Free Republic

Over a dozen House Democrats led by California Reps. Norma Torres and TJ Cox are calling on the Trump administration to halt its efforts to produce county-specific social distancing guidelines, citing concerns over the potential misclassification of low-income and rural communities that lack access to coronavirus tests. Nearly two weeks ago, Trump sent a letter to U.S. governors outlining a plan to classify counties in the U.S. based on their risk factors and rescind social distancing guidelines accordingly. The president has showed a priority on re-opening the economy, which has been halted as a result of social distancing measures and...

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said Wednesday his son, Danilo, 22, contracted the coronavirus. "When it all started, my Danilo told me surrender is not an option. My firstborn is infected with coronavirus and admitted to the Infectious Diseases Clinic," Vucic said on social media. "Son, you will win it. Daddy loves you, we all love you!” Serbia has 2,666 COVID-19 cases with 65 deaths. The government declared a state of emergency and imposed a nighttime curfew from 5 p.m. to 5 a.m. (1600 GMT to 0400GMT) local time.

The corrupt media misses the real news, as usual. – In a wide-ranging interview with Laura Ingraham to be aired on Fox News Thursday night, Attorney General William Barr slams the corrupt news media for “waging a jihad” against hydroxychloroquine simply because President Donald Trump has spoken positively about it. This is the focus of headlines about the interview by media outlets both leftist and conservative this morning. Here is an excerpt in a Washington Times piece about Barr’s HCQ-related comments: Attorney General William P. Barr Wednesday accused the media of attacking hydroxycholoroquine solely because President Trump has suggested it...

SAN DIEGO - A U.S. Border Patrol agent wouldn’t let Jackeline Reyes explain why she and her 15-year-old daughter needed asylum, pointing to the coronavirus. That confrontation in Texas came just days after the Trump administration quietly shut down the nation’s asylum system for the first time in decades in the name of public health. “The agent told us about the virus and that we couldn’t go further, but she didn’t let us speak or anything,” said Reyes, 35, who was shuttled to a crossing March 24 in Reynosa, Mexico, a violent border city. She tried to get home to...

Research indicates the majority of coronavirus cases in New York trace back to Europe, with the first cases circulating in the area by mid-February. “The majority is clearly European,” Harm van Bakel, a geneticist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who co-wrote a study currently awaiting peer review, told the New York Times. A separate research team at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, studying different cases but also analyzing coronavirus genomes taken from New Yorkers beginning in mid-March, reached similar conclusions, the Times reported. The virus is believed to have originated in a wet market in Wuhan, China,...

Some commenters responding to this daily series providing some information about the Chinese virus have repeated what seems to have become something of a mantra among libertarians who, understandably, dislike the idea of widespread lockdowns, with the loss of freedom and the economic damage that they entail. That mantra is that the Chinese virus is no more infections or no more fatal than flu, and that if we had allowed everyone to acquire immunity by catching the infection and throwing it off all would be well. Look at today’s graph. Though the downtrend in the daily compound growth rate in...

"Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth" (Matt. 5:5). Someday God will reverse the curse and return the earth to His people. God said to Adam and Eve, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth" (Gen. 1:28). But their sin cost them their sovereignty and brought a curse upon the earth (Gen. 3:17-18). The apostle Paul said, "The anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing...

Fletcher Horne was inspired by the stories he saw on the news and that his father, Dr. W. Mark Horne, told him of healthcare workers on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For weeks, President Donald Trump has dominated television coverage with daily White House briefings on the coronavirus pandemic, declaring himself a “wartime president” and touting his administration’s response. But Trump’s tendency to pepper his news conferences with misstatements, untruths and scientifically questionable advice has armed Democrats with a wealth of ready-made sound-bites to use against him ahead of the Nov. 3 election. The challenge for Democrats - and their presumptive presidential nominee, Joe Biden - is how to highlight what they see as Trump’s failures in handling the crisis without appearing too crassly political when Americans are dying and losing...

According to NC Senator Warren Daniel.

