Free Republic

A British tribunal has ruled that a Christian nurse who was forced to resign from a hospital over her refusal to stop wearing a cross was wrongfully discriminated against. The Employment Tribunal ruled Wednesday that Mary Onuoha had been mistreated by the Croydon Health Services NHS Trust when they demanded that he stop wearing a cross to work. The tribunal rejected the hospital's claim that the cross necklace presented a high infection risk, noting that other items like rings and hijabs were permitted at the facility. “There is no evidence to show that the infection risk they posed was lower...

Speaker Pelosi and her Democrat colleagues were criticized after inviting the cast of Broadway's “Hamilton” to perform at a ceremony marking Jan. 6. “We’re privileged to have a contribution from one of the great creative talents of our time, Lin-Manuel Miranda,” Pelosi said by way of introduction. “May his beautiful words be an inspiration to us.” After Miranda spoke, several members of different tour casts launched into a version of “Dear Theodosia,” which is sung in the show by Aaron Burr to his infant daughter. Video of the virtual performance quickly spread across social media, with many criticizing it as...

For years, experts thought the biggest stars in the universe, red supergiants, died with a whimper. But in 2020, astronomers witnessed quite the opposite. One of these gleaming monsters -- 10 times more massive than the sun -- violently self-destructed after presenting the cosmos with a final, radiant beacon of starlight. ..Jacobson-Galán is the lead author of a paper published Thursday in The Astrophysical Journal that documents the star's eruption as well as its last, 130-day hurrah.... ...The star's extreme illumination indicated it wasn't dormant, or quiescent, as previously observed red supergiants had been prior to their demise. This shiny...

"“Thanks to the USDA for their continued collaboration with HHSC to provide healthy meals to Texans across the state,” said Abbott. Despite businesses across Texas struggling to find employees to staff open positions, Gov. Greg Abbott has announced that Texas will once again dole out even more additional food stamp funds in light of the COVID emergency declared in March of 2020. In an announcement Wednesday, Abbott said the Texas Health and Human Services Commission will distribute more than $307 million in emergency Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits in January, to be given to more than 1.5 million Texas...

"Left-wing demonstrators have long made a habit of attacking, infiltrating, and occupying government buildings. Self-absorbed congressional Democrats held a group therapy session on Capitol Hill on Thursday as they work tirelessly to immortalize Jan. 6 as an annual day of doom, but the rest of us are old enough to remember a few more times when riots and protests overwhelmed government buildings with no such theatrical response. More than a few times, actually. The 2020 summer of rage was more or less “incited” by these same top Democrats, who race-baited as if their lives depended on it, and even our...

On Friday the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case challenging the constitutionality of President Biden's order that all businesses with 100 or more employees must compel their workers to be vaccinated or required to submit to weekly covid testing. Scott Keller, attorney for the National Federation of Independent Business, argued that "the power to make getting vaccinated the law of the land is clearly reserved to Congress in Article I of the US Constitution." Several of the Justices questioned this argument. Justice Elena Kagan posited that "the general welfare clause of the Constitution's preamble seems to trump...

"The U.S. economy added just 199,000 jobs in December and the unemployment rate fell to 3.9 percent. Economists had forecast 422,000 jobs and an unemployment rate of 4.1 percent, although this week’s report on private payrolls from ADP indicating that the private sector added 807,000 jobs had created some anticipation that the official figure would be higher than the consensus forecast. ..."

"The United States saw the widest gap in unemployment rates for African Americans and whites in years at the conclusion of the first year of Biden’s presidency, underscoring an uneven recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and the Biden administration’s failure to meet its promises to foster racial equity in the economy. The jobless rates for whites fell half a percentage point to 3.2 percent, while the rate for blacks rose from 6.7 percent to 7.1 percent, according to data released by the Labor Department on Friday. ..."

[17:09 video clip] "‘Gutfeld!’ panel reacts to Jan. 6 one year later and Democrats using it for political leverage."

[1:36 video clip] "How many of the biggest media lies from 2021 can you remember? Here’s my rapid fire version of the 2021 media lies. Share it to remind people just how much disinformation gets distributed by official media sources in a given year."

The Biden administration has cut detentions of illegal immigrants despite the historic surge across the border, and it is relying more on ankle bracelets to monitor migrants despite reports they don’t work. Syracuse University’s Transactional Research Access Clearinghouse, which charts federal immigration statistics, said that just 20,623 illegal immigrants are being detained, down from 22,000, raising questions from critics about where thousands of other border-crossers are.... ...An Arizona Sun Times report quoted the mayor of Yuma saying that just 1% of those nabbed by border agents are being deported.... ...“The historical data clearly shows any alternative to detention has been...

