Free Republic

If Columbus Day was a Bill O’Reilly book:(Apologies to Michael Ramirez. And, I guess, Bill O’Reilly.)Gary Kasparov, former chess slave under the former Soviet Union regime, has this to say about woke America’s commitment to cancelling Christopher Columbus:(Columbus) achieved great things and is worthy of being honored for them with a national holiday. His incredible feats of exploration were due to individual qualities that Americans should find admirable, and once did in near unanimity. Holding historical figures to modern standards of morality is a method of antihistorical political control—much like the pseudohistory I grew up being taught in the Soviet...

WASHINGTON, Thursday, Oct. 10. The following is the report of the sick in the hospitals on the 4th inst., as officially reported: E-street Hospital, 104; Seminary, 176; Union, 178; Columbian, 209; General, 58; Alexandria, 186; total, 911. This is a slight increase over the last week, but yet a very low total of sick in hospitals considering the large number of men in the camps. The terrific repulse of the rebels by the gun-boat Monticello, and the successful retreat of the Twentieth Indiana, is the theme of the day in the Department corridors and the lobbies of the hotels. It...

A new study published in Nature’s Scientific Reports by researchers at the Danish National Space Institute at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem suggests that the Sun’s activity in screening cosmic rays affects clouds and, ultimately, the Earth's energy budget with concomitant climatic effects. Science editor David Whitehouse interviews Professor Henrik Svensmark, one of the study's authors.

Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time Luke 11:29-32 Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus tells the crowd that they will receive no sign except the sign of Jonah, which was a prophetic code for his death and Resurrection. Everything Jesus said and did, in one way or another, is an anticipation of his Resurrection. The God of Israel, the God of Jesus Christ, is a God of life, a God of the living. He hates death and the ways of death. He hates sin, which brings about spiritual death; he hates physical illness, which brings about bodily death; he hates corruption, which...

Paris (AFP) - A hundred billion dollars every year –- that's the aid promised more than a decade ago to help developing nations curb their carbon pollution and adapt to devastating climate impacts. But rich countries have not delivered on that pledge, a failure that could undermine a critical COP26 climate summit in Glasgow next month already riven with tensions, experts say. The vow to gradually ramp up aid for the Global South to $100 billion (86.5 billion euros) per year by 2020 was first made at the 2009 UN climate summit in Copenhagen. A decade later, wealthy nations were...

Texas A&M fans created a raucous environment at Kyle Field on Saturday night after the Aggies upset No. 1 Alabama in the biggest college football shocker of the 2021 season. Police at Kyle Field may have had the toughest job of the night – escorting coach Nick Saban off the field. Texas A&M quarterback Zach Calzada (10) is surrounded by fans after the team's win over Alabama in an NCAA college football game Saturday, Oct. 9, 2021, in College Station, Texas. Texas A&M quarterback Zach Calzada (10) is surrounded by fans after the team's win over Alabama in an NCAA...

Among the federal holidays, Columbus Day has become one of the least honored, partially due to controversy about misdeeds associated with colonization. In fact, Columbus never set foot on or came close to any territory that later became part of the continental United States. The history of Christopher Columbus is actually less messy and more consequential than many of the other heroes of our national holidays. There is not only a great deal to celebrate in Columbus, but the man embodied a range of attributes that are necessary to solving many of our contemporary problems and even saving our country...

A massive solar flare is due to hit Earth today, authorities are warning - potentially disrupting power grids and bringing the Northern Lights as far south as New York. The flare - officially known as a coronal mass ejection (CME) - was observed on Saturday on the side of the sun directly facing our planet and comes as we enter a period of increased solar activity. An alert was published by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) which warned the geomagnetic storm could cause power grid fluctuations with voltage alarms at higher latitudes, where the Earth is more...

Before you start throwing things, I’m not suggesting that people with religious concerns about the vaccines should ignore those concerns. They may be serious and valid, and for those people, should be pursued. I could even add one: 19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? 20 For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body. (1Co 6:19-20 NAS)The idea that you might deliberately allow the injection of a harmful agent...

The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) was established in 1990 and is managed by both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a way to collect information about harmful side effects potentially caused by vaccinations. It’s meant to serve as a sort of “early warning system” so healthcare professionals can pivot in the event a vaccine causes unforeseen damage to patients. When this happens, and it occasionally does with all vaccines, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) provides a claims procedure to potentially provide compensation for those who are...

