Free Republic

U.S.—A new Gallup Poll shows President Biden beating out the infamous Brussels Sprout for America's least favorite vegetable. The poll, partially conducted as a survey for TV's Family Feud, has been criticized by the Biden administration as "unfair." Press Secretary Jen Psaki addressed the polling data during her daily press briefing. "The president feels, and we agree, that he's not a vegetable because he occasionally moves around sometimes. A Brussel sprout or, excuse me, 'Brussels sprout' doesn't move. It is literally a vegetable. The president also feels that he tastes much better." "Besides," Psaki continued. "We believe that while the...

A US Department of Defense staffer with top-secret clearance stole the identities of dozens of people from a work SharePoint system to apply for loans totaling nearly a quarter of a million dollars. Kevin Lee, 41, of Chula Vista, southern California, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to wire fraud. Lee, who worked for Uncle Sam's Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) as an analyst, raided the organization's Microsoft SharePoint system for people's private data to pull off his nefarious scheme. It's said that he applied for and was able to get as much as $244,500 in loans under other people's names to...

@NORML #Florida @GovRonDeSantis was asked about his position on legalizing #marijuana and he responded with this. This is what we are up against...

Explanation: The Mare Orientale, Latin for Eastern Sea, is one of the most striking large scale lunar features. The youngest of the large lunar impact basins it's very difficult to see from an earthbound perspective. Still, taken during a period of favorable tilt, or libration of the lunar nearside, the Eastern Sea can be found near top center in this sharp telescopic view, extremely foreshortened along the Moon's western edge. Formed by the impact of an asteroid over 3 billion years ago and nearly 1000 kilometers across, the impact basin's concentric circular features are ripples in the lunar crust. But...

A Florida contractor whose job it is to hunt down and kill the invasive Iguanas that are multiplying exponentially in S. Florida

It turns out you can outrun the law, but only for 72 years. Police pulled over an 84-year-old driver in Bulwell, U.K., this week only to discover he didn’t have a valid license … ever. The retired man, who police said had trouble standing and hearing, admitted that he’d been driving without a license or insurance since he was 12 years old, SWNS reported. "Thankfully he had never had an accident, caused anyone an injury, and never made anyone lose out financially, by hitting them whilst uninsured!"

A representative in California is pushing to reduce the current standard 40-hour work week to 32-hours, saying that the pandemic has highlighted the fact that most people spend more time at work and less time with loved ones.

Two new polls show Florida governor Ron DeSantis with a realistic shot of defeating Donald Trump in a 2024 primary. The former president remains the strong favorite, but he’s under 50 percent in the latest YouGov survey:GOP Presidential Polling:Trump: 46%DeSantis: 21%Pence: 6%Haley: 6%Carlson: 2%YouGov / January 24, 2022 / n=1568 / Onlinehttps://t.co/axPvpnEU7N— Polling USA (@USA_Polling) January 28, 2022A new poll by Echelon Insights shows that DeSantis’s position has improved in the last few months in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup:TRUMP v. DESANTIS two-way GOP primary:Trump 57%DeSantis 32%In October, this was Trump +40. Today, it's Trump +25. pic.twitter.com/1vYJYby3EN— Patrick Ruffini (@PatrickRuffini) January...

The students' negative COVID tests weren't good enough for school administrators.When 15-year-old Ellah Nahum and a few other unvaccinated students showed up at Los Angeles' New West Charter School on Tuesday, January 18, after winter break, they brought lunches, backpacks, and negative COVID-19 tests, hoping to be allowed in. They'd been negotiating with school administrators since early October, when the school had announced that a vaccine mandate would go into effect in January. Prior to returning to school from winter break, they'd requested a hearing, attempting to find alternative options to getting vaccinated. When they showed up at school around...

I can not get my credit card donation to work. Never had this problem before using the same cc (member over 25 yrs). I know all my entered info is correct. Suggestions?

The claim that the virus that causes COVID-19 definitely was not from a laboratory, put forth in a paper quietly shaped by Dr. Anthony Fauci that was cited by other scientists who called the lab idea a “conspiracy theory,” was “antithetical to science,” a former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director says. “The purpose of science is to have rigorous debate about different hypotheses. I’ve never really experienced in my life where there was private telephone calls among scientists that had a decision on what position they would take collectively, and to see that position then published in a...

