Free Republic

“In December 1944,” begins Sim Kessel’s Holocaust memoir, “I was hanged at Auschwitz.” He was twenty-five years old and had been caught attempting to escape. Sim Kessel (called “Sam” in some accounts), a French Jew who boxed professionally, had been at Auschwitz for two years — a staggering period of time where the normal lifespan of a prisoner was at most three months — and had already escaped the gas chambers on two occasions. The first time, he was in the infirmary recuperating from a severe beating and torture at the hands of the SS (one of his fingers had...

Dec. 27 (UPI) -- In response to Western price caps on Russian oil, President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday banned the export of oil to the United States and other Group of Seven and European Union nations. The ban, which applies to all Russian oil and petroleum products, will go into effect Feb. 1 and be enforced until July 1. According to the Kremlin, oil exports to the affected Western nations can still occur, but only if Putin grants it in a special order. This month, Western nations imposed a price cap on Russian oil that prevents the price from rising...

Serious holes have been poked in the world’s response to the pandemic, with Sweden emerging atop a telling list of nations least affected by Covid-19. In a list of countries studied by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Scandinavian nation ranked lowest for overall cumulative excess deaths from 2020-22 at 6.8 per cent, compared to Australia (18 per cent), the UK (24.5 per cent) and the US (54.1 per cent). The results are even more poignant considering Sweden was one of the few developed nations that opted against widespread lockdowns. As governments scrambled to make the idea of...

Indianapolis residents saw a bizarre sight on Christmas and it had nothing to do with Santa or his reindeer. Quite the opposite as the Indianapolis Fire Department revealed a 33 year old woman drove down an embankment and then started driving on a frozen canal. This appears to have gone on for a while as the department said she “continued north on the canal until she came to the dead end at 10th Street, where she turned around [and] headed south.” Her luck eventually ran out as the vehicle broke through the ice and plunged into the water. The fire...

An Arizona judge on Tuesday rejected a request to sanction Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake (R) over her lawsuit challenging her defeat. Maricopa County and Katie Hobbs (D), in her capacities as both governor-elect and secretary of state, had asked the judge to require Lake and her legal team to pay all parties’ attorneys’ fees, arguing the suit was groundless and made in bad faith. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson in Tuesday’s decision reiterated that Lake did not meet the burden of providing clear and convincing evidence of her claims necessary to win the case, but he said...

Novak Djokovic has arrived in Australia almost a year after he was deported over his stance against COVID-19 vaccination, Tennis Australia confirmed Wednesday. Djokovic will open his 2023 campaign in Adelaide as he prepares for a shot at a 10th Australian Open title. >snip< Djokovic missed the Grand Slam event last year because of his refusal to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Australia has since lifted strict rules for unvaccinated travelers. Immigration Minister Andrew Giles last month confirmed that Djokovic, who had been facing a possible three-year ban after being deported, has been granted a visa.

Update on Diamond Ranch Academy Tic Tok poster has inside story on what happened and who the girl was that died. 17 year old Taylor Goodrich of Washington. She was a Native American.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk fact checked a sitting U.S. Congress member for spreading false information on the social media platform. On Monday, Musk fact checked far-left California congress member Ted Lieu for “linking to misleading data.” I'm beginning to think he did do it for humanity.. 👇🏽https://t.co/1Oc59GG5Ho — Chuck Callesto (@ChuckCallesto) December 27, 2022 Ted Lieu Attacks New 'Twitter Files' as Misinformation, Immediately Gets Dragged by Elon Musk for Spreading Misinformation https://t.co/rqnNwvAha9 — RedState (@RedState) December 27, 2022 Lieu tweeted in response to Monday’s TWITTER FILES drop that exposed the platform’s prior censorship of COVID information that was true but...

As the Biden administration and deeply ideological publications such as the New England Journal of Medicine push for treating children with gender dysphoria with nothing but affirmation — and castigate mental-health treatment for gender dysphoria, considering it equivalent to “conversion therapy” — less politicized institutions in other liberal societies are hitting the brakes. Sweden’s national board of health just updated its guidelines on the care of children with gender dysphoria, and “caution” is its new watchword. It declares that extended psychosocial explorations are key. From its announcement (Google translation): Young people suffering from gender dysphoria need to be able to...

