Free Republic

Trying to buy wine or liquor from the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board’s online store these days is a lot like playing the lottery. The odds are against you in being able to buy your favorite wine or spirits from the state’s website. Gov. Tom Wolf closed the brick-and-mortar retail liquor stores on March 17 due to the coronavirus outbreak. Last week, the state resumed online sales but it’s been an exercise in frustration for many who want to buy booze. With demand for these products is outstripping the PLCB’s ability to accept and process orders, the talk about privatizing all or...

New Mexico’s oil and gas industry is teetering on a near-shutdown, slammed by plunging demand for oil and an unprecedented global market glut that’s slashed prices to 20-year lows. New drilling in the Permian Basin in southeastern New Mexico is screeching to a halt, and many producers are starting to shut in existing wells to await better times. That, in turn, foreshadows a double whammy on the state budget, as government revenue tumbles from plummeting oil prices and forthcoming production declines.

n the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, some anti-abortion protesters are still doing the unthinkable: doubling down to threaten patients and clinics providing essential reproductive healthcare. Anti-abortion extremists have ramped up their tactics in the key cities of Milwaukee, Detroit, Huntsville, Indianapolis, Charlotte, Raleigh, San Francisco and Greensboro. To make matters even more dangerous, some are even confronting patients and staff in close physical proximity, crowding and touching them, and taunting and threatening to expose them to COVID-19. Milwaukee, Wisconsin Affiliated Medical Services clinic has faced extreme harassment for years. One of the largest providers in the state, the clinic...

Judge Removed For Ordering Men Arrested Who Didnt Show Up To Court During Pandemic! Video is 18 minutes long.

"The financial news site MarketWatch and The Washington Post later estimated Trump’s stake to be worth between about $100 and $1,500"

Reflections on the anniversary of the Seventeenth Amendment “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.” - Constitution of the United States of America, Article 1, Section 3 And so it was, for about 124 years, from the implementation of the Constitution in 1789 through the implementation of Amendment XVII, on April 8, 1913. With the Seventeenth Amendment, the progressive era reached its pinnacle. Direct election of United States Senators forever severed the tethers by which the state...

Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP/VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE and AMERICA: Government, Family, Military, Business, Education, Churches, and the Media. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 1 JOHN 5:14 Religion Forum threads labeled "Prayer" are closed to debate of any kind.

CN) — Ever since the federal government indicted Dr. Yashica Robinson in 2014 on charges claiming she engaged in health care fraud when she purchased misbranded intrauterine devices, the Alabama obstetrician and gynecologist believes she is singled out because she performs abortions. Testifying in federal court Monday, Robinson said the charges were dismissed after her attorney’s argued the government engaged in selective prosecution because other health care providers also purchased the devices. But the experience makes her believe she would not be treated with the same deference as other physicians during the response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Protesters rally on...

Signs are mounting that Gilead’s (NASDAQ:GILD) remdesivir is at least somewhat effective in treating the novel coronavirus. Those signs are positive for the world, and for GILD stock. On April 3, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), the European Union’s equivalent of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, recommended that remdesivir be approved for compassionate use.According to the EMA, “These [compassionate use] programmes are only put in place if the medicine is expected to help patients with life-threatening, long-lasting or seriously debilitating illnesses, which cannot be treated satisfactorily with any currently authorised medicine.”The agency reported that remdesivir is active against the novel...

When Democrats say there’s no room for pro-life people in the Democrat party, they really mean it. And Democrats in the state of Tennessee literally just removed a 26-year state legislator from the August primary ballot because he’s pro-life on abortion. The Tennessee Democratic Party voted Wednesday to remove state Rep. John DeBerry from the August 6th primary ballot. berry represents District 90 and is from Memphis. But he can no longer represent the party before voters because he doesn’t stand for the “value” of killing babies in abortions. And the vote wasn’t even close — as the radical abortion...

Our schools claim to teach sophisticated topics such as critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, the meaning of math, social emotional learning, and dozens of other buzzwords. Truth is, the schools hardly bother to teach even basic skills and foundational knowledge. Simultaneously, children are indulged and excused, which encourage the least desirable personal traits. All of which explains the answers left by teachers (on an internet forum, Quora) when asked this question: what are the most appalling things about students nowadays? “One of the big things that disappeared over the years from teenagers is common sense. Teens would do something really stupid,...

Critics of the Food and Drug Administration were long ignored as they tallied up the casualties in the “invisible graveyard” of Americans who died because of the FDA’s antiquated policies. But now one small part of that graveyard has suddenly become visible—and the need for reform has become glaringly obvious. Americans are dying daily because of FDA regulations that have repeatedly delayed testing for the Covid-19 virus and impeded the manufacture and deployment of masks and other protective equipment. The agency’s obstructionism has angered the public—and prompted a search for scapegoats at the FDA and the White House—but there’s nothing...

