Free Republic

Health care workers are widely complaining that they lack sufficient masks, which they need to protect them from being infected by Coronavirus patients. This is consistent with well established prudent health care practice. So it's apparent that the task force lied to us when it advised that healthy people shouldn't wear a mask, based on the lie that a mask doesn't protect the wearer, but rather protects others from being infected by an infected person wearing the mask. This advice seemed very strange when news programs regularly showed most people in public in China wearing a mask. This lie apparently...

If the reports are true, then “a tentative plan” has been put in place “to split the [Methodist] church over differences on same-sex marriage and the inclusion of gay clergy.” In 2019, “The division, which has been brewing for years, came to an impasse last May when delegates in St. Louis voted 438-384 to ban gay marriage and the inclusion of gay clergy. “A majority of U.S.-based churches opposed the ‘Traditional Plan’ but were outvoted by conservatives in the U.S., Africa and the Philippines,” Fox News reported. Assuming that this split actually takes place, what will happen to these two...

Our First Amendment means that, even though the Supreme Court found a constitutional right to same sex marriage, that new right applies only to the government's relationship with citizens. From Obergefell forward, to the extent states and the federal government recognize traditional marriage, they must also recognize same sex marriage. Thanks to the First  Amendment, though, religious institutions cannot be forced to change their doctrines to conform to the Supreme Court’s holding. In the case of the United Methodist Church, the church opted not to recognize (or officiate at) same sex marriages. It also has refused to ordain openly gay people...

Illinois Republicans unhappy at the influence the Democrat-controlled city of Chicago holds over the state are looking at trying to blow the Windy City out of the state altogether -- despite the long odds that such a push would face. A new report by Pew Trusts' Stateline shines light on an effort by the state’s GOP to turn the state red by turning the blue city into its own state.

All U.S. Air Force airmen who have had non-deployable status for more than a year will soon face a disability board or be considered for administrative separation as part of the service’s implementation of the Pentagon’s so-called “deploy or get out” policy. A directive signed Tuesday by Air Force senior leaders states the service seeks to achieve a 95 percent or higher deployable rate within its units. The directive follows the October order by then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis for the Pentagon’s military services to create guidelines meant to motivate servicemembers to retain their ability to deploy into combat after troops...

Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) said American who agree with President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy that caused the separation of families “have not come to understand what faith is.” Kasich then cited Biblical doctrine of loving your neighbor. Kasich said, “The reason why I did not go to our convention and support Donald Trump as president is I’m not for a divider. I’m not for people who say the reason you don’t have something it’s because somebody else took your stuff that’s told victimization. I don’t believe in that.”

A Texas mother has been arrested for allegedly selling her young children. Esmeralda Garza, 29, was arrested by Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) officials on Friday after she allegedly sold her 7-year-old boy to two men, KRIS-TV reported. Garza was also in the process of selling two other children – a 2-year-old girl and a 3-year-old girl – as well, officials said. The arrest occurred after DPS officers executed a drug search warrant, according to KIII-TV. Garza, of Corpus Christi, was charged with the sale or purchase of a child, which is a third-degree felony. She is being held...

TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - The Honduran toddler pictured sobbing in a pink jacket before U.S. President Donald Trump on an upcoming cover of Time magazine was not separated from her mother at the U.S. border, according to a man who says he is the girl's father. The powerful original photograph, taken at the scene of a border detention by Getty Images photographer John Moore, became one of the iconic images in the flurry of media coverage about the separation of families by the Trump administration. Dozens of newspapers and magazines around the globe published the picture, swelling the tide of outrage...

Crocodile tears are flowing from Democrats and their allies in the Democrat Media Industrial Complex (DMIC) over the Trump administration’s enforcement of immigration laws signed by then-President Bill Clinton in 1997, followed by then-President Barack Obama’s decisions and policies. Immigration laws are a function of every country on the planet. Otherwise, why have borders? Which is something Democrats would apparently prefer not to have — or enforce. Because they want a recurring wave of new underclass voters, dependent upon the state for all their needs. Illegal aliens fit that description perfectly. The latest salvo in the immigration imbroglio stems from...

