Free Republic

A spokeswoman for Home Depot, which has more than half a million employees, said the company is “still looking at the ruling.” The Atlanta-based company hadn’t launched a vaccination requirement, but it had been asking staffers about their vaccination status. Recently, the company pushed back its planned mid-January reopening of corporate offices until Feb. 7 because of the dramatic surge in COVID-19 cases in recent weeks.

President Biden repeatedly claims that Build Back Better will reduce inflation and says seventeen Nobel Prize-winning economists agree with him. Although Biden lies a lot, it is certainly possible that he could find leftist economists who love big government and socialism, no matter how it fails as an economic system. Socialism essentially makes the government more powerful and makes more people dependent on the government. It gives little opportunity for the poor and middle class to move up. Here are some simple lessons on economic concepts and inflation: In the 1960’s, the government started throwing massive amounts of money at...

According to the CDC, vaccination is no longer an endpoint, it’s a process. For many months, conservatives have been predicting that the CDC will redefine what it means to be vaccinated. In the distant past—that is, more than two years ago—being vaccinated meant you’d had an injection that left you forever immune to a disease. This became problematic when the COVID vaccines did not leave people immune to the disease. Now there are boosters, so the CDC has announced that you’re not vaccinated unless you’ve also had your booster. Of course, even with that booster, you’re still not immune, as...

For Bitcoin, there’s only been one constant recently: decline after decline after decline. And the superlatives have piled up really quickly. With the Federal Reserve intending to withdraw stimulus from the market, riskier assets the world over have suffered. Bitcoin, the largest digital asset, lost as much as 8.7% Friday and dropped below $38,000 to its lowest level in six months. Since its peak in November, it has lost 40% of its value. Other digital currencies have suffered just as much, if not more, with Ether and meme coins mired in similar drawdowns. Bitcoin’s decline since that November high has...

Individual scientists are often well meaning and honest. But they are caught up in a system where conformity is enforced. There are many shady methids of making money. There are frauds like Ponzi schemes or pump and dump stock schemes. A more subtle scheme is convincing naïve students to take out large loans to pay inflated tuition so that colleges can milk the taxpayer. The consequences of the student loan fraud are far reaching such as delaying family formation and childbearing. Another academic scheme is to posit a future catastrophe based on “scientific” research. What follows is a vast flow...

In 2021, special interests groups and teachers unions worked their air-tight alliances with Democratic politicians to the bone, trying harder than ever to stop parents from having a say in the education of their children. But 2021 was also the year that parents fought back. Parents flocked to the polls in record numbers to elect Glenn Youngkin as Governor of Virginia in a massive upset. Youngkin kept his campaign promise and banned Critical Race Theory (CRT) in Virginia’s schools on his first day in office. In another victory, the Department of Education pulled the plug on a regulation that would...

It’s become fashionable to condemn law enforcement as racist, leading to such shortsighted responses as ending cash bail, permitting endemic homelessness, and downgrading felonies to misdemeanors. These responses have resulted in logical conclusions, from six dead in Waukesha, to senseless murder in the NYC subway. And these responses have devastated poor, black victims especially. But wait, say the social justice warriors, we’ve only just begun. We must not only abolish criminal punishment, but social incentives for good behavior as well. Last week, a housing justice group filed a lawsuit in federal court, arguing that a New Orleans landlord’s criminal background...

Former President Donald Trump’s endorsement is coveted among Republicans running for U.S. Senate in Missouri. All of the candidates talk about their support of Trump on the campaign trail. At least two have brought on former Trump staffers as paid advisers. And more than one of them might get the endorsement. Trump, frustrated that he’s getting conflicting advice from advisers and unsure of which one to believe, is reportedly considering endorsing more than one candidate, according to Politico.

Can we have a 3 hour recorded public debate on whether there was misinformation on JRE #1757 instead of censorship? Or is high tech company censorship the only way you roll?Steve KirschJan 20 The challengeTo the 270 scientists, medical professionals, professors, and science communicators who signed the letter to Spotify complaining about medical misinformation:We challenge every Professor and medical doctor (MD) who signed the Open Letter to a live recorded Zoom debate at 10am PST on January 28, 2021 for 3 hours. The purpose is to identify and expose any misinformation on the Joe Rogan podcast cited in the letter...

Can we have a 3 hour recorded public debate on whether there was misinformation on JRE #1757 instead of censorship? Or is high tech company censorship the only way you roll?Steve KirschJan 20 The challengeTo the 270 scientists, medical professionals, professors, and science communicators who signed the letter to Spotify complaining about medical misinformation:We challenge every Professor and medical doctor (MD) who signed the Open Letter to a live recorded Zoom debate at 10am PST on January 28, 2021 for 3 hours. The purpose is to identify and expose any misinformation on the Joe Rogan podcast cited in the letter...