The fighting over vaccine mandates continues, but the tug-of-war may soon displace a huge number of Seattle’s law enforcement. The city of Seattle, Washington, recently established a vaccine mandate for all city employees, which includes police, with a deadline of October 18th – or face possible termination of employment. Among those who haven’t submitted proof of vaccination are 292 police officers, and an additional 111 awaiting approval of submitted exemption paperwork, according to the Daily Mail. This creates a total of 403 officers that may lose their jobs on the 18th, if Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan enforces the deadline. The...

One of the fascinating things I have found during the Covid scam and subsequent fake vaccine push has been the way that it has caused individuals to reveal themselves as to which side they stand in this spiritual war. The Covid scam was the cover to push the poisonous vaccines. Thus, one’s position on the vaxx is a litmus test on the road to battle. Some people, many people I would say, have taken the vaxx in good faith and now find themselves in spiritual as well as physical trouble. For those souls, you have my thoughts and prayers. But...

Until now, the war has been theoretic, but that time is past. The war is present and ongoing. Like any war, there are a lot of soldiers sitting around waiting for orders. There are no orders forthcoming, because there are no generals, real generals, who recognize that the oath they took was for this exact time in history and for no other reason on earth. While there might not be any true American generals in the military, there might be some direction, if one takes the time to try and discern it from the noise. Like tuning in a radio,...

Let’s go, Brandon, and all you establishment jerks are Brandon. The beauty of “Let’s Go, Brandon” is how it not only captures the utter contempt that America has for our alleged president, who is currently polling about as well as Michael Moore would be among Golden Corral managers, but how it captures what is either unbelievable cluelessness among the media, or unbelievable mendacity. Probably some of both. NASCAR driver Brandon Brown, who had more successfully driven in circles than the other guys he was driving in circles with in whatever the Xfinity Series at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama is, was...

China’s display of military force can be seen as an open challenge to the US and its allies Though it may merely be a symbolic display of muscle-flexing, the rapid escalation of Chinese military activity around Taiwan over the last few months has raised concern around the world. That tensions were heightened when a total of 149 Chinese aircraft invaded Taiwan's air space all through last week. Experts suggest the purpose of the exercise is merely to cause disturbance prior to Taiwan’s national day that on the 10th of October. The US State Department said it was deeply concerned and...

The outspoken North Carolina politician was attacked for saying that graphic gay and transgender material has no place in public schools. North Carolina’s Mark Robinson got launched in politics when he spoke his mind about our right to bear arms. Since then, he has continued to refuse to back down when he runs afoul of the ever-growing list of leftist shibboleths. Most recently, cancel culture came for him when he referred to graphic gay and transgender material in school libraries as “filth.” True to form, while defending every person’s right to equal treatment under the law, Robinson made it clear...

Pilots at Southwest Airlines are protesting their company’s move to require Covid vaccinations, even though the company and their own union deny it. It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that pilots at Southwest Airlines are protesting their company’s move to require Covid vaccinations, even though the company and their own union denies it. Over the past weekend, Southwest was forced to cancel over 1800 flights: The Dallas-based carrier canceled over 1,000 flights Sunday and 808 flights Saturday equivalent to 27 per cent of its entire schedule for the day, over the Columbus Day holiday weekend. Prior to the...

We should stop pretending that a couple of neo-isolationist libertarians, outliers in the GOP, are just as bad as the antisemitism and vicious libels against Israel that have found a home on the 'progressive' left Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has often proved to be a gift that keeps giving for Democrats and a thorn in the side of fellow Republicans. The stubbornly independent Paul’s dogmatic advocacy of libertarian ideas about governance has often thrown a monkey wrench into the plans of the Senate leadership. That proved again the case this past week. After all the drama about U.S. funding for...

The American Left picks up yet another technique from the Soviets. It was from the 1940s through the 1970s, the height of the Cold War, that Soviet authorities notoriously politicized the field of psychiatry. One should always be very suspicious of any government official appealing directly to the “science.” Politicians know science like they know ethics. In 1963, Russian-Jewish poet and essayist Joseph Brodsky was twice placed in a pyschiatric facility against his will, and ultimately charged with the crime of “social parasitism” (according to the lawful authorities, not making sufficient contributions to society). He was eventually expelled from the...

Way back when, in the very beginning of Pandemic Time, March of 2020, I found an article that described a think-tank exercise determining how we might respond to a pandemic. It played out four response scenarios, with outcomes for each, from shutting down the economy, as we did, to doing nothing, emphasizing what each scenario would do to the world’s economy. I vaguely remember it being undertaken in either 2009 or 2014. I wish I could find this article, but it’s either been taken down or buried so deep it might as well have been. My bookmark disappeared. I remember,...