged more than 40% in June, suffering the worst ever monthly decline on record dating back to 1978. Prices are down 18% in 2021 and recorded the first negative first half since 2015. Lumber peaked in late April/early May at around $1,711 per thousand board feet, and as of Thursday morning, prices are down more than 4% to $684. It appears the great lumber bubble of 2021 has encountered a classic commodity blowoff top, down -60% from the highs.Readers may recall we’ve been closely following the lumber bubble: The latest drop in prices “suggests...