Free Republic

MONTPELIER, Vt. — While not expected to have any chance of becoming law, a bill proposed in the Vermont state senate this week would ban anyone under the age of 21 from using or possessing a cellphone. The controversial bill was introduced by Democratic state senator John Rodgers on the first day of Vermont’s 2020 legislative session. The bill would make cellphone possession or use a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum of a year behind bars and a $1,000 fine, according to the Times Argus. The bill cites traffic accident concerns and bullying among the reasons for the proposed ban....

A baby born extremely premature is being called a miracle baby by his parents, as he fights to survive at Emory Decatur Hospital in Georgia. Born in December at just 21 weeks, Jemarius Jachin Harbor Jr. has a lot going against him, but his parents — and his doctors — aren’t giving up. Jemarius was born on December 20th, weighing just 13 ounces, and measuring smaller than a hand. “I had just 21 weeks at 12 o’clock, 12:12 I had him. He’s actually has a fighting chance, that’s my miracle baby,” his mother, Jessica McPherson, told Fox5. When she went...

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie says he has no intention of modifying New York’s controversial criminal justice system overhaul, which has enraged prosecutors, police and some judges by nixing most bail requirements and forcing early production of evidence in cases. “I think I’m ready to let the law continue the way it is,” the powerful Bronx Democrat told reporters at the state Capitol Thursday. “We want safe communities but it is important to have a criminal justice system that treats everybody equally.”

After a human skull found in “an active mining pit" was determined to be part of a Pennsylvania man, state police are seeking information that could lead to an explanation about why the skull was there. Jason Gold, 34, of Lost Creek, Schuylkill County, had not been reported missing, but DNA testing showed that the skull was his, according to officials with the Pennsylvania Crime Stoppers. There were several active warrants open for Gold’s arrest, authorities said. The skull was found at the bottom of an embankment in the mining pit in August 2019. The mining pit is located just...

As many as seven to 10 million people in the world are thought to live with Parkinson's disease (PD). Current medical treatments for PD rely on alleviating PD symptoms with little efforts to explore ways to reverse the symptoms. It is firmly believed that abnormal movements of PD begin in the brain where the production of dopamine, a neurotransmitter for movement control, is irreversibly impaired. Currently, L-DOPA, a potent PD medication is mainly prescribed to replenish dopamine in the deprived brain. However, such treatment is symptomatic, not disease-modifying therapy. The researchers reported that the symptoms of PD begin when dopaminergic...

California regulators have proposed a ban on the sale of gas-powered landscaping equipment, worrying Santa Maria Valley landscapers who say the move would impact their ability to serve their clients.State regulators with the California Air Resources Board said they plan to ask board members to sign off on a plan by the end of the year to gradually reduce the emissions from items like lawn mowers and leaf blowers to zero. The move is an important one to reduce air pollution, said Karen Caesar, a spokeswoman for the board. Caesar said the work put into reducing pollution from car engines hasn’t translated at the same...

Home security company Ring has fired employees for watching in on customers’ videos, according to a new letter from parent company Amazon. “Over the last four years, Ring has received four complaints or inquiries regarding a team member’s access to Ring video data,” wrote Brian Huseman, a vice president for public policy at Amazon, in the letter penned earlier this week to five U.S. senators. “Although each of the individuals involved in these incidents was authorized to view video data, the attempted access to that data exceeded what was necessary for their job functions,” Huseman went on. “In each instance,...

President Donald Trump has been a polarising figure at home - but how has he fared abroad? A new report by the Pew Research Center details what the world thinks of the US leader.Pew, a non-partisan US-based opinion pollster, surveyed nearly 37,000 individuals across 33 countries from May to October of last year. So the polling was done before the US president gave the order to kill Iran's top general, Qasem Soleimani.Here are some key findings. Views on Trump... Only 29% of the countries surveyed by Pew expressed confidence in Mr Trump last year, in keeping with how his presidency...

A Massachusetts college professor was fired for posting a Facebook status encouraging Iran to list 52 American cultural sites that it would bomb, according to new reports. Asheen Phansey, the director of sustainability at Babson College in Wellesley, shared the since-deleted post — a response to a tweet by President Trump stating that the US had picked out 52 Iranian cultural sites for destruction — on Tuesday. “In retaliation, Ayatollah Khomenei [sic] should tweet a list of 52 sites of beloved American cultural heritage that he would bomb,” said the post, first obtained in a screenshot by the website Turtleboysports.com....

We are just one week into 2020, and already Europe has suffered its first Islamist terrorist attack of the year. On Friday, a 22-year-old French citizen named in the press as “Nathan C.” began stabbing joggers in a park in Paris. One man died while trying to protect his wife, who was also seriously injured. Another innocent victim was wounded. The attacker fled, but was eventually fatally shot by French police. At first, the media ascribed the attack to mental health issues. Yet France’s anti-terrorism prosecution office has now stated that “[w]hile the troubling psychiatric problems of the individual have...

