Free Republic

TRADITIONIS CUSTODES: Separating Fact from FictionWhen, on July 16, 2021, Pope Francis promulgated Traditionis Custodes, restricting the traditional Latin Mass, he said that according to the results of a recent Vatican consultation of bishops, the norms of his predecessors Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, had been exploited by some who attend the traditional Latin Mass to sow dissent from the Second Vatican Council. In the apostolic letter, Pope Francis writes in regard to the survey of bishops:“In line with the initiative of my Venerable Predecessor Benedict XVI to invite the bishops to assess the application of the...

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that a “special-operations unit and a contingent of Marines have been secretly operating in Taiwan to train military forces there, U.S. officials said, part of efforts to shore up the island’s defenses as concern regarding potential Chinese aggression mounts. About two dozen members of U.S. special-operations and support troops are conducting training for small units of Taiwan’s ground forces.”For folks like me who distrust the Chinese Communists, and thus pray Beijing doesn’t attempt to conquer Taiwan, this is good news.This information clearly was leaked, probably to serve as a deterrent, reminding China that a...

Newly uncovered video shows Anthony Fauci and other HHS officials discussing how a new virus from China could be used to enforce universal vaccination back in October of 2019.

A team of academics has disclosed today two vulnerabilities known collectively as TPM-FAIL that could allow an attacker to retrieve cryptographic keys stored inside TPMs. Thanks to efforts from the research team, both vulnerabilities have been fixed, which is a good thing since both issues can be weaponized in doable real-world attacks -- something that is very rare in the case of TPM vulnerabilities. TPM stands for Trusted Platform Module...used to ensure hardware integrity during the boot-up process or to attest various cryptographic operations, such as handling digital certificates, ensuring HTTPS connections on servers, or verifying authentication-related processes. However, as...

If there is still one person somewhere in America who doesn’t think President Joe Biden and the toxic progressives who increasingly call the shots for the White House and the Democratic Party are heading swiftly down an authoritarian road, here’s yet another illustration:div class="thm-piano-mop"> “The Administration strongly opposes section 716, which would detract from readiness and limit a commander’s options for enforcing good order and discipline when a Service member fails to obey a lawful order to receive a vaccination …“The Administration also strongly opposes section 720, which would create a new and overly broad exemption from the vaccination requirement...

China’s aggressiveness in the face of Biden’s weakness could plunge the world into war. Its dictator Xi Jinping is thinking about issues that few Americans understand or even know about.China has been violating Taiwan’s airspace with massive numbers of aircraft, including nuclear-capable bombers accompanied by fighters in recent days. But October 5th was the last such incursion, a pause that has no public explanation. The Chinese government feels no need to explain itself to its own people or to the world.These provocations could well be a prelude to an attack against what the Beijing regime considers a rebel province. There...

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland asking him to clarify what he meant by a crackdown on the “harassment” of school officials in his recent memo, warning that the directive could stifle parents’ constitutional right to free speech, according to a report. “In it you directed federal law enforcement to partner with state and local governments to address ‘threats of violence, and other forms of intimidation and harassment’ of ‘school administrators, board members, teachers and staff’ in public schools,” McConnell​ (R-Ky.​) said in a letter to the attorney general on Friday, according to...

The U.S. Navy announced Thursday that a nuclear submarine, the USS Connecticut, struck an object in the South China Sea on October 2. No one was injured in the crash, which took place in international waters. “The submarine remains in a safe and stable condition,” the Navy said. “USS Connecticut’s nuclear propulsion plant and spaces were not affected and remain fully operational. The extent of damage to the remainder of the submarine is being assessed. The U.S. Navy has not requested assistance. The incident will be investigated.” According to The Washington Post, the Navy disclosed the collision Thursday, about five...

Bengaluru: Two drugmakers in the country have requested permission to end their late-stage trials on Merck & Co's experimental antiviral drug molnupiravir in moderate COVID-19 patients. The two drugmakers, Aurobindo Pharma Ltd and MSN Laboratories plan to continue late-stage trails of the drug for those with mild COVID-19, the drug regulator's expert committee said on Friday. The two companies separately sought permission to end trials in the case of moderate COVID-19 patients after having submitted interim clinical trial data around the effectiveness of the drug in treating this category of patients, the committee disclosed, throwing into question the efficacy of...

Wildfires in Oregon, California, and Washington State this summer made for spectacular headlines. The media took their lead in press releases issued from the respective state capitals to blame drought—allegedly induced by man-caused climate change—for what they called the worst fires in history. But was climate change really the underlying cause? And were the fires really the worst in history? A bit of real history can be enlightening. Peshtigo is today a small city in northeastern Wisconsin, but 150 years ago it was the site of the largest and deadliest single wildfire in North American history. On October 8, 1871,...

