Free Republic

“Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars” (Proverbs 9:1 KJV).

Several conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court called into question President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate for businesses legality. Republican officials and business requested the nation’s highest court to block the controversial policy that doesn’t seem to sit well with so many Americans.As the case reached the top court on Friday, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch said that instead of a federal agency taking the lead in dealing with the pandemic, the states and congress should take the lead.Barrett and Kavanaugh asked Elizabeth Prelogar, the administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, tough questions.The court heard testimony from Republican...

Sinead O'Connor's 17-year-old son, Shane O'Connor, died after he went missing earlier in the week, the Irish singer announced on Twitter Friday. "My beautiful son, Nevi’im Nesta Ali Shane O’Connor, the very light of my life, decided to end his earthly struggle today and is now with God," she tweeted. "May he rest in peace and may no one follow his example. My baby. I love you so much. Please be at peace." The death was confirmed by O'Connor's management company. "Regrettably, we can confirm that Sinead’s son Shane has indeed passed. We would politely ask that the utmost respect...

Zookeepers are counting their losses after the tragic deaths of around 50 of their 69 penguins due to an avian malaria outbreak.Dozens of Humboldt penguins at Dudley Zoo have died having contracted the disease, leading to an outpouring of sympathy and sadness from zoo fans. Similar to human malaria, avian malaria is a parasitic disease transmitted through the bite of infected mosquitoes. It cannot be passed on to humans or other animal species, but penguins are particularly susceptible to it as they do not have natural immunity to the disease. This is a completely separate disease to avian flu, which...

Democrats are dusting off a familiar strategy to advance key pieces of President Joe Biden's agenda through the evenly divided Senate over Republican objections. In doing so, they hope to pressure Republicans to finally support their effort to take up the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. And Democrats' past success employing the strategy to compel Republicans to cooperate with them suggests that their plan could work again this time.Republicans have twice prevented the Senate from taking up the voting rights bill by filibustering it. The bill's supporters have called for changing the Senate rules to prevent a minority...

Calvin Simon, best known for his work as a vocalist with George Clinton's Parliament-Funkadelic, has died at the age of 79. "Rest in peace to my P-Funk brother Mr. Calvin Simon," Clinton wrote in a post to Facebook. "Fly on Calvin!" “We lost another original member of Parliament/Funkadelic,” added bassist Bootsy Collins in a message of his own, remembering Simon as a “friend, bandmate & a cool classic guy.” Born in Beckley, W.V., Simon grew up singing in his church's choir. When he was a teenager, he moved to New Jersey, where he got involved with a local harmony group...

On the anniversary of the so-called insurrection, leftist commentator Keith Olbermann took aim at several liberal targets he claimed have wasted the past year with inaction and asserted that without a massive conservative political purge, “democracy could be dead in a year.”

The study will assess the immune response and safety of the new vaccine against the Zaire and Sudan species of Ebola. A planned sample of 26 participants – who must be assessed as healthy and aged 18 to 55 – will all receive one dose of the ChAdOx1 biEBOV vaccine at the University. Following vaccination, participants will be monitored through several visits over a six-month period, with results expected in the second quarter of 2022. The vaccine is based on the ChAdOx1 virus, a weakened version of a common cold virus (adenovirus) that has been genetically modified so that it...

There’s a certain type of architecture from the mid-20th century called “California Crazy.” Think of a donut shop shaped like a big concrete donut or a restaurant shaped like a hat. That kitschy programmatic architecture defined Southern California life in the middle of the last century.Here’s an example:Uzma Gamal, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons These days “California Crazy” has new meaning all its own — the policies of a left-wing state that seems to be drifting ever leftward. Citizens of the Golden State pay anywhere between 1% and 12.3% in taxes, depending on residency, income, and filing status, according to...

On Wednesday, Aaron was laid to rest at a permanent gravesite in the historic South-View Cemetery in Atlanta.It's been nearly a year since baseball legend and Braves Hall of Famer Henry "Hank" Aaron passed away at the age of 86. On Wednesday, Aaron was laid to rest at a permanent gravesite in the historic South-View Cemetery in Atlanta. He has been kept in a temporary crypt at the cemetery until his final resting place was finished. The baseball legend began his career in the major leagues at 20 years old with the Milwaukee Braves. Known by the Baseball Hall of...

