Free Republic

Public-health officials ruined many lives by insisting that workers with natural immunity to Covid-19 be fired if they weren’t fully vaccinated. But after two years of accruing data, the superiority of natural immunity over vaccinated immunity is clear. By firing staff with natural immunity, employers got rid of those least likely to infect others. It’s time to reinstate those employees with an apology. For most of last year, many of us called for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to release its data on reinfection rates, but the agency refused. Finally last week, the CDC released data from New...

The gut microbiome may be linked to a person developing 'long COVID' many months after initial infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19 infection. A growing body of evidence has implicated the gut microbiome—the trillions of bacteria, fungi, and other microbes that inhabit the digestive tract—in COVID-19 severity. And given that the gut has a major role in immunity, a disordered immune response to COVID-19 infection, induced by resident microbes, may affect the recovery process too. While initial viral load wasn't associated with long COVID, their gut microbiome differed from that of patients without long COVID and those who...

You know what corned beef is, right? (If you don't, this handy explainer might help.) Since you're now so well-versed in the art of pickled brisket, let's move on to pastrami, corned beef's slightly more luxurious cousin. Here's what you need to know about the historic sandwich staple. What is pastrami? While corned beef is typically made from brisket, pastrami generally comes from the cow's navel area, Serious Eats reports. The navel cut is a fatty one, and it's also likely to stand up well to the long cooking process that's to come. When you eat it, it's less stringy...

Billy, the runaway bison who became an unlikely social media star in suburban Cary this fall, is being lured home with the help of molasses-sweetened feed, according to one of her co-owners. Scott Comstock of Milk & Honey Farmstead in Wauconda said that the bison, dubbed Billy by some of her fans, has been staying close to the farm in a forest preserve, and he has been able to see her daily, sometimes from as close as 10 feet away. Using food, he is encouraging the wily 950-pound bovine to walk in and out of an enclosure he built for...

Joe Biden is planning to deploy 1,000 troops to Eastern Europe to defend it against Russian aggression alongside several Nato allies, a new report claimed on Wednesday. It comes a day after he put 8,500 U.S. soldiers on alert to go to the region where Putin is threatening to invade Ukraine. The president is trying to patch together a ‘coalition of the willing’ of NATO members who would each deploy 1,000 troops, according to CNN. However, some countries are unwilling to take action and Biden is reserving the right to act bilaterally with just the U.S. and a 'handful' of...

This illustration provided by the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory depicts a target pellet inside a hohlraum capsule with laser beams entering through openings on either end. The beams compress and heat the target to the necessary conditions for nuclear fusion to occur. Credit: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory via AP ============================================================================== With 192 lasers and temperatures more than three times hotter than the center of the sun, scientists hit—at least for a fraction of a second—a key milestone on the long road toward nearly pollution-free fusion energy. Researchers at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence...

White House Press Secretary wouldn’t directly confirm that Biden was selecting Vice President Kamala Harris to fill the Supreme Court vacancy soon-to-be-left by retiring Justice Stephen Breyer.But what Psaki did is narrow down the field to one that would include Kamala Harris. Watch:https://rumble.com/vtck10-peter-doocy-grills-psaki-on-harris-as-next-scotus-pick.html “When you were asked about the Vice President, possibly being selected as a Supreme Court nominee, you say you’re not going to speak to any considerations. Does that means she is being considered?” Fox News’s Peter Doocy asked.Psaki declined to address the question, because she said the retirement “hasn’t been announced.”She did, however, confirm that he would...

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas' meeting with Border Patrol agents in the Yuma Sector on Wednesday did not go well after he admitted the staggering amount of illegal border crossings has made the agents' job more difficult. In an audio recording of his remarks to the agents, which was obtained by Townhall, Mayorkas conceded the massive influx of people illegally crossing into the sector, along with the rest of the southern sectors, has not been easy. "The job has not gotten any easier over the last few months and it was very, very difficult throughout 2021. I...

Bravo has fired Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star Jennie Nguyen over posts she shared on social media calling out the Marxist, far-left organization Black Lives Matter and slamming rioters amid the summer 2020 riots that spread across the country after the death of George Floyd. “Bravo has ceased filming with Jennie Nguyen and she will no longer be a cast member of ‘The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City,'” Bravo said in a statement. “We recognize we failed to take appropriate action once her offensive social media posts were brought to our attention.” “Moving forward, we will work...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi softened her previous criticisms of China’s communist regime as her husband and son scored big business deals in China, Peter Schweizer’s new book reveals. The bombshell revelations about Pelosi come as she is under fire for stock trading returns made by her and her husband that regularly outperform the market. Now, it appears as though her family’s business opportunities in China have influenced her policy views on America’s chief adversary. Pelosi’s family has had millions of dollars on the line when it comes to China, and the Speaker seems to have altered her positions on China’s...

