Free Republic

- The Cleveland Clinic has joined other top hospitals in North America and can now offer in utero surgery. The hospital announced Wednesday that after more than a year of preparations they have successfully completed Northern Ohio’s first ever surgery on a fetus inside the uterus to repair spina bifida. “The operation on the fetus in the uterus, I’m directing and in charge of, and the guidance of where we should open the uterus, the exposure of the baby,” said Dr. Darrell Cass, Director of Fetal Surgery in the Cleveland Clinic’s Fetal Center. Cass and a team of more than...

After Cleveland police officers arrested Gregory L. Johnson in 2016 as he burned an American flag outside the Republican National Convention, Mr. Johnson sued the city, saying the officers had violated his First Amendment rights.This week, three decades after the court invalidated prohibitions on flag desecration in 48 states, the city of Cleveland agreed to pay Mr. Johnson $225,000 to settle his claim that officers had retaliated against him for an exercise of free expression.

Former NFL star Kellen Winslow Jr., 35, was convicted on Monday of raping a 58-year-old homeless woman in Encinitas last May by a jury in Southern California. Winslow was also found guilty of indecent exposure toward the woman and of lewd conduct. But the jury remained deadlocked on six other felony charges, including two more counts of rape involving a 54-year-old hitchhiker last year and an unconscious 17-year-old girl in 2003.

Federal geologists say an earthquake rattled the area just northeast of Cleveland, Ohio, Monday morning. The United States Geological Survey confirmed a 4.0 magnitude earthquake centered in Lake Erie, approximately 2.5 miles north of Eastlake, at about 10:50 a.m. WOIO reports there was no serious damage in the immediate area, according to Ohio law enforcement, but multiple agencies said they received an overwhelming number of 911 calls from residents asking what the shaking was. A screen shot from the United States Geological Survey shows the area of northeast Ohio where the earthquake was felt.CBS affiliate WOIO

Ten Cent Beer NightTen Cent Beer Night was a promotion held by Major League Baseball during a game against the Texas Rangers at Cleveland Stadium on Tuesday, June 4, 1974. The idea behind the promotion was to attract more fans to the game by offering 12 U.S. fl oz (354.9 ml) cups of 3.2% beer for just 10 cents each (regular price was 65 cents) with a limit of six per purchase. During the game, fans became heavily intoxicated, culminating in a riot in the ninth inning which caused the game to be forfeited due to the crowd's uncontrollable rowdiness and because the game...

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Protestors will gather in Public Square on Tuesday to rally against the “heartbeat” abortion ban signed by Gov. Mike DeWine in April. The protest is part of the #StoptheBans movement, a nationwide day of rallies advocating against efforts to undo Roe v. Wade. The Ohio law — which prohibits abortion after 6 weeks, before many women know they are pregnant — is being challenged by the ACLU and others. The law has no exceptions for rape or incest. Abortion rights opponents hope the legal challenge to the law triggers a U.S. Supreme Court battle that overturns Roe...

For Cleveland suburbs, Shaker and Parma have little in common other than that, until recently, Democratic presidential candidates could count on their votes. But in 2016, Parma voted for Donald Trump, and Shaker didn’t. To Clevelanders, this split followed a certain logic. Shaker and Parma have long been of different tribes, though the same political party.

CLEVELAND, Ohio – The Plain Dealer on Monday laid off 14 newsroom employees as part of a staff reduction first announced in December. The 14, most of them reporters and all members of Local 1 of the News Guild of the Communication Workers of America, account for about a third of the unionized news-gathering staff. One additional journalist will depart later this month. The company had earlier announced plans to eliminate 29 other jobs in May by shifting its page-production work to a centralized outside system. Three of those production staffers will move to the newsroom, however, reducing the net...

The Giants on Tuesday agreed to send Beckham to the Browns for a 2019 first-round draft pick (No. 17 overall), a 2019 third-round pick and safety Jabrill Peppers. The Giants were not actively shopping Beckham but they were listening to offers, and when they found one they liked, they made the deal — no doubt changing the course and direction of their team now and for years to come...

Scientists think they've identified a previously unknown form of neural communication that self-propagates across brain tissue, and can leap wirelessly from neurons in one section of brain tissue to another – even if they've been surgically severed. The discovery offers some radical new insights about the way neurons might be talking to one another, via a mysterious process unrelated to conventionally understood mechanisms, such as synaptic transmission, axonal transport, and gap junction connections. "We don't know yet the 'So what?' part of this discovery entirely," says neural and biomedical engineer Dominique Durand from Case Western Reserve University. "But we do...

