Free Republic

President Joe Biden announced Friday he was fully convinced that Russian President Vladimir Putin would invade Ukraine and attack their capital city. “As of this moment, I’m convinced he has made the decision,” Biden said during his latest assertion of a coming Russian offensive. “I have reason to believe that.”

"A North Carolina dad dropped the mic at his school board meeting. Love seeing moms and dads speak out like this." (CRT)

Malaysian researchers found that treatment with the anti-parasite drug ivermectin did not prevent patients with COVID-19 from becoming severely ill in a randomized clinical trial published in the JAMA Internal Medicine journal on Friday. The researchers said their findings do not support the use of ivermectin for patients with COVID-19. The study enrolled 490 patients with mild to moderate illness at 20 hospitals and a COVID-19 quarantine center in Malaysia. Everyone received standard care; half the group also received ivermectin. Severe disease developed in 21.6% of the patients given ivermectin and in 17.3% of those who received only standard care,...

A woman who pushed a 74-year-old man off a Las Vegas bus in March 2019, causing his death, has pleaded guilty to an abuse charge. Cadesha Bishop, 28, was initially charged with murder and accused of pushing Serge Fournier off a parked bus near Fremont and 13th streets. Fournier landed on his head about 8 feet from the bus doorway, and died about a month later, according to Bishop’s arrest report.

“Sharing in Your Father’s Character” (Luke 6:27-38) Listen to the things Jesus tells us to do today: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back.” Sounds like a tall order! Are you up to it? Well, I’m going to say yes!...

Images of dry lake beds, scorched forests and charred buildings, and drought-stricken farmland from the American West have been published in newspapers worldwide as a megadrought intensifies. Many have wondered just how severe the current drought is, and perhaps, that question can be answered in a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. A new peer-reviewed study titled “Rapid intensification of the emerging southwestern North American megadrought in 2020–2021” says the last 22-year dry period is the worst since the Vikings and Mayans ruled parts of the world, or about 1,200 years ago. “Anyone who has been paying...

It didn’t need to be this way. The Liberal years from 2015-2017 broadly fulfilled the promise of the first Trudeau mandate.... Then, imperceptibly at first, the great scourge of our political age began to make appearances within the Trudeau Liberals: identity politics. With astonishing speed, opponents of government action could quickly be labelled racist, misogynist, homophobic or any other of a litany of insults intended to personally scar opponents and discredit them as the worst society has to offer, without addressing the substance of their argument.... While Trudeau talked tolerance and openness, his actions were marching towards control and conformity.......

A yearslong staffing crisis in the state medical examiner’s office in Baltimore is leading to unprecedented delays in autopsies, an emergency request to federal officials for help and now a legislative push for more workers. To deal with “bodies piling up,” one lawmaker said the statewide agency that investigates sudden and unexpected deaths has turned to a ready source of labor — contractors “flown in from out of state” and recent retirees earning $850 per autopsy. State officials say that labor pool is vital to clearing cases. But lawmakers and union representatives deride the vacant positions across state government generally...

Armed with a smartphone and a Twitter account, every day she makes national news by prating pure blather and blatant baloney, the latest drivel popping into her head. The media reports on her wherever she is, dutifully bannering her words front and center. In Texas, campaigning for a Democrat House candidate, she muses about turning blue a state that she does not understand, where Hispanics from Mexico, Guatemala, and other locations have been flocking to the GOP in major shifting voting patterns unlike her Puerto Rican base in the Bronx and Queens. Heckled during one campaign stop, she responds with...

[Catholic Caucus] USCCB seminary norms won't include proposed background databaseA U.S. bishops’ conference draft policy update on seminary formation does not incorporate a call to build a national screening database of applicants to seminaries and religious orders. Advocates say a database could help flag problem seminary applicants before they are accepted, by tracking rejected applications from seminaries or religious orders, along with those applications deferred or withdrawn.The database was proposed to the U.S. bishops’ conference by an Ohio seminary nearly six years ago, but there has been no apparent move toward adopting it. It has not been included in the...

Explanation: Galactic or open star clusters are young. The swarms of stars are born together near the plane of the Milky Way, but their numbers steadily dwindle as cluster members are ejected by galactic tides and gravitational interactions. Caught in this telescopic frame over three degrees across are three good examples of galactic star clusters, seen toward the southern sky's nautical constellation Puppis. Below and left, M46 is some 5,500 light-years in the distance. Right of center M47 is only 1,600 light-years away and NGC 2423 (top) is about 2500 light-years distant. Around 300 million years young M46 contains a...

Vatican spy story takes center stage as fraud trial resumesVATICAN CITY — The Vatican's big fraud and extortion trial resumes Friday after exposing some unseemly realities of how the Holy See operates, with a new spy story taking center stage that is more befitting of a 007 thriller than the inner workings of a papacy.According to written testimony obtained Thursday, one of Pope Francis' top advisers brought in members of the Italian secret service to sweep his office for bugs and commissioned intelligence reports from them, completely bypassing the Vatican's own police force in the process.The reported actions of Archbishop...

For the Founding Fathers, the Revolutionary War was not simply a matter of principle – it was a matter of life and death. “Give me liberty or give me death” was, after the Declaration of Independence, not a statement of political radicalism, but a simple recognition of the facts. If the Founders had failed in their bid for a new and independent republic, it is very likely that they all would have been executed for treason. After the Declaration of Independence, there was no going back. The only paths in front of the Founders were victory or death. They understood...

In the last regularly scheduled daily press conference for the Beijing Olympics organizing committee, a committee spokesperson got political in response to reporters' questions, saying that reports of human rights abuses against the Uyghur ethnic minority in Xinjiang were "lies." Olympic organizing committee spokesperson Yan Jiarong and International Olympic Committee (IOC) spokesperson Mark Adams faced questions relating to controversial issues that Chinese officials have previously refused to speak about during the games, The Associated Press reported. However, three days before the games were set to close, Yan spoke out, saying questions about reports that forced labor was being performed in...

BREAKING: Multiple reports that a gas pipeline near separatist-controlled Luhansk in eastern Ukraine has exploded.

Metadata from the messaging app Telegram indicates that pro-Russian separatist leaders created videos ordering "emergency" evacuations from eastern Ukraine two days ago, but posted them on Friday, Bellingcat first reported and Axios can confirm.

Same kind of nonsense.

Random music thread. What you got? I feeling a little cranky today.

About 20 eco-terrorist surrounded gas pipeline workers, overturned heavy equipment and smashed up a mobile trailers in an attack on the Coast Gaslink pipeline The attackers, who were masked and wore camouflage, came from all directions in a 'coordinate' and 'violent' assault First Nations and environmentalists have been against the 420-mile pipeline that will carry liquified natural gas to the west coast of British Columbia The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were called to the scene, but their way was blocked by fires and downed trees in the roadway One officer was injured after attackers threw torches and smoke bombs at...