Free Republic

Former President Donald Trump ripped into Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) once again on Wednesday, giving the leader an invective-filled ultimatum to stand firm against raising the debt ceiling and keep his conference unified against President Biden’s spending agenda. Trump blasted his former Senate ally as “stupid” and a “fool” and accused him of “incompetence” in a long, tangled statement that jumped from expressing displeasure over Republican votes on a procedural motion related to raising the debt limit in October, to Congress’s passage of the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill this month, to the ongoing Democratic talks over a...

Biden Has Always Been a Doofus...

Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) raised more than $2 million in the 24 hours after he announced his challenge Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), his campaign said on Wednesday. The one-day haul — the largest of any statewide midterm campaign in Texas history, according to O’Rourke’s campaign — is an early sign that the former presidential candidate remains a formidable fundraising force more than three years after his high-profile yet ultimately unsuccessful campaign to oust Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). To be sure, he’ll need to continue raising money at a breakneck pace if he hopes to catch up with Abbott....

ANTIOCH, California -- There is outrage among some parents in California's Bay Area as 14 children were given the wrong amount of COVID-19 vaccine this past Saturday. At least two kids were given double the recommended dose at a Sutter Health pediatric vaccine clinic in Antioch, California, officials say.

… A few afternoons each month, I am also a volunteer with an organization that helps migrants released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention reunite with their families. As much as we try to smooth this last leg of the journey, the only part we can control, Delta Airlines’ credit card policy foiled us multiple times last month. For some number of people, Delta flags their flight bookings and requires the credit card used for purchase to be shown at check-in. There is no way out and no way around it. The migrants detained by ICE and flown to a...

Religious Luke 19:11-28 Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus uses images drawn from the world of business to instruct us in Christian living. And he especially likes the dynamic of investment, risk, and return as a model of the spiritual life. The reason is clear. God exists in gift form. Therefore, if you want his life in you, you have to learn to give it away. Think of the coins we read about today as everything that we’ve received from God—life, breath, being, powers, and so on. Because they come from God, they are meant to become gifts. If you cling...

Philip Margo, the singer who helped make the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” famous has died. The song was very popular during the 1960s, then it returned to popularity as part of the soundtrack of Disney’s “The Lion King.” According to The Sun, Margo was 79 years old at the time of his death. His family has reported that he passed away on Saturday, Nov. 13. His cause of death was a stroke. Philip Margo was born in Brooklyn. He spent much of his singing career as part of the group The Tokens. They were a popular doo-wop-style vocal group....

Prosecutor may have just bought themselves (sleazed themselves) into a mistrial with prejudice.

WASHINGTON — Democrats are refocusing their message on President Joe Biden's Build Back Better bill in response to inflation concerns from voters and key centrist lawmakers as Congress moves closer to final votes on the massive spending package. The White House and Democratic leaders have rebranded the legislation as an antidote to widespread price hikes, arguing that it would lower the cost of prescription drugs, child care and overall expenses related to raising families. "Want to fight inflation? Support Build Back Better," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Tuesday. Consumer prices jumped by 6.2 percent last month, the biggest...

Americans may soon get a better glimpse into a future of green-friendly transportation by visiting a U.S. national park. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg signed a joint pledge Wednesday to test some of the newest and most innovative travel technologies on public lands and improve visitors’ tourism experience. Under multimillion-dollar pilot programs made available by the $1 trillion infrastructure law and other federal spending, visitors to national parks could see self-driving shuttle buses, along with electric scooter or bike stations and electric charging stations for zero-emission cars. In February, for instance, park officials said it would...

Earlier this month, Billy Joel finally returned to Madison Square Garden for his first show at the venue since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. I was lucky enough to be one of the just over 20,000 people in attendance. Only a few minutes after sitting down prior to the concert starting, I noticed three people I recognized to my left. These were not people I knew personally, but rather some of the most well-known names at CNN: primetime anchor Don Lemon, Sunday show host Fareed Zakaria, and the president of the network, Jeff Zucker. One thing that stuck out...

