Free Republic

The hosts of the "Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show" hammered President Biden as "Jimmy Carter without the accomplishments" as he continues to deflect blame for massive inflation on Vladimir Putin and Trump supporters. Travis commented that inflation is essentially a "default tax" every American is forced to pay when economic conditions plummet. He said Biden disingenuously claims to be "Middle-Class Joe From Scranton" who supposedly "cares about families." The Electric City, in Pennsylvania's coal region, has long been identified with its industrial, middle-class history.

Moscow maintains that Ukraine has also lost three Su-24 bombers, one Su-27 fighter jet, three armored amphibious assault ships, 10 different helicopters and more than 50 soldiers during the attempt to retake Snake Island Information released by the Russian Defense Ministry suggests that Ukraine has so far lost 30 drones in the area around the snake island in the last three days, including nine Bayraktar TB2 drones, one of which was shot down by Russian air defenses on Tuesday, according to the Defense Ministry. Snake Island fell at the beginning of the invasion on February 24 with the assault of...

Pennsylvania GOP Senate candidate Kathy Barnette is touting her military service on the campaign trail—but asked on Wednesday to provide basic details about that record, Barnette's campaign manager abruptly ended a phone call. The incident is the latest in a series in which Barnette's campaign has rebuffed requests for her DD214, a standard form issued to service members when they leave the military. The form would show when Barnette served, under which branch, and the terms of her discharge. Her failure to provide the form has raised questions from military veterans, including former Republican candidate and decorated combat veteran Sean...

A black Pennsylvania cop is going viral after he was snapped smacking a Black Lives Matter protester at a rally against police brutality. The officer was captured confronting the protester as chaos broke out between his colleagues and protesters at Saturday’s rally in the Pittsburgh suburb of Wilkinsburg, the Pittsburgh City Paper reported. Footage caught the handful of protesters screaming at officers who declared it an unlawful assembly, the outlet reported. Video then showed officers trying to apprehend a woman backing away and shouting obscenities, as a black dress-wearing protester pushed and grabbed at them. The officer then swung a...

As global food prices remain at record highs and war wages in Europe between two of the world’s largest grain suppliers, troubling videos from China show farmers slashing winter wheat production ahead of harvest times, adding even more uncertainty about food security. Bloomberg reports China’s agriculture ministry is very concerned about the matter. The ministry is investigating if there’s illegal destruction of wheat crops. The ministry said this comes three weeks before harvests, adding the crop was subjected to devastating floods late last year. There’s also concern that soggy field conditions in southern China due to abnormal rainfall could affect...

[Catholic Caucus] Viganò on Liturgical Revolution and the Holy Week Reforms of Pius XII Dear Monsieur…,Thank you for sending Abbé…'s question to me regarding the reform of Holy Week.I agree with him that the reform can effectively be considered a sort of trial balloon with which the architects of the subsequent conciliar reform introduced an entire series of modifications – which in my opinion were entirely questionable and arbitrary – to the Ordo Majoris Hebdomadæ as it existed up until that time.I would say in fact that this modification may have appeared almost harmless, albeit bizarre, because the mens...

A handful of pro-choice demonstrators protested outside the San Francisco home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday afternoon, accusing her and her fellow Democrats of being “complicit” in the potential overturn of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court. The small group held several signs, some depicting caricatures of the conservative justices on the high court. Others blasted pro-life moderate Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) while delivering brief speeches targeting the party. The signs featured images of Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. The word “Liar” was printed above their faces. All five...

WASHINGTON—Federal regulators are investigating Elon Musk’s late disclosure last month of his sizable stake in Twitter Inc., TWTR -2.48% according to people familiar with the matter, a lag that allowed him to buy more stock without alerting other shareholders to his ownership. The Securities and Exchange Commission is probing Mr. Musk’s tardy submission of a public form that investors must file when they buy more than 5% of a company’s shares, the people said. The disclosure functions as an early sign to shareholders and companies that a significant investor could seek to control or influence a company. The Tesla Inc....

Pennsylvania’s Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman is expected to announce on Thursday that he is dropping out of the governor’s race and will be endorsing Lou Barletta to be the Republican gubernatorial nominee, according to a source familiar with the campaign. Corman, whose rankings in the polls have been lagging in the crowded nine-person field for the GOP nomination, wants to see the party come together and elect a candidate who can beat presumptive Democratic nominee Josh Shapiro in November for the open governor’s seat, the source said. In Corman’s mind, that is Barletta, a former Hazelton mayor and...

