Free Republic

Pro-abortion demonstrations over the past few months, and rising to a crescendo in the aftermath of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, have told the world, with unremitting vehemence, that women have a right to control their own body, a right to a safe abortion, and that the unborn is not yet human being. On the negative side, they have shown a hostility toward the Catholic Church and, in particular, to Mary, the Mother of God. The hostility toward the latter is well symbolized by the mantra, “keep your rosaries off our ovaries”. Pope St. John Paul II expressed the...

The five therapists, who were arrested over a year ago, are finally facing trial for charges of sedition for a series of books about a village of sheep and a village of wolves. The books very clearly differentiate the two towns as good and bad, with the wolves' society bearing a striking resemblance to mainland China. The books depict the society of wolves — monitored by CCTV cameras — plotting an infiltration of the sheep village after their shepherd has left. "[The books'] combined effect was to influence or educate readers to neither be Chinese nor have a sense of...

You need a personal net worth of at least $1.4 million to be "financially comfortable" in the New York area, according to a survey of 500 local residents in the 2022 Charles Schwab's Modern Wealth report. To be considered "wealthy" in New York, you need a net worth of $3.4 million — over one million more than the national average. The survey's New York results are the second highest after San Francisco. Bay Area residents say you need $1.7 million in order to be financially comfortable in the California tech hub and $5.1 million to be considered wealthy, Charles Schwab...

FanDuel and DraftKings are among the books that have announced refunds, giving back money on any straight bets for Chestnut to eat more than 74.5 hot dogs. Chestnut finished with 63 hot dogs Monday, good enough to hand him his 15th title but well short of last year’s record of 76. It was Chestnut’s worst showing since 2015...Midway through the contest, with Chestnut just getting going at 17 hot dogs, a protester in a Darth Vader mask rushed the Coney Island stage and unfurled a sign next to Chestnut. Chestnut quickly put the protester in a headlock before organizers took...

I write education news for a living. My job, every day, is to report on what’s happening in education. I have great respect for teachers in all settings but have been a homeschooling mother for more than 10 years now, and what I’ve researched and written on recently is horrifying. The public school system is a mess. Hardly anyone wants to be a teacher anymore, and with good reason. Too many educators in the system have little to no respect for parental rights and believe they are above the law. Most recently I reported on a gym teacher who allegedly...

Water births provide 'clear benefits' for mothers and their newborns, with fewer complications, evidence suggests. A water birth involves using a birthing pool to help with relaxation and pain relief during labour. In some instances the mother exits the pool for the final stages of labour, while others remain in the pool for the birth and bring the newborn to the surface to start breathing. Researchers analysed 36 studies involving more than 150,000 women to compare the interventions needed during and after labour between the two different types of water birth compared to standard care, without the use of a...

It has been fifty years since that momentous break-in at the Watergate office complex, and it seems a good time to revisit that episode, especially in light of the current abuses of power that seem so ubiquitous. Geoff Shepard's book, The Real Watergate Scandal and the just published book by Garrett Graff, Watergate, a New History, offer different perspectives. Shepard is more interested in the legal process and its abuse, while Graff's book relies more on the infamous White House tapes. It is the more comprehensive of the two. Here are some of observations based on these histories. *** Most...

UVALDE, Texas - A major development this morning out of Uvalde, Texas. The school district's police chief is announcing he's stepping down from his city council position following the Robb Elementary School shooting that killed 19 students and two teachers. This morning, Uvalde school district police chief Pete Arredondo is off the city council. Arredondo writing in a resignation letter, “it is in the best interest of the community to step down to minimize further distractions." Arredondo has been criticized repeatedly for his handling of the Robb Elementary shooting in May that left 21 dead. Community frustration boiled over at...

On Tuesday, November 3rd President Trump was ahead of Joe Biden in the swing state of Michigan by over 100,000 votes. This appeared to be another solid win for President Trump in Michigan with a greater margin than his 2016 victory. The ballot counting in Detroit, Michigan on election night took place at the TCF Center, formerly known as Cobo Hall. This is the site where Detroit City Officials put cardboard over the windows to prevent the GOP observers from seeing in, where poll workers were militantly hostile to the GOP observers, and where hundreds of affidavits by election observers...

Celebrating, waving at the Russian tanks...

