Free Republic

Jimmy Dore plays a portion of Katie Halper's interview with Alexandra Tara Reade who accuses Joe Biden of sexual assault/rape while working as his staffer.

Will the last Republican left in New York’s state Senate please turn out the lights? It’s not quite that bad … yet. But the Senate GOP leader, John Flanagan, this week announced that he’s not seeking re-election, the ninth member of his caucus to hang it up — and a tenth, Cathy Young, quit last year. It was only in the 2018 election that the Republicans fully lost control of the chamber, though they had increasingly relied on alliances with renegade and/or “independent” Democrats, plus heavy gerrymandering.

Chicago’s mayor issued a warning to residents spending long periods of time outside their homes as the city tries to stem the spread of the coronavirus. Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Wednesday that Chicagoans need to follow the statewide "stay at home" order issued by Gov. J.B. Pritzker last week. She said residents should “only go out for the essentials” and warned that those violating the rules could wind up in trouble. “Be smart,” Lightfoot said, according to CBS Chicago. “Not only will our police be deployed to shut them down if you are not abiding by these orders, we will...

Three House Democrats, including a former 2020 hopeful and a member of “The Squad,” have self-quarantined after developing symptoms of coronavirus. Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) and Katie Porter (D-Calif.) each announced on Wednesday that they were cautiously remaining at home while monitoring their symptoms for the rapidly spreading virus, which has already appeared in one House Republican and one House Democrat. Moulton, a veteran who ran an unsuccessful bid for the 2020 Democratic nomination, wrote in a Facebook post that he and his wife had developed symptoms of the virus and consulted his primary health provider, the...

Federal agents on Wednesday arrested a Southern California man who allegedly claimed to have a cure for the coronavirus and was selling the fake antidote using Earvin “Magic” Johnson’s name as a ruse to lure investors. The FBI took actor Keith Lawrence Middlebrook, 53, into custody Wednesday evening during an undercover sting. Middlebrook, who held small-time uncredited roles in “Iron Man 3,” “Thor” and “Moneyball,” delivered pills to a federal agent posing as a potential investor after he allegedly claimed to have personally developed a “patent-pending cure” for COVID-19, the global pandemic that has since ravaged the world, the agency...

After news spread that the Italian innovation firm Isinnova successfully saved lives by 3D printing ventilator valves for its local hospital, CEO Cristian Fracassi and engineer Alessandro Romaioli fielded all sorts of calls from around the world. Many 3D-printing companies wanted to join in and help. Several countries wanted to use similar technology for their populations. But, one call started a whole new project for Isinnova’s staff in Brescia, in northern Italy. Renato Favero, a retired physician, got in touch with Fracassi and Romaioli by contacting a doctor at the Chiari hospital where the ventilator valves were used.

In his bitter, five-year battle with the media, I’m not sure President Trump has ever leveled a more serious charge than he is making right now. He’s turned “fake news” into an indelible slogan. He has called such news “the enemy of the people.” He has suggested that some journalists are traitors. And look, all kinds of media people have said all kinds of terrible things about the president, so there is deep hostility on both sides. But I was still taken aback, in the midst of this virus crisis, when Trump tweeted this the other day:

New Orleans is quickly becoming a hotspot for the coronavirus, and the city's jam-packed Mardi Gras season could be the reason why, according to medical experts. More than a million revelers crowded into the city's famed French Quarter and other neighborhoods over several weeks to celebrate the costumed gathering, the culmination of the Carnival celebration. The Mardi Gras season ran from Jan. 6 to Feb. 25, or Fat Tuesday. In the weeks after, the coronavirus pandemic has spread across the United States, overwhelming hospitals in some cities and prompting lockdowns of several urban areas. The "Big Easy" -- one of...

NBC reporter Ken Dilanian faced a wave of backlash Thursday after penning an article in which he suggested that China's coronavirus response was helping it overtake the United States as a global superpower. The article -- titled "As U.S. struggles to stem coronavirus, China asserts itself as global leader" -- starts by highlighting Chinese aid to Italy. "With Italy in dire need of medical equipment, an economic superpower stepped in to help. No, not the United States," Dilanian wrote. "It was China."

Tucker Carlson focused the top of his Thursday show on New York City's battle with the coronavirus, ripping city officials for increasing the "risk" for citizens and not taking the outbreak seriously in its early stages. "As this deadly virus emerged from eastern China and began to spread inexorably across the globe, clearly headed here, leaders in New York not only failed to shield their citizens from it, they took affirmative and aggressive steps to increase the risk to their population," Carlson said. "Why would they do that? Well, because they were worried far more about being called racist than...

