Free Republic

Western allies on Thursday rejected Russia's bid to thwart Kiev's NATO ambitions and urged Moscow to halt its military build-up along Ukraine's border and return to talks led by France and Germany. European Union leaders, meeting in Brussels, insisted on "the urgent need for Russia to de-escalate tensions caused by the military build-up along its border with Ukraine and aggressive rhetoric". Separately, NATO's members used similar language, rejecting "the false Russian claims of Ukrainian and NATO provocations" and urged Moscow to "immediately de-escalate, pursue diplomatic channels, and abide by its international commitments." Both organisations, which share most of their member...

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Omicron appears to cause less severe illness than earlier variants of the coronavirus but is much more resistant to the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine widely used in South Africa, according to a major private study of the variant. The study by Discovery Health, South Africa’s largest health insurer, showed that risk of hospital admissions among adults who developed covid-19 was 29 percent lower than in the initial pandemic wave that emerged in March 2020. Discovery Health provided conflicting information about the size of the study. In the initial release, the company said the study was based...

The Cleveland Guardians said minor league catcher Andrés Meléndez died Thursday in Miami. He was 20. The team said Meléndez died suddenly. There was no immediate word on the cause of his death. The Venezuela native began his career with Milwaukee’s organization in 2018. He spent two seasons between the Brewers’ Dominican Summer and Arizona League teams before he was acquired in a trade by Cleveland in 2019.

""...I think small businesses have been through enough already." At least 13 counties in New York state are telling newly-tapped Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul that they will not be enforcing her mask mandate on private businesses — and some of the county leaders are letting their displeasure over the “dictate” be known. According to the New York Post, Orange County Executive Steve Neuhaus ripped Hochul, telling the governor he opposes “using Gestapo tactics and going business to business and asking them if they are enforcing masking.” The order from Hochul puts the onus on businesses: either checking customers’ vaccine statuses...

“A reproof entereth more into a wise man than an hundred stripes into a fool” (Proverbs 17:10).

The U.S. Navy on Wednesday released dramatic photos from a demonstration of a high-energy laser weapon system that "successfully engaged" a floating target during a test in the Gulf of Aden. The laser was test-fired from the USS Portland, a San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock, which previously used the laser in May 2020 to destroy a drone, which was considered a first-of-its-kind test of such a weapon, USNI News reported. The Navy took to Twitter to post futuristic infrared images that showed the laser training on its target. Another image showed sailors in a control room presumably wearing protective glasses....

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday recommended Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines over Johnson & Johnson’s shot for adults, after finding dozens of people developed a rare blood clot condition following vaccination with J&J shots. All of those patients were hospitalized, and nine died. The CDC has confirmed 54 cases of people developing blood clots and showing low blood platelet levels — a new condition called thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, or TTS, which mostly affects younger women. Of those cases, 36 required treatment in intensive care. In a statement Thursday evening, the CDC said the U.S. has an...

The U.S. Senate approved legislation on Dec. 16 to ban all imports from China’s Xinjiang region, where Beijing is holding more than 1 million Uyghurs in internment camps, over forced labor concerns. The measure is now headed to the White House, where President Joe Biden has said he’ll sign it into law.The move complements a series of actions by the Biden administration aimed at holding the Chinese regime accountable over its repression in Xinjiang, which Washington has labeled as a genocide. The Senate approved the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act by unanimous consent two days after the House approved it...

"‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ host addresses the consequences of Biden’s ‘reckless’ policies."

President Joe Biden has a long list of slip-ups in his political history, and his first year in the White House was no exception. In addition to bumbling through national addresses and mixing up the titles of world leaders, Biden infamously misremembered his past, lied, and even made up several stories to score points with his audience. Here are just a few of such incidents.1. Joe Biden’s Made-Up Amtrak StoryAt a 50th-anniversary event for Amtrak in Philadelphia, Biden said that when he was vice president, a train conductor congratulated him for traveling 1.5 million miles on Amtrak. A Fox News...

