Free Republic

People in Scotland have been asked to limit socialising to three households at a time in the run-up to Christmas amid concerns over the Omicron variant. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the advice would not apply on Christmas Day and that plans should not be cancelled. But she said people should reduce their social contacts with other households "as far as possible". Shops and hospitality venues will also be told to bring back physical distancing and screens. Ms Sturgeon said that Scotland is facing a "likely tsunami" of new infections of Covid-19 in the weeks ahead, with a "very significant"...

Martin Mawyer, president, Christian Action Network Every day I go through the painstaking process of sorting through the news stories that reflect the state of American culture, religious values, national security and – let’s be honest – sanity. Many of them leave me fuming. Whether it’s the Salvation Army shaming white donors into apologizing for being racists, or school boards putting people in jail for speaking out, or innocent bystanders being gunned down “just for fun,” there’s an anger-inducing news cocktail ready to be swallowed each and every morning. So why did this headline from the UK’s Daily Mail outrage...

President Biden and his Department of Justice were unsuccessful in arguing to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals to lift an injunction against his vaccine mandate for healthcare workers. Missouri’s Attorney General Eric Schmitt posted the one-page order to Twitter on Monday afternoon. "The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Department of Justice's motion for stay pending appeal in our lawsuit against the vaccine mandate on healthcare workers, meaning our injunction will stay in place." The legal battles within the United States over mandating a Coronavirus vaccine have been ongoing through the final weeks of 2021.

[Catholic Caucus] It Really Is A Sin-Nod In The Worst Way Some took umbrage with me for calling those papal gabfest sessions "sin-nods" as opposed to synods. Well, let's just say there are some occasions where I wished I was in error, for that is literally what happened a few days ago with this "synod of bishops". Earlier this month, the sin-nod removed a link to New Ways Ministries from its website. How it got there in the first place will remain a mystery for now. Anyway, the bishops restored the link earlier this week and APOLOGIZED to the...

She just won’t go away. Speculation is running hot that Hillary Clinton — a spring chicken at age 74 compared to the 79-year-old President Joe Biden — is maneuvering to run for president again in 2024. Just this past Sunday, Clinton warned that former President Donald Trump is planning to run again, claiming there would be catastrophic consequences for America if he wins. “I think that could be the end of our democracy,” she said in an interview with the Today Show. “Not to be too pointed about it, but I want people to understand that this is a make-or-break...

The omicron variant now represents about 3 percent of domestic COVID-19 cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Tuesday, showing the new variant is starting to rise in the U.S. The CDC estimated omicron was 2.9 percent of sequenced U.S. cases for the week ending Dec. 11, up from 0.4 percent one week earlier. The number is expected to rise quickly given the sharp spikes in omicron in other countries. For example, officials in Britain have estimated omicron will be the dominant variant there within days. The U.S. trajectory appears to be somewhat behind.

A series of deadly tornadoes ripped across at least six states on Friday, killing more than 80 people in what experts have called a "historic" weather event. The twisters have devastated communities — and experts say these kinds of weather events may only get deadlier as climate change moves coastal populations inland to vulnerable areas. Many experts have pointed to climate change as part of the reason for the catastrophic events, echoing past warnings that global warming will undoubtedly fuel extreme weather. KCBS meteorologist Evelyn Taft told CBS News on Monday that the stark contrast in temperatures of the Northeast...

Liz Cheney is going to New Hampshire. She's getting her political operation in order. And she's raising money like mad from icons of the Republican Party. The Wyoming congresswoman is clearly exploring her political options and power well beyond her congressional district, even if she's not talking openly about a run for president. "I've never had a conversation with her about 2024," said Eric Edelman, a former ambassador, Pentagon official and adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney. "If there was going to be a Never Trump candidate, I can't think of anyone better." Eight months after she voted to...

Repeated immunization with antigen causes systemic autoimmunity in mice otherwise not prone to spontaneous autoimmune diseases. --- Systemic autoimmunity appears to be the inevitable consequence of over-stimulating the host's immune ‘system’ by repeated immunization with antigen, to the levels that surpass system's self-organized criticality.

An old tweet hasn’t aged well for the CNN producer who was arrested last week and charged with “using a facility of interstate commerce” to allegedly lure young girls to his home for depraved sexual indoctrination “training” sessions. The cable news network was still dealing with managing the fallout from the firing of Chris Cuomo when John Griffin, who claims he worked “shoulder-to-shoulder” with the disgraced star anchor, was taken into custody by the FBI which acted after a grand jury delivered an indictment that he used social media to “communicate with people purporting to be parents of minor daughters”...

