Free Republic

Mice: check. Lizards: check. Squid: check. Marsupials … check. CRISPR has been used to modify the genes of tomatoes, humans, and just about everything in between. Because of their unique reproductive biology and their relative rarity in laboratory settings, though, marsupials had eluded the CRISPR rush—until now. A team of researchers at Japan’s Riken Institute, a national research facility, have used the technology to edit the genes of a South American species of opossum. The results were described in a new study out today in Current Biology. The ability to tweak marsupial genomes could help biologists learn more about the...

OPINION: This article contains commentary which reflects the author’s opinion There’s a reason people call him “creepy Joe.” During his much-criticized town hall on CNN, Joe Biden denied sucking the blood of children. That’s right. Apparently, American politics continues to devolve lower and lower. The fact that Biden even addressed this question is proof that he knows the concern the American public has. During the CNN town hall, Biden said: The idea that the Democrats or the Biden is hiding people and sucking the blood of children, no I’m serious, that’s the — Now you may not like me and...

“. . . in your moral excellence, knowledge” (2 Peter 1:5). Moral excellence cannot develop in an intellectual vacuum. It’s a frightening thing to realize the extent to which our culture downplays knowledge in favor of emotions. These days people are more likely to ask, “How will it make me feel?” instead of, “Is it true?” Sadly, the church has bought into the spirit of the age. Many people go to church, not to learn the truths of God’s Word, but to get an emotional high. The focus of theological discussion also reflects the contemporary hostility to knowledge. To a...

If I seek to please man, I simply cannot be a servant of Christ. If my heart is motivated by the approval of others, my loyalties will be divided, and the driving force behind my actions will be confused. I’ll always be striving to please someone other than Jesus. A few years after the apostle Paul was converted, he went to the church in Jerusalem to try and join the disciples there, “but they were all afraid of him, and did not believe that he was a disciple” (Acts 9:26, NKJV). The apostles all knew Paul’s notorious reputation as a...

The iconic, famously woke ice cream company, Ben & Jerry’s, announced on Monday that it will no longer sell its product in “Occupied Palestinian Territory.” As the company explained, “We believe it is inconsistent with our values for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to be sold in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT).” However, they added, “Although Ben & Jerry’s will no longer be sold in the OPT, we will stay in Israel through a different arrangement.” Put another way (and to read between the lines), “We will continue to sell our ice cream to the evil oppressors in their own...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is considering adding anti-Trump Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) to the January 6 Select Committee, according to multiple reports. This could be part of Pelosi’s plan to make the committee bipartisan. On Thursday, Pelosi said, “We have a bipartisan quorum, we can proceed,” when asked by an infamous CNN reporter if she has concerns about Republicans being pulled from the committee after she refused to allow Republican Reps. Jim Jordan (OH) and Jim Banks (IN) sit on the committee. A report from Politico said Pelosi “would consider appointing more Republicans to the Jan. 6 probe, less...

Tucker Carlson has an audience of around 3 million viewers, which is more than any other news program and most other programs generally. It is still only 3 million people out of a nation of 330 million people. In the grand scheme of things, Tucker Carlson is influential in the way many others are -- he has a core fan base that listens to him, generally trusts him, talks to other people and posts on the internet. Nielsen ratings showed Rush Limbaugh had tens of millions of listeners, but the TV networks rarely focused on him. They focused on Carlson...

In a new statement, GOP Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik explained why she believes Pelosi booted GOP Reps. Jim Jordan and Jim Banks from the Jan 6th Committee . “Nancy Pelosi is a radical authoritarian Speaker of the House. The American people have always known the truth – that the Pelosi partisan January 6th commission was never about investigating the facts, it was only ever about Pelosi’s radical politics and the Left’s endless obsession with crushing any discussion or debate,” Stefanik said. “This commission is an absolute sham and has been a disgrace from the beginning; no amount of drooling...

Just putting this out there! If we could all take a moment every night at 9pm and think of the MAGA Supporters who are in prison in DC as political prisoners. They sing the National Anthem at that time! I feel we can at least have a moment of silence of them and if you are in a group, maybe sing the Anthem. That is all! Thank you.

Breakthrough cases will become more common as the more transmissible Delta variant keeps spreading. But most disease experts still expect COVID-19 to be milder in vaccinated people. Two young people who got sick after they were vaccinated described how their symptoms progressed. See more stories on Insider's business page. Breakthrough infections, or COVID-19 cases diagnosed after someone is fully immunized, were supposed to be rare - at least that's what a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested in May. At the time, data indicated that just 0.01% of vaccinated Americans got a breakthrough case from January...

