Free Republic

Seventy-one percent of the earth’s atmosphere is made up of nitrogen, but we’re told that too much of it can be very, very bad. So the Nitrogen Minister of the Netherlands (yes, that’s a real job), Christianne van der Wal, is spearheading a government effort to drastically reduce nitrogen emitted by too much greenery — especially on very productive farms — and especially close to “environmentally sensitive” areas. Farmers in the Netherlands have been at war with the government over nitrogen emissions ever since the government announced that there would be a 50% reduction in nitrogen emissions by 2050. Dairy...

The Chinese Communist Party, through its state propaganda outlets, insisted that it would not relent on its brutal lockdown and quarantine policies known as “zero Covid” on Monday, apparently responding to, but not acknowledging, protests in major cities nationwide over the weekend. Beijing has insisted on “zero Covid” for nearly three years, abruptly trapping people in their homes and often leaving them without food or basic medicine. The Chinese government announced its first deaths attributed to a Chinese coronavirus infection in six months last week – three people over the age of 87 – meaning that, by the regime’s own...

Members of a Baltimore church are giving thanks this week that their longtime pastor wasn’t seriously injured during a mid-service assault on November 20. According to news reports, a 55-year-old man allegedly attacked Bishop Jerome Stokes with a hammer during Sunday worship at The Church of the Redeemed of the Lord (CRL). Stokes, 78, received only a minor laceration on one ear. The alleged attacker, whom police say may have been having a mental health crisis, was evaluated at a local hospital. Baltimore Church: ‘We Thank God That Dr. Stokes Is Okay’ In a statement posted to its Facebook page,...

A Qatari official involved in the organisation of the country's World Cup has put the number of worker deaths related to the tournament "between 400 and 500" for the first time, a number drastically higher than any other previously offered by Doha. The comment by Hassan Al-Thawadi, the secretary general of Qatar's Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, appeared to be an off-the-cuff remark during an interview with British journalist Piers Morgan. The comment threatened to renew criticism by human rights groups over the toll of hosting the Middle East's first World Cup given the migrant workers who built more...

In its heyday, Vineyard Anaheim served as the flagship of a worldwide, charismatic movement. Now, the church has left the Vineyard, taking with it $62 million in assets. And according to a lawsuit filed this month by former church members, the exodus was part of a premediated plan by current church leaders to deceive and defraud. In the suit, the widow of Vineyard founder John Wimber and eight other former members of Vineyard Anaheim—now the Dwelling Place—accuse current church pastors and board members of fraud, misrepresentation, and breach of fiduciary duty. Named as defendants are Dwelling Place Lead Pastors Alan...

WHEN you think of camels, you think of hot and dry deserts, with no water in sight. But is it true that camels store water in their humps? Verdict: FALSE Contrary to what cartoons have been showing us about camels, they do not store water in their humps. Instead, these ships of the desert have fatty tissue stored in their humps, which becomes their source of nourishment in case there is a shortage of food. When the camel is unable to access food for a long period of time, its body is able to metabolise the fat in the humps...

BEIJING — This week, dozens of Chinese citizens died after the Chinese Communist Party welded their apartment doors shut and a fire broke out in the building, sparking protests. China has doubled down on its "Zero COVID" policy, however, and has tapped Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer to lead its COVID lockdown enforcement measures."Michigan's lockdowns were wonderfully effective in slowing the spread of COVID as well as freedom," said a Chinese Communist Party spokesman in a statement. "Our shared values with Whitmer, who we have affectionately dubbed the 'Ice Queen', make her the ideal candidate to lockdown our citizens under brutal...

In the 2012 Presidential Election, Democrat Barack Obama decisively defeated Republican Mitt Romney. Obama won 332 electoral votes and the national Presidential popular vote by nearly 4%. Despite this crushing victory, Obama headed into his second term in office without a majority in the US House. House Republicans lost the popular vote by 1% but still won a 234-201 majority in the chamber. This outcome did not surprise shrewd political observers—Republicans held a considerable structural advantage in the US House throughout the 2010s. In fact, according to FairVote, Republicans would expect to win a 241-194 majority in a tied national...

I don’t trust the results of the midterms. I suspect I will not be confident in election outcomes until verified citizens must sign-up during a short registration period immediately before elections and the voting only takes place at the polls on Election Day. It could be a long wait. The reports and common-sense indications of fraud are everywhere. Mail-in ballots are, once again, the primary suspect but voting machines and corrupt officials seem to be implicated as well. Anecdotally, Kari Lake was up by 10 points in the run-up to the Arizona Governor’s race. She ended up losing by a...

Football fever has taken over the world, thanks to the 2022 FIFA World Cup that’s currently being held in Qatar. Despite being organised under the shadow of two public health emergencies — the COVID-19 pandemic and the monkeypox disease (recently renamed as ‘Mpox’) — millions of fans from around the world are expected to throng this global footballing event. Amid all this frenzy, the possibility of a deadlier viral outbreak at the FIFA World Cup has been flagged by WHO-backed health experts! The findings of a study, published in the journal New Microbes and New Infections, have warned that about...

