Free Republic

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. If you have specific question about a plant/problem you are having, please remember to state the Growing Zone where you are located. This thread is a non-political respite. No matter what, you won’t be flamed, and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack...

Gerald Baker wrote an interesting piece a few weeks back. Baker abhors, as do most of the WSJ editors, Trump’s “non-presidential” behavior and takes every opportunity to whine about it. But if you can get past his complaint about Trump’s “continuing refusal to accept the results” his thesis is interesting. He outlines how it was the Trump haters, the partisan elites of all ilks including the leftist media, who let their deep-seated, personal hatred of Trump undermine our republic and destroy the legitimacy of government. Trump-haters, not Trump. It is they who are responsible for ensconcing our current Mickey Mouse...

Four candidates backed by Donald Trump to challenge Republican lawmakers who voted to impeach him or boot him from office are falling behind in raising money for their campaigns, according to disclosures filed on Friday. Trump, who left office in January, remains a major influence within the Republican party, which hopes to regain control of the U.S. Congress in next year's elections. Only a handful of Republicans joined Democrats when Congress voted to impeach Trump and then held an unsuccessful vote in the Senate to remove him from office, on a charge he incited insurrectionists to attack the U.S. Capitol...

... The chimpanzee is our closest living relative in evolutionary terms and research suggests our kinship derives from a common ancestor. About five to six million years ago, our evolutionary paths separated, leading to the chimpanzee of today, and Homo Sapiens, humankind in the 21st century. In a new study, stem cell researchers at Lund examined what it is in our DNA that makes human and chimpanzee brains different -- and they have found answers. "Instead of studying living humans and chimpanzees, we used stem cells grown in a lab. The stem cells were reprogrammed from skin cells by our...

Boomers and millennials are competing for houses, per a new Zillow report. Boomers are winning. Boomers have more cash to win bidding wars as they take advantage of an appreciating market. Buying a home has been hard enough for millennials, who are struggling with skyhigh prices and a lack of starter homes. Baby boomers and millennials are in a housing war. It's boomers who are winning, according to a Zillow report released this week. It found that so many boomers are active in the housing market that it's become more difficult for millennials to buy a home. As seen in...

ARENAC COUNTY, MI — Showing no fear of humans and with a distinctive item around its neck, an antlered deer attacked a woman on her Arenac County, Michigan property. While the woman survived the bizarre attack despite numerous puncture wounds, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources is reminding residents that wildlife should indeed stay wild. On Sept. 26, DNR officers responded to a residence in the Au Gres area for a report of an antlered white-tailed deer having attacked a woman, according to Lt. Brandon Kieft, DNR district law supervisor. The woman in question, 64-year-old Patty Jean Willis, had been...

A group funded by George Soros and other donors to continue investigating the Russia collusion allegations after the 2016 election met with the FBI, offering its assistance to agents and alerting them it was working with one of their terminated confidential sources in the case, Christopher Steele, according to court testimony made public Friday.Former FBI analyst Daniel Jones' testimony, released in a D.C. Superior Court civil case, recounts in painstaking detail how he formed the group The Democracy Integrity Project in early 2017, raised money for it and continued a private investigation into alleged Russian and other interference in the...

SAUL IN DAMASCUS: BLIND & IN DANGER. ACTS 9New International Version, emphases added Abrdgd: the complete text is in YOUR Bible Resources to CLICK: To read ACTS 9 in full To hear MAX McLEAN reading it To hear a DRAMATIZATION of it To see an ANIMATION of it BIBLE TIMELINE 34 A.D. ACTS of the APOSTLESChapter 9, Verses 8-25 Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything. In Damascus...

Brandon is still trending yuuuge, but this week definitely belongs to Shatner. Brandon will be around for a while, but really, how often do we get to indulge a full on Kirkasm? Meanwhile, Biden and Harris continue to be the ghost ship White House. How’s that reconciliation package coming? Maybe Southwest Airlines can help them land it. Oh, wait.

Want proof that the Biden administration is really the second incarnation of the Carter administration? We have runaway inflation, Americans trapped overseas, a member of the first family who tried to do business with Libya and a president begging the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies (OPEC Plus) to increase oil production. It’s like the 1970s all over again. Gas prices have risen $1 a gallon since Joe Biden’s election, while crude oil prices have doubled since November to $83 per barrel — and some analysts predict they could rise by another $10 before the end of the...