Proterra Bus Fire Prompts California Agency to Consider Shelving Electric Bus FleetElectric buses are melting in sun, too expensive to fix, transit official says An electric bus manufactured by Proterra caught fire while charging in a southern California city that is now considering taking the electric buses off the road, according to government records. The Foothill Transit agency, which serves the valleys surrounding Los Angeles, will decide on Friday whether costly Proterra buses purchased in the last decade are still operable. Problems cited by the agency include not only the bus that caught fire in what's described as a "thermal...

Leftist activists and the ATF have been gearing up in a dangerous and nefarious assault on the Second Amendment. There are several initiatives that anti-gun activists are engaging in to impede the ability of law-abiding citizens to practice their right to bear arms. Namely, the nomination of an anti-gun radical to head of the ATF and proposed rule changes on the legality of stabilizing braces. I fear that these regulations will create far too steep of a barrier of entry for those looking to keep themselves safe. Single mothers and working-class families are often the focus on the adverse effects...

Is Governor Abbot doing anything on the Texas border or is he just blowing smoke? He keeps holding press conferences and holding meetings but does anything substantive ever happen? Someone needs to stand up to the Biden administration and stem the tide. The potential loss of federal dollars are hard to resist but far worse things are coming our way! As we said it the Guard, "more balls, sir!"

It’s been over a year since I’ve commented on the question of whether the response to the Chinese Virus has been appropriate versus overblown. (See this post from July 6, 2020.). Now, with most of the population vaccinated, and the pandemic hopefully winding down, it’s time to take stock of where we are. During the year and a half since the cases of Covid-19 began to emerge, we have endured seemingly interminable stay-at-home orders and recommendations, “lockdowns,” business closures, millions thrown out of work, school closures, “social distancing,” mask mandates, the cancelation of all in-person social events, concerts, theater, and...

It hardly seems noteworthy anymore that Congress is proposing trillions of dollars in spending. After a parade of trillion-dollar spending bills over roughly the last year, congressional leaders are rolling out a budget that will pave the way for another $3.5 trillion in spending. The budget accounts for everything from infrastructure, to social welfare, Medicare expansion, and immigration. A package this broad would be irresponsible under any circumstance, but given the recent report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), it is especially problematic. On July 9, the CBO released its monthly budget review for June. The numbers did not paint...

On civil liberties grounds, the case for requiring vaccination is ironclad. Even libertarian philosophers like Robert Nozick admit that the government can coerce people to prevent injury to others. The argument for strict measures to halt the spread of a super-contagious and extremely dangerous virus is essentially the same as for laws against murder.

On 13 July, 2021, in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, a three-judge panel issued an opinion that held 18-20-Year-Old people have Second Amendment rights. To people who have studied the Second Amendment and the supporting documents at the Founding, this is an unsurprising conclusion. From the decision, p. 24:As with any matter of constitutional interpretation, “our inquiry begins with the text of the Constitution.” Altman v. City of High Point,330 F.3d 194, 200 (4th Cir. 2003). Both the text and structure of the Second Amendment, along with its place within the Constitution as a whole,...

The partisan political propaganda is stunning to behold. The partisan political propaganda is stunning to behold, even for The New York Times. This observation refers to the July 22 New York Times story on the Pelosi ban on two Republican congressmen from her Jan. 6 select committee, which now will consist of eight Pelosi puppets. The Times story opened with this paragraph: Speaker Nancy Pelosi moved on Wednesday to bar two of former President Donald J. Trump's most vociferous Republican defenders in Congress from joining a select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, saying their conduct...

CNSNews.com) - The Senate Armed Services Committee this week voted 23-3 to send the $777.9-billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2022 to the Senate floor. Among the provisions, the bill "Amends the Military Selective Service Act to require the registration of women for Selective Service," just as all men in the United States must register when they turn 18. (House Republicans in 2016 rejected a measure requiring women to register.) The Senate requirement for women to register follows a March 2020 report from the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service, established by Congress to study...

Speech suppression is a habit that the Biden administration and its liberal supporters can't seem to break. Many staffers may have picked up the habit in their student years: Colleges and universities have been routinely censoring "politically incorrect" speech for the last 30 years. As Thomas Sowell noted, "There are no institutions in America where free speech is more severely restricted than in our politically correct colleges and universities, dominated by liberals." Now, the Biden administration seems to be giving the colleges and universities some serious competition. Like many Democrats during the Trump presidency, they have come to see suppression...