Finland on Thursday paused the use of Moderna's (MRNA.O) COVID-19 vaccine for younger males due to reports of a rare cardiovascular side effect, joining Sweden and Denmark in limiting its use. Mika Salminen, director of the Finnish health institute, said Finland would instead give Pfizer's vaccine to men born in 1991 and later. Finland offers shots to people aged 12 and over. "A Nordic study involving Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark found that men under the age of 30 who received Moderna Spikevax had a slightly higher risk than others of developing myocarditis," he said. Swedish and Danish health officials...

<p>Biden campaigned as someone who could bring the country together. Since taking office, he's made no effort to do that. Instead, he has continually conceded to his party's far-left wing, which is growing crazier by the day. It's not clear if Biden is just too weak to take them on or if he is buying into their craziness, but either way, people are not happy. The Democrats are somehow making the Republicans seem appealing again to your average non-politically aligned voter. Given the current disarray in the Republican Party, this was a tall task. It's almost as if the two parties are competing to see who can turn off the middle more. This week, the Democrats are in the lead. Their policies are so crazy not even their allies in the dominant corporate media can succeed in selling them.</p>

In 1958, the Navy proposed overhauling the Iowa-class ships by removing all of the 16-inch guns and replacing them with anti-aircraft and anti-submarine missiles. The new “guided missile battleships” would also carry four Regulus II cruise missiles, each of which could flatten a city a thousand miles distant with a nuclear warhead more than 100 times as powerful as the bomb used on Hiroshima.

Paper added over 800,000 to total of kids hospitalized with coronavirus.. The New York Times issued a massive correction Thursday after the liberal newspaper severely misreported the number of COVID hospitalities among children in the United States by more than 800,000. A report headlined "A New Vaccine Strategy for Children: Just One Dose, for Now," by science and health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli, was peppered with errors before major changes were made to the story. The Times initially reported "nearly 900,000 children have been hospitalized" with COVID since the pandemic began, when the factual data in the now-corrected version is that...

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was reportedly chewed out by Senate Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) after the debt ceiling vote Thursday night. After the vote to approve the debt ceiling increase, Schumer was “confronted” by Sen. John Thune (R-SD) and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) for a derogatory floor speech towards Republicans, Politico Playbook reported. Thune reportedly told Schumer his speech was “inappropriate and tone deaf.”

Our ruling classes are infected with arrogance, egotism and condescension. So convinced are they of their inherent superiority that their desires – whether motivated by purported altruism or blunt self-interest – are subordinated to nothing; not even the most fundamental principles of American society like truth and due process. They are doing immeasurable damage to this country and its people. The Biden administration, its puppetmasters behind the scenes, and its willing warriors in Congress and the press, are all engaged in a full-blown propaganda war against ordinary Americans. This started with absurd accusations against former President Donald Trump, but quickly...

Mayor Bill de Blasio is phasing out New York City’s Gifted and Talented program, he announced Friday — bowing to critics who complain that the coveted model is racist. Current students in the program will be able to stay in accelerated-learning classes to completion. But new cohorts they will be completely eliminated by fall 2022, ending the current testing for 4-year-old city kids. “The era of judging four-year-olds based on a single test is over,” de Blasio said Friday. It is being replaced by Brilliant NYC, a program offering students aged 8 and up chances for accelerated learning — while...

The following is an email Facebook sent to Workplace users in regards to the outage of Oct 4, 2021 *** Dear Workplace Admin, Firstly, we’d like to apologize again for the outage on October 4, 2021. We know that your teams work incredibly hard to make the most of Workplace every day and we are truly sorry for the disruption the outage may have caused for your business. We appreciate your patience while we fully investigated this incident and its impact. This incident was purely an internal issue and there were no malicious third parties or bad actors involved in...

Sen. Rand Paul: We’re Accumulating Debt at Rate of Over $2 Million per Minute Rumble ...

An illustration showing the DART spacecraft blasting toward the asteroid Didymos. (Image credit: NASA) NASA has announced the launch date for an upcoming mission to punch an asteroid in the face with a high-speed spacecraft. The mission, called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), is scheduled to launch at 10:20 p.m. PST (7:20 p.m. EST) on Nov. 23, and it could help the world's space agencies figure out how to divert potentially lethal asteroids from impacting Earth, according to a NASA statement. DART will test an asteroid defense plan called the kinetic impactor technique — essentially, shooting one or more...