A woman who brought her 14-year-old son to the Capitol on Jan. 6 last year will serve three months in jail for illegally parading in the complex during the insurrection, CNN reported Friday.Why it matters: Virginia Spencer and her husband entered a hallway of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's offices while inside the Capitol, later joining a crowd that attempted to enter the House chamber as lawmakers were still trapped inside, per court documents. Worth noting: It's one of the longer sentences handed to Jan. 6 defendants who face charges for non-violent misdemeanors, CNN notes.Spencer will also be on probation for...

Just before the New Year, the Pentagon established a new office that will study UFOs — or unidentified aerial phenomena, as they’re now known — and report its findings to Congress. However, the move — the most significant UFO legislation ever passed — is contentious to many in the UFO community, reports NBC News. “This is a subject with a provable history of secrecy, and anything that lacks a new openness about the information is subject to more, possibly inappropriate control,” Ron James, a spokesperson for the Mutual UFO Network, which bills itself as “the oldest and largest UFO organization...

Last week, over a two-day period, people in a small town in North Wales began to experience unprovoked attacks by a grey squirrel. The animal was eventually captured and put down, but not before 18 people were injured as a result of its wild biting spree, reports say. According to the BBC, the grey squirrel started attacking people in Buckley, Flintshire, last week. Prior to that, Corinne Reynolds, 65, had been feeding it since March. She said it was a “frequent and friendly visitor” to her garden. The squirrel initially came “to steal bird food” Reynolds said: “All those months...

Over the past week, after a blog post I made about how Joe Rogan was disrupting the mainstream media, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by former Fox Houston newswoman Ivory Hecker about what the future of the mainstream media looks like.You may remember Ivory as the woman who was fired after interrupting a live, on-air weather report this past summer to claim that Fox was “muzzling” her, before turning over her evidence to Project Veritas.A follow up interview by Project Veritas revealed that Hecker was reportedly reprimanded by the network for bringing up hydroxychloroquine during an interview and...

The Washington State Legislature is slated to vote on a measure that will authorize the involuntary detainment of residents as young as 5 years old in “Covid-19 concentration camps, for failing to comply with the state’s experimental vaccine mandate. If passed, WAC 246-100 will allow local health officers at “his other sole discretion” to “issue an emergency detention order causing a person or group of persons to be immediately detained for purposes of isolation or quarantine.” Health officers are required to provide documentation proving unvaccinated residents subject to detention have denied “requests for medical examination, testing, treatment, counseling, vaccination, decontamination...

A group of Chicago parents this week sued the city’s teachers union over its refusal to teach classes in person.The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) voted on Tuesday night to only teach classes remotely, arguing the rise in COVID-19 cases and an alleged lack of protective measures made it too dangerous to instruct students inside classrooms.Chicago Public Schools (CPS) deemed the action an illegal work stoppage and canceled classes for three consecutive days as officials negotiated with union leaders. CTU and city officials also filed competing labor complaints.The lawsuit, filed in Cook County circuit court, offers a similar view of the...

“Looking at the present, I see a more probable future: a new despotism creeping slowly across America. Faceless oligarchs sit at command posts of a corporate-government complex that has been slowly evolving over many decades. In efforts to enlarge their own powers and privileges, they are willing to have others suffer the intended or unintended consequences of their institutional or personal greed. For Americans, these consequences include chronic inflation, recurring recession, open and hidden unemployment, the poisoning of air, water, soil and bodies, and, more important, the subversion of our constitution."- Bertram Gross, Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power...

The Hockey Diversity Alliance hopes an attention-grabbing video and a campaign involving hockey tape bolsters its mission to eradicate racism in the sport. The HDA, made up of current and former hockey players of color, has partnered with Budweiser Canada to launch "#TapeOutHate," a campaign that will feature rolls of hockey tape available for purchase with "racism has no place in hockey" written on the tape.

Wokeness has a reputation for intolerance. That reputation has made some people intolerant of the woke. At least one Floridian has resorted to what could be construed as civil disobedience to voice disdain over the influx of New Yorkers into a Palm Beach neighborhood. A number of cars with New York license plates found notes on their car windows instructing them to move someplace else if they identify with the political left, according to the New York Post. Typed in capital letters, the message read, “If you are one of those ‘woke’ people -- leave Florida. You will be happier...

Georgian tennis star Nikoloz Basilashvili was forced to drop out of the Sydney Cup due to breathing difficulties and needing treatment from a doctor during his singles match against Greece’s Stefanos Tsitsipas. The 29-year-old and World’s no. 22 tennis player had to end his ATP Cup match early due to breathing difficulties on Wednesday. A doctor and physiotherapist attended Basilashvili while sitting with his team.