Free Republic

While conservative evangelical and Catholic churches across America celebrated Friday’s Supreme Court ruling rescinding a federal right to abortion care, sermons and prayers in other congregations ranged from lament to outrage to calls for simply getting along with each other. Sunday, June 26, turned out to be one of those rare occasions when the connection between faith and politics could not be avoided. Tim Schaefer “I am put in a position to address things that concern the people, the congregation, and sometimes those issues are difficult to address. They’re not easy, especially when we may not all agree. But I...

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) told a crowd of pro-abortion protesters on Friday that she had been raped a decade earlier — and had been grateful to know that if she had become pregnant as a result of that rape, she would have had the choice to abort. Ocasio-Cortez joined protesters at Union Square just hours after the Supreme Court announced its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned landmark abortion rulings in both Roe v. Wade and Planed Parenthood v. Casey. When some of the women in the crowd began to tell their own “abortion stories,” Ocasio-Cortez...

Although 27% of young adults believe secondhand cannabis smoke (SHCS) exposure is safe, cannabis smoke has several hundred toxic chemicals, carcinogens, and fine particulate matter, many at higher concentrations than tobacco smoke. Despite the known dangers of secondhand tobacco smoke, there has been a lack of research focused on the risk of SHCS from social cannabis smoking. However, a new paper published March 30, 2022, in JAMA Network Open by authors Patton Khuu Nguyen, MPH, and Berkeley Public Health Professor of Environmental Health Sciences S. Katharine Hammond, is the first to quantify SHCS levels from social cannabis smoking using a...

A church in Fairfax County, Va., was vandalized with abortion-related graffiti over the weekend, according to authorities, who said a smoldering fire also was found outside the building. County police and firefighters were called to St. John Neumann Catholic Church in Reston at 6:45 a.m. Sunday and found graffiti on a sign at the church entrance and in “three additional locations on the back of the building,” police said in a statement. They said a smoldering fire, for which “an accelerant was likely used,” was found in mulch outside the church. Police said the spray-painted graffiti related to Friday’s Supreme...

Church is supposed to be on Sundays, but that didn’t stop Pastor Joe Scarborough and his right-hand man, host of Politics Nation “Reverend” Al Sharpton from preaching a passionate sermon on abortion on the Monday service of Morning Joe. Scarborough, the self-proclaimed good ol’ Southern Baptist started his empowering sermon by expressing that Americans “need to understand the truth about what's in the Bible and what's not in the Bible.” He then brought Sharpton into the conversation. “Well Rev,” he started, “[abortion is] also not mentioned, as you know better than anybody, in the Bible. It's not mentioned in the...

On Friday afternoon Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge signed a certification that Act 180 of 2019 prohibiting abortion except to save the life of the mother is in full effect in Arkansas. The Arkansas Legislature passed Act 180 in 2019. The law prohibits abortion in Arkansas except to save the mother’s life in the event that the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade on Friday in a 6-3 decision, paving the way for Arkansas to enforce Act 180. Arkansas’ Leaders Respond to Reversal of Roe

A new study published has found that consuming a Mediterranean-style diet may prevent frailty. Defined as a recognizable state of increased vulnerability resulting from a decline in function across multiple physiological systems, frailty affects 10–15% older adults, and leads to other health issues. Although benefits of a Mediterranean-style diet are well known, its role in the reduction of frailty in older Americans who do not normally consume such a diet was unclear. The study showed that consuming a Mediterranean-style diet may prevent the development of frailty with aging. The study included 2,384 non-frail adults with Mediterranean-style dietary pattern score and...

New research in rats finds a diet high in the prebiotic fiber inulin offered a protective effect against the damage of a high-salt diet. The research will be presented this week at the American Physiological Society (APS) and American Society for Nephrology Control of Renal Function in Health and Disease conference in Charlottesville, Virginia. Inulin is a prebiotic dietary fiber common in fiber supplements and found in foods like onions, artichokes and chicory root. Prebiotic fibers like inulin are not absorbed by the body but instead move to the large intestine where it is fermented by the healthy bacteria of...

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., presented Barrett with a poster-size picture for Trump's 2015 tweet on how he'd expect his nominee to rule on healthcare. “Do you think we should take the president at his word when he says his nominee will do the right thing and overturn the Affordable Care Act?” Klobuchar asked.

An advocacy group has sent mobile billboards to Chuck Schumer’s DC and Brooklyn homes to convince the Senate majority leader to schedule a vote on bipartisan antitrust legislation that would curb the power of Big Tech platforms. The truck-mounted ads arrived at the Democrat’s residences on Saturday promoting MakeSchumerWatchJohnOliver.com, which hosts a 26-minute clip of the HBO host John Oliver promoting the legislation. “Everyone knows that Democrats are facing a tight election year, and I just don’t think that he can afford to fumble another major effort like this,” said Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future, which paid...