Now more than ever we need substantive debate about decisions that affect the health of hundreds of millions of people, including views counter to official positions. The attacks on free speech and science are unrelenting. Academic publisher Elsevier’s suppression of an article documenting the myocarditis risk of the COVID-19 vaccines, with no excuse or pretext offered, is incredible enough. Viewed alongside Twitter’s censorship of the American Heart Association, YouTube’s suppression of a panel discussion of vaccine mandates on Capitol Hill, and the Orwellian call by National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins for critics of the government’s COVID-19 policies to...

I admit I’m a Carrie Bradshaw fan. I was in my twenties in 1998 and living in Chicago when Sex and the City debuted on HBO. It captured, pretty accurately, what life was like in a big city when you’re young and beautiful. What was never accurate was the amount of money Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda had to play with; that was always a fantasy. But the weird encounters with guys who would do stupid things like break up with you on a post-it-note or ask you to do sexually bizarre things you would never ever consider, frienemies who...

Cornell University on Saturday blamed off-campus maskless gatherings for the cancellation of all in-person student activities, both formal and informal, on the Ithaca campus. Upon revealing 300 hundred new cases of coronavirus, including the omicron variant, among students at the campus, Cornell took measures to lock down all in-person campus activities due to “off-campus student social gatherings where masking and other public health measures were not followed.”

A U.S. appeals court on Monday rejected a renewed attempt by the Biden administration to end a policy put in place by former President Donald Trump that forced tens of thousands of migrants to wait in Mexico for the resolution of their U.S. asylum cases. In a Monday night ruling, the court said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) "claims the power to implement a massive policy reversal — affecting billions of dollars and countless people — simply by typing out a new Word document and posting it on the internet. "DHS has come nowhere close to shouldering its...

A Virginia hospital was held in contempt of court Monday after refusing to administer ivermectin to a woman who has been battling COVID-19 since early October. What are the details? Kathleen Davies, a 63-year-old northern Virginia woman, became severely ill with COVID in October, and she has been on a ventilator since Nov. 3. Davies was prescribed ivermectin by her family doctor, but she could not complete her regime upon being admitted to the Fauquier Hospital in Warrenton. That's because the northern Virginia hospital refused to administer the drug, "citing medical, legal and practical concerns," the Fauquier Times reported. Davies'...

Next year's restaurant industry trend predictions are in, and they include avocado coffee (an Indonesian delicacy), gourmet egg sandwiches and Burger King Whoppers made with Halloumi cheese instead of burgers. Why it matters: As the pandemic lingers, it's shaping what ingredients are available as well as how we eat, with newfound habits that we once thought were temporary turning out to be permanent. Driving the news: A new forecast from Technomic, a food service industry consultancy, predicts that many trends of the past year — like ghost kitchens, meal kits and restaurants selling groceries — will likely persist. "We continue...

I came down with the flu on 12/3 but am back to work. just have coughing left, however hubs, who is self employed, has been off his feet since 12/6. He received an RX for amoxicillin, however that is only working on the bacterial side. The viral side is keeping him down, fatigue, fever that comes and goes, soreness, headaches etc. We live in upstate NY and both are insured under my insurance plan (which I was going to retire next month but now doesn't look like it due to Bidenflation). We also have Ivermectin that we took early on....

MANORVILLE, NEW YORK: Long Island police have been looking for two teenagers who have disappeared after last being spotted catching a train to Manhattan on December 9. Couple Kaileigh Catalano and Vincent Abolafia, both 15, were to catch an afternoon train from Ronkoma to New York, according to Suffolk County Police. Their families reported them missing later that evening. Desperate pleas for leads on the whereabouts of the couple are being made on social media as both remained missing on Monday, December 13.

Heated runoffs in four Houston ISD trustee elections ended last weekend and two self-described conservatives unseated incumbents as national politics took center stage. "Just overall excited to serve,” District VII victor Bridget Wade said. Wade defeated incumbent trustee Anne Sung in an election that included issues such as critical race theory, library books and the district’s mask mandate. “I’m in favor of getting rid of masks," Wade said. "I’m in favor of it because I’d like parents to be able to decide what they want for their children.” Sung believes national political talking points seeped into what is supposed to...

Now more than ever we need substantive debate about decisions that affect the health of hundreds of millions of people, including views counter to official positions. The attacks on free speech and science are unrelenting. Academic publisher Elsevier’s suppression of an article documenting the myocarditis risk of the COVID-19 vaccines, with no excuse or pretext offered, is incredible enough. Viewed alongside Twitter’s censorship of the American Heart Association, YouTube’s suppression of a panel discussion of vaccine mandates on Capitol Hill, and the Orwellian call by National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins for critics of the government’s COVID-19 policies to...