Free Republic

There’s a whole lot of rats under this rug. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help your neighbors see them scurrying.On March 17, 2022, The New York Times stated it had verified the authenticity of a laptop and its data as belonging to the president’s son, Hunter Biden. This was the same laptop holding information that Twitter, Facebook, and other corporate media immediately suppressed when The New York Post, a right-leaning competitor of The New York Times, reported on it three weeks before the 2020 presidential election.If they had known about one of the Biden family...

The Lapsus$ extortion gang briefly alleged over the weekend it had compromised Microsoft. The devil-may-care cyber-crime ring has previously boasted of breaking into Nvidia, Samsung, Ubisoft, and others. Its modus operandi is to infiltrate a big target's network, exfiltrate sensitive internal data, and then make demands to prevent the public release of this material – and perhaps just release some of it anyway. "We are aware of the claims and are investigating," a Microsoft spokesperson told The Register on Monday. On Saturday and Sunday, the crooks shared then deleted on Telegram screenshots suggesting they had broken into Microsoft's internal DevOps...

The bill is 2,700 pages – the length of ten books.Congress had less than one day to read the bill before they voted. President Biden has already signed off — a $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill. Magic!Do we really have a representative republic if our representatives don't even know what they are voting on?Here are just a few examples of what was in the bill: $1 million for a “farm-to-refrigerator training facility” in Pennsylvania$2 million for George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change$2.5 million for a museum in Vermont.$3 million for a fisherman’s coop facility in GuamThese examples represent only...

In 1823, when the emperor of Tzarist Russia invited the United States to negotiate a resolution of contested coastal lands along the northwest of the North American continent, President James Monroe responded with a proclamation in an address to Congress that would forever-after be called the Monroe Doctrine. In his own words, he said that when "the rights and interests of the United States are involved … the American continents … are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers. … We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between...

The National Weather Service advised people to take shelter after issuing tornado watches and warnings, which expired by about 7 p.m.

Chief White House COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci said Sunday that he doesn’t believe the United States will see another surge of the CCP virus due to the spread of a subvariant of Omicron.The subvariant, known as BA.2, has been blamed by some officials for an uptick in cases across Europe and the United Kingdom in recent days.“Hopefully, we won’t see a surge. I don’t think we will. The easiest way to prevent that is to continue to get people vaccinated. And for those who have been vaccinated, to continue to get them boosted, so that’s really where we stand right...

About 87 percent of vaccinated Hong Kong people who died from the latest wave of COVID-19 outbreak had taken China-made vaccines, local media reported, citing official data. But most deaths occurred among those who were not vaccinated.Ming Pao, a local newspaper, said it conducted an analysis of data from the Hospital Authority of 5,167 out of overall 5,400 local death cases in the latest Omicron-driven outbreak. It found that 71 percent of those who died were unvaccinated.Among the 1,486 vaccinated people who died from COVID-19, almost 1,300 of them—87 percent—had received at least one dose of the CoronaVac vaccine developed...

India will station maritime patrol aircraft in Australia amid ongoing concerns of hostility in the Indo-Pacific region, a move that comes as part of a larger package that will see the Australian government commit around AU$200 million (US$147 million) into developing the relationship.Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met virtually on March 21, where they discussed closer ties across sectors such as trade, clean technology, space, culture, defence, and the Indo-Pacific.While the Australian prime minister did not express the need for both nations to hold “Russia to account” for the invasion of Ukraine—according to a...

The confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson began on Capitol Hill on Monday. The prior reactions in the mainstream media were what you’d expect. Namely, endless, slobbering profiles and claims that any questioning of the judge’s record would be racist and out of bounds.When the time came, Sen. Dick Durbin opened the hearing by pleading with Republicans for “civility.”“These baseless charges are unfair,” Durbin says of GOP charges that Judge Jackson is “soft on crime.” He adds Hawley accusations on her approach to sex offenders “fly in the face” of GOP vows to keep the proceedings civil....

In the liturgy that has been the total failure of our National Intelligence Apparatus, no character has been more prominent than James Clapper. The former Director of National Intelligence, and now CNN Talking-Head, has been perpetually wrong about the vast majority of his predictions or statements regarding intelligence matters, even to damaging others by his actions.On March 5th, Clapper was on CNN performing his regular duties as a “far-left conspiracy theorist,” suggesting that Vladimir Putin was no better than Adolf Hitler.“It’s always a mystery to us. And all we really have to go on, at least for me, is his...

Most voters support Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Bill, which protects children in kindergarten through third grade from classroom discussions on gender identity and sexual orientation, a Rasmussen Reports survey released Thursday found. The survey found that three-fourths of voters have followed news about the measure, which the left has grossly mischaracterized with the cheap, inaccurate slogan, “Don’t Say Gay,” even though the word “gay” does not appear in the bill’s text. In reality, the bill asserts that “classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3...