Even as hospitals and governors raise the alarm about a shortage of ventilators, some critical care physicians are questioning the widespread use of the breathing machines for Covid-19 patients, saying that large numbers of patients could instead be treated with less intensive respiratory support. If the iconoclasts are right, putting coronavirus patients on ventilators could be of little benefit to many and even harmful to some. What’s driving this reassessment is a baffling observation about Covid-19: Many patients have blood oxygen levels so low they should be dead. But they’re not gasping for air, their hearts aren’t racing, and their...

A 45-year-old man was jailed for 17 months on Wednesday (April 8) after he was caught smuggling 22kg of white rhinoceros horns worth an estimated US$563,000 (S$804,000) at Singapore’s Changi Airport without a permit. In a statement issued after the sentence was handed down, the National Parks Board said the penalty was "the heaviest sentence meted out for the smuggling of wildlife parts in Singapore" to date. The court heard that the horns had been removed from at least five adult white rhinoceros — a species that is threatened with extinction according to an international convention — the court heard....

At the casino, the house (almost always) wins. In the stock market, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) never seems to lose. That’s certainly the reputation Burr has managed to cultivate these last few weeks as his financial disclosures showed he sold off major stock positions worth up to $1.72 million just ahead of the market crash resulting from the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. Another of Burr’s well-timed stock trades is now drawing scrutiny. Burr sold off nearly $47,000 worth of shares in an obscure Dutch fertilizer company in 2018 — when the stock was near its five-year peak. Burr’s profitable sale came...

~ The FReeper Canteen Presents ~ ~ Remembering Our Troops!! ~ SHOULDER RESCUE Army Sgt. Jason C. Carroll carries a young resident through flooded streets in Monroe, LA, March 10, 2016. Carroll is electronic warfare specialist noncommissioned officer assigned to the Louisiana National Guard's 528th Engineer Battalion, 225th Engineer Brigade. The unit used light tactical vehicles as it worked with the Ouachita Parish Sheriff's Office to navigate the high waters and assist residents. Army National Guard photo by Spc. Tarell J. Bilbo Canteen Mission Statement Showing support and boosting the morale ofour military and our allies' militaryand family members...

Teachers in school districts across the country have been doing hundreds, if not thousands, of these parades over the past few weeks (Google lists over 2,500 news articles on local parades), but especially over the past few days. Yet “car church” isn’t okay! These are just some of the teacher parades that were held in the past few days and the past week, despite there probably being state orders for most of them that prohibit people from taking non-essential trips from home. Alaska https://www.kyuk.org/post/slideshow-elementary-school-connects-kids-teacher-parade Arizona https://www.kold.com/2020/04/08/coronado-k-teachers-have-parade-see-students/ Arkansas https://www.nwaonline.com/news/2020/apr/05/teachers-parade-through-neighbors-cheer/ California https://krcrtv.com/news/local/turtle-bay-teachers-to-hold-social-distancing-parade-wednesday-in-redding https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/teacher-parades-growing-in-popularity-across-sd-county/2299202/ https://myvalleynews.com/photos-ysabel-barnett-elementary-teachers-parade-for-their-students/ https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/living/story/love-care-amid-coronavirus-crisis-good-news-happening-69624293 https://www.turnto23.com/news/makin-it/local-teacher-parade-in-northwest-bakersfield https://www.mantecabulletin.com/news/local-news/teachers-parade/ Illinois https://khqa.com/news/coronavirus/liberty-school-staff-holds-social-distancing-parade-for-local-families https://www.mysuburbanlife.com/2020/04/07/teachers-parade-through-berwyn/dlvj4m/ https://q985online.com/poplar-grove-elementary-teachers-surprise-students-with-parade/...

Joe Biden’s campaign is offering to help states receive coronavirus resources through its own private connections. Let me repeat that for the CNN-impaired… Joe Biden is offering to help states get their hands on coronavirus resources through his own private connections. In other words, rather than offer these much-needed resources to the federal government or even the state and local governments, Biden’s connections are offering them to his campaign so Biden can pretend to be president while he hides out in his Delaware basement. And Joe Biden is okay with that. This is not a joke. This is really happening...

It materialized out of nowhere and is disappearing just as quickly, as if a mirage in a coronavirus-fueled fever dream. Gov. Jay Inslee Wednesday announced he would return to the federal government the field hospital assembled by soldiers roughly a week ago in Seattle’s CenturyLink Field Event Center to help the healthcare system cope with the new coronavirus. Inslee in recent days has cited more favorable projections for what’s to come next in the outbreak of COVID-19 in Washington, the state that at one time led the nation in cases and deaths. There were 9,097 cases of coronavirus as of...

It’s probably a coincidence, but I notice that as businesses go under, jobs are lost, careers are ended and trillions of dollars are drained from the economy, the people most avidly pushing the coronavirus panic are doing quite well. No politician or government official has taken a salary cut. To the contrary, dusty bureaucrats now find the entire country transfixed by their every utterance. Cable news hosts still make millions of dollars -- and now they get to work from home! Annoyingly, though, journalists can’t seem to relay the basic elements of a news story: who, what, where and why....