Free Republic

Sacramento -- The California legislature is set to return to the state Capitol from summer recess next Monday to make final decisions on more than a dozen bills harmful to California communities. The California Family Council opposes 17 bills threatening the unborn, parental rights, freedom of speech and religion, and encourage racism, drug abuse, sex trafficking, and assisted suicide. Earlier in the year, the legislature killed bills promoting religious liberty and providing sex education transparency, and pushed off until next year a bill to protect children from sex abusers. Most of the 17 bills CFC is opposing made it through...

Virgil and Dante observe hypocrites in the 8th circle of Hell In Dante’s Inferno hypocrites are found deep in hell, forced to walk in circles while wearing golden robes that are in fact gilded lead. Rick Lowry advises how to identify them back here on earth:There’s a handy device for determining status in American society: whether someone feels obligated to abide by his or her own COVID rules.The true masters of the universe, the people who imagine themselves the great and good without which society can’t function, are the ones who preach but don’t practice, who mandate but don’t comply.Hypocrisy,...

The rapidly escalating surge in COVID-19 infections across the U.S. has caused a shortage of nurses and other front-line staff in virus hotspots that can no longer keep up with the flood of unvaccinated patients and are losing workers to burnout and lucrative out-of-state temporary gigs. Florida, Arkansas and Louisiana all have more people hospitalized with COVID-19 than any other point in the pandemic, and nursing staff is being stretched thin.

AUSTIN, Texas - The Texas Supreme Court has voided a state district judge's temporary restraining order barring the arrest of Democratic lawmakers who have refused to return to the Legislature, putting in jeopardy the liberty of some Democrats who have returned to the state.

As we have over the past two weeks, we are continuing to examine amicus briefs filed in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization which the Supreme Court will hear this fall. ... crucial point: “[w]hether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional?” The brief was filed by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, joined by two Catholic Dioceses in Mississippi, and other religious groups. Here are three points made in the amicus brief: #1. “The Constitution does not create a right to an abortion of an unborn child before viability or at any other stage...

“Where kids had not been exposed to their normal viral load that they are typically exposed to throughout the year, once they got back together and people started to be exposed to these viruses again we’ve seen a huge increase,” [Dr. Derek Jones at Family Medicine Center] said. “The kids are sicker than usual because their immune systems hadn’t got the little exposures that tweak their antibodies throughout the year, so these kids are quite sick when they’re catching RSV.”

Like a perpetual motion machine, a time crystal forever cycles between states without consuming energy. Physicists claim to have built this new phase of matter inside a quantum computer. A time crystal flips back and forth between two states without burning energy. Maylee for Quanta Magazine Natalie Wolchover Senior Writer/Editor July 30, 2021 VIEW PDF/PRINT MODE condensed matter physicscrystalsphase transitionsphysicsquantum computingAll topics Watch and Learn In a preprint posted online Thursday night, researchers at Google in collaboration with physicists at Stanford, Princeton and other universities say that they have used Google’s quantum computer to demonstrate a genuine “time crystal.” In...

I give some thoughts on the increasingly tyrannical New York political class, re: COVID-19 passports, and explain how it will lead to a bifurcated society.

Black soldier fly larvae (BSF) can replace soybean meal (SBM) as protein source in the diet for growing pigs. That was discovered by a multidisciplinary research team of Wageningen University and Research (WUR) and Leiden University, the Netherlands. There is increasing pressure against the use of SBM as a source of dietary protein source in animal feed, as cultivating SBM requires cropland that could also be used to grow food crops. BSF is potentially a more suitable and sustainable protein source, as it can be grown on waste and residual streams from food production. Trials The researchers studied two groups...

As more institutions enact COVID-19 vaccination mandates, Catholic leaders are divided over whether or not the faithful can seek religious exemptions from the orders. On Aug. 6, the Catholic bishops of Colorado published a letter pushing back against the mandates, writing that they violate “personal freedoms of conscience and expression,” and embedded a template letter for parishioners to get an exemption signature from their pastor. Meanwhile, priests in the Archdiocese of New York were advised in a memo from the archdiocese on July 30 to not get involved in religious exemptions from COVID-19 vaccination mandates because doing so would be...

CNN didn’t just make one mistake trying to push President Joe Biden to extend the eviction moratorium. It made more than 200,000. That’s how much money it helped raise for a “mom” who wasn’t even the real mother of the kids in the story. CNN ran a story on the August 2 edition of Erin Burnett OutFront fear-mongering over the moratorium ending by showing alleged “mom” Dasha Kelly on the verge of being evicted from her apartment. CNN correspondent Nick Watt propagandized how “Kelly and her [three] little girls” were served a 24-hour eviction notice to throw them “onto the...