The Cleveland Clinic confirmed that a resident who posted anti-Semitic comments on social media is no longer with the organization. The former employee, identified as Lara Kollab, worked as a supervised resident at the Clinic from July to September of this year. “She is no longer working at Cleveland Clinic. In no way do these beliefs reflect those of our organization. We fully embrace diversity, inclusion and a culture of safety and respect across our entire health system,” the Clinic said in a prepared statement. The Clinic said it was recently made aware of Kollab’s comments on social media. The former...

Is there any profession that merits the esteem that doctors have?  I don't think so. What doctors do not only requires significant brains, but requires professionalism, because patient trust is so critical.  Without that trust, how would a doctor be able to get a patient to take his or her clothes off, bend over for an exam, or accept a medical treatment with bad side effects?  Trust is what makes the whole profession work. This is why this story out of Cleveland is so chilling. Medical resident at Cleveland Clinic Lara Kollab, who published antisemitic statements on Twitter regarding her Jewish patients at the hospital, was dismissed from...

Kollab studied at the Touro Medical School and was accepted at the Cleveland Clinic as a resident. A medical resident at the Cleveland Clinic was fired after scores of her anti-Semitic social media posts were discovered. Dr. Lara Kollab worked at the Clinic from July 2018 – September 2018. The Clinic fired her after the messages, which were posted over at least the last seven years, were flagged. The Clinic on Monday in a statement confirmed Kollab’s firing, after reports about her posts began circulating online. “This individual was employed as a supervised resident at our hospital from July to...

Classy: Nothing good that POTUS Donald Trump does will ever placate the perpetually triggered and angry American Left, but what he did for a 10-year-old girl battling stage four brain cancer this Christmas is worthy of high praise indeed. Cleveland resident Oliviah Hall has been battling a brain tumor since 2017 after being diagnosed with Glioblastoma Multiforme Grade IV. She was able to meet POTUS Trump during his midterm swing through Ohio and had a picture taken with him and her family.

Citing audience input, CBC has reversed its decision to remove the holiday track Baby, It's Cold Outside from seasonal playlists. "Last week, we decided to press pause to consider the different points of view on playing Baby, It's Cold Outside. Because we value our audience input, which was overwhelmingly to include the song, we have put it back on the two playlists where it had been removed," Chuck Thompson, CBC's head of public affairs, said in a statement Tuesday. "Appreciating not everyone interprets lyrics the same way, listeners may wish to skip the song as we understand not everyone will...

I think what we’re learning here is that NBA players are huge fans of conspiracy theories. Nearly two years after Kyrie Irving said the Earth is flat on a podcast with then-Cleveland Cavaliers teammates Richard Jefferson and Channing Frye, fellow All-Star point guard Stephen Curry informed us that man never landed on the moon during an appearance with Golden State Warriors teammate Andre Iguodala on a new podcast featuring Atlanta Hawks players Vince Carter and Kent Bazemore. Curry even tipped his cap to Irving, suggesting, “They’re gonna come get us,” an ode to the social media firestorm that followed Irving’s...

The holidays are here, which means it’s time to debate whether or not the lyrics to “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” are creepy or just crappy and annoying. According to CNN, Star 102, WDOK-FM, a Cleveland Christmas radio station has decided it won’t be playing “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” this year. The 74-year-old song by “Guys and Dolls” writer Frank Loesser is also known on Urban Dictionary as the “Christmas Date Rape Song.”On the station’s website, radio host Glenn Anderson explained that the song is no longer appropriate for #MeToo era: “Now, I do realize that when the song was written...

Forget about Condoleezza Rice. If the Cleveland Browns really were interested in naming a woman coach, they’d hire Hillary Clinton. Who better than Clinton to turn things around for a football team that has seen better days? She knows about losing. Which means, given the losing record of the once renowned football franchise, she would fit right in. Knowing Hillary, she would contest every loss in the Browns’ current seven game losing season and, like the Browns ownership, vow to win again, as she is planning to do when she runs for president for the third time.

Is it any wonder that Lance Mason believed that he could get away with killing his wife? On the way back from a funeral, Judge Lance Mason beat his wife so badly that he broke her orbital socket.  A woman who called 911 had described a horrifying scene of “fists flying” inside the car. Their two children, ages 4 and 6, were in the SUV when their father assaulted their mother, choked her and bit her on the ear and the cheek. According to Aisha, Judge Mason "struck me in the face, yanked my hair, slammed my head into the...

BROOKLYN, Ohio — A Cleveland boy led police on his second high-speed chase with police in 13 months, this time because his mother took away his PlayStation, police said. The boy was arrested after the crash and is being housed in the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Detention Center. Formal charges have not yet been filed. The 11-year-old boy stole his mother’s 2013 Dodge Durango about 10:45 p.m. Sunday after they got into an argument about his mother taking away his PlayStation, according to police reports. The mother went to bed. She later told police that she noticed her keys missing and...