I remember the call from my husband on May 31. It was our anniversary, and he was out running errands before he came home—not because we had plans, but because there was a curfew in place in Minneapolis. He called to tell me he had to drive to a nearby suburb to pick up a medical prescription. "Our Walgreens on Hennepin Avenue isn't there anymore," he said. "It was burned to the ground." Over the spring and summer of 2020, thousands of businesses were looted, damaged, or totally destroyed during the George Floyd protests—especially here, where Floyd was killed. Every...

Grammy-nominated Five For Fighting singer John Ondrasik said his new music video that shows footage of President Joe Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan has been censored and removed by YouTube. A search for the song on the video service shows a lyric video and a still image video that plays the tune, called 'Blood on Your Hands,' but does not appear to feature the controversial video Ondrasik posted. The singer, best known for hits like Superman and 100 Years, announced the removal of the video - which features images of what he calls 'Taliban atrocities' - on his Twitter account.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection revealed on Wednesday Border Patrol agents working in the Big Bend Sector rescued 25 illegal immigrants who were abandoned in a locked trailer in low temperatures. ... ...While the Big Bend Sector in Texas is one of the most remote sectors along the U.S.-Mexico border, it had experienced an increase in illegal activity in 2021 during the still ongoing border crisis. Compared to fiscal year 2020, fiscal year 2021 saw a 233 percent increase in unaccompanied children encounters, a 62 percent increase in family encounters, and a 365 increase in single adult encounters. ...

“Doth not wisdom cry? and understanding put forth her voice?” (Proverbs 8:1 KJV).

ransomnote: The Worldometer uses, as its source, many organizations which have their own credibility problems. Since 'someone' rewrote the content of Wikipedia's entry for Worldometer to eliminate mention of it's flaws/limitations, I thought I should capture what Worldometer says about itself before it, too is revised and sanitized."Sources and MethodsOur sources include Official Websites of Ministries of Health or other Government Institutions and Government authorities' social media accounts."Worldometer links their sources on another page. Here's just a subset of a larger list - their dominant source is the United Nations.Worldometer - Sources (worldometers.info)United Nations, Statistics DivisionEconomic Commission for Asia and...

ransomnote: Worldometer.com seems to the be SNOPES of demographic & statistical data sharing. It's rather humorous to see CNN posturing as if its standards are higher than that of Worldometer.Excerpts:Instead of citing Johns Hopkins, Spanish officials are now pointing to testing rankings from a data aggregation website called Worldometer — one of the sources behind the university’s widely cited coronavirus dashboard — and prompting questions about why some governments and respected institutions have chosen to trust a source about which little is known.SNIPThe website claims to be “run by an international team of developers, researchers, and volunteers” and “published by...

NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams on Friday named his younger brother as a deputy NYPD commissioner, police sources said — a move that immediately raised conflict-of-interest questions. Bernard Adams was assigned to the office of new Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell, sources said. The post — which comes with a yearly salary of around $240,000, according to SeeThroughNY.net — is believed to be temporary. Sources expect Bernard Adams to be transferred elsewhere once other high-level personnel moves are finalized.... ...The appointment by Adams, who won office on a tough-on-crime platform, raised eyebrows among government watchdogs....

During a speech on the occasion of Friday prayers in the Iranian city of Mashhad which commemorated this week’s second anniversary of the US killing of IRGC General Qassem Soleimani, the top commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force (who was Soleimani’s replacement) vowed to take vengeance “from within the US”. Iranian state and other foreign regional media featured Brigadier General Esmaeil Qaani’s ultra-provocative words, translating them as follows: “We will prepare ground for the hard revenge against the US from within their homes, as we do not need to be present as supervisors everywhere.” IRGC Quds...

We’ve known for some time now that the omicron variant of COVID-19, which is driving the current surge in coronavirus cases, is more transmissible but less deadly than past variants.Recent studies have shown, for example, that while previous variants heavily attacked the lungs, omicron is far milder, mostly infecting the upper airways and not deep lung tissue.Not that that stopped the usual suspects from pressing the panic button.But evidence continues to grow that omicron is a signal that the worst of the pandemic is over. Scientists are now saying omicron appears to have a death rate 100 times less than...