Free Republic

Most of the world is finally climbing out of the gulag cocoons that “the authorities” and “experts” created to silence dissent during the COVID scare campaign. Are you beginning to feel a bit less oppressed? Are you just a little miffed after being fed lies and threats endlessly? Don’t people driving alone in their cars wearing masks finally seem as absurd as they should have seemed for two years? Don’t get too comfortable. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. In less than a year another presidential campaign kicks off and the powers that be intend by then to have reinstated a...

First Lady Jill Biden came to her husband's defense Thursday when he was questioned about the classified document controversy dogging his presidency. President Joe Biden was walking through the White House during the Lunar New Year festivity when he was asked a question about whether he would let the FBI search one of his houses. The president looked flustered, but then the first lady intervened and waved at reporters before catching up with him en route to the celebration. Late last week, the FBI searched the president's Wilmington, Delaware home and reportedly unearthed additional documents with classification markings. His legal...

More than half of LGBTQ parents in Florida are considering moving their families to another state over concerns that a new Florida education law – known to its critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” law – stigmatizes LGBTQ identities and creates a hostile learning environment for LGBTQ children or students with LGBTQ family members. In a report issued Tuesday by the Williams Institute, a public policy research institute based at the UCLA of Law, and Clark University in Massachusetts, 56 percent of LGBTQ parents surveyed said they were considering leaving Florida over concerns about how the new law may impact...

Across the country, an increasing number of universities now require scholars to submit “diversity statements” in hiring, promotion, and tenure. Many have abandoned or downplayed standardized tests in the name of racial equity. Meanwhile, offices with flowery titles like “Inclusive Excellence” frequently conduct training sessions that espouse spurious claims about “microaggressions” and “white supremacy culture.” By now, it’s clear that many policies that fall under the banner of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI)—like the ones I’ve listed above—pose a threat to academic freedom, good scholarship, and sound education. No doubt, many campus reformers have already taken on the project of...

(Daily readings from the USCCB)Jesus said to the crowds: “This is how it is with the Kingdom of God; it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land and would sleep and rise night and day and the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how. Mark 4:26–27It’s beautiful to reflect upon how the Word of God changes people’s lives. This short passage above analogizes the sharing of the Word of God with the planting of seed. The sower goes forth and scatters seed into the ground and then observes how that seed grows into...

Corporate media blackout of the story but the weirdness is compelling.The incredible undercover video of a senior Pfizer executive boasting about “mutating” the Covid virus released Wednesday by Project Veritas is making waves, even though the corporate media have completely ignored it as Google suppresses searches for it. Here is the original video itself of Pfizer's Jordon Trishton Walker regaling his companion, unaware that he was being recorded. The incredible undercover video of a senior Pfizer executive boasting about “mutating” the Covid virus released Wednesday by Project Veritas is making waves, even though the corporate media have completely ignored it...

Last Updated On: January 25, 2023) NATIONAL CHOCOLATE CAKE DAY National Chocolate Cake Day celebrates the cake more people favor. And more often than not, we celebrate our special occasions like anniversaries, birthdays and weddings with cake. Why not enjoy chocolate cake on January 27th every year? #ChocolateCakeDay In America, chocolate was consumed primarily as a beverage until the 1830s or 40s. Chocolate cakes, as we think of them today, mostly did not exist then. According to the Dover Post, the chocolate cake was born in 1765 when a doctor and a chocolate maker teamed up in an old mill....

First lady Jill Biden imposed a strict “no dancing” rule on her husband after dragging President Biden up on stage during a Lunar New Year celebration at the White House Thursday night. The first couple had just finished watching a performance of a traditional Chinese lion dance from the front row in the East Room, when Jill took on the role of the MC and led her husband by the hand onstage. “Are we going to dance?” the 80-year-old commander-in-chief joked as he mounted a short flight of stairs. “No, you’re not going to dance, believe me,” Jill replied through...

It’s very strange not to seriously pursue a deeply held goal when you have unified control of Washington, then to insist on trying to achieve much of it in one fell swoop when you barely have control of one chamber of Congress. But here we are. This is the Republican pattern. It has been, fundamentally, driven by the fact that two Republican presidents in a row now have won the White House by effectively running against the fiscal conservatism of the party’s congressional wing. George W. Bush’s compassionate conservatism was an implicit rebuke of Newt Gingrich’s bomb-throwing majorities that tried...

