Free Republic

For the last 20 years, North Korea has ranked No. 1. This year, a new country has taken the No. 1 position as the world's worst enemy of faith.

Starbucks has decided to reverse its COVID-19 vaccine mandate on U.S. workers in response to the Supreme Court's ruling on the Biden administration's mandate. Starbucks on January 3 announced its mandate, which would have required employees to be vaccinated against the virus by February 9 or to test weekly, the Associated Press reported. But in a Tuesday memo sent to the coffee chain's 228,000 U.S. employees, Starbucks Chief Operating Officer John Culver said the company would change its policy due to the Supreme Court's decision to strike down President Joe Biden's mandate requiring vaccines or weekly testing for businesses with...

I just got word of the death of Arnold, a (black) high school classmate of many decades ago. For some reason, my memories of him also brings up memories of another black classmate, Bryant. Arnold had a huge personality that found pleasure and humor no matter the circumstances. He was the type of person that would approach a stranger, struck up a conversation and walk away with an instant friend. I was shocked that he remembered a conversation we had many, many decades ago. Life was hard on him, in a recent photo, he looked decades older than his age....

Mandates Are About Political Control, Not HealthFor two years, the political class’s ineptitude has been on full display. School shutdowns, business closures, and endless mask mandates have all proven relatively ineffective at stemming the spread of COVID-19 (never mind reducing hospitalizations and deaths), yet politicians continued instituting these harmful and useless measures in a desperate attempt to be perceived as doing something.But over the past month or so, it has become inescapable that sheer incompetence and ignorance can no longer be the sole explanation for two years of bungled policies. Rather, the craven mindset of many of our leaders in...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Honduras next week to attend the inauguration of President-elect Xiomara Castro, the Central American country’s first female president. Castro, the leftist opposition party candidate, won out over the country’s ruling party in November. She will be inaugurated Jan. 27. She is the former first lady and her husband, José Manuel Zelaya was ousted by the army in a coup in 2009. She rode a wave of popular discontent with 12 years of National Party governance, which peaked in former President Juan Orlando Hernández’s second term.

Thieves have been raiding cargo containers aboard trains nearing downtown Los Angeles for months, taking packages belonging to people across the U.S. and leaving the tracks blanketed with discarded boxes. The packages are from retailers including Amazon, REI and others, CBSLA reported Thursday. The sea of debris left behind includes items that the thieves apparently didn’t think were valuable enough to take. While CBSLA cameras were on the scene, one person was spotted running off with a container used to hold small packages, and a Union Pacific railroad police officer was spotted pursuing two other people who were apparently going...

Massive Federal stimulus (both fiscal and monetary) have led to bidding wars among the wealthiest Americans. Despite clamoring for The Fed to increase rates and speed-up the shrinking of The Fed’s balance sheet, nothing has happened … yet. (Bloomberg) — Home buyers willing to spend almost a $1 million are competing the most for a piece of the red-hot U.S. housing market. Homes priced between $800,000 and $1 million saw the highest rate of bidding wars at 64.6%, followed by 62% for homes between $1 million to $1.5 million and 61.7% for homes above $1.5 million, according to December data...

Sir Tim Clark, president of Emirates, appeared on Bloomberg Wednesday to blame the shambolic situation on the Biden administration which green-lit the 5G rollout without addressing the safety fears of the aviation industry first. 'I need to be as candid as I normally am and say this is one of the most delinquent, utterly irresponsible issue subjects, call it what you like, I've seen in my aviation career because it involves organs of government, manufacturers, science, etc. The notion that, for instance, the U.S. government should sell its franchise for all the frequencies for a large amount of money, somebody...

The Washington, D.C. Department of Health announced that "beginning January 15, any person wanting to enter any indoor space—including government buildings, restaurants, bars, theaters, gyms, and hotels—in the Capital must show a photo ID and proof of having been vaccinated for covid. Mayor Muriel Bowser said "the convergence of major public health menaces—the emergence of the Omicron variant of covid and the arrival of two major disease vectors—the Annual March for Life on January 21 and the Defeat the Mandates March on January 23—are the reason for this new decree." "While we can't legally bar the hundreds of thousands of...

As it turns out, one man’s bodily reaction to COVID has proven that the virus truly isn’t confined to the throat and upper respiratory tract. According to a foreign medical journal, an Iranian man has drawn the interest of doctors after reporting “agonizing” pain in his penis that turned out to have been caused by blood clots that seriously threatened the man’s sexual health.The man, who wasn’t named in the news reports about the incident, had suffered penile pain for three days before being seen by a urologist in Iran, who referred him for tests. Keep in mind: one of...

