Free Republic

Atlanta City Council member Andre Dickens won a runoff election Tuesday to become the city's next mayor. The election centered on the issue of rising violent crime in the city. Dickens successfully argued that he would be a more effective leader on the issue than rival Felicia Moore, the current City Council president. Moore had been the leading candidate initially in the round of voting that began on Nov. 2. Incumbent Democratic Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms this past spring surprised the political world when announcing she would not seek reelection. Bottoms, an outspoken Trump critic, was considered a rising party...

The jury is still out in the U.S. on how to deal with Americans who are unwilling to get vaccinated, but European countries are increasingly choosing the stick over the carrot as governments across the continent turn to hardline methods from lockdowns to fines in order to coax the unvaccinated to take the jab. The message: get vaccinated, or don’t participate in society.

Christian entertainment company 4HisGlory Amusements has announced an exciting new escape room experience based on Calvinist theology. Participants will be entirely unable to do anything to escape the room and instead must wait for an actor playing Jesus to unlock the door and let them out.

Far-left ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel threw a fit on Tuesday, railing against “screwballs” and Republican “scumbags” who have criticized Dr. Anthony Fauci — those who have pointed to White House medical adviser’s inconsistent views, flip-flopping, and denial of funding gain-of-function research — defending the “tiny, adorable, tired man” who has positioned himself as the human expression of science itself. Kimmel kicked off the segment by insulting those who have not gotten vaccinated, telling the audience, “If you’ve been watching Fox News, you know that the real enemy isn’t the virus or the do-my-own-research geniuses who refuse to get the...

An Austin, Texas, high school was in lockdown Wednesday as police investigated reports of an “armed subject” on campus. Authorities were called to Akins High School shortly after 10 a.m. local time, Austin Police Chief Ashley A. Gonzalez said. No shots had been fired but the school remained on lockdown as cops continued to search the campus, he added. A heavy law enforcement presence remained on the scene as police investigated.

Is the Age of the Living, Self-Replicating Robot at Hand? No. Stem cells naturally reproduce themselves. The researchers working with frog stem cells merely found, via algorithms, one configuration that works betterRecently, the sci-fi dream of self-replicating robots has been in the news, thanks to the University of Vermont, Tufts University, and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard. A recent experiment with frog cells was hailed by news outlets as disparate as CNN (“World’s first living robots can now reproduce, scientists say”) and Daily Wire (“American Universities Create First ‘Self-Replicating Living Robots’”). And it was also...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court appeared prepared Wednesday to uphold a Mississippi law that would ban nearly all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, which would represent a dramatic break from 50 years of rulings. The justices heard 90 minutes of oral arguments in the most direct challenge to Roe v Wade in nearly three decades over Mississippi's abortion law. A majority of the court's conservative justices suggested they were prepared to discard the court's previous standard that prevented states from banning abortion before the age of fetal viability, which is generally considered to be at about 24 weeks into...

China and Russia are targeting U.S. satellites with electronic attacks “every single day,” U.S. Space Force Gen. David Thompson told the Washington Post last week. In an interview with Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin on the sidelines of the Halifax International Security Forum, Thompson said, “The threats are really growing and expanding every single day. And it’s really an evolution of activity that’s been happening for a long time.” Thompson reportedly declined repeated questions about whether U.S. satellites have ever been targeted with kinetic means, which could have done more significant permanent damage. The Space Force second-in-command said China represents...

FIRST WEEK OF ADVENT MATTHEW 15:29-37 Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus multiplies the loaves and the fishes. There is no better exemplification in the Scriptures of what I have called the loop of grace. God offers, as a sheer grace, the gift of being, but if we try to cling to that gift and make it our own, we lose it. The constant command of the Bible is this: what you have received as a gift, give as a gift—and you will find the original gift multiplied and enhanced. One realizes this truth when one enters willingly into the loop...

A majority now believe China poses the biggest threat to the United States, while confidence in the U.S. military has simultaneously dropped. Less than half of the roughly 2,500 people who participated in the fourth annual Ronald Reagan Foundation and Institute survey , which was released on Wednesday, said they have “a great deal” of confidence in the military. Specifically, 45% of respondents said they felt that way, but this represents a significant decline compared to the 70% of people who answered that way in the same survey in November 2018. Those who said they have little or not much...

