Free Republic

Houston church cancels Mass after coronavirus outbreak Holy Ghost Catholic Church has canceled public Mass indefinitely while members of the religious order remain in quarantine. HOUSTON — A Southwest Houston church canceled public Masses until further notice after five members of its religious order tested positive for COVID-19 and a priest, who died last week, may have had it, too. The five members of the religious order live and work at Holy Ghost Catholic Church. The church said a priest, Donnell L. Kirchner, died on May 13 and may have been infected with the virus as well. Father Kirchner was...

Israel appears to be behind a cyberattack earlier this month on computers at Iran's Shahid Rajaee port that caused massive backups on waterways and roads leading to the facility, the Washington Post reported on Monday (May 18). Citing unnamed US and foreign government officials, the Post said the May 9 disruption of Iranian computers was presumably in retaliation for an earlier attempted cyberattack on rural water distribution systems in Israel. The Israeli Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters on the Post report. The managing director of Iran's Ports and Maritime Organisation, Mohammad...

The Washington Free Beacon analytics bureau used a proprietary algorithm to program a bot to read 1,000 Jennifer Rubin columns and write its very own Jennifer Rubin column based on its analysis. This was the result: Biden is right. Trump's disaster gambit lacks competence. By Jennifer Rubin President Trump tweeted rage on Wednesday, the worst in history. To compare with decent man Joe Biden, the difference is leadership courage. Trump possesses the bad qualities without precedent, said the expert. The expert is also a victim of Trump because he is an elite nonwhite immigrant. That's why Trump invented birtherism, a...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) delivered the virtual commencement address for Smith College on Sunday, telling the graduates the that House Democratic Caucus is “more than 60 percent women, people of color an LGBTQ members.” . . . “Smith remains strongly committed to the education of women at the undergraduate level, but admits both men and women as graduate students,” says its website.

Over at the Washington Post, Keith Humphreys ended the week on a pessimistic note, opining that no matter how much testing and contact tracing is required to get us fully past this pandemic, America will never do as well as several other countries that seem to be taming the virus more quickly. The reason? Because Americans love their “freedom” too much. (Please note for the record that it was Humphreys who put the word freedom in scare quotes, not me.) He begins by quoting medical professionals who insist that the only path toward the new normal relies on our...

A Baltimore restaurant owner said Tuesday that she can't get employees to return to work because they make more in unemployment benefits than in working for her business. Melony Wagner, who owns Charles Village Pub in Baltimore, said her employees would prefer to continue collecting unemployment than come to work as they make more money staying home, according to a report by FOX 5 News. "They don't want to [come back to work] and I don't really want a restaurant full of unhappy employees," Wagner told the tv station. "They don't want to because it is less money. I am not...

To File a Complaint Click to download Acrobat Reader Download a version of the complaint form from the list below. English (two pages, 26.85 KB pdf) Spanish (two pages, 42.21 KB pdf) Chinese (two pages, 141.61 KB pdf) Italian (two pages, 41.66 KB pdf) Korean (two pages, 123.35 KB pdf) Vietnamese (two pages, 41.05 KB pdf) Farsi (three pages, 64.19 KB pdf) Complete and print the form (signed and dated). Attach any relevant documents you have and send it by fax to (202) 638-0862, by email to odcinfo@dcodc.org, or by mail to: Office of Disciplinary Counsel Board on Professional Responsibility...

The Justice Department’s move to dismiss the prosecution of former national security adviser Michael Flynn does not need to be the end of the case — and it shouldn’t be. The Justice Department has made conflicting statements to the federal judge overseeing the case, Emmet G. Sullivan. He has the authority, the tools and the obligation to assess the credibility of the department’s stated reasons for abruptly reversing course. The department’s motion to dismiss the Flynn case is actually just a request — one that requires “leave of the court” before it is effective. The executive branch has unreviewable authority...

Lawmakers accused Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday of removing protections in her $3 trillion coronavirus bill preventing cash flow to Planned Parenthood. The House Democrats’ HEROES Act, the most recent coronavirus relief package proposal, includes language that removes taxpayer safeguards in the Paychecks Protection Program (PPP) that previously disqualified Planned Parenthood from receiving aid. These safeguards were added by President Donald Trump’s administration to block Planned Parenthood from receiving coronavirus aid, a senior administration official previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The Paycheck Protection Program is for small businesses,” Republican Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse told the DCNF....

Sidwell Friends School, a Quaker-affiliated independent school known for enrolling top lawmakers' children—including the daughters of former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama—accepted a $5.2 million loan under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), Congress's bailout fund for small businesses affected by the coronavirus crisis. The school, which brings in over $40 million in tuition annually, declined to give back the loan after Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin called on "private schools with significant endowments" to "return" PPP funds. In a letter to the community, the board of trustees cited its "fiduciary responsibilities" as well as "our Quaker values" in...