President Biden said Thursday that Americans unvaccinated against the coronavirus are facing a winter of "severe illness and death." "It’s here now and it’s spreading and it’s going to increase," the president said about the omicron variant while meeting with his coronavirus response team. "For unvaccinated we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death if you’re unvaccinated for themselves, their families, and the hospitals they will soon overwhelm." "But, there’s good news," Biden added. "If you’re vaccinated and have your booster shot you’re protected from severe illness and death."

It's been a busy and not particularly good day for President Joe Biden and his Build Back Better agenda. Not long after the White House released a statement from the president raising doubts about the future of the bill, news broke that the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, had rejected a third proposal from Senate Democrats to do with including immigration reform in the bill.Democrats only have a shot at passing Biden's spending bill through the reconciliation process. While it only needs a simple majority to pass, it must also meet certain rules for what's included in the legislation, namely that...

A federal judge has ruled that a New York-based Christian photographer must provide services for same-sex wedding celebrations despite holding religious objections to gay marriage. Judge Frank Geraci, Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York, rejected a request by Emilee Carpenter of the upstate New York-based Emilee Carpenter Photography to grant a preliminary injunction against a state anti-discrimination law. In his ruling Monday, the Obama appointee concluded that “New York has a compelling interest in ensuring that individuals, without regard to sexual orientation, have equal access to publicly available goods and services, and that...

"Absolutely terrible. GET OUT OF BLUE STATES FOLKS… NOW not later… make the move. Save your life and freedom because it is only going to get worse"

Is Omicron really a “new strain,” or is there more than meets the eye to this latest COVID narrative? Say I’m a scientist who has just discovered a previously undetected matter in the universe. Let’s call it Purple Matter. The world never bothered to test specifically for Purple Matter until now, because they had no idea Purple Matter existed. Somehow, my Purple Matter testing protocol finds Purple Matter EVERYWHERE. Does that mean my newly discovered Purple Matter only surfaced when I started testing for it? Of course not. If my Purple Matter test launched just last month, I would be...

With Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) continuing to give his own party nightmares as the infighting over President Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda rages on with no end in sight, talk on Capitol Hill has (predictably) turned to speculation over whether or not Manchin is planning an eventual flip to the dark side – also known as switching to the Republican party.The Associated Press floated a story today suggesting that some Senate Democrats were very “concerned he could switch parties and take away their slim hold on power” considering the Senate as it stands now is at a 50/50 split, with...

Due to party infighting, Democrats are now looking to push a vote on Joe Biden’s big-government socialism juggernaut, the Build Back Better Act, into next year. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) had hoped to pass the bill before Christmas, but key holdouts like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) made it impossible to pass the bill through the evenly split Senate due to his concerns about the hefty price tag. Democrats now expect a vote won’t happen until January at the earliest. But that’s wishful thinking, according to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) who says Biden’s $3 trillion plan is “dead forever.”...

"Fox News host Sean Hannity has fired back at Wyoming RINO Rep. Liz Cheney for reading out his text message during the public January 6 hearing. Hannity called for her emails and texts, and those of her family, to be made public. Hannity was responding to Cheney reading his private text to Mark Meadows on Jan 6 during a public hearing. “I’d like to see all Cheney family texts, emails, transcripts, phone calls, kissing Donald Trump’s a** to get a pardon for Scooter Libby—and what was the aftermath of that?” Hannity blasted. ..."

Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Mueller. (Photo internet reproduction) "People, who sit on the throne of their wealth" see an "opportunity to push their agenda," the cardinal said, naming Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, billionaire George Soros and Davos Economic Forum head Klaus Schwab among those behind the global control scheme. RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – A German cardinal has claimed that the coronavirus pandemic has been used by the likes of George Soros and Bill Gates to create a global “surveillance state.” Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, a high-ranking Vatican court judge, has said in an interview with Austria’s St. Boniface Institute last week...

After biological male transgender swimmer Lia Thomas dominated women’s events at the Zippy Invitational at the University of Akron earlier this month, athletes have expressed their frustrations at the fact that a man pretending to be a woman is setting records and overshadowing actual women in NCAA competitions.Last week here at PJ Media, my esteemed colleague Robert Spencer noted that Thomas’ fellow swimmers — the real women swimmers of the University of Pennsylvania — are secretly unhappy with their teammate.Behind the façade of joy and pride in Thomas’ accomplishments is growing discontent with the devaluation of women’s athletics that the...