Free Republic

Sen. Tom Cotton on Wednesday delivered a brilliant speech defending the filibuster as Democrats plot to change Senate rules to pass voting legislation. What made his remarks so powerful? He used the top Senate Democrat’s own words. “Right now, we are on the precipice of a constitutional crisis. We are about to step into the abyss. I want to talk for a few minutes why we are on that precipice and why we are looking into that abyss,” Cotton said Wednesday, quoting Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. In fact, the rest of the Arkansas Republican’s speech was a reading of...

The Justice Department will begin transferring thousands of inmates out of federal prisons this week as part of a sweeping criminal justice overhaul signed by President Donald Trump more than three years ago. The department, in a rule being published Thursday in the Federal Register, is spelling out how “time credits” for prisoners will work. The bipartisan law is intended to encourage inmates to participate in programs aimed at reducing recidivism, which could let them out of prison earlier. It also eases mandatory minimum sentences and gives judges more discretion in sentencing. While the transfers are expected to begin this...

What will you all do to enjoy this moment of schadenfreude for the despicable communists?

FIRST WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME MARK 1:40-45 Friends, our Gospel for today has to do with Jesus’ healing a leper. There aren’t that many lepers around today, but there are plenty of people that we treat as outsiders or pariahs. Like Jesus, we should be welcoming to them. Now, I have nothing particularly against that way of reading the situation, but I suspect that we’ve all heard it a thousand times. Let me propose a symbolic reading a little different from the customary one. I propose that the leper here stands not so much for the socially ostracized but for...

The Age of Intolerance: Cancel culture’s war on free speech“Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners.”—George CarlinCancel culture—political correctness amped up on steroids, the self-righteousness of a narcissistic age, and a mass-marketed pseudo-morality that is little more than fascism disguised as tolerance—has shifted us into an Age of Intolerance, policed by techno-censors, social media bullies, and government watchdogs.Everything is now fair game for censorship if it can be construed as hateful, hurtful, bigoted or offensive provided that it runs counter to the established viewpoint.In this way, the most controversial issues of our day—race, religion, sex, sexuality, politics, science, health,...

Fool's Ball: Wildcard Weekend!!!! Your home for all things Fool's Ball! In Memoriam Danny Lee (BENDER2)

The U.S. Supreme Court blocked President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate on large private businesses through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) on Thursday, but upheld a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) mandate. The decision on the OSHA mandate was 6-3; the decision on the CMS mandate was 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joining the court’s three Democratic appointees in upholding it. As Breitbart News reported last week, the Court had appeared skeptical of the mandates during oral arguments, especially the OSHA mandate, as Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar struggled to identify the statutory...

Kyrsten Sinema publicly and bluntly reaffirmed she would not support any change to the filibuster rules on Thursday, effectively killing her party’s hope of passing the most sweeping voting rights protections in a generation. Sinema took to the Senate floor around noon on Thursday and said she would not support any changes to the filibuster, the Senate rule that requires 60 votes to advance legislation. “While I continue to support these [voting rights] bills, I will not support separate actions that worsen the underlying disease of division infecting our country,” said Sinema, a first-term Democrat from Arizona. “We must address...

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter announced Wednesday a temporary policy for establishments serving indoor food or beverages. View the full order from Minneapolis here and from St. Paul here. The policy, which applies for licensed businesses at which food or drink is served indoors, will require customers to either show proof of COVID-19 vaccination or a negative PCR or antigen test taken within 72 hours of the visit. City officials said the policy will take effect on Jan. 19. There is not an explicitly listed expiration date for the policy, but Frey said the policy...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis confirmed that the Food and Drug Administration agreed to extend the expiration date for almost 1 million rapid COVID-19 test kits. The tests initially expired last September, but the expiration was extended to December before they expired again. The new extension will last for three months. "At the end of the summer they expired. The FDA agreed to extend it for three months, but during those three months there was almost zero demand for testing because we had such low COVID prevalence," he said during a press conference Wednesday. "The Division of Emergency Management had been...