A Jewish couple from Tennessee has filed a lawsuit against the state’s Department of Children’s Services after a state-funded Christian program denied them foster care services for religious reasons. According to the lawsuit filed on Wednesday, Elizabeth and Gabriel Rutan-Ram signed up for the foster-parent training class and home-study certification process last January at the Holston United Methodist Home for Children. On 21 January 2021, the same day the Rutan-Rams were scheduled to begin the foster-parent-training class at Holston, an employee “emailed Ms Rutan-Ram to inform her that Holston would not serve the Rutan-Rams because of the couple’s Jewish faith”....

Senate Democrats say they share President Biden’s concern that the results of the 2022 midterm elections may not be legitimate because of restrictive voting laws passed by GOP-controlled state legislatures and the empowerment of state-level officials allied with former President Trump. But the senators are torn over how hard to push a stolen-election narrative ahead of the November election in which Republicans are expected to make big gains in Congress. While Democratic lawmakers are worried that Republican state officials are seeking to suppress Democratic votes, some are leery of sounding like Trump, who made predictions of widespread election fraud before...

It was breathtaking to be at St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on the morning of Jan. 18. The Christmas tree was gone from Rockefeller Center, but the church was packed yet again, this time with a strong showing from the NYPD, the new mayor, and other civil leaders. It was the fifth anniversary of the death of Steven McDonald, a police officer, who was shot on the job by a troubled teen. Left paralyzed, he forgave his shooter and even offered him room in his home once he was released from prison. The young man tragically died,...

Peter McCullough, MD MPH (@P_McCulloughMD) / Twitter Peter McCullough, MD MPH on Twitter: "Dr. Doshi is highest integrity, unassailable, pharmaceutical expert, fully justified in the strongest call for transparency from big pharma on products used and mandated in pandemic response. No one should be presented with biologic products without good faith/full transparency https://t.co/FpOI7TACx4" / Twitter

Fighting climate change is at the center of resident Joe Biden’s administration, because, Biden claims, “[Climate change is] the number one issue facing humanity.” Biden’s solution, as outlined at the time and subsequently on multiple White House fact sheets, is to use a “whole of government approach,” achieving a 50-52 percent reduction from 2005 levels in economy-wide net greenhouse gas emissions in 2030, and being net-zero emissions for the nation as a whole by 2050. Although Biden’s goals are clearly stated, his energy and climate policies have been inconsistent. Energy is the lifeblood of the economy. The actions taken by...

It’s a scary time here in Ukraine. That’s saying something, because the past eight years haven’t been easy... Heavy artillery, rocket attacks, trench warfare, a civilian airliner shot from the sky. In September 2014, I witnessed tank combat outside the coastal city of Mariupol. Today, Ukrainian troops remain in daily combat against a combined force of Russian regulars and local conscripts drawn from the Russian-occupied territories in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region... We are in the midst of Europe’s most dangerous moment... One line of thinking is that Russian forces would execute a swift, overwhelming strike meant to inflict massive...losses on...

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The author of the preposterous 1619 Project seems miffed by the growing grass-roots backlash against the force-feeding of her anti-historical rubbish and it’s offshoots to American schoolchildren. Over in Virginia, for example, Gov. Younkin kicked off his term with an executive order banning Critical Race Theory in Virginia’s public schools. And down in Florida Gov. De Santis is pushing a bill to do much the same. “Many in mainstream media got caught up in the Republican propaganda campaign, which tried to conflate the teaching of a more accurate (italics mine) history, the teaching of structural racism, with trying to make...

January 22nd, 2021 Memorial of Saint AnthonyMonday of Week Two in Ordinary Time St. Joseph's Cathedral, Rawalpindi, PakistanReadings at MassLiturgical Colour: Green First reading2 Samuel 1:1-4,11-12,17,19,23-27 ©David's lament over Saul and JonathanDavid returned from his rout of the Amalekites and spent two days in Ziklag. On the third day a man came from the camp where Saul had been, his garments torn and earth on his head. When he came to David, he fell to the ground and did homage. ‘Where do you come from?’ David asked him. ‘I have escaped from the Israelite camp’ he said. David said to...

It's a step toward clinical trials involving live patients.A group of surgeons from the University of Alabama at Birmingham has proven that it's possible to genetically alter a pig so that its kidneys can be used on human transplant patients. The doctors have transplanted kidneys from a genetically altered pig into the abdomen of a brain-dead man, and as The New York Times has reported, the procedure was described in a paper published in the American Journal of Transplantation. According to the doctors, the kidneys from the pig started producing urine as soon as 23 minutes after the procedure and...