Lies, Lies, LiesA case study in journalistic malpractice.Let me take you down a Twitter rabbit hole. When I open my homepage, the first trending story on the top right is: “Judge allowed Kyle Rittenhouse to draw jurors from a raffle box to determine the 12 who will decide the verdict of his homicide trial.” When I click on this story I get a summary that says, “While there is no rule against a defendant selecting their own alternate jurors from a raffle, generally this role is given to clerk of courts, according to reporting by The AP.” So I scroll...

Have to complete religious exemption form and need advice. Thank you in advance!

Brussels (AFP) – The EU plans to bar food and wood imports from deforested areas, according to a proposal unveiled Wednesday aimed at using its trade power to drive sustainability. The draft law, which Brussels wants to turn into binding rules for all 27 European Union nations, would require companies show their soy, beef, palm oil, cocoa, coffee and wood products are certified "deforestation-free". It follows an international pledge made at the COP26 summit last week to end deforestation by 2030. "This proposal is a truly ground-breaking one," the EU commissioner for climate action policy, Virginijus Sinkevicius, told a media...

Imagine what it must have been like for Kamala Harris this past Sunday evening to be scrolling through the newsfeed on her smartphone only to come across what is typically a Democrat’s “reliable source” at CNN and finding the headline: Exasperation and dysfunction: Inside Kamala Harris’ frustrating start as vice president, on that team left rag’s landing page. The lengthy piece was very critical of her and her VP team’s role in the current Biden administration. She must have wondered what she had done to find herself suddenly under attack. She would wonder because it would never occur to someone...

Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations grant will help establish proof of concept for vaccines protective against existing and new strains.The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) is granting $4.3 million to Israel’s MigVax to advance development of Covid-19 vaccines suitable for use in low- and middle-income countries. CEPI, headquartered in Norway, also is funding a similar project at the University of Saskatchewan. Both projects aim to establish preclinical proof of concept for “variant-proof” vaccines that protect against existing and new SARS-CoV-2 variants. The vaccine platforms may also be applicable for developing vaccines that are protective against a broad range of...

Republican Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland is taking aim at former President Donald Trump for targeting some House Republicans who earlier this month voted for a wide ranging bipartisan infrastructure bill. After 13 House Republicans crossed party lines and voted with nearly the entire House Democratic conference to narrowly pass the $1.2 trillion infrastructure measure - the largest investment in the nation's crumbling roads and bridges in decades – Trump called them RINOS (the acronym for ‘Republicans in name only’) who should be "ashamed of themselves." The crossover Republican votes helped the majority House Democrats pass the bill – which...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced the U.S. Capitol rioter known as the "QAnon Shaman" for his horned headdress to 41 months in prison for his role in the deadly Jan. 6 attack by followers of then-President Donald Trump. Prosecutors had asked U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth to impose a longer 51-month sentence on Jacob Chansley, who pleaded guilty in September to obstructing an official proceeding when he and thousands of others stormed the building to try to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden's election. The sentence matches one Lamberth imposed on a former mixed martial...

How many lefty Facebook chowderheads have you seen say, “If Rittenhouse was black the cops would have shot him dead!” Let’s look into that. Eighteen-year-old Timothy Simpkins recently got beaten up at school. He came back later, pulled a gun, shot the kid who beat him up, and shot two others in the process. A fourth person was injured in the fracas. He was out on $75,000 bond in less than 24 hours. His mommy threw him a party. Seventeen-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse shot three white rioters who were assaulting him. He was deemed a “white supremacist” by lefty news. He...

A Canadian minister has said he has "no doubt" that a deadly storm in British Columbia is linked to climate change. Thousands were evacuated after an "atmospheric river" - a long strip of moisture in the air that transports water from tropical areas towards the poles - dumped the region's monthly rainfall average in 24 hours. The storm severed road and rail links and caused mass power cuts. One person was killed in a landslide, and at least two others are missing. Mike Farnworth, the local minister of public safety, told reporters he had "no doubt these are climate-related events".