The increased availability of D-Dimer testing—a blood test that checks for, or monitors, blood-clotting problems—may be a vital aid to the early diagnosis of venom-induced consumption coagulopathy (VICC), the most frequent systemic effect of snakebite in Australia, according to research. "D-dimer values exceeded 2.5 mg/L from three hours after the bite for 95% of patients who developed VICC, and were lower than 2.5 mg/L for 95% of non-envenomed patients up to six hours after the bite," Isbister and colleagues reported. "Diagnostic performance increased during the first three hours after snakebite; for quantitative D-dimer testing at 2–6 hours, the area under...

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) over the weekend took the stage at the city’s annual Pride in the Park event to lash out at Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for his opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to abortion. “We know what happened yesterday,” Lightfoot, Chicago’s first openly gay mayor, said on Saturday

Intermittent fasting changes the gut bacteria activity of mice and increases their ability to recover from nerve damage. The researchers observed how fasting led to the gut bacteria increasing production of a metabolite known as 3-Indolepropionic acid (IPA), which is required for regenerating nerve fibers called axons—thread-like structures at ends of nerve cells that send out electro-chemical signals to other cells in the body. The team state that the bacteria that produces IPA, Clostridium sporogenesis, is found naturally in the guts of humans as well as mice and IPA is present in human's bloodstreams too. "There is currently no treatment...

The January 6 Committee sent the feds after Trump lawyer John Eastman because he dared to take action against the Democrats and their massive election fraud operation in 2020. Trump’s election lawyer John Eastman said the FBI searched and seized his phone last week, according to a new court filing. Eastman filed a federal lawsuit in New Mexico on Monday and asked a judge to order the feds to return his property and block the January 6 investigators from accessing his phone. According to the court filing, John Eastman was exiting a restaurant with his wife and friend last week...

Liberal National Party senator Matt Canavan wants late-term abortions to be banned in Australia after the US rolled back abortion rights. All Australian jurisdictions apart from the ACT, Tasmania and WA allow elective abortions after 20 weeks. Senator Canavan, a Catholic who has four sons and a daughter, believes abortions beyond this time are 'barbaric' and should be banned except in rare circumstances. Although the science is contested, he subscribes to the view that beyond 20 weeks foetuses can feel pain and even try to avoid surgical equipment in the womb. 'The science has evolved massively where we now have...

New research in a mouse model of diet-induced obesity finds that time-restricted feeding improves markers of kidney and vascular health. The research will be presented this week at the American Physiological Society (APS) and American Society for Nephrology Control of Renal Function in Health and Disease conference in Charlottesville, Virginia. A research team based out of the University of Alabama at Birmingham fed mice either a high-fat or normal diet. After the mice developed obesity, the researchers split the high-fat diet animals into two groups. Half maintained continuous access to food while the other half had access restricted to the...

Vitamin D supplementation may help offset damaging bone loss that occurs in some people who take canagliflozin, a commonly prescribed diabetes drug. A class of diabetes drug called SGLT2 inhibitors has been shown to slow the progression of diabetes-related kidney disease and is increasingly being considered as a first-line treatment option for people with diabetes who have a high risk for developing kidney and heart disease. However, some studies have found SGLT inhibitors to negatively affect bone health by accelerating loss of bone mineral density and hampering the activation of vitamin D by the body. The combination of these events...

A tractor-trailer found near Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio contained the bodies of 46 dead people, along with 16 others who have been taken to hospitals, local officials in San Antonio said on Monday evening. The horrifying discovery was made near the intersection of Cassin Drive and Quintana Road in Southwest San Antonio, according to a local official who spoke to The Texas Tribune on condition of anonymity. The official said that Mayor Ron Nirenberg and Police Chief William McManus would give a briefing to the press at 9 p.m. near the site of the discovery. The official...

I have known Christians that didn’t seem to know anything about Bible prophecy to say, “I know this; we are one day closer to the return of Jesus today than we were yesterday.” No one can deny that each day moves the world one day closer to the return of Jesus, but people need to realize that major prophecies are shaping up, and they appear to be on steroids. Biblically speaking, wars and rumors of wars, famine, inflation, natural disasters, world government, tracking all buying and selling, etc., are happening like birth pains (coming faster and harder). They appear to...

Michael Stenger, the Senate sergeant-at-arms who oversaw security in the upper chamber during the Capitol riot, died Monday morning, according to multiple reports. The cause of his death was not immediately clear. Stenger held the post from 2018 to 2021 and stepped down the day after the Jan. 6 attack. "There is an opportunity to learn lessons from the events of January 6th. Investigations should be considered as to funding and travel of what appears to be professional agitators. First Amendment rights should always be considered in conjunction with professional investigations," he said in an opening statement before a Senate...