Free Republic

A 17-year-old high school student was headed home from a Houston Astros game with his family Tuesday night when he was shot inside his car during an apparent road rage incident, according to police. The teenager, identified by local outlets as David Xavier Castro, remains on life support, despite initial reports that he had died, the Houston Police Department clarified Wednesday. Castro was one of two passengers in his father’s pickup Tuesday night when the older man “exchanged hand gestures” with the driver of a white Buick sedan, police said. The other driver followed Castro’s car onto the freeway, then...

Pro-life Catholic voice Catherine Hadro recently called out a new pro-abortion children’s book for being “full of propaganda and deception” as it attempts to teach young children that killing unborn babies is normal. According to the Catholic News Agency, Hadro, host of the EWTN show Pro-Life Weekly, said authors Carly Manes and “M” use colorful drawings and euphemisms to indoctrinate children through their book, “What’s an Abortion, Anyway?” The authors, who identify themselves as abortion doulas, described their work as a “nonjudgmental book about abortion for children” that seeks to build “a world for kids and adults where abortion is...

As we expected, the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) issued its revised guidelines on stem cells and embryo experiments at the end of May 2021, and as expected, the ISSCR recommendations are rife with proposed experiments on young human beings. The new guidelines discard the 14-day limit on human embryo experiments in favor of no limits, and they allow virtually unrestricted manufacture of human-animal chimeras of any type, as well as creation of genetically altered human embryos and lab constructed human embryo “models.” Very little is left in the category of “currently not permitted.” The ISSCR overreach is...

A Republican senator in Pennsylvania initiated the first steps this week of a forensic election audit, even as the state’s top law enforcement official promised intervention should the effort continue. State State Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Gettysburg, said in an editorial Wednesday he’s requested information and materials from three counties needed for a “forensic investigation” into both the 2020 general election and the 2021 primary election completed in May. He said the effort is “necessary” because millions of residents harbor serious doubts about the accuracy of the results, citing a January poll from Muhlenberg University that showed 40% of respondents “are...

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (CNS) — Bishop Douglas J. Lucia, whose downtown Syracuse office sits on the ancestral lands of the Onondaga Nation, hopes to meet with Pope Francis “to re-examine” 15th-century Vatican documents that justified colonization, land takeovers and oppression of Indigenous peoples. In the last decade, numerous congregations, denominations and faith-based organizations — including several women’s religious communities — have urged the Vatican to repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery, which asserts European Christianity’s superiority and power over other lands. Bishop Lucia appears to be the first U.S. Catholic bishop to publicly call for the Vatican and the U.S. Catholic Church...

This week, three members of an 11 member FDA advisory committee of experts resigned in protest over the FDA’s approval of Aduhelm (aducanumab) for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. These resignations are extremely unusual, but in this case, understandable.Aduhelm was approved by the agency despite the fact that both pivotal trials were stopped early because they were judged to be futile, the FDA’s own statistical reviewer did not support approval, and the FDA advisory committee reviewing the application voted it down overwhelmingly. Additionally, in a survey conducted by Endpoint News, whose readership is heavily weighted to biopharmaceutical industry staffers and...

When Chicago Public Schools fully reopen late next month for the first time since the start of the pandemic, students will be returning to schools stocked with hand sanitizer, disinfectant wipes, masks, forehead thermometers and air purifiers.But nearly every CPS school will also have items that experts say will keep students healthy and safe regardless of the status of the pandemic: menstruation products and condoms.Both will be provided as the result of a new policy passed by the CPS Board of Education in December. A similar action that will require all schools in Illinois provide menstruation products generated far more...

Recovering from colon surgery, Pope Francis briefly ran a fever late July 7, leading his doctors to perform a CT scan of his abdomen and chest the next morning to check for signs of infection. Results of the scan were negative, as were the results of "routine and microbiological examinations," the Vatican press office said July 8. ... As with any operation, but especially intestinal surgery, infection is a major post-op concern. Before the passing fever, the press office said, Pope Francis had sent a message of "paternal closeness" to the "young patients in the nearby pediatric oncology and children's...

I recently drove 950 miles to give the keynote commencement address at an online high school based in Las Vegas. Two thousand students were supposedly going to attend, but it turned out that the school didn’t exist. The fake high school and the deceptive editing of my speech weren’t the only falsehoods here. A gun control organization called “Change the Ref” hoodwinked news outlets worldwide to propagate a lie about how extensive gun violence is in the United States. The videos made from this address focus on the “lost class.” Specifically, “they are the 3,044 graduating high school seniors that...

Ballad Health will be requiring each such person to provide proof of vaccine. Those with proof of vaccine will be issued a blue “badge buddy” to hang behind their badge. Those who have chosen not to be vaccinated will be issued an orange badge buddy. This color-coded badge system has been added to the dress-code policy and failure to comply, or any attempt to falsify the badge, will result in disciplinary action, up to and including termination.

