“I cannot even imagine where I would be today, were it not for that handful of friends who have given me a heart full of joy. Let’s face it, friends make life a lot more fun.”  So says well-known pastor and author Chuck Swindoll. That quote came to mind as I thought about a good friend of mine and his wife who are currently dealing with taking care of her aging parents. Her mother and father, in their early 80s, are classic loners, with few or no social connections. They do not go to church, they do not participate in neighborhood activities, and they have no family other than their daughter, who lives 700 miles away. They have no friends, and thus, no joy. It’s heartbreaking for my friend and his wife to see her parents rapidly deteriorate, well before others they know in their 80s and even 90s. Both of her parents, but especially her father, have significant memory issues. They also are rapidly deteriorating physically, while others their age remain active. I thought of my friends’ parents when I came across a recent article by Marta Zaraska in The Washington Post on the importance of face-to-face communication in keeping our brains and bodies in good health. Zaraska writes about those who are now in their 80s, 90s, and even over 100, who remain mentally alert and active. While she notes numerous studies showing that those who have high-quality friendships have better health and live longer lives, it is even more important that these relationships are not “long distance” chats over Zoom, but instead a regular part of our daily lives. Virtual friendships are just not the same. Unfortunately, with the rise of remote work, videoconferencing, and then COVID-19, many people moved behind a computer screen. Zaraska cites an American Time Use Survey that shows that time with friends decreased from 60 minutes per day in 2003 to just 34 minutes in 2019, the year before the pandemic. It has likely decreased more since. Zaraska notes, “One study conducted during the coronavirus pandemic, and based on the analysis of blood samples from 142 adults, revealed that meeting friends in person improves the functioning of genes linked to the immune system. Such benefits, however, didn’t materialize for those who only interacted with their friends online.” She concludes, “… while texting our friends or sending them Snapchat photos is certainly one way to keep the relationship going, for a deep connection we need more than seeing a friend’s two-dimensional image on a screen.” Given that evidence, it’s not a coincidence that those who are involved in a faith community, where there is regular interaction and true human compassion for one another, enjoy better mental and physical health, and live longer lives. Last year, psychoanalyst Erica Komisar wrote, “Over the years, Americans have rejected faith, leaving emptiness in its place. The loss of faith has robbed society and its citizens of a sanctuary in the storm of life. … It’s no surprise that loneliness and aimlessness are on the rise.” And it’s not just relationships with people our own age that help keep us young. It has been shown that intergenerational friendships are important and are invigorating as well. Both the young and the old benefit from regular interaction. My friends do just that. They are active in their church and have significant, meaningful relationships not only with people their own age but also with young adults 30 to 35 years their junior who thoroughly enjoy the interactions with the “older generation.” They also understand the importance of faith and its accompanying relationships, so that they don’t meet the same fate as her parents.  It is those relationships that bring them joy and keep my friends active and living lives with meaning. Friendships and faith are the vital connections that are good for both the brain and the soul. Those connections also bring us together as people, rather than isolating us and tearing us apart. Perhaps the next time we choose to sit down behind a computer screen, we will think twice and either pick up the phone, or better yet, get together physically with a friend or go to church rather than watching online. It will do us a world of good, in the present and in the future. So, in the words of Swindoll, let’s have a “lot more fun.” We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Why Connections Are Good for the Brain and the Soul appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Department of Justice is targeting a Texas whistleblower who exposed Texas Children’s Hospital secretly performing attempted gender-transition procedures on children. