Free Republic

On Monday, singing sensation Billie Eilish, only 19 years old, confessed to Howard Stern that she had started watching porn movies on TV while still in grade school. “I used to watch a lot of porn, to be honest. I started watching when I was like 11.” Eilish believes that her habit — it started with entry-level, “normal” porn and spiraled downward into more extreme forms — really warped her mind. “It got to a point where I couldn’t watch anything else unless it was violent,” she admitted. As a result, her ideas about sex and relationships became “warped.” Eilish’s...

"Salt Lake City, UT — Richard Harward, a basketball player at Brigham Young University, announced this week that he was no longer going to be able to play with the team this season, according to The COVID World. Harward suffered blood clots and severe heart inflammation just days after taking a Pfizer shot, which he did not want to take. He said he had “horrible pressure and pain in his chest,” and he eventually collapsed during an exhibition game. ..."

Kari MacRae is trying to make the best of a less-than-ideal situation. The Republican from Bourne who serves on her town’s school committee got fired from her teaching position at Hanover High School less than one month into the school year over a Tik Tok video in which she expressed conservative views; there is also an ongoing recall effort in Bourne to try to oust her from the school committee. Now, she’s running for the Massachusetts Senate in the Plymouth & Barnstable District. MacRae told NewBostonPost she’s running for state Senate because of the outpouring of support she has received...

"South Korean President Moon Jae-in has announced that the United States, China, and North Korea have reached an agreement “in principle” on declaring an end to the Korean War. With the war having ended with a 1953 armistice, the two Koreas remain in a technical state of war, even though full-scale hostilities haven’t resumed since then. Moon, who leaves office next May, has been keen to “institutionalize” progress in the area of inter-Korean peace since 2019. In 2007, when he served as chief of staff to former South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, Moon saw firsthand the risks of inter-Korean rapprochement...

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...