Free Republic

Even so, our Creator is still there to remind us—most graphically at dawn and at dusk— that no matter what the news of the day, God is in His heaven. No ‘News’ on the Internet can possibly compete with the largely overlooked ‘Real News’ that begins and ends each and every day. Whether or not we’re up early enough, or too busy to notice, the birdsong of ‘God’s Orchestra’ announces each breaking dawn. Sometimes it begins with the chirp of just one or two little birds, calling out to other feathered friends before the full chorus joins in. It’s almost...

Democrat Heath Mello lost his race for Omaha mayor Tuesday in a setback for supporters who argued that the Democratic National Committee and abortion rights groups were wrong to attack the anti-abortion former state senator. Mello, a 37-year-old Catholic from Omaha's working-class south side, had become a flashpoint for the internal Democratic battle over whether a candidate's position on reproductive rights should disqualify him from support by the national party after its crushing losses around the country last year. Republican Jean Stothert, a 63-year-old former nurse and city council member elected in 2013, was elected to a second term. It...

Even if a new drug proves to prolong human life, it won't receive regulatory approval for that purpose unless the FDA accepts that aging is a treatable medical condition.David Sinclair has been reverse-engineering the aging process for two decades. As the co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Harvard Medical School, Sinclair and his colleagues have identified several key enzymes and interactions inside cells that cause them to “lose their identity” over time, making our bodies more susceptible to diseases like cancer, heart disease, and dementia. But what if aging itself is the real...

Freedom From Truth: FFRF is beyond all reason by Daniel Clark “Our purpose is to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church,” At least that’s what Freedom From Religion Foundation Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor wrote in a thinly veiled threat to the Allegheny County Council, to dissuade it from installing a plaque in the county courthouse that says “In God We Trust.” That principle, like everything else the FFRF stands for, is a lie. If Gaylor and friends can point to anything in the U.S. Constitution that prohibits a Pittsburgh courthouse from acknowledging God, this particular resident...

The White House says President Donald Trump is appointing the former president of a leading anti-abortion organization to a senior position at the Department of Health and Human Services. Charmaine Yoest, who actively supported Trump in his campaign, will serve as assistant secretary of public affairs at HHS. From 2008 until February 2016, she was president of Americans United for Life, which campaigned at the federal and state level for tough restrictions on abortion. Among the many state bills backed by the group under Yoest's leadership were measures that would ban most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, require women...

Over the past few hundred years we, the human race, have experienced an unparalleled explosion of knowledge. Although our advances due to swarm intelligence have been growing since the beginning of life on the planet, during the recent past knowledge of the natural world has increased exponentially. The start of this rapid increase in the growth of knowledge can traced to the Scientific Revolution. It was the spark which ignited a complete redefinition of the natural world and how we interacted with it; the ignition of a never-ending search for reality and truth. It was a paradigm shift in the...

Trump signs bill targeting funding for abortion providers © Getty President Trump on Thursday signed a bill to nix an Obama-era rule that blocked states from defunding healthcare providers for political reasons. The bill, which Democrats say is really an effort to defund Planned Parenthood, passed the Senate last month after Vice President Pence had to cast a tie-breaking vote. Trump signed the measure behind closed doors in the Oval Office without media present. Republicans used the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to roll back the regulation, which former President Obama signed during his final months in office. Obama's rule required...

Scientists have found the strongest evidence yet that alien life may exist. All the building blocks for life have been found for the first time away from Earth, NASA announced – within our solar system. The hunt for alien life is set to begin on Enceladus, Saturn’s sixth largest moon, after the NASA spacecraft Cassini’s deepest ever dive into its cracks found hydrogen gas. This hydrogen is now said to be ‘a potential source of chemical energy that could support microbes on the seafloor of Enceladus,’ the researchers revealed during a NASA press conference today.

Hillary Clinton will receive a consolation prize from one of her top supporters, Planned Parenthood, in May. The abortion chain announced Thursday that it chose the failed presidential candidate to receive its “Champion of the Century” award for “her 40 years of service to women and girls in this country.” The award will be given to her during Planned Parenthood’s 100th anniversary gala in May. Clinton lost the presidential election, despite strong support and expectations from the abortion chain. Planned Parenthood spent more than $30 million to help Clinton and other pro-abortion candidates get elected. Most of the candidates lost...

The United States is ending its support for a United Nations entity that promotes abortion overseas, the State Department has announced. Pro-life leaders are praising President Trump for the move. "We are thrilled that the U.S. is no longer funding forced abortion and involuntary sterilization in China," Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women's Rights Without Frontiers, told LifeSiteNews Tuesday. "The blood of Chinese women and babies will no longer be on our hands ... I have consistently advocated for the defunding of UNFPA over the years, most recently just a couple of weeks ago at the United Nations Commission on the...