U.S. Senator Mitt Romney, a leading Republican critic of former President Donald Trump, will help raise money for Representative Liz Cheney, who is fighting for political survival after voting to impeach Trump and contesting his false stolen-election claims. Romney is the featured guest at a March 14 fundraiser for Cheney at the home of Bobbie Kilberg, a well-connected Virginia Republican who lined up against Trump during his 2016 bid for the White House, according to an invitation seen by Reuters. In addition to Romney, the list of attendees is comprised of an array of establishment Republican figures and Trump critics,...

So far no arrests have been made and authorities are keeping mum about a raid on a property in the heart of Pennsylvania’s Amish country around Lancaster, but the local paper has some intriguing suggestions about what’s going on, and it sure looks like the BATFE is getting ready to accuse an Amish farmer of being an unlicensed gun retailer.The raid on the property known as the Cattail Foundry took place two weeks ago, with agents carting off an untold number of guns. This week, LancasterOnline.com spoke with Rueben King, who says the guns were all his private property, though...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Democrats who have played defense for the last three Supreme Court vacancies plan to move swiftly to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, using the rapid 2020 confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett as a new standard. Barrett was confirmed exactly a month after then-President Donald Trump nominated her to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — and just five weeks after Ginsburg’s death in September of that year. Democrats sharply criticized that timeline then, arguing that most confirmations had taken much longer and that Republicans were trying to jam the nomination through in...

Memorial of Saints Timothy and Titus, Bishops soilMark 4:1-20 Friends, our Gospel for today is the parable of the sower and the seed. It has to do with the growth and development of the kingdom of God. We hear that Jesus began to teach by the sea and that a very large crowd gathered around him. This is Jesus speaking to the whole world. He then presents the parable of the sower: A sower goes out to sow, and as he sows, some of the seed falls on the path, where the birds eat it up; some falls on rocky...

Oscar Rosales (left) is wanted in the deadly shooting of Harris County Pct. 5 Constable's Office Corporal Charles Galloway. (Photos: Harris County Pct. 5 Constable's Office ) HOUSTON - Oscar Rosales, the suspect wanted in the deadly shooting of Harris County Pct. 5 Constable’s Office Corporal Charles Galloway, was arrested in Mexico, authorities confirm. The U.S. Marshals Gulf Coast Violent Offenders and Fugitive Task Force, in conjunction with Mexican authorities, arrested Rosales without incident in Ciudad Acuña, which is located on the border with Del Rio, Texas. Houston police say they are working with law enforcement partners to begin the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden has already narrowed the field for his first Supreme Court pick. Biden said as a presidential candidate that if he were given the chance to nominate someone to the court, he would make history by choosing a Black woman. And word on Wednesday that Justice Stephen Breyer plans to retire should give Biden that opportunity. “As president, I’d be honored, honored to appoint the first African American woman. Because it should look like the country. It’s long past time,” Biden said in February 2020 shortly before South Carolina’s presidential primary. The White House has...

The White House said Wednesday that the COVID-19 vaccine regime for kids younger than 4 years old will likely be three doses when it’s approved — and vowed to make millions more hard-to-find Pfizer anti-viral pills available in coming months.Two clinical trials of the Pfizer vaccine on children ages 6 months to 2 years old, and ages 2 to 4 are underway, but the older group hasn’t yet met standards, White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said at a press conference.“Dose and regimen for children 6 months to 24 months worked well, but it turned out the other...

One woman being prosecuted in Atlanta for defrauding the Paycheck Protection Program is a Walmart bakery worker. Authorities say she helped a cousin apply for pandemic bailout loans in a multi-state scheme involving phony businesses.Another defendant runs a trucking company and, according to his indictment, hired a financial adviser who helped him and at least four other business owners obtain $300,000 in pandemic loans using falsified documents and inflated employee numbers. And the University of Texas study found suspicious loans clustered in regions of the country, including Atlanta, where FinTechs had the largest market share. “A lot of these lenders,...

A Department of Commerce report on supply chain issues regarding American semiconductors has found ''a major supply and demand mismatch,'' and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has called for ''extremely urgent'' legislation to address the crisis. ''This is why domestic semiconductor funding is extremely urgent,'' Raimondo wrote in a statement following the Biden administration report. ''The House of Representatives is preparing to introduce its version of the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (USICA), which includes $52 billion in domestic semiconductor funding to help us create long-term solutions. The Senate has already passed its version of the bill with strong bipartisan support....

mysterious object that is just 4,000 light years away from Earth is unlike anything ever seen before in space, astronomers have said. They think it could be a neutron star or a white dwarf – collapsed cores of stars – with an ultra-powerful magnetic field, also known as a magnetar. As it spins through the cosmos, the 'spooky' object sends out a beam of radiation, and for one minute in every 20 it is one of the brightest objects in the night sky. Observations show it releasing a giant burst of energy three times an hour. Astrophysicist Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker,...