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas announced Monday that it had indicted 34-year-old Eithan Haim for “obtaining protected individual health information for patients that were not under his care and without authorization.” If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 maximum possible fine. Texas Children’s had publicly said in March 2022 that it would no longer perform attempted gender-transition procedures on kids. In May 2023, Haim provided journalist Christopher Rufo with documents showing that Texas Children’s was “lying to the public about the existence of its transgender-medicine program,” as Haim later revealed in an explosive January 2024 piece. “I worked at the hospital as a surgery resident, and I knew that these interventions didn’t stop,” Haim wrote. “Three days after the announcement, a surgeon implanted a hormone device in a healthy 11-year-old girl for gender dysphoria. Over the next year, the frequency of these procedures increased, and potentially hundreds more children received hormone interventions for gender dysphoria.” “Meantime, the director of a program that supposedly no longer existed was given the opportunity to speak at the hospital’s most prestigious lecture series in January 2023,” he continued. “I knew that it was my moral responsibility to expose what was happening to these children.” Haim told The Free Press that before he gave Rufo any of the documents, he made sure that the patient’s names and identifying information were redacted (to protect himself from violating HIPAA and to protect the patients’ privacy). First lady Jill Biden encourages parents and guardians to vaccinate kids ages 5-11 during her visit on Nov. 14, 2021, at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. (Photo: Yi-Chin Lee/Houston Chronicle/Getty Images) The very next day after Rufo published Haim’s (then anonymous) May 2023 expose, the Texas Legislature banned these experimental gender-transition attempts for minors. A month later, two federal agents came to Haim’s home to speak with him. They told him that he was a “potential target” of an investigation into federal criminal violations related to medical records. “It was clear to me that this was a political investigation; I refused to submit to an interview without an attorney,” he wrote in City Journal. After this, Haim went public with his story. “To these agents, the prosecutor, and their political handlers, I was a criminal because I had told the truth,” he wrote. “It didn’t matter that we exposed the fact that the largest children’s hospital in the world was lying to the public about the existence of a program in which children were manipulated, mutilated, and even sterilized. It didn’t matter that the practice that they were lying about had now become illegal. It didn’t matter that I had committed no crime.” “None of this mattered, I believe, because I had exposed a truth that threatened their ideology,” Haim added. “This was the reason for their frightening show of force. The intent was to intimidate me. If I agreed to stay silent, though, I would be legitimizing their lies and sacrificing the truth. Instead, I decided to fight back.” Haim is now set to make his initial appearance before U.S. Magistrate Yvonne Y. Ho in Houston, Texas. “The four-count indictment alleges Haim obtained personal information including patient names, treatment codes and the attending physician from Texas Children’s Hospital’s (TCH) electronic system without authorization,” says the U.S. Attorney’s Office release. “He allegedly obtained this information under false pretenses and with intent to cause malicious harm to TCH.” Texas Children’s did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Daily Signal. Haim joined “The Daily Signal Podcast” in March to share his story. “What’s going to happen now is we’re going to do everything we can, [with] every fiber of my being, to hold them accountable,” Haim told The Daily Signal at the time. “We’re never going to stop until we succeed. So they thought they were going to intimidate me. They thought I was going to bend the knee to their evil ideology, like most doctors would have done. But as they were coming to find out, they had knocked on the wrong door.” Haim is one of a number of Americans who have faced DOJ charges related to hot-button culture war issues. Armed FBI agents arrested Mark Houck, a Catholic father of seven and pro-life activist, in front of his children over an incident outside an abortion clinic that had been dismissed by local authorities. The post Texas Doctor Faces Prison for Whistleblowing on Secret Child Gender Procedures appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Worst $50 Million that Biden Campaign Will Spend?