Marcus Lamb, a co-founder and the CEO of the conservative Christian Daystar Television Network who vocally opposed Covid-19 vaccines, has died at 64, weeks after he contracted Covid-19, the network said.

The weapons supplier for “Rust” told investigators he may have mistakenly provided the live ammunition that killed the cinematographer and wounded the director during a shooting on set near Santa Fe early last month. Authorities say movie star Alec Baldwin was practicing a cross draw in an old church on the Bonanza Creek Ranch movie set when he discharged a live round from a Colt .45 revolver, killing Halyna Hutchins, 42, and wounding Joel Souza, 48. “No charges have been filed as of this date,” Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Juan Rios said Tuesday. Seth Kenney, owner of PDQ...

From Kids to ComradesNeo-Marxists are Communizing your children.To make sense of the current war on the family—and make no mistake, there is one—we must travel back to early 20th-century revolutionary Russia and then pass by Hungary on our way home. Because, odd as it may seem, recent snapshots from across our nation are all related. The Department of Justice targets parents for challenging the school’s racialist curriculum. Police officers arrest a dad after he exposes that his daughter was raped in her school’s bathroom by a boy in a skirt. A politician declares, “I don’t think parents should be telling...

CNBC host Jim Cramer went on an unhinged rant against unvaccinated Americans and called for the federal government to impose a national COVID-19 vaccine mandate enforced by the U.S. military. Cramer took precious airtime during the Nov. 29 edition of CNBC’s Mad Money to express his fury at Americans who won’t get the jab: “It's time to admit that we have to go to war against COVID.” Then came Cramer’s dip into absurdity: “Require vaccination universally. Have the military run it. If you don't want to get vaccinated, you better be ready to prove your conscientious objector status in court.”...

Investigators may have found the source of the live bullet fired by actor Alec Baldwin on the "Rust" set in New Mexico last month that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, according to a new search warrant.Longtime Hollywood armorer Thell Reed, the father of the film's armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, said in a statement to investigators that ammunition once in his possession "may match the ammunition found on the set of Rust," according to a search warrant issued Tuesday by the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office as part of the ongoing investigation....

CNN's Chris Cuomo said he is embarrassed after being suspended by the network on Tuesday following new revelations about his involvement in his brother, former N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo's (D), campaign to defend himself from allegations of sexual harassment. "It hurts to even say it. It’s embarrassing. But I understand it. And I understand why some people feel the way they do about what I did. I’ve apologized in the past, and I mean it," Cuomo said Wednesday on his weekday radio show on SiriusXM. "It’s the last thing I ever wanted to do, was compromise any of my colleagues...

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's new book touting himself as the potential savior of the Republican Party has sold just over 2,000 copies in the week since it was published. In its first week available in stores, Christie's tome titled Republican Rescue has sold just 2,289 copies, according to BookScan data cited by the publishing newsletter Press Run. Press Run author Eric Boehlert called the sales figures a 'a colossal publishing flop' and 'debacle' for Christie

If you don’t understand the stakes, and how fraught the situation is — that the ruling class seeks total power, is closing in on it, and will stop at nothing to achieve it — you are unfit to lead. The defining political question of our time is this: “Do you know what time it is?”The line, popularized by the Claremont Institute’s David Reaboi, succinctly captures the most essential of points: If you don’t understand the stakes, and how fraught the situation is — that the ruling class seeks total power, is closing in on it, and will stop at nothing...

Quantum computers could one day blow boring old classical computers out of the water, but so far their complexity limits their usefulness. Engineers at Stanford have now demonstrated a new relatively simple design for a quantum computer where a single atom is entangled with a series of photons to process and store information.Quantum computers tap into the weird world of quantum physics to perform calculations far faster than traditional computers can handle. Where existing machines store and process information in bits, as either ones and zeroes, quantum computers use qubits, which can exist as one, zero, or a superposition of...

Teen environmental activist Greta Thunberg sent a letter revealed on Tuesday to anti-communist Hong Kong protest leader Joshua Wong, a political prisoner under the Chinese regime, in which she expressed “love, support, and strength.” Pro-democracy activist Lee Dae-seon of South Korea shared the letter with Vice, which published it on Tuesday. In addition to wishing Wong a “Merry Christmas,” Thunberg expressed support for his cause, called him a “big hero,” and asserted, “you are never alone.”