Free Republic

Dr. John Calhoon, the outgoing president of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, posted the slide immediately below as part of his farewell remarks. See if you can spot anything wrong with it: Of course you know what happened next: Dr. Calhoon was called out for his “hurtful” remarks by the STS’s new president and board of directors. You’d almost think the STS board had confused Dr. John Calhoon with John C. Calhoun or something. The only thing harmed by this reaction is the declining confidence patients will have in their doctors if this keeps up.

A new study has found that consuming dietary nitrate—the active molecule in beetroot juice—significantly increased muscle force while exercising. While it is known that dietary nitrate enhances exercise, both boosting endurance and enhancing high-intensity exercise, researchers still have much to learn about why this effect occurs, and how our bodies convert dietary nitrate that we ingest into the nitric oxide that can be used by our cells. To help close this gap traced the distribution of ingested nitrate in the saliva, blood, muscle and urine of ten healthy volunteers, who were then asked to perform maximal leg exercise. The team...

In an attack with a machete in southern Spain, one person has been killed-several people were injured. The perpetrator is said to have attacked people in at least two churches... The public prosecutors office had initiated a preliminary investigation on suspicion of terrorism wrote the newspaper "El Pais". The suspect was a 25-year-old Moroccan. According to eyewitnesses, the man had entered the Church of San Isidro with the cry "for Allah"...

Alongside the usual shipments of drugs and guns confiscated at the US border, customs officers are intercepting a surprising commodity – eggs. Traffickers are attempting to sneak thousands of Mexican “huevos” across the border per week after skyrocketing prices have made them a hot property, costing up to $8 per dozen in certain parts of America. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said they saw an uptick of 108% in egg seizures in the last three months of 2022, according to Border Report and violators end up having to shell out for a fine of up to $10,000.

A top adviser for Stacey Abrams' voting rights nonprofit defended anti-cop activists who set a police car ablaze and smashed windows while protesting the death of an environmental activist this past weekend in Atlanta. Marisa Pyle, a senior rapid response manager at Abrams' Fair Fight Action, who also worked as a senior manager for Abrams' One Georgia leadership committee during her most recent failed Georgia gubernatorial run, rushed to defend the anti-police protesters and the ensuing chaos. "You cannot commit violence against a window or a car. Killing a human? Now that, that is violence," Pyle wrote on Twitter this...

The strange saga of the Filipino onion – a humble vegetable transformed into a priceless treasure by a combination of high demand, supply problems, and imbecilic government policies – took another turn on Saturday when blushing bride April Lyka Biorrey walked down the aisle with a bouquet of onions instead of flowers. By all accounts, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Onions have become so scarce in the Philippines that travelers are returning from overseas with suitcases full of them and black-market smugglers are fighting gang wars for onion turf. To make a long story short, almost every...

One of the strangest parts of the COVID-19 pandemic has been all of the public health “experts” who openly lied to the American people while expecting to be lauded as heroes in response. Certainly, most have witnessed Dr. Anthony Fauci’s grotesque level of arrogance over the years, with numerous examples of the good doctor admitting to lying in order to get the outcome he desired from the public. For his efforts, he’s got magazine covers and million-dollar awards. But we shouldn’t forget about Dr. Deborah Birx, the other half of Donald Trump’s initial COVID-19 advisory team. Though she has rarely...

A ‘Dirty Schism’ in Germany? As Synodal Way Nears Conclusion, Lay Group Warns of ‘Worst Possible’ OutcomeNEWS ANALYSIS: Without decisive intervention from Rome, faithful Catholics in Germany are likely to be pushed ‘underground,’ cautions New BeginningObservers of the Catholic Church in Germany have long feared that the country’s ongoing Synodal Way would lead to a split from Rome. And after the German bishops refused a Vatican request in November to put a “moratorium” on the controversial process and its push for women’s ordination, lay governance, and approval of homosexual sex, those fears were likely only heightened.But barring a more...

The company uses a technological system capable of transposing images, called adversarial patches, onto a knitted fabric that can be used to dupe people detectors in real time. Wearing one of the items with the adversarial image woven in can protect the biometric data of a person's face. It means that it will either be undetectable, or associated with an incorrect category, such as animals. Examples used include dogs, zebras and giraffes. the fabric has been tested with YOLO, the most common and fastest real-time object detection system.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Newly crowned Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy wasted no time fulfilling his promise to free the House Intelligence Committee from members caught up in lying or sleeping with Chinese spies, Representative Adam Schiff being chief among the affected members. But Rep. Schiff had barely had a chance to mourn the loss of a position that allowed him to use top-secret information to propagate lies for his own advantage when he heard the heartwarming news that he had been given a seat on the House Pencil-Neck Committee. "It brings me great honor to be a part of...