Follow-Up on the Building Takeover at CSULA

House Republicans are now pulling at another thread in the web of the Censorship Industrial Complex that has been directly funded by the American taxpayer. New reporting by Washington Examiner reporter Gabe Kaminsky unveiled that the House Small Business Committee drafted a subpoena demanding that Secretary of State Anthony Blinken appear before the Committee on June 27. The subpoena also requires that the State Department hand over “all documents and communications” related to which organizations the State Department’s Global Engagement Center funded and how much money it gave through grants, awards, or cooperative agreements from 2018 to the present.   The legal document includes a list of specific State Department funded projects that must be included in order to satisfy the subpoena’s requirement. The list included infamous website traffic cops NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index. The GDI was previously exposed by a House Judiciary investigation for authoring a “hate groups” blacklist that primarily targeted conservatives and faith-based organizations.     The subpoena additionally demanded “documents sufficient to identify each of the 366 programs featured on the GEC’s Disinfo Cloud platform, mentioned in the document named ‘2023.02.14 GEC-GDI-BLACKLIST.docx.’” Disinfo Cloud was a technology platform designed to facilitate censorship by providing a testing lab for various censorship technologies. Beyond Disinfo Cloud, the subpoena also required documents listing “the application and approval process of each program” and the aforementioned “BLACKLIST” document.  The Committee is also seeking to learn about any State Department efforts “planning for any successors to the Disinfo Cloud Platform,” which was shuttered in 2022.   The Global Engagement Center has been in the public spotlight for its role in facilitating government censorship. The New Civil Liberties Alliance filed a preliminary injunction in February requesting that a federal court order the State Department to cease funding censorship operations like NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index.  NewsGuard in particular, which is now also under Congressional investigation for its ties to the federal government, has been exposed by MRC for a clear and persistent bias against right-leaning outlets. MRC’s latest study found that NewsGuard rated left-leaning outlets an average of 25 points higher than outlets on the right (91 percent versus 66 percent).    Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.

Police released from jail a 77-year-old Oakland homeowner they said fatally shot a break-in suspect last week.The homeowner had been held without bail since early Tuesday on suspicion of murder; he was released from jail Thursday evening without facing any charges, the Mercury News reported, citing Alameda County jail records.'You have a Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate yourself. And the fact that you exercise that right doesn’t seem like a reasonable basis to arrest somebody.'Police said the homeowner killed one of three people who were trying to break into his home while wielding a crowbar and a replica gun, the paper said. Jail records said the homeowner was scheduled for a Thursday morning arraignment, but Mercury News reported that the hearing never happened. An Alameda County Sheriff’s spokesperson told the paper the homeowner was released due to a lack of charges in the case.County prosecutors had a deadline to file charges, Mercury News said, adding that the sheriff's office generally doesn't hold suspects for longer than two days when they haven't been formally charged.However, the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office said in a Friday morning statement that “the case is still under investigation by the Oakland Police Department," the paper said.At a Wednesday press conference, acting deputy chief Frederick Shavies said the homeowner “did not provide a statement” when homicide investigators questioned him, after which he was arrested, Mercury News said.“Absent any sort of statement, if ‘A’ shoots ‘B’ without an explanation, we can only go with what we have,” Shavies said, according to the paper. “All we know is an individual lost his life.”Legal experts told Mercury News that the homeowner’s arrest and the police department's reason for jailing him are concerning.“I find it very troubling that the police would arrest someone because they didn’t make a statement,” Mathew Martinez, an East Bay defense attorney who spent 13 years as a prosecutor in Merced County, told the paper. “You have a Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate yourself. And the fact that you exercise that right doesn’t seem like a reasonable basis to arrest somebody.”Daniel Horowitz, a Lafayette-based defense attorney, told Mercury News that it's "really incredible to arrest someone, just simply because there’s someone dead in your yard. If there’s just somebody on your property, and you have a gun and you shoot them, that’s not sufficient to arrest them. It just isn’t.” Oakland police provide details on homeowner shooting possible burglar Monday youtu.be Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

