Free Republic

Howard Stern did not mince his words when it came to discussing how he feels about Oprah, and the parties she has held during Covid-19. “Over vacation I tried to decompress,” Stern said in his SiriusXM radio show during his first show of 2022. “I was watching Oprah, I follow her on Instagram. I’m really amazed by Oprah, I really am. On her Instagram she likes to take you into her house where every night of Christmas is a big party like a celebration and she flies in a different chef.”(snip) “It’s getting very confusing to me,” Stern said. “I...

An Indiana judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by a relative of famed 1930s gangster John Dillinger seeking to dig up his body to confirm it is actually him. In a tan-walled Marion County courtroom, Superior Court Judge Timothy Oakes entertained arguments from the Crown Hill Cemetery, where Dillinger’s body is buried, which claimed that it has a right under state law to deny the exhumation of any body. The fight over digging up Dillinger’s remains came after the gangster’s nephew Michael Thompson filed a lawsuit in August claiming the cemetery is wrongfully preventing him from exhuming the body...

“Bishop, know thy dignity!”: On overcoming episcopal diminishment The following essay was written by a priest and published in the latest issue of the periodical Calx Mariae published by Voice of the Family. Reprinted here with permission.IN THE YEAR 372, when a “second wave” of Arianism was sweeping over the eastern part of the Catholic Church, an extremely powerful and aggressive man came to visit the bishop of a city in what is now called Turkey. The name of this powerful man, somewhat ironically, was Modestus. He was the praetorian prefect. This meant that he governed most of the...

When his girlfriend told him she was pregnant, Jean-Paul Noel-Cephise was elated. Although he was only young and the pregnancy was unplanned, he had always wanted to be a dad and felt confident they would make great parents. After all, he had a good job, was financially stable with his own home and they were madly in love. ‘I’d had a happy childhood and couldn’t wait to recreate it with my own child,’ says Jean-Paul. ‘I know some young men would’ve been horrified at the prospect of having a baby but I really wasn’t — quite the opposite.’ Sadly, though,...

The University of Central Oklahoma’s (UCO) W. Roger Webb Forensic Science Institute, in collaboration with the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, is using its nationally ranked expertise to solve a mystery involving one of the nation’s most notorious outlaws. Through a donation, the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum received a purse believed to belong to Bonnie Parker of the infamous Bonnie and Clyde duo, who committed dozens of robberies and burglaries while running from law enforcement between 1932 and 1934. While the purse, which is stamped with Parker’s name and features what is presumed to be a single...

[Catholic Caucus] “This liturgy of Christendom spiritually energizes the remnant of faithful in secularized nations”—Christian Marquant Rorate is pleased to offer a translation of a message from Christian Marquant and we give thanks to God for his recovery from hospitalization with Covid. Our Wishes for the Year of Our Lord 2022Paix Liturgique, Letter 842, January 3, 2022Dear Friends,May the freedom of the traditional liturgy come! This is the wish of Paix Liturgique for the year 2022. It may seem utopian or very wilful to you to hear me say this, bruised as we are by the persecutions that have...

Since 2016, investigative genetic genealogy has made its (explosive) name solving cold case rapes and murders that were previously considered unsolvable. The identification of the Golden State Killer was the case that put IGG on the map, and is also arguably the most infamous to date. But a recent statement from the City of Boulder and the Boulder Police Department has people wondering if IGG can solve an even more well-known case that captivated the nation 25 years ago and still today—the murder of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey. “As the [Colorado Police] Department continues to use new technology to enhance the...

Federal Reserve officials said a strengthening economy and higher inflation could lead to earlier and faster interest-rate increases than previously expected, with some policy makers also favoring starting to shrink the balance sheet soon after. “Participants generally noted that, given their individual outlooks for the economy, the labor market, and inflation, it may become warranted to increase the federal funds rate sooner or at a faster pace than participants had earlier anticipated,” according to minutes published Wednesday of the Dec. 14-15 meeting of the U.S. central bank’s policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee, when it pivoted to a more aggressive inflation-fighting...

Editor’s note: The views expressed in the following article are that of attorney Anthony L. DeWitt and do not reflect an official stance from the USCCA. If you watched any part of the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, you know there were some tremendous takeaways for concealed carriers. What follows is my analysis of the six most important lessons as a legal professional. 1. You Can Be in the Right and Still Be Wrong Kyle Rittenhouse was attacked by four different people on the night he had to shoot to save his life. His trial illustrates quite well how a person can...