Officials there say their data shows 16 people in the last month that have reported getting the COVID vaccine when they went in for a flu shot.

On September 27, 2021, a little after midnight, in Anderson, Indiana, surveillance cameras captured a man lurking around a home on a quiet residential street. From fox59.com: ANDERSON, Ind. — An Anderson woman shot and killed a man suspected of breaking into her home overnight.911 dispatchers received a call from a female homeowner in the 1300 block of E. 8th Street around 12:47 a.m. The woman told police there was a break-in at the home, and she shot the suspected burglar. By the time police arrived, they found the alleged suspect dead in an upstairs bedroom.With home surveillance cameras rolling,...

It gets harder and harder to be an independent thinker in the midst of one of those indoctrination and groupthink factories known as a university. Step out of line, and at any moment someone can claim to be offended or “triggered” by something completely bland that you may have said. Next thing you know, someone will have tattled on you to the administration. And you know exactly what the administration will do: They will simultaneously mouth platitudes about “free speech” while making every kind of threat, veiled or not, to bring you into line. Is there any way for you...

With the US currently engaged in a cyberwar that has affected all sectors of the global economy, the safety of all Americans is constantly in danger. With that in mind, yesterday’s alert from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) pertaining to the Ongoing Cyber Threats to US Water and Wastewater Systems provides a reminder of the potentially devastating results that can be achieved should an enemy of the US gain access to America’s critical infrastructure. America has endured years of attacks from countries like Russia, Iran, North Korea, and in particular, China. China has been perhaps the biggest culprit...

It’s not until you leave the United States that you realize how angry Americans are. Earlier this month my wife the travel agent and I took a cruise in the Mediterranean from Athens to Barcelona by way of stops on the Greek island of Santorini and in Sicily. It was the first trip Colleen has been able to book since February 2020, right before the global pandemic lockdowns sank 80 percent of the cruise ship industry and put her out of a job. For me, who got to tag along, it was the best kind of getaway vacation, mainly because...

There are diseases with such high mortality rates that vaccines, even if risky, make sense. COVID is not among that list of diseases. The saying that desperate times call for desperate measures was never more true than when applied to vaccination. Consider the first vaccine in 1796, when a young boy was inoculated against smallpox. It had been noticed that milkmaids almost never contracted smallpox. Milkmaids frequently caught cowpox, a mild illness related to smallpox. British physician Edward Jenner theorized that infecting someone with cowpox would confer immunity to smallpox. The procedure was simple enough. A cut was made in...

Will it simply be a “coincidence” if we allow Taiwan to be absorbed by China? The U.S. Navy is preparing to discharge every one of its sailors who refuse to be vaccinated against the China Virus. Apparently, it isn’t enough that the Biden administration’s policies have caused rampant inflation, unemployment, crime, and supply chain issues. Or that it is in the process of gutting the nation’s transportation, public safety and healthcare sectors. Now it will gravely harm national security by forcing out up to 25% of our Navy personnel. (This after top brass tried to purge the military of those...

In an apparent effort to rally the base, House Leadership has jammed an environmental activist project, the PFAS Action Act of 2021, into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) -- a move that threatens military readiness and supply chains. The bill “establishes requirements and incentives to limit the use of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly referred to as PFAS, and remediate PFAS in the environment.” PFAS can be found in a wide variety of products like non-stick pans, weatherproof clothing, carpets, belts, food packaging and various other usages. Without PFAS chemicals we wouldn’t have smartphones since they help stabilize them...

The same school district that covered up a 14-year-old girl’s rape turns out to have a history of ignoring sexual assaults. Glenn Reynolds has said for many years that putting children in public school is a form of child abuse. Events in Virginia’s Loudoun County Public Schools (“LCPS”) prove his point. Earlier this week, the bombshell news was that Scott Smith, the father who, for the left, became the poster child for alleged “domestic terrorism” at school board meetings, was upset because the school board and superintendent were denying his daughter’s sexual assault at Stone Bridge high school, and refused...

Whether it’s their response to January 6 or to COVID, activist judges have abandoned the law and are engaging in tyrannical acts. Thirty years of litigation work in the San Francisco Bay Area, which some might consider Ground Zero for activist judges, left me with a deep and abiding disrespect for leftist judges who are more concerned with their prejudices and feelings, than with facts and law. Two recent stories perfectly exemplify this. The first story involves an Obama appointee who is reaming people arrested because they dared to do what leftists always do: Enter government property, including the Capitol,...