CNN has zero qualms when it comes to deception, but even Glenn Beck is shocked at its latest lie. “We apparently are not a republic,” he says, referencing a recent claim made by the media outlet. “I guarantee your head will explode on this CNN clip.” The footage documents CNN's Donie O'Sullivan asking Trump supporters about Biden being a “threat to democracy.” Many of those he interviewed had a similar message: “America is not a democracy; it’s a republic.” Which, of course, is absolutely correct. But not according to Mr. O’Sullivan. “To hear Americans — people who would describe themselves as patriots — say that America is not a democracy, that stopped me in my tracks,” he told historian Anne Applebaum, who agreed. “America is a democracy; it was founded as a democracy,” she said. “You are hearing people say America is not a democracy because there are people around Trump who want them to be saying that, who've been planting that narrative.” To say Glenn is horrified would be an understatement. “We are a republic and 'to the Republic for which it stands,'” he corrects. So, where’s this confusion about democracy coming from? “We are a democracy on voting day — one man one vote ... but what you're not doing is voting on every single law. You are voting for a representative, and that representative represents you in the republic,” Glenn clarifies, noting that “people don’t understand the difference.” And for those who don’t understand why a republic is infinitely better than a traditional democracy, Glenn has an answer for that too. “A democracy only country will fail every time because all you need is to whip enough people into a frenzy, schedule a vote, and they'll vote the way you want them to vote,” whereas “a republic understands that people can't understand every single issue and be voting on every single issue,” he explains, adding that a republic is designed to “slow the process down” and “give reason a chance.” But unfortunately, the “faceless bureaucrats” in Washington, D.C., don’t like slowing down, using reason, or respecting the constitutional rights of the people. “The EPA, the ATF, the housing people, the FED ... you never elected any of those people, and it's okay if they are hired to be in there to make the system work, but instead, they're making the rules, which become laws,” says Glenn. “Only Congress can make laws, but we don't do that anymore.” “That's why we have to restore the republic.” To hear more of Glenn’s analysis and watch CNN footage that’s bound to make your blood boil, watch the clip below. Want more from Glenn Beck?To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

The director of a California organization that attempts to help the supposedly wrongfully convicted is now accused of establishing a romantic relationship with one convicted murderer to help free another, according to the San Francisco Standard.The caseThe complicated case relates to two friends who grew up in the projects of San Francisco as well as a woman who died because of a drug deal gone wrong. In 1991, a jury found Maurice Caldwell, a local drug dealer, guilty of fatally shooting the woman, and he was soon afterward locked away in prison.That same year, Caldwell's childhood friend Marritte Funches, who was allegedly present at the time of the shooting, was convicted of a separate murder in Reno. Funches was then sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.During that time, city attorneys in San Francisco began reinterviewing some of the witnesses identified by Funches and found inconsistencies in their stories. In court documents, they even accused Kaneb of 'manipulating the facts.'In 2007, 16 years after Caldwell and Funches were convicted of those respective murders, Paige Kaneb joined the Northern California Innocence Project — an organization that is based out of Santa Clara University and is independent of the more widely known Innocence Project established in New York City in 1992 — to advocate on behalf of Caldwell.Three years later, Kaneb met Funches in the Nevada prison where he was then incarcerated. The two developed a friendship of sorts, and Funches eventually began making suggestive comments to Kaneb in letters and in some of their phone conversations. Kaneb reciprocated some of his romantic overtures, the Standard said, though whether she ever used explicit language with him at that time is unclear.In 2010, the NCIP was ready to take Caldwell's case to a judge after Kaneb secured statements from several witnesses, including Funches and others identified by him. At the time, Kaneb and Funches reportedly made an agreement that these witnesses could remain anonymous. However, Kaneb then released their names to the public, prompting Funches to end his relationship with her.The legal ploy worked, though. Funches claimed that he and another associate had killed the woman during the drug deal and that Caldwell was innocent. As a result, a judge granted Caldwell a new trial, determining that he had received inadequate counsel in the original. In March 2010, Caldwell walked out of prison after serving nearly 19 years. A city attorney later declined to retry him.Several years later, Caldwell unsuccessfully attempted to have the courts declare him factually innocent. During that time, city attorneys in San Francisco