NEW YORK, January 10 (C-Fam) Even with adjustments for longer, healthier living, the UN’s latest population figures show rapid aging and economic unpreparedness across the globe. By each of the three metrics used in the latest UN report on aging, only Africa is projected to avoid the harsh effects of aging in the coming decades, a world where the number of elderly is projected to more than double, reaching more than 1.5 billion. According to World Population Prospects 2019, by 2050, one in six people will be over the age of 65, up from one in eleven in 2019, as...

Authorities along the U.S. border are on alert after receiving a law enforcement intelligence warning about a possible suicide bomber heading north toward the U.S.-Mexico Border. Breitbart obtained an exclusive copy of the leaked official document from a source operating under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The official report was circulated to law enforcement partners along the U.S. border, the intelligence originated from Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), and the report was circulated by Border Patrol Intelligence. Breitbart confirmed the authenticity of the document with multiple law enforcement sources; however, the details contained within the report have...

Documents sent to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Thursday by aircraft manufacturer Boeing included conversations between the company's employees who talked about getting the agency to approve the now-beleaguered 737 Max airplanes while concealing problems with the product, The New York Times reports. Many of the messages handed over to the agency included conversations detailing the software and flight simulator problems for the aircrafts that were withheld from the FAA, the newspaper reported. “I still haven’t been forgiven by God for the covering up I did last year,” one of the employees said in documented messages from 2018, referencing their...

If one bothered to turn back the pages of history it should become quite evident that the 1868 impeachment of President Andrew Johnson bears a most eerie resemblance to the current two-count indictment that has been drawn up against President Trump by the Judiciary Committee of the present House of Representatives. A century and a half ago it was the Radical Republicans led by Congressmen Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania and Charles Sumner of Massachusetts who controlled the House with an over eighty-six per cent majority, while today the House is in the hands of radical Democrats who hold a more...

January 7, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – After Michelle Williams used her award acceptance speech to promote abortion at the Golden Globes on Sunday, a Catholic model in labor took the time to record an Instagram video challenging Williams’ statement that abortion was integral to her success as an actress. “I’m here getting ready to deliver my fifth baby,” said Leah Darrow, a former contestant on America’s Next Top Model, from her hospital bed. “And I want to let all you women know, all you young ladies who haven’t had babies or are maybe listening to what the culture says about birth,...

President Donald Trump has lost a bid to block an advice columnist’s lawsuit over his remarks that she lied in accusing him of rape. In a decision this week, a Manhattan judge declined to order a hearing on Trump’s request to dismiss E. Jean Carroll’s defamation suit and to put evidence-gathering on hold in the meantime. A lawyer for Trump, Lawrence Rosen, had argued the New York court shouldn’t handle the case, saying that the president’s statements weren’t made in the state and that Trump currently lives in Washington, not New York, his longtime home. Judge Doris Ling-Cohan said the...

If what Democrats said was true, that they could do whatever they wanted given the Constitution supposedly granting them "sole power" on the grounds of impeachment, and this supposedly meant they could ignore the rest of the Constitution and act like dictators in the process, then where it also says the Senate has "sole power" for trial, McConnell and other Repubs in the Senate have equal power to Pelosi, Schifty, and Nadler, just different functions within this context. So if Dems could call anyone they wanted to be interrogated, then Repubs can call anyone they want to be a witness....

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- People cannot call themselves Christians if they sow the seeds of war, Pope Francis said. Finding fault and condemning others is "the temptation of the devil for making war," the pope said in his homily during morning Mass in the Domus Sanctae Marthae Jan. 9, the same day he gave his annual address to the diplomats accredited to the Vatican. If people are "sowers of war" in their families, communities and workplace, then they cannot be Christians, he said, according to Vatican News.

Slap-Happy Pontiff? January 9, 2020Slap-Happy Pontiff?Charles Coulombe Now billed as “The Slap Seen ’round the World,” the video footage of the Holy Father’s encounter with an apparently over-zealous admirer at St. Peter’s Square on New Year’s Eve has gone viral. In a pontificate that has seen the Catholic world become deeply polarized over the style, personality, and actions of the Church’s current visible head, the video has ignited quite an ocean of invective.For those who dislike this pope, his angry, petulant reaction reveals the face of the man they feel they have known since his accession to office—nasty, cruel, and...

A federal judge (U.S. District Judge Randy Crane) lifted a temporary restraining order against a project to build a privately funded border wall next to the Rio Grande... Tommy Fisher, owner of Fisher Sand & Gravel, a North Dakota-based construction firm, had been waiting for the chance to prove he can build President Trump’s signature border wall faster and better than the government... Fisher has said his crews could start work as soon as Sunday and finish in eight days. Fisher has argued the government was being overly cautious by building walls far away from the river. His crews plan...