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch formed an unlikely alliance with the high court’s three liberal justices on Tuesday in breaking with the majority’s decision to temporarily keep the Title 42 border policy in place. “The current border crisis is not a COVID crisis,” Gorsuch said in his dissent, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. “Courts should not be in the business of perpetuating administrative edicts designed for one emergency only because elected officials have failed to address a different emergency,” he added. “We are a court of law, not policymakers of last resort.” While they did not join Gorsuch’s dissenting...

BUFFALO, N.Y. — State and military police were sent Tuesday to keep people off Buffalo’s snow-choked roads, and officials kept counting fatalities three days after western New York’s deadliest storm in at least two generations. Even as suburban roads and most major highways in the area reopened, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz warned that police would be stationed at entrances to Buffalo and at major intersections because some drivers were flouting a ban on driving within New York’s second-most populous city. More than 30 people are reported to have died in the region, officials said, including seven storm-related deaths announced...

Dr. Rachel Levine, the Biden administration’s assistant health secretary, has drawn pushback after advocating for tech platforms to crack down on “misinformation” about sex change procedures. Dr. Levine was trending Monday on social media after a video surfaced in which the transgender health official called for health workers to pressure tech companies to combat misinformation about “the health equity of sexual and gender minorities.” “There is substantial misinformation about gender-affirming care for transgender and gender-diverse individuals,” said Dr. Levine in the May 27 video presentation before the Federation of State Medical Boards in New Orleans. Dr. Levine, the first openly...

(FLASHBACK November 24th, 2020) The left-wing news media didn’t just poison the information environment with their incessantly negative coverage of President Trump going into the 2020 election. They also refused to give airtime to important arguments of the Republican campaign — both pro-Trump and anti-Biden — which meant millions of voters cast their ballots knowing only what the media permitted them to know about the candidates. To measure the true effect of the media’s censorship on the election, the Media Research Center asked The Polling Company to survey 1,750 Biden voters in seven swing states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North...

"Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?" "And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me." "And make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed. Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord:" John, Chapter 11 1 Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus,...

A New York man filed a class-action lawsuit against Apple on Dec. 24, alleging that the Apple Watch’s blood oximeter has a “racial bias” against individuals with darker skin tones. “Blood Oxygen app measurements are not intended for medical use, including self-diagnosis or consultation with a doctor,” Apple writes.

He's right at one month old. Perfect little guy.

The lockdowns of March 2020 shocked the American people and most public health agencies, not to mention infectious disease doctors. The idea of school shutdowns, business closures, plus mandatory remote work and other restrictions have previously seemed inconceivable. It was especially remarkable to have such an “all-of-government” response to a virus that we already knew posed a threat mainly to the elderly and infirm. Issues like public-health precedent, American legal tradition, and medical knowledge about dealing with respiratory viruses, not to mention natural immunity and collateral damage of lockdowns, were all thrown out the window. Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s book “The...

[Catholic Caucus] Cardinals block appointment of Heiner Wilmer as Prefect of the DDF(Translation of German article by Giuseppe Nardi at Katholisches.info.)It seemed that everything was already fixed: Shortly before Christmas, the appointment of a new prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) was expected. But then everything turned out differently - at least for the time being.Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer, the prefect for the Doctrine of the Faith who was still in office, had received his mandate in an unexpected way in the summer of 2017. Until then,...

Due to the incoming warm, heavy rain expected to reach the area these next couple of weeks, US Forest Service officials in the Klamath National Forest are warning locals to be prepared for the worst. Officials said there will be a heightened risk of flooding, landslides, and debris flow due to the incoming weather. The USFS expects creeks flowing out of recent fire areas to be the first to run turbid.

SISKIYOU COUNTY, Calif. — Severe weather caused Caltrans District 2 to close both the eastbound and westbound lanes of Siskiyou State Route 96. The closure is about two miles east of Horse creek to Doggett Creek Bridge. Caltrans says the cause is flooding. According to the California Highway Patrol, "widespread flooding" was reported just after 10:30 p.m. Monday night east of Horse Creek.