Free Republic

While Americans know that guns take many innocent lives every year, many don’t know that firearms also save them. On May 15, an attacker at an apartment complex in Fort Smith, Ark., fatally shot a woman and then fired 93 rounds at other people before a man killed him with a bolt-action rifle. Police said he “likely saved a number of lives in the process.” On June 30, a 12-year-old Louisiana boy used a hunting rifle to stop an armed burglar who was threatening his mother’s life during a home invasion. On July 4, a Chicago gunman shot into a...

Six years ago, Dan Price, the founder and CEO of credit-card processing company Gravity Payments. made waves when he announced that he was raising the firm's minimum salary to $70,000 for his 120 employees. To accommodate the change, Price slashed his own $1 million salary. In the following years, revenue soared, and staff had many more babies and bought more homes, Price told Insider. The Seattle-based company's starting wages used to be roughly $35,000, Price said. But for the company to thrive, he felt he needed to make sure all employees were making enough to look after themselves.

The Centers for Disease Control warned that doctors must prepare for a wave of mumps, measles, leishmaniasis, and worse still, polio. Already, 20 people arriving from Afghanistan have been diagnosed with mumps or measles.

Former first lady Michelle Obama is already mobilizing celebrities in preparation for next year’s midterms, recruiting famous faces to push key legislation including the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would federalize elections and cancel voter identification requirements. Michelle Obama’s When We All Vote organization has announced a new slate of events featuring Scary Movie actress Regina Hall, TikTok celebrity La’Ron Hines, NBA star Chris Paul, and “The Breakfast Club” host Angela Yee. The events will focus on voter registration drives in local communities while also advancing Democrat-backed legislation.

Electronic cigarettes, which deliver nicotine without tobacco or combustion, are the most important harm-reducing alternative to smoking ever developed -- one that could prevent millions of premature deaths in the United States alone. Yet bureaucrats and politicians seem determined to negate that historic opportunity through regulations and taxes that threaten to cripple the industry. When a court-set deadline for "premarket" approval of vaping products came and went on Sept. 9, the Food and Drug Administration had received millions of applications but had not approved any. As a result, the agency says, every vaping device and nicotine liquid sold in the...

The United States is set to significantly increase the amount of Covid-19 vaccines it will ship to foreign nations beginning in 2022 in an effort to end the pandemic worldwide, the White House announced Wednesday. As part of a virtual Covid-19 summit on the margins of the UN General Assembly, President Joe Biden will announce that the US is purchasing an additional 500 million Pfizer Covid-19 vaccines to donate to low- and lower-middle-income countries around the world, a senior administration official said, previewing the summit. The newly announced 500 million doses are on top of the 500 million the US...

Autumn Equinox 2021 in the Northern Hemisphere arrives at 3:20 PM today.One day the summer storm is gathering,Golden Summer Evening – Barry Hiltonthe next thing you know the Autumn Equinox has arrivedAutumn Glows – Barry Hiltonand with it the passing of the dusty greens of late summer. At first they are replaced by autumn’s radiant display of hues. This season of ever shortening days and longer nights requires a sorting down, a retention of bare essentials. Thus all that finery is tossed to the wind, left to crinkle, brown, decay and nourish the barren earth. Their hosts tuck themselves down...

EASTON, Pa. - Classes across the country are looking a lot different with COVID still an issue. But even with masking & mass vaccinations, Lafayette College students are still catching the virus. Nearly ALL of the more than 2,500 Lafayette students are vaccinated, but 145 of them tested positive in just the past week. I was really sick about a day before I got tested," said senior William Chabala. He said he got his vaccinations and still suffered severe symptoms. "I had a runny nose, shivers, fever, headache, nausea, really tired, really tired, I never really felt that bad," Chabala...

President Joe Biden used his one-on-one meeting with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Tuesday to reprise a story about an Amtrak conductor who supposedly congratulated him for traveling 2 million miles on the rail service — despite having died before the story purportedly took place. After Biden noted that Johnson had traveled from New York to Washington, DC on Amtrak for their White House meeting, he proclaimed to Johnson and the assembled media that “I got to tell you a quick story that has nothing to do with anything.” The president began by recalling that when he was Vice President,...