Furious lawmakers voiced serious concerns on Capitol Hill late Thursday that a Republican House member could “go rogue” and possibly scuttle a vote on the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package, and potentially endanger other House members in the process, Fox News has learned. Fox News is told there is deep worry on both sides of the aisle that Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., could try to sidetrack House plans to quickly approve the coronavirus bill via a “voice vote” -- a verbal exercise in which those in favor shout yea, and those opposed holler nay. The loudest side would prevail. “It’s...

I am wondering whether the government which is prohibiting us from earning a living will prohibit itself from filching our pockets for money we haven’t been allowed to earn. It seems only fair. I am thinking, specifically, about the property taxes I and millions of others are forced to pay on the property we supposedly own – i.e., our homes and land... ...But how am I – how are any of us – supposed to pay when we have been ordered not to earn? I was supposed to speak about automated driving technology – taking the con side – at...

The long lines and stacks of ash urns greeting family members of the dead at funeral homes in Wuhan city are spurring questions about the true scale of coronavirus casualties at the epicentre of the outbreak, renewing pressure on a Chinese government struggling to control its containment narrative. The families of those who succumbed to the virus in the central Chinese city, where the disease first emerged in December, were allowed to pick up their cremated ashes at eight local funeral homes starting this week. As they did, photos circulated on Chinese social media of thousands of urns being ferried...

India’s government has banned exports of hydroxychloroquine as global demand surges for the malaria drug touted by US President Donald Trump as a potential Covid-19 treatment. Exports will be limited to fulfilling existing contracts, while certain shipments on humanitarian grounds may also be allowed on a case-by-case basis, according to a statement issued Wednesday by the Directorate General of Foreign Trade. (Please see full article, at the link)

March 27 2020 Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent Reading 1 Wis 2:1a, 12-22 The wicked said among themselves, thinking not aright: “Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us; he sets himself against our doings, Reproaches us for transgressions of the law and charges us with violations of our training. He professes to have knowledge of God and styles himself a child of the LORD. To us he is the censure of our thoughts; merely to see him is a hardship for us, Because his life is not like that of others, and...

Canada said Thursday it told the Trump administration that a proposal to put troops at the U.S.-Canada border amid the coronavirus pandemic was entirely unnecessary and would damage relations between the two longtime allies. The Wall Street Journal, citing an unidentified U.S. official, later reported that the Trump administration had dropped its consideration of the plan. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his government had been in discussions with the White House seeking to persuade the U.S. not to do it. “Canada and the United States have the longest un-militarized border in the world and it is very much in both...

Bahrain and Belgium report their hospitals are successfully treating coronavirus patients with the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine touted by President Trump as a possible breakthrough in the pandemic. The Kingdom of Bahrain's Supreme Council of Health chairman said his country was among the first to use the drug and that its impact has been "profound," according to the Bahrain News Agency.

At the Center for Disease Control, epidemiologist Dr. Kayla Martin (Tiffani Thiessen, Beverly Hills 90210) and her partner Carl Ratner (French Stewart, 3rd Rock from the Sun) receive a frantic call from a flight attendant high above the Pacific. A nineteen-year-old male passenger, en route to Los Angeles from Australia, has died following a raging fever and violent convulsions. Vehemently concerned about the symptoms, Kayla orders all passengers quarantined upon their arrival at LAX—a decision at odds with Mayor Richard Delasandro (Oscar and Golden Globe nominee Eric Roberts, Runaway Train) who suggests the only outbreak will be one of panic....

Dr. Deborah Birx on Thursday provided encouraging coronavirus numbers suggesting that some of the predictive models were incorrect. “There’s no model right now, no reality on the ground, where we can see that 60-70 percent of Americans are going to get infected in the next 10-12 weeks,” she said. Without specifically naming the Imperial College, Brix referred to models that predicted there could be 500,000 coronavirus deaths in the United Kingdom and 2.2 million deaths in the United States. The scientist of the model revised the estimate of deaths in the United Kingdom to be roughly 20,000 people or fewer....

Revealed: the truth at the bottom of a bourbon shot Scientists discover that spilt Jim Beam has forensic value. Share Tweet A drop of American whiskey evaporated to form a distinctive web-like pattern of solutes. Adapted from ACS Nano 2020 By Barry KeilyThe mark of a particular bourbon, it turns out, is not its taste, nor its price-point, nor even the clever design on its label.No. Scientists have now demonstrated that what truly distinguishes a drop of Bulleit from a drop of Knob Creek, or a snifter of Jimmy B from a slurp of Wild T is the mark it...