There’s a food crisis brewing, but you wouldn’t know it with the way the European bureaucracy is behaving. Dutch farmers – who sit as the second-largest agricultural exporter in the world and largest meat exporter in Europe – have brought the Netherlands to a standstill, protesting against Climate Change regulations. The newly elected government has set up a 55-60 per cent emissions goal by 2030, 70 per cent by 2035, and 80 per cent at 2040. To meet these arbitrary climate targets, they have created a self-inflicted disaster that will see the government drag its agricultural sector up the temple...

The victims, just 17 and 14 years old, were butchered with a machete and pickaxe before being tossed into shallow graves; their killers sent video back to El Salvador in hopes of impressing gang bosses Five foreign-born members of MS-13 have been convicted of murdering two teenage boys in the ultra-wealthy, deep blue DC suburbs of Fairfax County, Virginia. Gang members lured the boys to a park before restaining them, killing them, and chopping them up with a machete and pickaxe. They even recorded footage of the brutal murders on a cell phone camera so that videos could be sent...

“A naughty person, a wicked man, walketh with a froward mouth” (Proverbs 6:12 KJV).

Western leaders are beginning to recognize, if not openly acknowledge, that their unprecedented sanctions against Moscow are hurting their own countries’ economies without significantly crimping the Kremlin’s war machine. The fallout from the U.S.-led sanctions on Russia has ended the era of cheap oil and gas and contributed to surging inflation, supply-chain disruptions and a looming recession in the West. In poorer countries, by sending fuel and food prices higher, the sanctions are threatening livelihoods and political stability. As the West is now discovering, sanctions against a large, powerful state not only entail significant costs for the countries imposing them,...

A potential cutting-off of Russian gas would lead to recession and “chaotic conditions”, various German officials are now warning. Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s warning that Germany’s addiction to Russian gas would have extremely negative long-term consequences appears to have been proven prophetic, with officials in the country now warning of “chaotic conditions” and severe economic recession should they lose access to Moscow’s supply. The warnings come as Germany starts to fret that when the Kremlin turns off gas on July 11th to do annual maintenance on the gas line between the two countries, Russian authorities will use technical problems...

U.S. power companies are facing supply crunches that may hamper their ability to keep the lights on as the nation heads into the heat of summer and the peak hurricane season. Extreme weather events such as storms, wildfires and drought are becoming more common in the United States. Consumer power use is expected to hit all-time highs this summer, which could strain electric grids at a time when federal agencies are warning the weather could pose reliability issues. Utilities are warning of supply constraints for equipment, which could hamper efforts to restore power during outages. They are also having a...

ntil recently, CRISPR—the gene-editing technology that won scientists Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier the 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry—sounded more like science fiction than medicine; lab-created molecular scissors are used to snip out problematic DNA sections in a patient’s cells to cure them of disease. But soon we could see regulators approve the very first treatment using this gene-editing technology in an effort to combat rare inherited blood disorders that affect millions across the globe. In a $900 million collaboration, rare disease specialist Vertex and CRISPR Therapeutics developed the therapy, dubbed exa-cel (short for exagamglogene autotemcel). It has already amassed...

In April 2014, four naval aviators narrowly escaped disaster. Just as they entered highly controlled airspace for a training exercise, their two F/A-18F fighter jets nearly collided with an unidentified flying object (UFO). To the frustration of dozens of their fellow aviators, such a near-catastrophe was inevitable. For months before and after the incident, aircrews flying in “exclusive use” training areas off the U.S. East Coast frequently observed unknown objects exhibiting highly anomalous flight characteristics. Despite the collision hazard posed by the UFOs, aviators lacked a formal mechanism to report the mysterious objects.

With Luhansk Province firmly in Russia’s grasp after weeks of brutal fighting, the country’s military forces on Tuesday were already setting their sights on the next target. On the outskirts of Bakhmut, a key supply hub for Ukrainian forces, the Russian Army was ramping up its shelling as an apparent prelude for an inch-by-inch offensive into the province of Donetsk. In Sloviansk, one of the cities in Donetsk that lies in Russia’s path, the mayor, Vadym Lyakh, urged residents on Tuesday to flee the city, which he said was now on the front lines. “Artillery is already hitting the city,”...

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to discuss a 2018 voicemail from President Biden that was recovered from a laptop that belonged to his son Hunter — further undermining Biden’s claim that he never discussed foreign business deals with his son. “Why is there a voicemail of the president talking to his son about his overseas business dealings if the president has said he’s never spoken to his son about his overseas business dealings?” Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy asked Jean-Pierre at her regular briefing Tuesday. “Well, first I’ll say that what the president said stands. So if he...