began reinterviewing some of the witnesses identified by Funches and found inconsistencies in their stories. In court documents, they even accused Kaneb of "manipulating the facts."They also discovered the previous infatuation between Kaneb and Funches and found that Kaneb may have offered Funches legal and medical aid or even passed along money to his daughter. Kaneb later denied rendering him legal aid. She also reportedly insisted that her efforts to help Funches did not cross any ethical lines.In 2021, even with the inconsistencies in the witnesses' stories and Caldwell's failed attempts to secure legal innocence, San Francisco agreed to pay Caldwell an $8 million settlement.The flame burns hot once againIn 2023, two years after Caldwell reached the settlement with the city, Kaneb and Funches reconnected, and their romantic relationship rekindled in earnest. Between March and December 2023, the two exchanged nearly 9,000 messages that included videos and pictures.'I love you too. Always have, always will.'In one message, Kaneb admitted to Funches that on their first meeting, she was jealous that he seemed to pay more attention to her female colleague. "I wanted you to look at me — I’ve never admitted that before ... I remember when she left for a few minutes. It was like my chest would explode. And we began talking ... ❤" she reportedly wrote.In his messages, Funches frequently described Kaneb as "beautiful" and claimed he wanted to "protect" her. "I love you. I always have. Never stopped. Always will," he apparently wrote last July."I love you too. Always have, always will," she reportedly replied.Several weeks later, she sent him a few racy photos. In one, she is wearing a thin wrap. She wrote in the attending message that she had "nothing" on "underneath." He assured her in his reply that his "imagination was going crazy."Kaneb sent at least one other selfie that suggested she was wearing minimal clothing. She also sent multiple videos that included a virtual kiss, the Standard report shows.The Standard reviewed many of the former couple's messages as well as many of their recorded phone calls. The outlet claimed these messages and phone calls "corroborate many aspects of Funches’ relationship with Kaneb and the aid he claims Caldwell promised him."'Your career is done': Apparent blackmail leads to another break-upLast December, their relationship soured once again after Funches began hinting that Caldwell was actually guilty. "Maurice isn’t everything you think he is," he told Kaneb. Kaneb insisted she believed the case involved "an innocent person."Funches also allegedly began blackmailing Kaneb, demanding $2 million in exchange for his silence about their relationship. "I recorded every phone call, kept every text. And copies of every video," he allegedly warned her in an email."You can try to clean it up. But you'll never practice law again. Your career is done."Funches then went to the Standard. In statements with the outlet, Funches claimed that he and Caldwell "shot two people" in 1990. He also added that Kaneb engaged with him only so that he would help her on Caldwell's case."She pretended to take a personal interest in me. We began a romantic relationship," he wrote to the Standard. "It was the art of seduction at its finest. All to get me to finally help Mr. Caldwell."Response to the accusationsCalifornia law does not expressly prohibit romantic relationships between lawyers and witnesses, but the experts whom the Standard consulted indicated that the courts would've disregarded much of the evidence brought to assist Caldwell, had they known about Kaneb and Funches' communications.'It’s the most compelling case for innocence that I’ve ever seen.'An NCIP spokesperson from Santa Clara University countered that Kaneb, who is now the legal director of the NCIP, began sexting Funches only last August, more than a decade after Caldwell was released from prison."As with any unit of the university, when we receive any allegations of inappropriate conduct by an employee, we refer the matter to the university for investigation," the spokesperson said. He also claimed that Caldwell's exoneration remains safe. However, a statement from city prosecutors indicates they are "looking into the matter" as it relates to Caldwell's settlement. "We take this information seriously," the statement said.Neither Kaneb nor Caldwell responded to the Standard's "repeated" requests for comment."Maurice has always proclaimed his innocence," Kaneb said of Caldwell in 2021. "It’s the most compelling case for innocence that I’ve ever seen."Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Ever since metal detectorist Bob Jemmett found "Nobby" six years ago, the figure has been his "constant companion," but now he's selling it to make improvements to his home. The post 2,000-Year-Old Celtic Fertility Figure With An Alien-Like Appearance And A ‘Prominent Phallus’ To Go Up For Auction In England appeared first on All That's Interesting.

The skeletons showed signs of osteomyelitis variolosa, a bone infection that is triggered by the smallpox virus, which was brought to the region by Spanish colonizers. The post Archaeologists Unearth 500-Year-Old Remains Of Inca Toddlers With Smallpox appeared first on All That's Interesting.