Rafael Nadal is a truly great tennis player but the once great sporting nation of Australia has abandoned it's own proud history of sportsmanship to persecute Nadal's rival Djokovic for insisting on his rights to medical privacy and personal control of what substances are injected into his own body. I rate the chances pretty low of Cheif Commissioner Shane Patton doing anything to bring Novak's vicious criminal persecutors to justice. But I have started the formal process by demanding an investigation and one young police officer took the first step toward doing that. Patton should support her. And when and...

Even the most fervent germaphobes among us will agree that not all bacteria are worthy of a glob of Purell. Still, just the word “bacteria” is enough to bring a grimace to someone’s face. And why not? Popular culture has made countless movies about worlds where tiny microbes exterminate humans, and the list of infamous bacteria is formidable — tuberculosis, salmonella and Clostridium, to name a few. But behind the fear and disease, there’s a duality. Bacteria sicken yet protect our bodies. They can topple civilizations but can nourish our food. We actively try to avoid them, yet microbes permeate...

The first sign of trouble for Empyreal came on May 17, when a sheriff's deputy in Dickinson County, Kan., pulled over one of its vans' drivers on I-70 for an alleged traffic violation and questioned her. She told the deputy she was on her way to pick up cash at medical pot dispensaries in Kansas City, Mo., then planned to drive the money back through Kansas the next morning to deposit it at a credit union in Colorado, according to the DEA. Medical marijuana is legal in Missouri but not in Kansas. The next morning, the DEA put the driver...

The blowtorch flame cast a halo of heat on Oko Jewelry’s double-paned, laminated glass door. After letting the glass cool, two masked men shattered the posh East Burnside Street shop’s threshold about 4 a.m. last Thursday, then reached through to the deadbolt and let themselves in.

GRAPHIC CONTENT WARNING. The images interspersed throughout the video are graphic and many may find them highly disturbing. I did not provide any such images from the video below – just one photo of Dr. Jane Ruby and Mr. Richard Hirschman. The 3 images within the first 10 minutes are medical in nature, pertaining to blood clots in an embalming setting, the third picture includes a glimpse of the deceased's legs. I posted time markers in the transcript to indicate approximate location of the images, but I was not precise and they may appear a bit earlier in the video...

No one appears to have been in charge at Black Lives Matter for months. The address it lists on tax forms is wrong, and the charity's two board members won't say who controls its $60 million bankroll, a Washington Examiner investigation has found. BLM's shocking lack of transparency surrounding its finances and operations raises major legal and ethical red flags, multiple charity experts told the Washington Examiner. ... "Like a giant ghost ship full of treasure drifting in the night with no captain, no discernible crew, and no clear direction," CharityWatch Executive Director Laurie Styron said of BLM. ... BLM...

Spend enough time studying the “racial equity” and “ethnic studies” programs sweeping school districts across the nation and you’ll find that they are following in the footsteps, on a several-year delay, of one of America’s most progressive cities: Seattle. It’s worth examining, then, how all that worked out in Seattle. Despite decades of the most aggressive equity programs anyone could ask for, Seattle’s racial disparities are among the worst in the nation – and they’re getting worse, not better. At the forefront of Seattle Public Schools’ (SPS) initiatives was Tracy Castro-Gill, until recently its director of ethnic studies, who represented...

Lia Thomas' Teammate Reveals Trans Swimmer Doesn't Always Cover Up His Genitals in Locker Room Members of the University of Pennsylvania women’s swim team are uncomfortable changing and showering in the locker room with transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, according to a new report. The Daily Mail reported Thursday that one of the female swimmers is speaking out about the issues she and her teammates face after the school allowed a man who identifies as a woman to join the squad this year. Thomas — who competed on the men’s team as Will Thomas for three years before taking a hiatus,...

Another must-pass bill, another rushed policy that severely damages the privacy and constitutional rights of cryptocurrency users. We’ve just seen language in the America COMPETES Act of 2022 (see page 1482)—a bill ostensibly about economic competitiveness with China—that would strip all administrative procedures and safeguards from the imposition of so-called “special measures” prohibitions in the Bank Secrecy Act while simultaneously expanding authority for such prohibitions to cryptocurrency activities. In brief, it would hand the Treasury Secretary unchecked discretion to forbid financial institutions (including cryptocurrency exchanges) from offering their customers access to cryptocurrency networks. The Secretary may not use this discretion...