Free Republic

As parents and educators fight over book bans, five states have enacted criminal punishments for librarians who allow children to access 'obscene' materials - with a dozen states considering similar actions. The laws could subject librarians to significant penalties, including imprisonment and hefty fines, for providing sexually explicit, obscene or books deemed 'harmful' to children. At least seven state legislatures have passed these laws over the past two years, with six of them doing so in the last two months, although the governors of Idaho and North Dakota vetoed similar legislation. The laws are pending in nine other states but...

Midland County Sheriff David Criner told the Reporter-Telegram on Sunday that the bond for the man arrested for the murder of 20-year-old Madeline Molina Pantoja is $3 million, not $300 million as the Sheriff's Office reported earlier. Criner said there was an error on the Midland County Sheriff’s Office website. Mario Juan Chacon Jr. was arrested Saturday and is being charged with murder, a first-degree felony, Midland County records show. The Midland County Sheriff’s Office current detainee list first showed that a bond has been set for “300,000,000.00.” Criner later confirmed that number is $3 million and the website would...

Sen. Dan McCay couldn’t stop thinking about the process it took for Utah to adopt a new state flag as he, Gov. Spencer Cox and a group of other elected leaders, government employees, residents and children carried the new flag to a pole on the roof of the Utah Capitol on Wednesday morning. To him, the group of people holding the flag represented a piece of the thousands of Utahns who either submitted designs or offered feedback that led to the final design that they were holding. Moments later, they clipped the large flag to a line underneath the state’s...

Elon Musk raised questions about deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s list of clients in a series of tweets – suggesting it was “odd” that the information still hasn’t surfaced. Musk commented on the situation alongside a meme labeled “things I’ll never see in my life” with photos of a dragon, dinosaurs, a unicorn and the words “the Epstein/Maxwell client list.” “Only thing more remarkable than DOJ not leaking the list is that no one in the media cares,” Musk tweeted ... “Doesn’t that seem odd?” “Sometimes I think my list of enemies is too short, so …” Musk added....

Beginning in 2021, he says in his complaint he began asking Garcia y Griego for permission to personally interview, vet and hire employees who would report to him.She did not respond to any of his requests, Blinman says in his complaint, which speculates she intended to "deprive him [of] the competent employees and necessary tools to enable him to effectively perform his job duties," which would "provide her with the pretext she wanted, and needed" to fire him.Blinman's lawsuit says this issue prompted him to file a whistleblower complaint in 2022, in which he reported to Lucero, the human resources...

St Javelin comes thru again.

Like the teeth themselves, under the right conditions the gunk on your teeth may survive not just thousands but millions of years in the grave. Isn't that good to know.Advanced dental decay and plaque buildup have been detected in Dryopithecus carinthiacus, a primate that lived in Europe 12.5 million years ago, suggesting it doted on high-sugar fruit. Sivapithecus sivalensis, who lived between 9.3 to 8.7 million years ago in Pakistan, was also apparently frugivorous. Analysis of ancient plaque has shed light on the mobility of Neanderthals and other hominins, as implied by dietary changes, and shored up the thesis that...

A Wisconsin teen bragged “fraud is fun” before allegedly hacking user accounts on sports betting website DraftKings and helping others steal $600,000, Manhattan federal prosecutors charged Thursday. Joseph Garrison, 18, is accused of swiping the login information of 60,000 accounts in the Nov. 18 cyberattack, and then selling the data, allowing others to steal money from some of the users, the feds alleged. In total, the Madison man allegedly helped others loot the $600,000 from a total of 1,600 users — with at least 30 of those accounts belonging to New Yorkers, prosecutors said. Before Garrison carried out the major...

A tech worker in England tried to sue her former boss after apparently believing email abbreviations he used, such as “xx” and “???,” were codes asking for a sexual relationship. Karina Gasparova, an IT worker at “paperless global trade management” company essDOCS, filed a sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuit against her boss Alexander Goulandris outlining alleged misbehavior dating back to 2019, according to the Independent. A judge threw the case out after an employment tribunal at London Central Court heard Gasparova’s claims. The IT employee claimed that Goulandris’ use of “xx” in emails to her were attempts to kiss her,...

Progressives who’d decided that “soft on crime” is a winning message in urban America got a well-deserved wake-up call Tuesday, as Philadelphia Democrats tapped Cherelle Parker as their nominee, and so near-certain to become the city’s 100th mayor. Like our own Mayor Eric Adams, Parker won voters over with her promise to address public safety and quality of life concerns. She explicitly vowed to restore stop-question-and-frisk (conducted constitutionally) as a policing tactic and to get more beat officers on street patrol. The progressive darling was Helen Gym, backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson....