Cognitive impairment among older hospitalized Australians could be the result of low vitamin C levels, a study has found, paving the way for a potential treatment. Common in older hospitalized patients, cognitive impairment can result in a person having trouble remembering things, concentrating or making decisions. "Previous research has shown that vitamin C plays a significant role in the functioning of the brain, with studies finding that vitamin C deficiency may be associated with cognitive impairment, depression and confusion," says lead author Associate Professor Yogesh Sharma. A total of 91 patients (56.9%) were found to have cognitive impairment, while 42...

Cardinal George Pell has given a wide-ranging interview to The Spectator's Holy Smoke podcast in which he criticises the Vatican's 2018 deal with Beijing and especially the secrecy surrounding it. The unpublished pact allows the Chinese Communist Party to choose Catholic bishops, whose appointments are then rubber-stamped by Pope Francis. 'I know high-up people in the Vatican are very dissatisfied with the way things are going,' says Pell, the former Vatican Prefect for the Economy. 'The agreement is there to try to get a bit of space for the Catholics. Obviously that's praiseworthy. [But] I don't think we've gained anything....

The findings of a new study suggest that a ketogenic diet—which is low in carbohydrates and protein, but high in fat—helps to kill pancreatic cancer cells when combined with a triple-drug therapy. In laboratory experiments, the ketogenic diet decreased glucose (sugar) levels in the tumor, suggesting the diet helped starve the cancer. In addition, this diet elevated ketone bodies produced by the liver, which put additional stress on the cancer cells. By destabilizing the cancer cells, the ketogenic diet created a microenvironment in which the triple-drug therapy designed by TGen—a combination of gemcitabine, nab-paclitaxel and cisplatin—was more effective at knocking...

The World Health Organization’s latest guidelines on abortion treat individuals and institutions that object to abortion as an obstacle, while ignoring the right to life. Among the WHO recommendations is the claim “that access to and continuity of comprehensive abortion care be protected against barriers created by conscientious objection.” “If it proves impossible to regulate conscientious objection in a way that respects, protects and fulfils abortion seekers’ rights, conscientious objection in abortion provision may become indefensible,” said the “Abortion Care Guideline” document released March 9. The guidance drew criticism from Alyssa Koren, director of United Nations advocacy at ADF International,...

The communications offer a rare look at the relationship between Pritzker and Cupich, who privately heaped praise on the governor and worked with him behind the scenes to guide church protocols.Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s strict COVID-19 response over the past two years drew considerable resistance from the public at times, but he found a behind-the-scenes ally in Cardinal Blase Cupich, text messages between the two leaders show. Pritzker and Cupich were in frequent contact, according to newly obtained records that show they texted and emailed each other repeatedly from early 2020 into this year. The written communications — obtained from the...

SNIP Gary Berman is CEO of Tricon Residential, a Toronto-based company that has quietly become one of the largest owners of single-family homes in the United States. Gary Berman: So today, we own about 30,000 single family rental homes across the U.S., largely in the Sun Belt. And we've got probably about 75,000 people living in our homes. Lesley Stahl: You are a multi-billion dollar company. You're publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Gary Berman: Correct. Lesley Stahl: And the-- Gary Berman: Toronto Stock Exchange. Lesley Stahl: --Toronto Stock Exchange. I even read in one of your own...

In the wake of continued anti-Catholic attacks on St. Patrick's day, Fr. Brendan Kilcoyne called for the official celebrations to be canceled as it was even worse than a ‘pagan festival.’DUBLIN, Ireland (LifeSiteNews) — In yet another slight against the Catholic faith as part of a St. Patrick’s day parade, the government-backed St. Patrick’s Festival in Dublin is promoting a “Paradise Cabaret,” depicting St. Patrick in women’s underwear. Dublin is currently hosting its first “St. Patrick’s Festival” since 2019, as Ireland’s severe COVID-19 restrictions prevented the festival from taking place since then. The official logo for the Festival is a...

On March 21, a Moscow court has recognized the activities of Instagram and Facebook, social networks owned by Meta Platforms, as extremist and banned their operation in Russia. Washington, March 22./TASS/. The United States condemned Russia's decision to ban activities of Meta (the organization's activities are banned on the territory of the Russian Federaton) as an extremist organization, spokesperson for the US Department of State Ned Price said. "We condemn a Moscow court's decision to designate Meta, including Facebook and Instagram, as 'extremist'. This assault on access to information must stop," he wrote on Twitter...

Curtiss-Wright's Defense Solutions division, a leading supplier of modular open systems approach (MOSA) solutions engineered to succeed, today introduced the Parvus® DuraCOR® Pi, the embedded industry’s first Raspberry Pi (RPi) powered mission computer for defense and aerospace applications.