Skin penetrating nanoparticles made airborne, enhanced with human chimeric spike proteins.Creating new MERS viruses with fatality rate greater than 30 percent.Newly leaked documents reveal researchers led by Peter Daszak applied for $14 million in funding.

Wuhan and US scientists were planning to release enhanced airborne coronavirus particles into Chinese bat populations to inoculate them against diseases that could jump to humans, leaked grant proposals dating from 2018 show. New documents show that just 18 months before the first Covid-19 cases appeared, researchers had submitted plans to release skin-penetrating nanoparticles and aerosols containing “novel chimeric spike proteins” of bat coronaviruses into cave bats in Yunnan, China. They also planned to create chimeric viruses, genetically enhanced to infect humans more easily, and requested $14million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) to fund the work. Papers,...

The top U.S. military officer met with his Russian counterpart Wednesday, against the backdrop of U.S. struggles to get military basing rights and other counterterrorism support in countries bordering Afghanistan — a move Moscow has flatly opposed. The meeting in the Finnish capital, Helsinki, between Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Chief of the Russian General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov comes at a crucial time in the wake of the military withdrawal from Afghanistan. Without troops on the ground, the U.S. needs to forge more basing, intelligence sharing and other agreements to help monitor...

Beltway raconteur Bob Woodward has a track record for sensationalizing gossip in order to create buzz and sell books. In American high schools and the Washington Beltway -- is there a difference? -- "buzz" is a term for manipulating emotional and social responses to achieve a goal. Woodward? He wants to sell books and demonstrate he matters, years after Watergate made him a Washington Post legend. In the case of high school, the buzz creators are usually Mean Girls decapitating Nice Girl rivals or punishing boys and girls who ignore or abhor Mean Girl deceits, scams and deceptions. Washington? Hey,...

Scientists have created the ultimate GM crop: contraceptive corn. Waiving fields of maize may one day save the world from overpopulation. The pregnancy prevention plants are the handiwork of the San Diego biotechnology company Epicyte, where researchers have discovered a rare class of human antibodies that attack sperm. By isolating the genes that regulate the manufacture of these antibodies, and by putting them in corn plants, the company has created tiny horticultural factories that make contraceptives. 'We have a hothouse filled with corn plants that make anti-sperm antibodies,' said Epicyte president Mitch Hein.

A whistleblower has claimed China deliberately spread Covid at a military tournament 2 months before the rest of the world knew about the deadly virus. Ex-Chinese Communist Party insider Wei Jingsheng said The World Military Games held in Wuhan in October 2019 could have acted as the virus' first superspreader event. He claimed it was no coincidence some of the 9,000 international athletes who gathered for the event reportedly became sick with a mystery illness. "I thought the Chinese government would take this opportunity to spread the virus during the games as many foreigners would show up there." He also...

Nonunion workers make up nearly 90% of the U.S. workforce. resident Joe Biden is stabbing them in the back. The massive $3.5 trillion budget bill Biden and Democratic lawmakers are trying to ram through Congress discriminates against nonunion workers and even forces some of them to pay higher taxes than union workers. Union membership in the U.S. has been declining for over 50 years. Biden is bent on reversing the trend, using the federal government to rig the system in favor of organizers and twist the arms of nonunion workers and employers. Biden said that unions "brung me to the...

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*** The 17th Amendment instituted the direct election by voters of U.S. senators who until then were chosen by state legislatures pursuant to Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution. The Amendment was part of the early 20th century’s progressive movement reforms. It is time to repeal that amendment. *** In constructing the legislative branch of the federal government, the Founders established a bicameral Congress -- the House of Representatives based on a state’s population that would directly represent the people in their legislative districts and the Senate that would afford the states equal representation in Congress regardless of their...

WASHINGTON, Saturday, Sept. 21, 1861. There has nothing occurred on the other side to-day, worthy of mention, except there were three or four pickets killed near the Chain Bridge. They belonged to the Second Michigan. Gen. MCCLELLAN went over the river at dusk to-night, but this probably indicates nothing more than that he is ready and waiting for something to turn up. Gen. MCCALL's Brigade of Pennsylvania Reserves was reviewed this morning by Gen. McCLELLAN and Staff, and the Prince DE JOINVILLE and suite. Gen. BAKER, of Oregon, has been made a Major-General. DISPATCH TO THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. WASHINGTON, Saturday,...