— After nearly a year of having hiccups, the athlete is seeking treatmentWelcome to Culture Clinic, MedPage Today's collaboration with Northwell Health to offer a healthcare professional's take on the latest viral medical topics. Former baseball and football star Bo Jackson has had the hiccups for nearly a year and is undergoing a medical procedure this week to treat the unexplained phenomenon. "I'm busy at the hospital having shine lights down my throat and probing me every way they can to find out why I have these hiccups," the former professional football and baseball player told the hosts of the...

The Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine—which prevents tuberculosis—offers multiple beneficial effects, and it's currently a recommended therapy for non–muscle-invasive bladder cancer. In a new study, treatment with the BCG vaccine was associated with a reduced risk of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. Although previous research has suggested a link between the BCG vaccine and a lower risk of dementia, studies were limited by size, study design, or analytical methods. To conduct a more robust study, Marc Weinberg, MD, Ph.D., and colleagues followed 6,467 individuals for up to 15 years after they were diagnosed with non–muscle-invasive bladder cancer. The group included 3,388...

In women, a higher physical activity (PA) level is associated with a lower incidence of Parkinson's disease (PD), according to a study. Berta Portugal, Ph.D. and colleagues examined the association between time-varying PA and PD using lagged analyses to address the potential for reverse causation. Data were obtained from the E3N cohort study of women affiliated with a national health insurance plan (1990 to 2018). During the follow-up period, PA was self-reported in six questionnaires. A time-varying latent PA (LPA) variable was created as questions changed across questionnaires. Differences in LPA trajectories were examined, and the association between time-varying LPA...

Exit, Lori Lightfoot; enter, Brandon Johnson — and the song remains the same. Or does it?It’s hard to imagine conditions in Chicago getting more desperate than under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, but new Mayor Brandon Johnson — in office less than a week, as I write — is already doing his damnedest to make everyday life and business survival in one of the country’s most iconic cities even worse.But imagine, we must.As reported by The New York Post, the iconic Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) opened in 1898, only 27 years after the infamous Great Chicago Fire. Proud Chicagoans heralded the...

You hear it everywhere. "The U.S. has never defaulted on its debt." Yes, but: It’s not true. By the most basic definition of default — not making agreed-upon payments to those you owe — the U.S. has defaulted, arguably on multiple occasions. Why it matters: The talking point on the pristine U.S. credit record is a key bit of rhetoric for those arguing that not raising the debt ceiling — which would ultimately mean missing payments the government owes — represents an unprecedented economic risk. But in reality, the U.S. has failed to meet obligations in the past. What they're...

Robert Gates, who served as Secretary of Defense under Presidents Bush and Obama from 2006-2011, appeared on “Face the Nation” Sunday and told moderator Margaret Brennan that he thinks the biggest threat to the nation isn’t white supremacy, it’s not China or Russia or climate change—it’s the political polarization of our country. It’s not the first time we’ve been so divided, he says, but there’s something new about our latest rifts :MARGARET BRENNAN: What do you think the biggest threat to United States is right now?FORMER SEC. GATES: I think it is the polarization in the country. And, you know,...

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has become the latest far-left organization to issue a “travel warning” for Florida, claiming that the state and its Governor Ron DeSantis are “openly hostile to African Americans.”In a press release this weekend, the organization declared the travel warning was a “direct response to Governor Ron DeSantis’ aggressive attempts to erase Black history and to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in Florida schools” after he banned the teaching of critical race theory in public schools.“Florida is openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals,” the release reads....

The Harvard Harris poll conducted online between May 17-18 among 2,004 registered voters has some fascinating takeaways that don’t look good for Joe Biden and the Democratic narrative pushed by the liberal media.Most believe that the Trump-Russia collusion and the Steele Dossier are fake stories.To start:Majorities of Americans say it’s *false* that Trump colluded with Russia. The Steele Dossier is also “false.”In other words, they view the story the US media aggressively centered for 3 years as a hoax and a fraud, yet NBC and CNN won’t even air this view. pic.twitter.com/wqULHK4Rd9— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 21, 2023Most also believe...

Divorce usually isn’t a good idea, and that’s especially true of a nearly 250-year-old continental nation. The notion of a national breakup has long simmered as a fringe argument, but it is increasingly popular in certain precincts of the political right and has gained at least some traction with partisans of both sides. A recent survey by the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia found that about 50 percent of Donald Trump voters and 40 percent of Joe Biden voters agreed to some extent with the proposition that the country should split up, with either red or blue...

British intelligence expressed skepticism about the FBI's investigation into the Donald Trump campaign's alleged ties to Russia in 2016, and eventually became so concerned it stopped cooperating, according to evidence made public in Special Counsel John Durham's recent report. Durham released his 300+ page report on the origins of the Trump-Russia collusion probe on Monday, representing the culmination of years of investigations. That report excoriated the FBI for pursuing the investigation without possessing any significant evidence of wrongdoing. Intelligence officials in the United Kingdom evidently shared Durham's assessment contemporaneously. File - Durham Report: https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2023-05/durhamreport.pdfDurham highlighted an exchange between an intelligence...