Long is among a group of retired agents who say the FBI is already both politicized and weaponized. They trace the roots of these problems to the massive reorganization undertaken by former Director Robert Mueller after 9/11. Citing an avalanche of intelligence failures leading up to the attacks, critics demanded reform. Mueller decided the answer was centralized control from Washington, D.C..Mueller created what are called flying squads, Long says: “When there was a big case, he would fly a squad in from headquarters rather than use the boots on the ground.”Kurt Siuzdak, who retired from the FBI last year, now...

Revelation, Ch. 16 1 And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth. 2 And the first went, and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men which had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his image. 3 And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died...

President Biden is a successful president who has built a historically impressive record during his first term, and if — or when — he runs for a second term, he will benefit from the support of an extraordinarily impressive group of Democratic governors, who possess a dose of political magic. One of the great untold stories of politics in 2023, which we can begin to remedy here, is the truly exceptional quality of many Democratic governors serving today, a significant number of whom govern with Democratic state legislatures.

Increased dietary fiber intake is associated with a decreased incidence of migraine, according to a study. Hao Huang examined the association between dietary fiber intake and the prevalence of severe headache or migraine using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (1999 to 2004). The researchers found that after adjusting for covariates, there was a significant inverse association seen between dietary fiber intake and severe headache or migraine, with the lowest prevalence observed in the fifth quintile (odds ratio, 0.74). For every 10-g/day increase in dietary fiber intake, the prevalence of severe headache or migraine decreased by 11...

Audits of 12 school districts has state Auditor General Timothy DeFoor believing school boards are playing a “shell game” with taxpayer funds by moving money into reserve accounts to allow them to make a case for raising property tax rates. State laws limit how much school districts can raise property taxes and sets limits on those increases but allows for exceptions to be granted in one of two ways: ask voters’ permission through a referendum or ask the state Department of Education for a referendum exception. “These 12 districts collectively raised taxes 37 times during the four years we reviewed...

A New York Times editorial board member actually claimed that Americans should be concerned about their taxes being too low when thinking about the $31 trillion-plus national debt crisis. Yes, you read that correctly. Binyamin Appelbaum, The Times editorial board’s so-called “lead writer on economics and business” argued that the government is actually a victim in the debt crisis that it created. “The Real Debt Crisis Is Low Taxes,” read the headline of his nonsensical Jan. 25 op-ed. It seems he realized just how stupid his headline sounded as The Times later changed the headline entirely, making it appear more...

Meta will be ending former President Trump's suspension across its platforms, which include Facebook and Instagram, "in the coming weeks," according to a blog post from the company. In a blog post on Wednesday, Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta, said that Trump's suspension on both Facebook and Instagram will be lifted. "To assess whether the serious risk to public safety that existed in January 2021 has sufficiently receded, we have evaluated the current environment according to our Crisis Policy Protocol, which included looking at the conduct of the US 2022 midterm elections, and expert assessments on the...

Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul the Apostle Mark 16:15–18Friends, today in our Gospel, Jesus commissions the Apostles to evangelize all people: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.”To evangelize is to proclaim Jesus Christ crucified and risen from the dead. When this kerygma, this Paschal Mystery, is not at the heart of the project, Christian evangelization effectively disappears, devolving into a summons to bland religiosity or generic spirituality. When Jesus crucified and risen is not proclaimed, a beige and unthreatening Catholicism emerges, a thought system that is, at best, an echo of the...

Vladimir Putin plans to seize US weapons left behind during the evacuation of Afghanistan. Kremlin insider claims that the Russian despot is in negotiations with the Taliban to recognise the nation's government. In return, Putin wants US equipment snatched from Afghanistan by the Taliban to be handed over - according to Telegram channel General SVR - which claims to be fed information by a Kremlin insider.

Convenience store chain 7-Eleven has discovered that homeless people don’t like opera and classical music blaring in their ears as they beg for money, do drugs, or harass the locals. The practice launched in Canada and then San Francisco and several beach locales in Florida followed suit. Now, it’s a mainstream solution for business owners struggling to cope in certain neighborhoods. The immediate problem is that a whole lot of customers who buy Twinkies, lottery tickets, and slushies don’t much like that style of music either. Therein lies the rub. “Studies have shown that the classical music is annoying. Opera...