Free Republic

David Mikkelson, the co-founder and CEO of Snopes, the well-known online fact-checker, has apologized and admitted to “serious lapses in judgement” for plagiarizing more than 50 articles.“The results of our internal audit confirmed that I engaged in multiple serious copyright violations of content that Snopes didn’t have rights to use. There is no excuse for my serious lapses in judgement,” Mikkelson said in a statement.He added, “I am sorry. I have given full authority to our managing editor, Doreen Marchionni, to take any measures needed to address these issues.”

By the middle of the week, as cities across Afghanistan were falling like dominoes to the Taliban and U.S. diplomats appeared increasingly at risk, President Biden’s plan for an orderly end to the United States’ longest war was quickly falling apart. On Wednesday evening, Biden convened his top advisers to assess the ominous turn of events. One by one, in the cramped Situation Room in the White House basement, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken outlined the administration’s options for ensuring the security of U.S. personnel. Biden asked them to return...

Anti-government “extremists” who stand against mask mandates and experimental COVID vaccines, as well as those who insist the was 2020 election was rigged, pose an imminent threat national security threat ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks — according to the Department of Homeland Security.

A team of Israeli researchers has found that one dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine provides 100% protection to youth ages 12-15 within three weeks, raising the question of whether the second dose is necessary. Injecting a single dose could be considered for young teenagers in Israel “both because the second dose adds relatively little, if any, immunogenicity and we know that for some young people there can be complications like myocarditis,” Prof. Nadav Davidovitch of Ben-Gurion University, who led the research, told The Jerusalem Post.

It is the first direct study of how such a delay affects coronavirus antibody levels, and could inform vaccine scheduling decisions in other countries, the authors say. “This study further supports a growing body of evidence that the approach taken in the UK for delaying that second dose has really paid off,” Gayatri Amirthalingam, an epidemiologist at Public Health England in London and a co-author of the preprint, said during a press briefing. Many COVID-19 vaccines are given in two doses: the first initiates an immune response, and the second, ‘booster’ shot strengthens it. Clinical trials of the three vaccines...

The Aiken County Republican Party in South Carolina announced Friday it voted to censure Senator Lindsey Graham over his support of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure package.The group said in a statement to Newsweek Saturday that the vote was not against "realistic achievable and necessary infrastructure projects" and that it understands the importance of strong infrastructure including roads, bridges and rural broadband internet access.

Lindsey Graham’s moment, it seemed, came on the evening of Jan. 6. With crews still cleaning up the blood and broken glass left by the mob that just hours before had stormed the Capitol, he took the Senate floor to declare, “Count me out” and “Enough is enough.” Half a year later, a relaxed Mr. Graham, sitting in his Senate office behind a desk strewn with balled napkins and empty Coke Zero bottles, says he did not mean what almost everybody else thought he meant. “That was taken as, ‘I’m out, count me out,’ that somehow, you know, that I’m...

Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), who is running for governor again, disappeared abruptly from a virtual forum for the disabled community to make it to a campaign fundraiser on Thursday in Las Vegas with Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak (D), who is accused of abusing his ex-wife. McAuliffe was supposed to participate on a Zoom call, hosted by the Arc of Northern Virginia, about disability issues alongside Virginia’s Republican gubernatorial candidate, Glenn Youngkin, and other statewide candidates. The Virginia Democrat, however, experienced a scheduling conflict between the forum for the disabled community and his Vegas event. An invitation obtained by...

Twitter link: Breaking: Brutal right-wing vs antifa brawl breaks out at anti-mask protest in Los Angeles. One of the antifa who charges in to fight gets pummeled to the ground. A woman trying to help him gets hit on the head. The antifa end up retreating. https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1426672808537595904?s=20

Pray For the Peace of JerusalemPsalm 135 1 Praise the Lord.[a] Praise the name of the Lord; praise him, you servants of the Lord, 2 you who minister in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of our God. 3 Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good; sing praise to his name, for that is pleasant. 4 For the Lord has chosen Jacob to be his own, Israel to be his treasured possession. 5 I know that the Lord is great, that our Lord is greater than all gods. 6 The Lord does whatever pleases...