"When will they open a Cold Case on the Psycho Joe Scarborough matter in Florida. Did he get away with murder? Some people think so. Why did he leave Congress so quietly and quickly? Isn't it obvious? What's happening now? A total nut job!" - President Trump, in a tweet, May 12, 2020 - - - The sun had not been up for an hour when the president of the United States, in his ninth tweet of the day, said MSNBC anchor Joe Scarborough might be a murderer. It's an old claim, debunked by The Washington Post in 2017. Trump...

KABUL — Gunmen set off an explosion Tuesday at the entrance of one of Kabul's busiest hospitals before storming the building, which includes a maternity ward, killing 13, including two newborns. The attackers battled for hours with Afghan security forces. According to the interior minister, the rest of those slain were nurses and mothers. Some 15 others were injured. The hospital is one of the busiest in western Kabul and houses a maternity ward run by Doctors Without Borders. In March, gunmen stormed a Sikh temple, killing 25, and earlier that month shooters killed 32 at an ethnic Hazara and...

Sen. Bernie Sanders has run for the White House two straight times. But the 78-year old populist lawmaker from Vermont is making it clear that the odds of a launching a third campaign for president -- when he'd be in his 80's -- are extremely low. “I think it’s very, very unlikely that I will be running for president ever again,” Sanders said Monday in an interview with the Washington Post.

Deborah Birx, the White House's coronavirus task force response coordinator, blasted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a White House coronavirus task force meeting during a discussion on COVID-19 data, according to The Washington Post. "There is nothing from the CDC that I can trust," she told CDC Director Robert Redfield, two people familiar with the meeting told the newspaper. The Post reported that Birx and others feared that the CDC's statistics on mortality rate and case counts were inflated by up to 25%. Birx later told The Post in a statement that "mortality is slowly declining each...

I had not seen the FULL interview posted anywhere (only bits & pieces), so here it is, from YouTube. The interview has a lot of new details of harassment in Biden's office and discusses other people who knew (uses first names only). I find Ms. Reade totally believable. She makes eye contact and addresses every question. Looks like the reason we did not hear more from her earlier is because she had a child, had a bad marriage with domestic violence she ended with a restraining order and a change of identity, then went to law school and became a...

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told American rabbis on Thursday that synagogues in the US may be able to be open for the Jewish High Holy Days in the fall, but only if certain conditions are met in terms of testing, contact tracing and social distancing. Speaking during a conference call organized by the Orthodox Union and quoted by Haaretz, Fauci expressed optimism that religious activities could be renewed before the end of the year. He noted, however, that synagogues would not be able to operate in the same way as...

Republicans in the House and Senate introduced legislation this week to have the street in front of the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., renamed Li Wenliang Plaza to honor the Wuhan-based doctor-turned-whistleblower who had early on sounded the alarm on coronavirus. “The Chinese Government attempted to silence Dr. Li Wenliang who, at great personal risk, warned about the danger of Coronavirus,” Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney said in a statement Thursday. Li was among eight doctors who were reprimanded by the Chinese government for warning people against the threat of the coronavirus. Li was later exonerated by Chinese officials.

The White House is blocking Anthony S. Fauci from testifying before a House subcommittee investigating the coronavirus outbreak and response, arguing that it would be “counterproductive” for him to appear next week while in the midst of participating in the government’s responses to the pandemic. The White House issued a statement about Fauci’s testimony shortly after The Washington Post published a story Friday afternoon quoting a spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee, who said the White House was refusing to allow Fauci to appear at a subcommittee hearing next week. “While the Trump Administration continues its whole-of-government response to COVID-19,...

The Washington Post Wants You to Fast for Ramadan BY ROBERT SPENCER MAY 04, 2020 1:50 PM EST The far-Left anti-Trump propaganda organ masquerading as a news source and operating under the name the Washington Post on Thursday published an inspiring op-ed entitled “As American Muslims fast this Ramadan, maybe the rest of America should consider joining in.” The Post’s articles exhorting people to keep the Lenten fast or the Yom Kippur fast have not yet been published, but I’m sure that they will be when the appropriate times for them roll around again. Won’t they? In the meantime, I’ll...

Democrats have converted an AI project that was initially funded by the department of defense to combat propaganda from ISIS and other extremists, into a tool to track down and counter Trump supporters on social media. The “Defeat Disinfo” group is being advised by retired Army General Stanley McChrystal.The project is called “Defeat Disinfo,” a creation of entrepreneur Curtis Hougland. It was initially funded by the Pentagon’s top-secret DARPA research agency, when the goal of the technology was to identify and counter online narratives from Islamic extremists. Founded by technology entrepreneur Curtis Hougland, it is still advised by retired Army...