Free Republic

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who sadly passed away from COVID complications, will be remembered for many accomplishments and failings. His legacy will have detractors on the right (he was a sellout who endorsed Obama) and the left (he misled us about WMDs), but I can’t help thinking what if he had been the future of the Republican Party? Counterfactuals are always messy, but bear with me. There is reason to believe that Powell was Ronald Reagan’s vision of the Republican Party’s bright future. And Powell might well have defeated Bill Clinton in 1996. That would have made Powell...

Inflationary pressures on the U.S. economy are getting so bad that even The Washington Post acknowledged that media arguments banging the transitory drum are falling flat. The Post economics correspondent Heather Long wrote a damning news piece headlined, “Uncomfortable inflation is here, and it’s changing the economy.” Long wrote: “American families and businesses are altering their habits as they increasingly believe high prices are here to stay.” Long reported that “[n]ews this week that U.S. inflation is running at a 13-year high of 5.4 percent confirmed what many Americans already know as they juggle their budgets: Food, energy and shelter...

On this date in 1749, Bosavern Penlez — surely one of the all-time great names to hang on a gibbet — was put to death to the sorrow of all of England. You know how they say that horse thieves are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses might not be stolen? Bosavern Penlez was hanged that whorehouses might not be torn down by mobs of angry sailors. (Fourteen other less remarkable folk were hanged for less remarkable crimes at the same time. Just another mass execution day at Tyburn.) On the first three days of July in 1749,...

Most of the coverage we provided during Japan’s bungled turn hosting the Olympics this summer dealt with the nation’s spiraling COVID infection rates and lagging mass vaccination efforts. But while they limited the in-person attendance of the actual games, the lockdowns and restrictions the government imposed were fairly mild. People were still allowed to go out to bars and restaurants, albeit with modest capacity limits and the streets were far from empty. The Associated Press described the measures as a series of “relatively toothless states of emergency.” That makes this week’s news all the more puzzling to some medical professionals....

Jon Stewart told CNN’s Jake Tapper to check his Trump Derangement Syndrome, saying it is a “mistake” to continue hyperventilating over former President Donald Trump and blaming him for all of the country’s problems. In an appearance Saturday on CNN’s State of the Union, Jon Stewart warned Tapper against portraying Trump as an omnipotent bad guy, after the host described Trump as a threat to democracy.

Scaglia Rossa Limestone exposed near Furlo, Italy, in the Northern Apennine Mountains. Limestone at this locality accumulated on the bottom of a shallow sea, in an arm of the ancient Mediterranean ocean nearly 85 million years ago, during what is called Late Cretaceous time. Credit: Ross Mitchell.Hold on to your hats, because scientists have found more evidence that Earth tips over from time to time. We know that the continents are moving slowly due to plate tectonics, but continental drift only pushes the tectonic plates past each other. It has been debated for the past few decades whether the...

Last Thursday, an agency of the Government of Canada responsible for providing and consolidating information technology services across federal government departments informed federal government employees that they would be fired “without recourse or labor union participation” if they used any form of the popular meme “Let’s Go Brandon” in any of their correspondence. Shared Services wrote, “This is a formal notification that all government correspondence must be professional in nature and approved by department heads. When applicable all correspondence must be vetted by the PMO for framing and message prior to public disclosure or internal distribution.”

Republicans and Democrats alike are now working for the Big Pharma lobby Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent vaccine rollout, pharmaceutical giants including Pfizer and Moderna have substantially increased their lobbying efforts, a National Pulse investigation has revealed. The lobbying apparatuses at both vaccine-reliant companies – in terms of the number of lobbyists hired and the overall budget deployed to influence government officials – have seen dramatic increases since 2019

Amyloid protein (orange) forms clumps among neurons (blue). Amyloid in the brain is one of the proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease. ================================================================================ In a major breakthrough, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have discovered how amyloid beta — the neurotoxin believed to be at the root of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) — forms in axons and related structures that connect neurons in the brain, where it causes the most damage. Their findings, published in Cell Reports, could serve as a guidepost for developing new therapies to prevent the onset of this devastating neurological disease. Among his many contributions to research on...

does anyone have an address to obtain sample ballots or a list of candidates? All I get are candidates store sites.

