Free Republic

Noem charged into Iowa on Friday singing a battle hymn and armed with barbed comments for her fellow GOP governors. At a conservative gathering in Des Moines, she told the crowd she “really hates this America” under President Joe Biden’s leadership, then led them in singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” But Noem didn’t just take aim at political foes. She also unleashed sharp-edged comments on those within her own party, accusing fellow GOP governors of “rewriting history” by claiming they kept their states open during the pandemic. “To pretend that they didn’t take actions that they had no...

A Muslim couple is suing a Chicago-area school and alleging that a former history teacher helped convert their daughter to Christianity. According to the Daily Herald newspaper, the federal lawsuit against Community Unit District 300 in Algonquin, Ill., alleges violations of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The suit by Yosuf Chaudhry and Amena Alvi alleges that a former Jacobs High School teacher, Pierre Thorsen, gave their daughter a New International Version Study Bible and introduced her to other Christians. "It's derailed our whole life," Alvi said of the daughter's conversion....

...No group of spiritual refugees is more organized, perhaps, than the Ex-Muslims of North America. Founded in 2013 as a nonprofit, EXMNA raises and spends funds to better understand its members’ experiences. Three years ago the group surveyed its membership, and the results offer a fascinating glimpse into not only the factors that make it more likely someone will leave Islam, but the challenges those leavers face. ...According to the survey of these people, defection from Islam happens at a very young age for many. When asked “How old were you when you left the faith?,” 16% of the sample...

The European Union's top court has ruled that Muslim women can now be banned from wearing hijabs in the workplace. The case was brought forward by two Muslim women in Germany, who were suspended from their positions for wearing head coverings. Both women - one of whom is a special needs carer at a childcare centre in Hamburg, and the other a cashier at a pharmacy chain - did not wear hijabs when they first started their jobs. However, court documents state that after deciding to do so when they returned from parental leave, they were told it was not...

Astronomers have observed record-breaking photons that strain classical theories of accelerationA little before sunrise on July 4, A.D. 1054, imperial astronomers of the Song Dynasty in China spotted an unknown star lighting up the eastern sky. “It’s as bright as Venus, with pointed rays in all four directions and a reddish-white color,” they wrote in notes delivered to the emperor. The glow, which remained visible to the naked eye during the day for almost a month, was from an explosion caused by the spectacular death of a star located 6,500 light-years away in the constellation of Taurus. Its relics are...

The International Olympic Committee has cleared a transgender athlete to compete in the upcoming Tokyo games. The IOC ruled Saturday that Laurel Hubbard, 43, who is a biological man, can compete for New Zealand in the women’s weightlifting super-heavyweight category and that her inclusion does not violate the current rules on the books. She is on track to be the first transgender athlete to ever compete in the games. “The rules for qualification have been established by the International Weightlifting Federation before the qualifications started,” IOC boss Thomas Bach said during a new conference Reuters reported. “These rules apply, and...

Many observers are forecasting that the world’s transition to electric cars will take place much sooner than expected. Now, BBC is also joining the fray. “What makes the end of the internal combustion engine inevitable is a technological revolution. And technological revolutions tend to happen very quickly … [and] this revolution will be electric,” reports BBC‘s Justin Rowlett. Rowlett points to the late ’90s internet revolution as an example. “For those who hadn’t yet logged on [to the internet] it all seemed exciting and interesting but irrelevant — how useful could communicating by computer be? After all, we’ve got phones!...

TikTok has become a hotbed for anti-Semitism, a new study revealed, with an alarming 912% spike in anti-Semitic content shared on the popular video-sharing platform over the past year. The study, led by Dr. Gabriel Weimann, a professor of communication at the University of Haifa, in conjunction with Natalie Masri, a research assistant at the IDC Herzliya’s Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT), discovered what they described as “a seismic increase” in anti-Semitic tropes, images and rhetoric compared to their 2020 study. At the end of a four-month systematic content analysis of videos, comments and usernames on the platform, researchers found a...

July 18 , 2021 Cathedral of St. Vincent De Paul, Tunis, Tunisia Readings at MassLiturgical Colour: Green First readingJeremiah 23:1-6 ©I will gather together the remnant of my flock and raise up shepherds for them‘Doom for the shepherds who allow the flock of my pasture to be destroyed and scattered – it is the Lord who speaks! This, therefore, is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says about the shepherds in charge of my people: You have let my flock be scattered and go wandering and have not taken care of them. Right, I will take care of you...