ALBANY, NY—In a stunning press conference, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced he will be resigning from his term as Governor to spend more time sexually harassing family and loved ones. "It has been an honor to serve as Governor," said Cuomo, "But all the groping of beautiful young women and killing of senior citizens has taken my focus away from where it needs to be: on my family. Starting next month, I will retire to focus on only harassing my dear family, and killing the elderly in my own community-- something I have neglected for far too long."...

Florida is requesting hundreds of ventilators from the federal government after a surge in COVID-19 across the state, according to a Department of Health and Human Services planning document obtained by ABC News affiliate Local 10. The request was made on Friday for 300 ventilators “to replace expended state stores,” the document said. It was not clear how the ventilators would be allocated but they were expected to arrive in the state on Monday, according to the outlet. The request comes as Florida is seeing more coronavirus cases and hospitalizations as the delta variant spreads mostly among unvaccinated individuals.

<p>Emmy-winning U.S. actor Christina Applegate has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and described her condition as a "tough road."</p><p>"A few months ago I was diagnosed with MS. It's been a strange journey. But I have been so supported by people that I know who also have this condition. It's been a tough road. But as we all know, the road keeps going," she said in a tweet on Tuesday....</p>

Archaeologists from the Universities of Manchester and Cardiff have discovered the origins of Arthur's Stone, one of the UK's most famous Stone Age monuments. Manchester's Professor Julian Thomas, who led the excavation, says the imposing Herefordshire tomb is linked to nearby 'halls of the dead', which were discovered in 2013. It is the first time the construction—which inspired the 'stone table' in C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe—has been properly excavated. Dating to the Neolithic period in 3700BC, Arthur's Stone is located on a lonely hilltop outside of the village of Dorstone, facing the Black Mountains in...

Morning Joe on Tuesday ripped into Ron DeSantis for perceived Covid sins. Washington Post editor and MSNBC analyst Eugene Robinson said Republican Florida Governor DeSantis' prohibition of localities mandating masks, and talk of withholding the pay of school officials who try to mandate them, was "criminal." Mike Barnicle passionately agreed, saying that DeSantis is "going to roll the dice with children’s lives . . . under the guise of ambition, his political ambition, running for higher office, AKA the presidency." No word from the Morning Joe crew on the dangers posed to Americans by the Biden policy of letting countless...

American drivers could soon trade paying taxes on gas at the pump for owing the government annual 'per-mile user fees,' under a new pilot program recently passed by the Senate in Joe Biden's $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal. The bill passed a Senate vote on Tuesday and will go on to the House of Representatives. The massive deal puts $125 million toward exploring the possibility of a federal vehicle miles traveled tax (VMT) by funding the launch of federal, state and local VMT pilot programs. It gives Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg the ability to award grants to local and regional...

President Joe Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill nears certain passage in the Senate with the blessing of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), even though he strongly opposed a trillion-dollar spending program proposed by President Donald Trump in 2016. “What I hope we will clearly avoid, and I’m confident we will, is a trillion-dollar stimulus,” McConnell said in December 2016 after Trump won the presidential election. Trump campaigned on the idea of massive infrastructure spending, a proposal that McConnell was not eager to endorse. “We need to do this carefully and correctly, and the issue of how to pay for...

Dominion Voting Systems, a technology company that was targeted with disinformation by former President Donald Trump and allies, filed lawsuits on Tuesday against two right-wing television channels, alleging they aided the spread of baseless conspiracy theories about its role in the 2020 election. The lawsuits, which are the latest in a string of legal action from the company, name Newsmax and One America News as defendants. The lawsuit against OAN also named two of the network's far-right personalities, Chanel Rion and Christina Bobb, as well as the network's owners, Robert and Charles Herring. John Poulos, the chief executive of Dominion,...

Gov. Phil Murphy said Monday that he plans to travel to his Italian estate for 10 days beginning this week as COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and other metrics continue to rise in New Jersey. Murphy said he was planning to leave on Tuesday evening to join his wife and children at their multimillion-dollar estate about two hours north of Rome. The State Department has issued an advisory recommending that travelers reconsider going to Italy due to COVID-19. Anyone coming to the U.S. from Italy must provide a negative COVID-19 viral test taken within three calendar days of travel.