Free Republic

New York Times to Americans: Embrace Big Brother, he’s watching anywayCongress just keeps on giving the executive branch more power, and 'America’s newspaper of record' doesn’t have a problem with it.The New York Times published an op-edthe other day in defense of warrantless government surveillance titled “Government Surveillance Keeps Us Safe.” Big Brother himself couldn’t have come up with a better title.The piece begins with this claim: “This is an extraordinarily dangerous time for the United States and our allies.” Let me start here by asking New York Times editors, why this is a such an extraordinarily dangerous time for...

Now We Are Supposed to Cheer Government Surveillance?They are wearing us down with shocking headlines and opinions. They come daily these days, with increasingly implausible claims that leave your jaw on the floor. The rest of the text is perfunctory. The headline is the takeaway, and the part designed to demoralize, deconstruct, and disorient. A few weeks ago, the New York Times told us that “As It Turns Out, the Deep State Is Pretty Awesome.” These are the same people who claim that Trump is trying to get rid of democracy. The Deep State is the opposite of democracy, unelected...

Remdesivir[The following is a chapter of Lori Weintz’s book, Mechanisms of Harm: Medicine in the Time of Covid-19.]Tragically, the government-backed mechanical (ventilators) and pharmaceutical (remdesivir, mRNA shots, etc) interventions didn’t work to remedy the respiratory illness problem. Instead, they added an additional layer of chaos on top of the virus mania that had captured the world.Jordan SchachtelInvestigative journalistDecember 13, 2023 In the interview with Zuckerberg, in addition to mentioning HCQ, Fauci said, “There’s a drug called remdesivir, which is…developed by Gilead as an antiviral. We tried it in Ebola. It didn’t work as well as some of the other drugs,...

Congressional Spending Goes Full WeimarIt has become a speculative game in the blogosphere to predict what black swan calamities could lead to a breakdown in civil order and the imposition of some form of martial law. Wars and rumors of war abound. We have already seen a container ship mysteriously knocking down a bridge and closing a key port. Other such scenarios include massive cyber-attacks that shut down the grid and block communication and transportation networks nationwide. The speculation on the variations of such events is virtually endless.However, one crisis is no black swan and is entirely expected, already happening,...

Full Measure: COVID Concerns In recent days, Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert announced she had emergency surgery for a blood clot and was diagnosed with an iliac vein problem called May-Thurner syndrome. Though it’s impossible to know the root cause, we’ve been reporting on a notable uptick in this very disorder, as reported by independent physicians treating thousands of patients. It’s one of many illnesses they say could be caused by, or worsened by, COVID or COVID vaccines. One estimate from a National Institutes of Health study implies up to one in four adults may be afflicted with long-term problems. Today,...

Tyranny by the Numbers: The Government Wants Your Money Any Way It Can Get ItThe government wants your money.It will beg, steal or borrow if necessary, but it wants your money any way it can get it.This is what comes of those $1.2 trillion spending bills: someone’s got to foot the bill for the government’s fiscal insanity, and that “someone” is the U.S. taxpayer.The government’s schemes to swindle, cheat, scam, and generally defraud taxpayers of their hard-earned dollars have run the gamut from wasteful pork barrel legislation, cronyism and graft to asset forfeiture, costly stimulus packages, and a national security...

Richard Dawkins, champion of atheism, mourns Christianity’s declineDespite repeated warnings, Dawkins assumed the traditions that formed his cultural identity were silly and unnecessary things that could be discarded without much consequence. Whoops.In a recent appearance, the notorious atheist Richard Dawkins lamented the lost influence of Christianity, going so far as to declare himself a “cultural Christian.”While achieving a level of notoriety for his work in the field of biology, Dawkins became best known for his vocal opposition to religion in general and Christianity in particular. Now that public Christianity has been purged from his native Britain, the biologist is surprised...

New Report Details Horrifying Cost of Fauci’s FailuresIn the post-pandemic period of Covid, there’s now a concerted effort to comprehend and explain the damage that was caused by our capitulating to the hysterical overreaction and overreach of the ‘experts.’ There’s a long list of policy failures to examine; mask mandates were a disaster that accomplished absolute nothing of value, but instead led to tremendous harms, many of which continue today.Children were forced into masks for years on end, millions of people still wear masks when traveling or inside stores and restaurants, permanently convinced of the deliberate falsehood that masks are...

The Decline Of Christianity Means The End Of Neutral SpacesThe fading of Christianity in the West doesn’t mean the triumph of secular liberalism but the return of an oppressive paganism.President’s Biden’s decision to elevate Transgender Day of Visibility on Easter, the holiest day of the Christian calendar, was no accident. Yes, we all know (now) that it falls on March 31 every year, while the date of Easter obviously varies. But the idea that the White House’s promotion of the transgender agenda on Easter was a mere coincidence, as Biden’s press secretary insisted on Monday, strains credulity. We all know...

Two Weeks to Flatten Became Eight Months to Change the Election In 1845, Congress established Election Day as the Tuesday after the first Monday of November. The Act sought “to establish a uniform time” for Americans to cast their ballots for president. Historically, voters needed to provide a valid reason – such as illness or military service – to qualify for absentee ballots.But Covid served as a pretext to overturn that tradition. Just 25% of votes in 2020 occurred at the polls on Election Day. Mail-in voting more than doubled. Key swing states eliminated the need to provide a valid...