Radio personality Howard Stern said Wednesday on his Sirius XM show “The Howard Stern Show” that the unvaccinated who get infected with COVID-19 would be refused service from hospitals. Stern said, “If it was up to me, anyone unvaccinated would not be admitted to a hospital. At this point, they have been given plenty of opportunity to get the vaccine.” [cut] Stern said, “They have been told you will die if you get the vaccine. Some of you will live, but most of you will die. They don’t trust our government. They think that there’s some conspiracy to turn them...

(CNN) On the eve of his one-year anniversary in office, President Joe Biden finds himself at the lowest polling point of his tenure -- a worrisome omen for Democrats desperately trying to hold onto their House and Senate majorities this fall. That's according to new poll numbers from Gallup that peg Biden's approval at just 40% with 56% disapproving. It's the lowest measure so far by Gallup and well below his 48.9% polling average over the past year in the organization's surveys. At this one-year mark, that average is about where Bill Clinton was and ten points better than Donald...

I'm hoping to sell my house by springtime (I need a bigger one for my wife and kids) and would like my bathroom redone. Needs some drywall work, new bathroom tub and shower surround, etc. I had a really hard time finding contractors and I got two bids. I can pick out the items from Home Depot I want him to install. Nothing fancy or complicated. is it expected for me to buy the items I want him to install? Or does he do that as part of the cost of the job?

The White House apparently didn't have enough foresight to realize that a presidential address last week in which Biden attacked roughly half the country for being on the side of historical racists wouldn't play well. Shocker: comparing more than half the United States Senate to Jefferson Davis is not a recipe for unity. Despite days of stinging criticism for the speech that was labeled a "break point" for the Biden administration by Peggy Noonan, the White House is maintaining Biden's divisive rant was totally normal.

Has anyone donated directly to Donald Trump/Trump campaign lately? Anyone know where to go to donate DIRECTLY to Trump? I am bombarded with emails daily and I want to donate- but i know most of these are RINO/GOPe affiliated organizations who won't get $0.01 of my money. Thank you.

CBS's Nate Burleson ties the underwater volcanic eruption and 50-foot-high tsunami in Tonga to climate change: "We talk about climate change quite a bit. These stories are a harsh reality of what we're going through and we have to do our part because these are more frequent." pic.twitter.com/Wn7ilAdeRo — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 19, 2022 Climate change causes underwater volcanic eruptions, according to Gayle King and crew. Huge volcanic eruption near Tonga. Reports of tsunami there and it's gone pitch black. Lots of lightning too. #tonga pic.twitter.com/Eia4fidPRc — Rick Threlfall (@RickThrelfall) January 15, 2022

President Joe Biden’s nominee for commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission hates Fox News and wants the federal agency to regulate conservative broadcasts because she disagrees with them. The White House first announced Gigi Sohn as Biden’s FCC nominee in October. “Gigi is one of the nation’s leading public advocates for open, affordable, and democratic communications networks,” the Biden administration claimed. “For over thirty years, Gigi has worked to defend and preserve the fundamental competition and innovation policies that have made broadband Internet access more ubiquitous, competitive, affordable, open, and protective of user privacy.” Sohn’s inclination towards censorship and partisan...

VIDEOHmmmm... New York Attorney General Letitia James campaigned hard on a platform that she would indict President Donald Trump for something... ANYTHING! Therefore it is quite laughable that all the current news reports that she might take legal action against Trump FAIL to mention her over-the-top loudly proclaimed political BIAS against Trump which she boasted about frequently during her election campaign.

There now are at least 19 federal departments or agencies that have – or are trying to get – procedures so they can keep lists of people who seek or are granted "religious" exemptions to various COVID-19 mandates. The details come in a Daily Signal column by Sarah Parshall Parry and GianCarlo Canaparo. Earlier, they explained when they first found an agency trying to spy on Americans, the Pretrial Services Agency for the District of Columbia. Its policy, that first report said, "will likely serve as a model for a whole-of-government push to assemble lists of Americans who object on...

Whether or not Vladimir Putin moves his troops into Ukraine, he has once again confronted Europe with a most painful reality: while being too weak to defend itself, it can no longer rely on the United States to come to its rescue. We are facing a reality in which Russia, despite its economy only having the size of Italy's, can bully and intimidate a continent thanks to its energy reserves and its readiness to project vast military power. Sure, any Russian invasion of Ukraine would cost Russia a fortune and likely degrade into a grinding war of attrition. Invasion is...