Health centers at all 146 public colleges and universities across California would be required to dole out abortion pills to students under a bill making its way through the state legislature. Democrat State Sen. Connie Leyva introduced the “College Student Right to Access Act” in mid-March, saying in a press release that the bill, if passed, “will help to improve the academic success of students.” The program would work by requiring student health insurance plans at the state’s 10 University of California schools, 23 Cal State campuses and 113 community colleges to provide medical abortions. “If a UC, CSU or...

In reaction to President Trump's roll-back of a number of President Obama's environmental protection and climate change regulations, Leftist documentary-maker Michael Moore lost it... "Trump has signed orders killing all of Obama's climate change regulations. The EPA is prohibited henceforth from focusing on climate change." But he was not done... as he sees the most dire outcome from this terrifying regulatory roll-back... "Historians in the near future will mark today, March 28, 2017, as the day the extinction of human life on earth began, thanks 2 Donald Trump" So to be clear, global humanity is destined for extinction because America...

Ireland must loosen its strict abortion laws and replace them with a regime more respectful to women's rights, the Council of Europe's human rights commissioner said on Wednesday. Rules on terminating a pregnancy in once stridently Catholic Ireland are among the world's most restrictive and a referendum on widening access could be held if a citizens' assembly set up by government recommends it in a decision expected next month. The Council, not part of the European Union, is a pan-European body concerned primarily with the region's human rights. "It's an unjust regime because it doesn't actually affect the number of...

Tardigrades are microscopic animals that survive a remarkable array of stresses, including desiccation [extreme drying]. How tardigrades survive desiccation has remained a mystery for more than 250 years. Trehalose, a disaccharide essential for several organisms to survive drying, is detected at low levels or not at all in some tardigrade species, indicating that tardigrades possess potentially novel mechanisms for surviving desiccation. Here we show that tardigrade-specific intrinsically disordered proteins (TDPs) are essential for desiccation tolerance. TDP genes are constitutively expressed at high levels or induced during desiccation in multiple tardigrade species. TDPs are required for tardigrade desiccation tolerance, and these...

In a significant advance toward creating the first “designer” complex cell, scientists say they are one-third of the way to synthesizing the complete genome of baker's yeast. In seven studies published Thursday in the journal Science, the researchers describe how they built six of the 16 chromosomes required for the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, altering the genetic material to edit out some genes and write in new characteristics.

Dozens of governments and private philanthropists have pledged nearly $200 million for family planning services, after US President Donald Trump banned funding for groups linked to abortion. Sweden, Belgium and Finland promised €20 million each (about $21 million) to the the global fundraising initiative, She Decides, launched by Dutch Development Minister Lilianne Ploumen. The pledges came at a one-day She Decides conference in Brussels on Thursday, aimed at raising funds for aid groups whose funding is under threat. Some 50 governments, ranging from EU members states to African and Asian countries, attended the conference. Organizers hope to raise $600 million...

Short mandolin solo, chorus only, Till We Met Again and Victory In Jesus. The pictorials at end are of, Greg Olson's art work and I cover mandolin.

The NASA-employed Science Definition Team has been crafting a plan to launch a mission that would search for alien life on Jupiter's icy moon Europa. The extraterrestrial world of Europa is considered as among the most likely places in the solar system to have the ability to support life as we know it. Scientists have gathered evidence that the salty ocean that lurks beneath the icy crust of the moon could be hospitable to life. Recent models also hint that the icy world can produce oxygen and hydrogen, which suggests it may have the necessary energy to support life.

A new law in Arkansas that bans the most common procedure used in second-trimester abortions is making international headlines. Supporters believe the law prohibiting dismemberment abortion benefits the unborn baby, while opponents believe it punishes the mother. But there's a third life involved: the father. "What if we said to men, 'Before you can have a vasectomy...,'" said State Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock. "That would be so outrageous. But they don't see the outrage in constantly putting the thumb on women to dictate what they can do and not do."

In the aftermath of the March for Life and in anticipation of dull feminist caterwauling over a conservative pick to fill Justice Scalia's Supreme Court seat, it is useful to consider precisely what Roe v. Wade did – and what it did not do. Leslie Marshall recently said on Fox News that if Roe v. Wade is overturned, then women will have only three states in which to get an abortion. Actually, at the time of Roe v. Wade, abortion was "legal" in almost every state in cases of rape and incest, as well as when the life of the...