Deepest blow yet to Trump’s phaseout ....Judge John D. Bates’s ruling would require a full restart, meaning even illegal immigrant “Dreamers” who’d never been approved before would now be able to apply for DACA.... judge imposed a 90-day delay on his own ruling to give the government a chance to reargue its case, but for now the ruling stands as the most severe blow yet to Mr. Trump’s phaseout. Judge Bates said the government’s reasoning for revoking DACA wasn’t convincing enough, and so it amounted to an “arbitrary and capricious” decision, which makes it illegal under the Administrative Procedures Act....

North Carolina judges rule some Republican laws undercutting new Democratic governor’s powers are unconstitutional.

Emory University’s Campus Life Department will soon host what it hopes will become a regular social hour, but invitations will only be extended to students and staff “of color.” DeLa Sweeney, Emory’s interim director for Multicultural Programs, sent an email to staff at the school’s Campus Life Department, inviting them to attend an upcoming social “for students, alumni, faculty, and Emory Campus Life staff of color” only. “This event is intended to serve as an opportunity for people of color at Emory to connect with one another and strengthen relationships within and across various communities, identities, and positions in the...

Two Kentucky churches once belonging to a local chapter of the Southern Baptist Convention have ended their ties over having female pastors. Trinity Baptist Church of Bloomfield was officially removed from the Nelson Baptist Association while Union Band Baptist Church of Howardstown voluntarily withdrew its membership. Lisa Zahalka, pastor at Trinity Baptist Church, explained to The Christian Post that she was first contacted back in August about pastoring Trinity and also Big Spring Bloomfield Presbyterian. "Upon confirmation The Nelson Baptist Association asked us to remove our church, voluntarily from the association," said Zahalka. "We chose to do nothing. We were...

I've been mulling this over for a few days ....

Muslim holiday being ‘honored’ by Conn. school district includes animal sacrifice We reported on the basics of this story earlier. I felt another post was necessary for some of the specifics. According to the NY Daily News, one of the holidays that the Waterbury school district has decided to ‘honor’ is Eid al-Adha: The board voted to recognize Eid Al-Fitr, marking the end of the month of Ramadan, and Eid Al-Adha, an annual feast day, by giving observant students the day off to celebrate with their families. It also voted to instruct educators not to schedule any field trips, major...

Though the Separation of Church and State is a relatively new concept, it has been declared settled law by the Media. That is much like the "settled science" of the extinct polar bears and the rapidly rising oceans flooding the coastal areas in the comfortably distant future of 2014. Or at least it seemed that way in 1994. Or at least it was reported that way in 1994, as fact, by the media. Disagreement was ridiculed. It isn't popular among certain conservatives, but the clause about "no laws respecting an establishment of religion" was actually well designed by the founders....

For weeks, the Army has been taking a verbal beating for sending “pink slips” to officers while they were deployed. It was no joke or Internet rumor, either: About 1,100 captains received notice last month that they would be required to leave active duty within a year as the service shrinks, and some of them were in Afghanistan and other volatile areas. Reaction was swift. It was a “stunning display of callousness,” one Army veteran wrote earlier this month in the New York Daily News. It was an “outrageous and and heartless way to ‘thank’ combat veterans,” responded one writer...

Of the more than 1,100 Army captains notified last month their military careers would soon end, 87 were deployed worldwide and 48 were serving in Afghanistan at the time, Army officials said Wednesday. The Army has been talking for months about the need to separate the captains as well as more than 500 majors this summer as part of the broad Army drawdown, but it’s the first time details have emerged about the sobering business of delivering pink slips to troops in harm’s way.

In the George W. Bush years, liberals were routinely shocked and awed that the Bush administration would obliterate their sacred wall of separation between church and state. They frowned on federal faith-based initiatives and worried about the bureaucracy being invaded by frightening people with college degrees from Christian schools like Liberty University, Regent University or Catholic University. Government was no place to be spreading a dangerous Christian majoritarianism with a swaggering certitude that wouldn't tolerate opposing views and respect minority opinions. The media presented the Bushies as -- to quote a slur from NBC anchor Brian Williams -- "anti-gay, pro-Jesus...

The phrase “Separation of Church and State” is not in the language of the First Amendment, and the concept was not favored by any influential framer at the time the Bill of Rights was drafted. So how did it become part of the jurisprudence surrounding the First Amendment?As Jim Lindgren, a law professor at Northwestern, explains, the Ku Klux Klan had something to do with it . . . 7. The first mainstream figures to favor separation after the first amendment was adopted were Jefferson supporters in the 1800 election, who were trying to silence Northern clergy critical of the...