Scratchy circle on cratered Mars surface with what look like two eyes and a snout A bear on Mars? (NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona) Bear Faced Crater On Mars A view of the area on Mars with the bear-like crater. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona) Facial pareidolia is the human tendency or illusion of seeing facial structures in an everyday objects – such as seeing the "man in the Moon," or the face of Jesus on a piece of toast. But here's a newly found crater on Mars that might be a case of 'bear-adoilia.' There's no denying, the crater looks like a bear's face. We've seen...

Until it decided to confront Moscow with an existential military threat in Ukraine, Washington confined the use of American military power to conflicts that Americans could afford to lose, wars with weak opponents in the developing world from Saigon to Baghdad that did not present an existential threat to U.S. forces or American territory. This time—a proxy war with Russia—is different.

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Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has rejected the prospect of peace talks with Vladimir Putin while dismissing his Russian counterpart Thursday as a “nobody.” Zelensky used an interview with Britain’s Sky News to declare Putin “doesn’t want negotiations because he doesn’t want peace.” The Ukrainian leader said he was “convinced” Ukraine was “just the first step” for Putin, who has his eye on “other countries” as he seeks Eastern European domination.

Odele -Ventimiglia, the daughter of Sopranos actor John Ventimiglia, had died on January 12, with her cause of death not yet known. -She is survived by her father , who is best known for his role as Artie Bucco in The Sopranos, her mother, sister and her three-month-old daughter Shiloh. -On Monday, the family requested donations to cover the costs of Odele’s infant daughter's education through GoFundMe. The daughter of Sopranos actor John Ventimiglia has died at the age of 25, his family confirmed, just three months after she welcomed her baby girl, Shiloh. Odele Ventimiglia passed away on January...

In findings published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Saint Louis University researchers and colleagues report that elephants play a key role in creating forests that store more atmospheric carbon and maintaining the biodiversity of forests in Africa. If the already critically endangered elephants become extinct, the rainforest of central and west Africa, the second largest rainforest on earth, would lose between six and nine percent of its ability to capture atmospheric carbon, amplifying planetary warming. **SNIP** Within the forest, some trees have light wood (low carbon density trees) while others make heavy wood (high carbon density...

Months after suffering third-degree burns in a fire that erupted while working on one of his antique cars, Jay Leno was injured in a mishap. ... Leno broke several bones in a motorcycle crash last week. The comedian was speaking by phone with a reporter, telling him that he was “knocked off my motorcycle. So I’ve got a broken collarbone. I’ve got two broken ribs. I’ve got two cracked kneecaps.” “So I turned down a side street and cut through a parking lot, and unbeknownst to me, some guy had a wire strung across the parking lot but with no...

The Bible In Paintings ~ Encouragement for Appreciating and Applying God's Word ~ JESUS WELCOMES ALL THE CHILDREN ֎ Featuring 37 Paintings, 2 Reliefs and 8 Windows ֎ M A R K Chapter 10* People were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like...

European natural gas inventories fell by 185 BCF over past week. EU nat gas storage 80% full. Current inventories at 2904 BCF

There was a hilarious film with Hillary Swank and Aaron Ekhart called “The Core” where earth’s core stops spinning and the earth gets cooked by the Sun’s rediation. Now we learn that the Earth’s inne core has actually stop spinning. This time, however, all that has happened is that Joe Biden is President which is almost as bad, But also related to “The Core” is that the important Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) are out for December along with PCE price deflator numbers. In short, personal income was up 0.2% month-over-month (MoM) in December while personal spending was down -0.2%. REAL...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge eased further in December, and consumer spending fell — the latest evidence that the Fed’s series of interest rate hikes are slowing the economy. Friday’s report from the Commerce Department showed that prices rose 5% last month from a year earlier, down from the 5.5% year-over-year increase in November. It was the third straight drop. Consumer spending fell 0.2% from November to December and was revised lower to show a drop of 0.1% from October to November. Last year’s holiday sales were sluggish for many retailers, and the overall spending figures...