U.S.—The SCOTUS has struck down Biden’s vaccine mandates on the grounds that they are unconstitutional. Experts say this sets a dangerous precedent of letting individuals make their own medical decisions. “What am I supposed to do now that I don’t have private companies working with the Federal government to force me to inject a foreign substance into my body?” said Linda Waddlebum, a concerned mother of 6 cats. “So dangerous and shortsighted. How will I stay healthy? I don’t even recognize this America anymore.” In response to the court’s decision, a large group of protestors has gathered outside of the...

A hardline judge has fined and ridiculed a 72-year-old Michigan man with lymphoma, ruling that he “should be ashamed” of being too weak to mow his overgrown lawn. Burhan Chowdhury of Hamtramck, a community about six miles north of Detroit, admittedly fell behind in yard maintenance after he was diagnosed with cancer of the lymph nodes in 2019. His overgrown property prompted local officials to subpoena Chowdhury. In now-viral footage of the Zoom court hearing on Jan. 10, Chowdhury’s breathing appeared labored as Judge Alexis G. Krot of the 31st District Court berated him. “You should be ashamed of yourself,”...

The budget blueprint Newsom detailed this week includes $2 billion over two years in grants and tax credits to incentivize housing development... “Moving away from investments in housing that don’t focus on climate, health, integrating downtown, schools, jobs, parks and restaurants.” Jason Elliott, Newsom’s top housing advisor, said the governor’s budget interlaces housing, cost-of-living and climate policies to simultaneously address California’s top issues. “The whole government...It’s better for equity, it’s better for inclusion..." The $2 billion includes $500 million in grants for nonprofit and for-profit developers or local governments to construct more units on existing, but underused, urban land close...

The number of actual Americans filing for jobless benefits for the first time spiked to 419k in the first week of 2022. That is the highest since May 2021. Seasonally-adjusted, initial claims also rose notably to 230k (against 200k expected). More… ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This trend will escalate as people walk away from the woke plantation theology that destroyed the country and delivered it into the hands of traitors. For the fedgov agents monitoring this site, ask yourselves how much longer you will be complicit in this evil.

n the Notes app on my phone, I keep a list called “Ingredients to Buy in the U.S.” Horseradish, cake flour, molasses, Chex Mix—I can’t find certain American foods in Madrid, so I lug them back with me, weight allowances be damned. But customs always swipes my most prized Proustian treasure, one that’s absent, astoundingly, in the Iberian Peninsula: good bacon. Smoky, crispy, sizzling slices of American-style bacon. Bacon is Spain’s biggest culinary disappointment. Flabby, elastic, and chronically undercooked, it’s always too thick or too thin, too salty or too bland. It boasts neither the heady campfire scent of American...

Earlier this week, TikTok star and podcast host Sofia Franklyn went viral when she shared her first date ritual. In a viral video that’s racked up 2.1 million views, Sofia admitted that she always sends herself a drink from a fake secret admirer so her date knows she’s in demand. She wrote: “When I ‘got to the bathroom’ and pay the bartender to send me an ‘anonymous’ shot so my date remembers I have options.” Sofia then captioned the clip: “Men love some healthy competition!”

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday blocked the Biden administration’s vaccine-or-test rule for most businesses with over 100 workers. The high court also ruled to allow vaccine mandates for most healthcare employees.

Some cannabis compounds can prevent the virus that causes COVID-19 from entering human cells — but smoking marijuana offers no protection against the illness, according to a study by Oregon State University.The researchers found that a pair of hemp compounds — cannabigerolic acid, or CBGA, and cannabidiolic acid, CBDA — bind to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, blocking a vital step in the deadly bug’s path to infect people.“These cannabinoid acids are abundant in hemp and in many hemp extracts,” said lead researcher Richard van Breemen at Oregon State’s Global Hemp Innovation Center in the College of Pharmacy and Linus Pauling...

The hunt for moons outside our solar system has just turned up another possible lunar world, a moon bigger than Earth that's orbiting a Jupiter-like planet. The planet and its moon — if it really is a moon — orbit a Sun-like star that's over 5,000 light years away, according to a report in the journal Nature Astronomy. "The moon is pretty alien compared to any moon in the solar system," says David Kipping, an astronomer at Columbia University. "We're not sure if it's rocky, we're not sure if it's gaseous. It's kind of in between the size of Neptune,...