Free Republic

Are we really doing this again? Are we really talking about returning to masking? Again? Last weekend, Los Angeles County reinstituted its mask mandate for indoor settings. More than 60 percent of the county is fully vaccinated, but the mandate applies to both vaccinated and unvaccinated people. The move is absurd in several ways. For starters, it throws shade on the vaccines. If vaccination works, why do the vaccinated need to be masked? And if we do still need to be masked post-vaccine, why would anyone take the jabs? The vaccinated are protected, and the unvaccinated have had enough time...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem Psalm 119ס Samekh 113 I hate double-minded people, but I love your law. 114 You are my refuge and my shield; I have put my hope in your word. 115 Away from me, you evildoers, that I may keep the commands of my God! 116 Sustain me, my God, according to your promise, and I will live; do not let my hopes be dashed. 117 Uphold me, and I will be delivered; I will always have regard for your decrees. 118 You reject all who stray from your decrees, for their delusions come to...

PARABLE OF THE RICH MAN & LAZARUS . LUKE 16 New International Version ©1984, emphases added Abrdgd: the complete text is in your Bible . Resources to CLICK: To read LUKE 16 in full To hear MAX McLEAN reading it To hear a DRAMATIZATION of it To see an ANIMATION of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John Harmony of the Gospels 30 A.D. Bible Timeline LAZARUS BEGS LUKE 16:19-31 "There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores...

Members of the Shiawassee County Board of Commissioners are shown with County Coordinator Brian Boggs (standing) in this YouTube screen grab from the commissioners' meeting Thursday, July 15. ============================================================================== SHIAWASSEE COUNTY, MI -- Members of the Shiawassee County Board of Commissioners agreed to share a windfall in federal COVID-19 relief funds with employees last week. What they didn’t tell the public was that top-level administrators for the county would receive far bigger payments -- up to $25,000 each -- than front-line workers who were directly exposed to coronavirus as they cleaned buildings and provided vaccines to residents. Records obtained by...

A new Gallup poll has found that positive ratings of relations between black Americans and white Americans have reached the lowest point in more than two decades of measuring the statistic. “Currently, 42% of Americans say relations between the two groups are ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ good, while 57% say they are ‘somewhat’ or ‘very’ bad,” Gallup reported. A significant shift occurred in 2013, which The Daily Wire’s Ryan Saavedra noted is when the Black Lives Matter movement began.

As of Thursday, the number of homicide victims in Philadelphia this year is up to at least 314 people. That’s up 35% from this time last year. Philadelphia now has the highest murder rate in the country per capita of the country’s 10 largest cities. Now, we’re getting a look at the areas hit hardest by the gun violence. More than one-third of the shootings have happened in just five zip codes in North Philadelphia, Hunting Park, West Philadelphia, Kingsessing, Kensington and Port Richmond. As the death toll continues to climb at a record-breaking pace, some city leaders are demanding...

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...