I’m so old that I can remember when first responders and health-care workers were the Heroes of the Pandemic. It doesn’t take long to go from hero to goat these days, not even in the middle of a personnel shortage in the health-care industry and a spike in transmissions that clearly include vaccinated people. Mayo Clinic fired 700 of its workers last night for failing to get vaccinated according to its mandate, a number that amounts to one percent of its overall workforce: "Mayo Clinic now confirms it fired 700 employees Tuesday who did not comply with its policy to...

To say I’m disappointed would be an understatement. As someone who has viewed Senator Ted Cruz as one of the “good guys” on Capitol Hill, hearing him say the January 6 mostly peaceful protest was a “violent terrorist attack on the Capitol” feels like the worst type of betrayal. I know why he said it and I’ll explain below, but here’s the report of what he said according to American Greatness: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) shocked many conservatives on Wednesday when he echoed the left’s overwrought January 6 messaging during a Senate Rules Committee hearing, referring to the riot as...

[H/T LilFarmer]6:31 PM · Jan 4, 2022·Twitter Web AppBoxerRebellion777 on Twitter: "36 year old reporter, Rafael Silva has a cardiac arrest on live television 3 days after his 3rd j@b and has 5 MORE CARDIAC ARRESTS on the way to the hospital. https://t.co/92UcZLgj7C" / Twitter

A father has described his shock after a voicemail message from NHS Test and Trace left on his phone appeared to show the call handler 'having sex'. William Ryan, from Basildon, Essex, missed a call from NHS Test and Trace after testing positive for Covid-19 on a PCR test. But when Mr Ryan listened to the message that had been left by the call handler on his phone he was horrified to discover a series of noises that appeared to show the member of staff engaged in sexual activity, BBC Essex reports. Mr Ryan said he looked up the number...

Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell appears to be following in the footsteps of fellow liberal Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez by taking a trip to mask-and mandate-free Florida - just days after lashing out at Republicans for 'prolonging' the coronavirus pandemic. The California Democrat has repeatedly accused conservative lawmakers of being responsible for the ongoing covid wave and last week blamed the GOP for 'canceled vacations' and for having to wear 'masks everywhere' again just before the new year. But Swalwell, himself was apparently able to go ahead with his holiday travel plans and ditch his mask just days later, when he was spotted...

Using information from ESA’s Cluster and Swarm missions along with measurements from the ground, scientists have, for the first time, been able to confirm that curiously named bursty bulk flows are directly connected to abrupt changes in the magnetic field near Earth’s surface, which can cause damage to pipelines and electrical power lines. The magnetosphere is a teardrop-shaped region in space that begins some 65,000 km from Earth on the day side and extends to over 6,000,000 km on the night side... formed through interactions between Earth’s magnetic field and supersonic wind flowing from the Sun. These interactions...comprise complicated magnetic...

Every empire at one point had some beauty and/or uniqueness that made it stand apart from all the rest. At one point in their being, each empire/kingdom/nation had signs of their distinctive existence dotting their landscape and was reflected by the vibrant towns and cities teeming with their people and customs. However, just as with the laws of thermodynamics regarding entropy, every empire returns to the common ground of absolute zero after they are collapsed. “When we look back through the remnants of the once-great kingdoms, we repeatedly see man’s attempt to thwart the ravages of time. Great structures, towering...

How lonely sits the city That was full of people! How like a widow is she, Who was great among the nations! The princess among the provinces Has become a slave! Lamentations 1:1 The thought of ghost towns has been on my mind as of late. Not so much the dilapidated wooden remnants of the old gold and silver prospecting communities scattered about the old American West, but the abandoned cities in the central and eastern United States. Some of these were abandoned when the local steel or paper mill closed down. Others were closed due to some type of...

CORONAVIRUS disruptions have continued in China’s Ningbo, where the world’s third-largest container port is striving to maintain operation levels. Truck entry into the port area remains restricted while some container freight stations have halted operations due to roadblocks and other lockdown measures in the city’s Beilun District, home to a string of large box terminals. The latest infection wave, which emerged on January 1, have so far been contained within the district, where 26 local cases were confirmed as of 2000 hrs local time on January 4, the Ningbo government told a press conference today. Most of them are from...

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland says the Department of Justice could charge people who were not physically present at the Capitol on January 6. Garland spoke the day before before the White House and Congress are set to mark the first anniversary of the attack. CBS News national affairs and justice correspondent Jeff Pegues joins CBSN to discuss the announcement.

Bethenny Frankel is heartbroken over the current state of the COVID-19 pandemic — particularly the sight of kids and the elderly still wearing masks all day. “It all makes me sad but the elderly & these young kids in school, having to live entire days in masks, is really upsetting,” Frankel, 51, tweeted on Tuesday. She added, “It’s terrible for everyone but seeing a baby or a disabled elderly person with a mask breaks me.”