<p>LOS ANGELES — A man who was naked except for shorts and one sock climbed to the top of a soaring church tower in East Los Angeles Wednesday night, set a fire at the base of a cross, then apparently tried to evade surrounding police by leaping from roof to roof of nearby buildings before he was taken into custody.</p>

If these sentiments become reality over time, it’s going to be a sea change for demand and supply at these crazy prices.So just briefly: This explains some of the dynamics we have seen in the housing market recently, with mortgage applications, sales of existing homes, and sales of new single-family houses dropping for months even as investors have piled into the market and as inventories have started to rise. Fannie Mae has been conducting its National Housing Survey monthly since 2010, one of the data collection efforts to come out of the Housing Bust. The survey covers a range of...

Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade bashed Dr. Anthony Fauci for his plea that more Americans get vaccinated for the coronavirus. “The focus of this administration on vaccination is mind boggling,” Kilmeade said on Thursday. He accepted that “they’ve done a very good job” of getting the word out on vaccines and making them publicly available, but then complained about being “berated” by Fauci because the nation’s top Covid adviser said in an interview that unvaccinated people should “get over this political statement” and get inoculated. “Here we have a vaccine that’s highly, highly effective in preventing disease and certainly...

ROME — One of the projects most dear to Pope Francis is having the first part of its fourth edition on Friday, before continuing in September. The Fourth World Meeting of Popular Movements will bring together activists from the most marginalized communities of society in the most visible example of the “popularism” the pontiff has proposed.... The Vatican office said the meeting is in response to “the invitation of Francis that the poor and organized communities do not become resigned and to become the protagonists of the change process.” The World Meeting of Popular Movements – the first of which...

An Iowa man is facing two felony charges after a loaded handgun and rifle were found in his Chicago hotel room July 4, near where hundreds of families were celebrating the holiday, prosecutors said. Keegan Gregory Casteel, 32, is charged with two felony counts of aggravated unlawful use of weapons/loaded. He appeared in court Tuesday and was released after paying a portion of his $10,000 bond, according to court documents obtained by CNN. Police said there was a handgun and a loaded .308 caliber rifle "equipped with a laser and high-powered scope" in Casteel's hotel room. Five rifle magazines were...

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra argued that the federal government is entitled to know who in the United States has been vaccinated, responding to anger from GOP House members who say the Biden administration is infringing on personal liberty.“Perhaps we should point out that the federal government has had to spend trillions of dollars to try to keep Americans alive during this pandemic, so it is absolutely the government’s business. It is taxpayers' business if we have to continue to spend money to try to keep people from contracting COVID and helping reopen the economy,” Becerra said on...

The continued decline in Treasury yields has prompted many short-sighted arm-chair analysts to declare that the Fed was right about inflationary pressures being “transitory”. Of course, as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen herself admitted, a little inflation is necessary for the economy to function long term – because without “controlled inflation,” how else will policymakers inflate away the enormous debts of the US and other governments. As policymakers prepare to explain to the investing public why inflation is a “good thing”, a report published this week by left-leaning NPR highlighted a phenomenon that is manifesting in grocery stores and other retailers...

On Evolution and Racism, Scientific American Goes to War Against the TruthGiven evolution’s racist baggage, you might think the theory’s proponents would be somewhat abashed to accuse the critics of Darwin of “white supremacy.” Apparently not. Writing in Scientific American, Allison Hopper goes there: “Denial of Evolution Is a Form of White Supremacy.” Who is Allison Hopper? She is a white lady, a “filmmaker and designer with a master’s degree in educational design from New York University. Early in her career, she worked on PBS documentaries.” Ms. Hopper “has presented on evolution at the Big History Conference in Amsterdam and...

VIDEOIt was a very SURREAL experience on the morning of July 7. One moment I am reading a message from YouTube that my latest video has been BANNED and that I could not upload videos to the DUmmie FUnnies channel for a week and the very next moment I hear President Trump announcing his class action lawsuit against social media. Of course, I joined the lawsuit. However, in my case there is a strange twist in which YouTube might be FORCED to DELETE hundreds and possibly thousands of videos of school board and other types of meetings due their INSANE...

The federal government is a kind of self perpetuating blob; a cannibalistic creature that must continue to feed on the public and the systems around it in order to survive, but it also must create reasons for its existence so that it may go on feeding uninterrupted. Now, don’t get me wrong – I realize that the apparatus in Washington DC is nothing more than a tool for the power elite to grow their scope of control as well as grow their wealth. That said, without a large federal government the establishment oligarchy would have no ability to project the...