Red flag alert! Justice Department’s new center strikes at gun rightsThe National Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center bypasses Congress to undermine the Second Amendment.The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday unveiled a brand-new entity designed to train state and local officials how to apply red flag laws to confiscate firearms from gun owners who’ve been deemed “a threat to themselves or to others.” These “red flag laws” are called extreme risk protection orders, which are “civil court orders that temporarily restrict firearm access for an individual who is behaving dangerously or presents a high risk of harm to self...

We Failed the Freedom TestThe remedy is worse than the disease.-Francis BaconThe government never cedes power willingly.Neither should we.If the Covid-19 debacle taught us one thing it is that, as Justice Neil Gorsuch acknowledged, “Rule by indefinite emergency edict risks leaving all of us with a shell of a democracy and civil liberties just as hollow.”Unfortunately, we still haven’t learned.We’re still allowing ourselves to be fully distracted by circus politics and a constant barrage of bad news screaming for attention.Four years after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, which gave world governments (including our own) a convenient excuse for expanding...

10 Times The Censorship Industry Suppressed The TruthThe era of online censorship was fueled by media-driven panics about “fake news” and “disinformation.” The focus of fear switched many times, from the spy-thriller narrative of Russian agents spreading disinformation intended to undermine U.S. elections, to “conspiracy theorists” questioning the official response to COVID-19 and undermining “election integrity” by raising concerns about mail-in ballot fraud.Eventually, these narratives led to the censorship of true information. The Foundation for Freedom Online has compiled some of the top examples:1. Targeting of Domestic “Malinformation.” There are three categories used by the censorship industry and its government...

Secret RCMP report warns Canadians may revolt once they realize how broke they areRight from the get-go, the report authors warn that whatever Canada’s current situation, it 'will probably deteriorate further in the next five years'A secret RCMP report is warning the federal government that Canada may descend into civil unrest once citizens realize the hopelessness of their economic situation.“The coming period of recession will … accelerate the decline in living standards that the younger generations have already witnessed compared to earlier generations,” reads the report, entitled Whole-of-Government Five-Year Trends for Canada.“For example, many Canadians under 35 are unlikely ever...

Perverse IncentivesI. IntroductionWe live in a world awash in perverse incentives.A perverse incentive is when the rules, structures, or practices of any system reward bad behavior or sociopathic outcomes.I had to come up with my own definition because all of the official definitions claim that perverse incentives are unintended. However, after the events of the last four years many of us have grown skeptical that the harms we experience from bad policy and bad law are unintentional.The cobra effect is a classic example of a perverse incentive. From Wikipedia:The term cobra effect was coined by economist Horst Siebert based on...

The Meltdown of Commercial Real EstateIn case you’ve still got money in a bank, Bloomberg is warning that defaults in commercial real estate loans could “topple” hundreds of US banks.Leaving taxpayers on the hook for trillions in losses.The note, by Senior Editor James Crombie, walks us through the festering hellscape that is commercial real estate.To set the mood, a new study predicts that nearly half of downtown Pittsburgh office space could be vacant in 4 years. Major cities like San Francisco are already sporting zombie-apocalypse downtowns, with abandoned office buildings baking in the sun.So what happened? The Fed’s yo-yo interest...

Four Years LaterHas the dust settled? Far from it. It is everywhere. We are choking on it. The storm cloud comes in many forms: inflation, learning losses, ill-health, high crime, non-functioning government services, broken supply chains, shoddy work, displaced workers, substance abuse, mass loneliness, discredited authority, a growing real estate crisis, censored technology, and overweening state power. For that matter, consider that Easter, the day to celebrate the Son of God’s triumph of life over death, itself was canceled for public worship just four years ago. That actually happened. Not even at the height of World War II was there...

The Language of Force: How the Police State Muzzles Our Right to Speak Truth to Power“If the state could use [criminal] laws not for their intended purposes but to silence those who voice unpopular ideas, little would be left of our First Amendment liberties, and little would separate us from the tyrannies of the past or the malignant fiefdoms of our own age. The freedom to speak without risking arrest is ‘one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation.’”—Justice Neil Gorsuch, dissenting, Nieves v. Bartlett (2019)Tyrants don’t like people who speak truth to power.Cue the rise...

White House, EPA warn water sector of cybersecurity threatsThe EPA is also convening a task force to take on some of the challenges facing the sector around cybersecurity efforts.The White House sent a stark warning to U.S. governors on Monday that “disabling” cyberattacks targeting water systems are occurring throughout the United States, in what is the Biden administration’s latest plea to state authorities to direct more resources and attention to protecting water utilities. In their letter, the White House and the Environmental Protection Agency invited state officials to a Thursday meeting to discuss how to improve digital defenses for the...

The War on Children: New Documentary Exposes How the Left is Sexualizing Your KidsThe War on Children, a new documentary by filmmakers Robby and Landon Starbuck, reveals the left’s not-so-hidden agenda to sexualize kids through exposure to sexually deviant behavior produced online, through social media, drag queen performances, schools, advertising, and elsewhere.At nearly two and a half hours of run time, the film may be long, but it’s worth the time, especially for parents. The War on Children may be seen at thewaronchildren.com, rumble, MoviesPlus, and X.Controlling Your Kids’ MindsRobby and Landon Starbuck interview experts about the sexualization of America’s...