Memorial of Saint Maximilian Kolbe Matthew 19:13-15 Friends, in our Gospel for today, Jesus proposes that the kingdom of heaven belongs to those who are like children. Why? For starters, children don’t know how to dissemble, how to be one way and act another. They are what they are; they act in accordance with their deepest nature. "Kids say the darndest things" because they don’t know how to hide the truth of their reactions. In this, they are like stars or flowers or animals, things that are what they are, unambiguously, uncomplicatedly. They are in accord with God’s deepest intentions...

The Church and China: Can Catholics serve two masters?Cardinal Pietro Parolin praised the witness of Chinese Catholics Thursday, urging them to be good citizens, while reiterating his support for a controversial agreement between the Vatican and Beijing on the appointment of Chinese bishops. But the Vatican secretary of state’s comments raise questions about whether it is possible to live as both a faithful Catholic and a loyal subject of the Chinese Communist Party, and whether it will remain so.In an interview published August 12, Parolin, who oversees the Holy See’s diplomatic relations, said that dialogue with the Chinese government over...

In 2014, MIT computer science student Jeremy Rubin offered all undergraduate students on campus $100 worth of bitcoin. Seventy percent of the student body participated in the free bitcoin giveaway. Some ended up wasting their coin at a sushi restaurant that took bitcoin. Others launched side hustles helping classmates set up crypto wallets. “One of the worst things and one of the best things at MIT is this restaurant called Thelonious Monkfish,” said Phu. “I spent a lot of my crypto buying sushi.” rabucco now runs Alameda Research, which manages over $1 billion in digital assets and trades up to...

Explanation: Stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy are scattered through this eye-catching field of view. From the early hours after midnight on August 13, the 30 second exposure of the night sky over Busko-Zdroj, Poland records the colorful and bright trail of a Perseid meteor. Seen near the peak of the annual Perseid meteor shower it flashes from lower left to upper right. The hurtling grain of cosmic sand, a piece of dust from periodic comet Swift-Tuttle, vaporized as it passed through planet Earth's atmosphere at almost 60 kilometers per second. Just above and right of center, well beyond...

The U.N. secretary-general said on Friday that Afghanistan is "spinning out of control" and urged the Taliban, which is capturing huge swaths of territory, to halt its offensive so they could "negotiate in good faith." "The message from the international community to those on the warpath must be clear: seizing power through military force is a losing proposition. That can only lead to prolonged civil war or to the complete isolation of Afghanistan," António Guterres said.

Stay yourselves, and wonder; cry ye out, and cry: they are drunken, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink. For the Lord hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes: the prophets and your rulers, the seers hath he covered.And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I cannot; for it is sealed: And the book is delivered to him that is...

Taliban fighters have captured Mazar-i-Sharif, the last major city in northern Afghanistan which was still under government control. The fall of the traditional anti-Taliban bastion marked a major gain for the militants, who have been advancing at speed as US-led forces withdraw. Local officials said Mazar-i-Sharif - the capital of Balkh province and fourth largest city in Afghanistan - fell largely without a fight. Abas Ebrahimzada, a lawmaker from Balkh, told the Associated Press news agency that the national army were the first to surrender, which then prompted pro-government forces and other militia to give up.

If I were Putin and Xi I'd coordinate simultaneous invasions. The time is perfect and besides Russia and China OWN Biden.

President Biden on Saturday authorized the deployment of 5,000 troops to Afghanistan amid a U.S. pullout that has emboldened the Taliban to take over multiple cities. "I have authorized the deployment of approximately 5,000 US troops to make sure we can have an orderly and safe drawdown of US personnel and other allied personnel and an orderly and safe evacuation of Afghans who helped our troops during our mission and those at special risk from the Taliban advance," Biden said in a statement. “I have ordered our armed forces and our intelligence community to ensure that we will maintain the...

Polish President Andrzej Duda on Saturday signed into law a bill limiting restitution for Holocaust-related claims. In a Saturday statement, Duda said: "I made a decision today on the act, which in recent months was the subject of a lively and loud debate at home and abroad. After an in-depth analysis, I have decided to sign the amendment." Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid), responded: "Today, Poland approved, not for the first time, an anti-Semitic and unethical law. Tonight, I instructed the chargé d'affaires of the Israeli Embassy in Warsaw to return to Israel immediately for indefinite consultations." "The...