With China's communist oligarchs tightening their grip on power as anti-COVID lockdown protests erupt across that country, who should step in to help the detested regime but wokester Apple, one of the most virtue-signally of all companies in the Silicon Valley. According to a report in Quartz, via Yahoo! Finance:Anti-government protests flared in several Chinese cities and on college campuses over the weekend. But the country’s most widespread show of public dissent in decades will have to manage without a crucial communication tool, because Apple restricted its use in China earlier this month.AirDrop, the file-sharing feature on iPhones and other...

Typically, in American schools, bullying is like the dark cousin to prom, student elections, or football practice: Maybe you weren’t involved, but you knew that someone, somewhere was. In 2011, President Obama spoke against this inevitability at the White House Conference on Bullying Prevention. “With big ears and the name that I have, I wasn’t immune. I didn’t emerge unscathed,” he said. “But because it’s something that happens a lot, and it’s something that’s always been around, sometimes we’ve turned a blind eye to the problem.” We know that we shouldn’t turn a blind eye: Research shows that bullying is...

Beto O'Rourke returned a $1 million donation from controversial cryptocurrency magnate Sam Bankman-Fried less than a week before Election Day, the Texas Tribune's James Barragán reported Tuesday. FTX, Bankman-Fried's cryptocurrency exchange, was valued at $32 billion before its abrupt collapse earlier this month sparked widespread panic amongst crypto investors and industry leaders. FTX filed for bankruptcy and Bankman-Fried stepped down as its top executive on Nov. 11, just three days after Election Day. Chris Evans, an O'Rourke campaign spokesperson, told Barragán that the decision to return Bankman-Fried's donation was not connected to the controversy now swirling around Bankman-Fried and FTX....

Shaheen stretched out on the sand and closed his eyes, but there was little time to rest for the camel. World Cup fans coming in droves to the desert outside Doha were ready for their perfect Instagram moment: riding a camel on the rolling dunes. As Qatar welcomes more than a million fans for the monthlong World Cup, even its camels are working overtime. Visitors in numbers the tiny emirate has never before seen are rushing to finish a bucket list of Gulf tourist experiences between games: ride on a camel’s back, take pictures with falcons and wander through the...

The police officer accused of killing three people and kidnapping a girl in Riverside on Friday passed a background check and psychological testing before being hired, according to officials in Virginia. According to police, Edwards “catfished” the girl using a fake identity, then kidnapped her in the 11200 block of Price Court, killed 69-year-old Mark Winek, his 65-year-old wife Sharie Winek and their daughter, 38-year-old Brooke Winek, and set fire to the teen’s home. He later was killed in a gunfight with deputies from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. The girl was unharmed. Before Friday, however, he had been...

Alaska’s sole congressional seat, which had been in GOP hands for 49 years, was recently captured by Democrat Mary Peltola. The victory has been touted by liberals as either vindication of their agenda or as portending the end of the career of Sarah Palin, Peltola’s most high-profile opponent. Yet the result, which took weeks to finalize, was easily explainable: It was a function of Alaska’s new ranked-choice voting (RCV) and Top-four Primary (TFP) system — a system electoral engineers would like to institute nationwide. In essence, this system created a situation in which Palin and another Republican, Nick Begich, were...

0:51 Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” that former President Donald Trump degraded himself and the nation when he had dinner at his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, FL, with Kanye West and Nick Fuentes. Mitchell said, “Senate Republicans now are a chorus condemning Donald Trump for dining with a white nationalist holocaust denier along with Kanye West.” Speaking to reporters, Romney said, “I think it has been clear there’s no bottom to the degree to which President Trump will degrade himself and the nation.”

Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., worked as a youth and assistant pastor of a church for a decade while it repeatedly hosted a former New York City professor who was ousted over antisemitic and Black supremacist teachings.From 1991 to 2001, Warnock served as youth pastor for six years and then assistant pastor for four years under Rev. Calvin O. Butts at Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City, several years before he went on to lead the same Atlanta church where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a pastor. From 1991 to 1998, Butts’ Abyssinian church hosted Leonard Jeffries as a...

What a legend.All sharing options There’s a lot of pressure when the camera is on you at a game to be entertaining. Most people just play it off as embarassing and are desperate to see the camera leave them alone — but the bar has been raised, forever. This Lakers fan was immediately named “Fan of the Game” for chugging beer out of her own prosthetic leg, and rightfully so. I went to a renaissance fair a few weeks back and drank ale out of a horn, because that’s where I’m at in my life now, so really drinking out...

The Democratic National Committee will vote on a flurry of voting rules ahead of the 2024 elections this week, with party leaders set to consider changes to the presidential primary calendar that could boot Iowa from its coveted first-in-the-nation voting slot. Democrats are set to meet this week to decide on their presidential primary calendar, with several state leaders elbowing one another to claim early-state status. However, doing so may be easier said than done as it remains unclear how the DNC will organize the party’s primary calendar — and President Joe Biden, who holds outsize influence over the committee’s...