After the election of Donald Trump, there was a rise in hate crime hoaxes. Note: I did not say hate crimes. The crimes supposedly committed by right-wing Trump-supporting thugs were actually hoaxes. We are all familiar with the attempted lynching of Brett Kavanaugh. Many of us were appalled at the attack on Nick Sandmann. In my opinion, though, the most egregious of the anti-Trump hate crimes was perpetrated by Jussie Smollet back in 2019.

Internationally Recognized Prophecy Expert, Minister, Speaker and Author, Paul McGuire analyzes current events through the lens of Bible Prophecy (a good listen for now or later)

For former British spy Christopher Steele, it’s “No Time to Lie.” Steele defended the explosive claims in his controversial dossier that became the catalyst for the investigation into whether former President Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russians during the 2016 presidential election. “I stand by the work we did, the sources that we had, and the professionalism which we applied to it,” Steele ​says in the documentary, ​​”Out of the Shadows: The Man Behind the Steele Dossier​,​” ​which premieres on Hulu Monday. Steele, a former MI6 agent, said in an excerpt of the documentary aired on ABC’s...

Lake Tahoe is in “terminal” condition as the water level in the sixth largest lake in the US fell below its natural rim, according to the Tahoe Daily Tribune. The UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center reportedly said Tuesday that the lake’s water level sunk six days earlier than expected, meaning the lake is no longer flowing to its tributaries. The terminal, or endorheic condition, could prevent salmon from spawning in the Truckee River, and other water sources connected to the freshwater lake that straddles the border between California and Nevada, according to the report.

Russian President Vladimir Putin thinks cryptocurrencies have value — but he's not convinced they can replace the U.S. dollar in settling oil trades. "I believe that it has value," he told CNBC's Hadley Gamble at the Russian Energy Week event in Moscow. "But I don't believe it can be used in the oil trade."

Russia says it will suspend the operations of its mission at NATO headquarters in Brussels in response to the Western security alliance's move to expel eight members of Russia's mission earlier this month. In a move marking another blow to East-West ties that are already near Cold War lows, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on October 18 that the operations will be suspended as of November 1, and that the those at the NATO military mission in Moscow will have their accreditation stripped on the same day as well. Lavrov added that the NATO Secretariat was notified of the...

“What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be! Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?” (Romans 6:15-16). Freedom from sin does not mean freedom to sin. From Paul’s day until now, the gospel of grace has been accused of providing license to sin. If salvation is the gift of God’s grace, legalists argue, wholly apart from human works, what will motivate...

In 2 Kings, we read about the Syrian army besieging the city of Samaria. The Syrians simply camped outside the city, waiting for the Samaritans to starve. Conditions grew so desperate that women were offering their children to be boiled for food. It was sheer insanity (see 2 Kings 6:24-33). Four lepers who were living by the city gates finally said to themselves, “Why are we sitting here until we die?…Now therefore, come, let us surrender to the army of the Syrians. If they keep us alive, we shall live; and if they kill us, we shall only die” (2...

For most of the time since the first description of multiple sclerosis (MS) in 1868, the causes of this disabling disease have remained uncertain. Genes have been identified as important, which is why having other family members with MS is associated with a greater risk of developing the disease. A recent study my colleagues and I conducted found that several types of infection during the teenage years are associated with MS after age 20. Our study didn't investigate whether people who are more likely to have genetic risks for MS were also more likely to have worse infections. This might...

Former Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa slammed the current city administration in an interview on Sunday with NBC Los Angeles, suggesting that Mayor Eric Garcetti — recently tapped to become U.S. ambassador to India — had failed. NBC-4 reported: In what appeared to be a stinging critique of his successor, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called the city he once lead “rudderless” and “adrift.” “I was born and raised here,” Villaraigosa said Sunday on NBC4’s NewsConference. “I have lived here my entire life. I have never seen this town so dirty, I’ve never seen crime go up so quickly…...