Vietnam recorded 2,807 new local Covid-19 cases Sunday evening, pushing the day's tally to an all-time high of 5,887. Among the night's tally, Ho Chi Minh City, the epicenter of the ongoing fourth coronavirus wave, recorded 2,310 cases. It was followed by the southern provinces of Dong Nai and Binh Duong with 65 and 64 cases, respectively. The remaining cases were recorded in 23 other provinces and cities. Of the new cases, 2,108 were contained within quarantine centers or lockdown areas. The rest either had contact with previously confirmed cases or are being contact traced. Vietnam saw the biggest daily...

Sen. Ted Cruz hadn’t been an official contender for the presidency of the United States for 12 hours before the questions started coming, even in the warm and welcoming cradle of a primetime interview before what should be the friendliest of conservative audiences. “You were born in Calgary, in Canada,” FOX News host Sean Hannity asked him, glancing into the camera for an apologetic chuckle. “Is there a birth certificate issue?” It’s a question that’s lurked around the edges of Cruz’s political profile ever since the junior senator gained enough notoriety to be mentioned as a presidential candidate. Google searches...

WASHINGTON – Earlier today, Pope Francis issued an apostolic letter, Traditionis custodes modifying the norms regulating the use of the 1962 Roman Missal issued before the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued the following statement in response: “Today Pope Francis published Traditionis custodes, an Apostolic Letter issued motu proprio on the use of Latin liturgical texts approved prior to the reform of 1970. I welcome the Holy Father’s desire to foster unity among Catholics who celebrate the Roman Rite. “As these new norms are...

“A slothful man hideth his hand in his bosom, and will not so much as bring it to his mouth again” (Proverbs 19:24).

When the race for COVID-19 vaccines started, health officials knew the competition between rich and poor countries would be lopsided. But few expected poor countries to be at the mercy of donations from the rich, or that the inequity would be this bad for so long. Poor countries have vaccinated 1% of their population, compared with 55% in the United States and about 25% globally. The reasons for that gap return to decisions early on, in the initial bankrolling and distributing of the vaccines. Officials, primarily from the U.S. and Europe, have told the Associated Press they never thought to...

Anthony Fauci, was asked if his thinking has changed on the controversial topic. After saying that he’s keeping an “open mind” until something is proven, either way, Fauci said that he and other experts in the field believe Covid-19 was “most likely” first transmitted via natural origins, meaning from animal to human and was not created and leaked from a lab. “The most likely explanation is a natural evolution from an animal reservoir to a human,” Fauci told CNN’s Jim Acosta on Saturday. “Once you say that, which I believe is the more likely , you’ve got to make sure...

National surveys of the 2020 presidential contest were the least accurate in 40 years, while the state polls were the worst in at least two decades...But unlike 2016, when pollsters could pinpoint factors like the education divide as reasons they underestimated Donald Trump and offer specific recommendations to fix the problem, the authors of the new American Association for Public Opinion Research report couldn't put their finger on the exact problem they face now.

ABOARD THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER – The busiest aircraft carrier on the East Coast is back home after two grueling, back-to-back deployments that kept the ship on station in the Middle East for a total of seven and a half months. Since USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69) left for its first deployment on Feb. 20, 2020, the ship has been deployed for 320 of the last 514 days – not counting training exercises and restriction of movement periods that have kept sailors away from family and loved ones. On Sunday, Ike slipped up the James River with...

"They're killing people...Look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they're killing people" President Joe Biden Attacks Opponents Of Vaccination On Social Media-Friday July 15th, 2021 "Joe Biden kept talking about how good a job he's doing on the distribution of the Vaccine that was developed by Operation Warp Speed or quite simply, the Trump Administration. He's not doing well at all. He's way behind schedule, and people are refusing to take the Vaccine because they don't trust his Administration, they don't trust the election results, and they certainly don't trust the Fake News, which is refusing...

(CNN)Millions of Americans are jeopardizing their health, freedom and finances by not getting vaccinated and putting themselves at risk of the most infectious coronavirus strain yet, current and former federal health officials say. "Most people will either get vaccinated, or have been previously infected, or they will get this Delta variant," Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday. "And for most people who get this Delta variant, it's going to be the most serious virus that they get in their lifetime in terms of the risk of putting them in the hospital," said Gottlieb, who was commissioner...

Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for AMERICA: For those in Authority in Government, Family, Military, Business, Healthcare, Education, Churches, and the Media. <font color =blue>I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone: for kings and all those in authority that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. ~ 1 Timothy 2:1-2 Religion Forum Threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 1 JOHN...