What if we’re stuck with Lori Lightfoot? Not just for another year, but for another term. Would it really be so bad? Let’s think this through. Like you, I was hoping one of the usual suspects - Paul Vallas, Mike Quigley - would come charging into the mayor’s race, someone significant we could get excited about. And no, Willie Wilson tossing away fistfuls of cash doesn’t count. But each potential savior took a long look at our churning municipal disaster, then fled. Another kick to prostrate Chicago: a city so broken nobody even wants to run it. Except Lightfoot, though...

With Russia demanding ruble payments for its natural gas supplies, German utility giant Uniper plans to continue paying in euros for its upcoming bill at the end of May, and it won't be a breach of sanctions, the company announced Wednesday. The Kremlin has demanded that European gas buyers create two accounts with Gazprombank, one for euros and one that converts the currency into rubles. The European Union, however, said complying with this mechanism would violate its wartime sanctions. According to a Uniper spokesperson, the company remains confident it can keep paying in euros, though it remains unclear whether it...

President Joe Biden got angry during a speech to unions on Wednesday, yelling about the long lines of people trying to get food during the coronavirus pandemic. “Remember those long lines you’d see in a television and people lining up in all kinds of vehicles just to get a box of food in their trunk? How quickly they forget people were hurting,” Biden said, raising his voice.

Kathy Barnette has just sent me her photos of her military records, both Army Reserve and National Guard...

Researchers have reported that supplementing a diet with the sea organisms Ascidiacea, also known as sea squirts, reverses some of the main signs of aging in an animal model. These sea organisms contain substances called plasmalogens, which are vital to our body processes. Plasmalogens are found all over our bodies naturally, particularly in the heart, brain and immune cells, but as we get older, the amount in our body decreases. This loss is also a characteristic of several neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. The researchers studied the effects of adding plasmalogens to the diet of aged mice....

The most recent macroeconomic figures show that the Chinese slowdown is much more severe than expected and not only attributable to the covid-19 lockdowns. The lockdowns have an enormous impact. Twenty-six of 31 China mainland provinces have rising covid cases and the fear of a Shanghai-style lockdown is enormous. The information coming from Shanghai proves that these drastic lockdowns create an enormous damage to the population. Millions of citizens without food or medicine and rising suicides have shown that the infamous “zero covid” policy often disguises mass population control and repression. It is easy to use the covid-19 lockdowns as...

LOS ANGELES -- A U.S. appeals court ruled Wednesday that California's ban on the sale of semiautomatic weapons to adults under 21 is unconstitutional. In a 2-1 ruling, a panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Wednesday the law violates the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms and a San Diego judge should have blocked what it called "an almost total ban on semiautomatic centerfire rifles" for young adults.

A congressional panel is planning an investigative hearing into the worsening shortage of infant formula. The House Energy and Commerce Committee said Wednesday it will hold a hearing on May 25 to examine the causes of the shortage as well as efforts to increase production and access to safe formula.

A writer's essay explaining why she plagiarized parts of what would have been her debut novel has been deleted after it was revealed she copied that as well. Jumi Bello's book The Leaving was scheduled to come out on July 12 and had appeared on several 'most anticipated' lists, according to Publisher's Market, when its publisher Riverhead Books suddenly scrapped it in December. The 30-year-old has now revealed the reason the book was abruptly canceled when it was in its final stages was because she admitted to the New York City-based publishing company - an imprint of Penguin - she...

California plans to hire “water cops” to monitor people and businesses wasting water as statewide usage soared in March despite Gov. Gavin Newsom declaring a drought emergency last July and parts of Southern California under water restrictions, according to The Mercury News. The Santa Clara Valley Water District, south of the San Francisco Bay Area, encompassing 15 cities and more than 2 million residents, is considering “water cops” to police neighborhoods and business districts for water wasters. People who are wasting water could be fined up to $500. Water cops may slap citations for people watering their yards for long...

A new study suggests that controlling blood sugar levels within the first year of diabetes diagnosis reduces the incidence of major cardiovascular events. Furthermore, the team also found that the more a patient's blood levels varied 12 months after diagnosis, the more likely they were to experience dangerous cardiovascular events. Dr. Martin Whyte, co-author of the study and Reader in Metabolic Medicine at the University of Surrey, says that "the conventional wisdom has been to slowly and steadily treat type 2 diabetes with diet and medicine dose-escalation over years—the period over which it took people to reduce their sugar levels...