BANGKOK - People queued to buy wine, beer and spirits in Bangkok on Thursday after the Thai capital announced a 10-day ban on alcohol sales to try to limit social activities before the traditional new year and curb the spread of the coronavirus. “The announcement prohibits the sale of alcoholic beverages at all shops … from April 10 to April 20,” Bangkok Metropolitan Administration spokesman Pongsakorn Kwanmuang told a news conference. At supermarkets in downtown Bangkok, shoppers wearing facial masks crowded in to the alcohol section. “I don’t know how long the ban will take, so I bought a lot...

Focusing only on coronavirus deaths and illnesses doesn’t tell the full story of what is happening in America. Other patients, waiting with no end in sight, deserve not to be forgotten. I’m one of many Americans waiting in limbo for a surgery because of coronavirus. I have a hip problem that cannot be solved with physical therapy, and my quality of life is miserable while I wait for the hospital — cleared out to make way for potential COVID-19 patients — to reschedule my procedure.Each step I take is a deep, painful grinding feeling that makes my leg ache, and...

CHICAGO — Family members say a former Marine who served two tours in Afghanistan was killed in a Chicago subway tunnel Tuesday after he was pushed onto the tracks and struck by a Red Line train. Al Balde and his daughter came to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office Wednesday to identify the body of 27-year-old Mamadou Balde, who was killed Tuesday.

... Various experts and intellectuals forecast warnings of things to come if we don't change our ways. These are mostly people from academia... "You must do as I say to avoid this catastrophe." If that were all there was to the manipulation, it would be a little thin and might not work. The element of time is critical here.... Take, for example, global cooling. It is not effective to claim that if we don't do X or refrain from doing Y, life as we know it will end tomorrow morning. We can't change things much in part of a day,...

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont (D) said Tuesday he is looking into how his state’s voters may be allowed to cast their ballots by mail in the primary that has been postponed to June 2.

There’s a wonderful video of economist Milton Friedman (no relation) discussing how no single person makes a pencil. His point was to show that demand for a product causes people all over the world to perform seemingly unrelated tasks that result in a seemingly simple and inexpensive product being made. The same is true of pretty much everything relating to firearms, optics, accessories and most every product you use. Between private conversations with firearm, ammunition and optic manufacturers over the past two weeks, along with public information disseminated by major gunmakers, I am fairly certain a major disruption in...

Islamabad (AFP) - An Islamic missionary movement is at the centre of a growing controversy in South Asia after it repeatedly held massive gatherings despite warnings about the coronavirus. Hundreds of followers of the fundamentalist Tablighi Jamaat have tested positive for COVID-19 since attending congregations last month, but the group is still sending proselytisers door-to-door -- sometimes without observing social distancing guidelines. The Tablighi movement -- which espouses a return to "true" Islam as observed by the Prophet Mohammed -- held an event outside Lahore in eastern Pakistan with about 100,000 participants. Thousands more congregated at separate meetings in India...

The Wuhan coronavirus outbreak is finally forcing a conversation about our vast economic entanglements with communist China. While we’re reevaluating those ties, celebrities are flocking to TikTok and raising money for the China-complicit World Health Organization.Lady Gaga is helping organize a major star-studded special on April 18, set to air across CBS, ABC, and NBC. The list of celebrity participants is long and full of A-listers. Make no mistake, this is a major television event. It’s also funding and legitimizing the WHO, which has defended the Chinese Communist Party’s reprehensible response to the outbreak.But that’s where Gaga’s benefit will...

Three tubs of ballots for Oshkosh and Appleton have been discovered at a mail processing center in Milwaukee, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission and a state senator.  The discovery emerges as would-be voters across the state express a host of frustrations about absentee ballots they tried to avoid going to the polls amid the coronavirus pandemic. Many have said ballots they requested long ago did not arrive by Tuesday, the deadline for getting their ballots postmarked.  "I learned today that the (state Elections Commission) received a call from a postal service worker informing them 3 large tubs of absentee...

He's on-the-air. One of America's very best Talk Radio Show Hosts, IMO: Chris Plante from WMAL in DC. His show is the "prep work" for many other shows. And, unlike the others, he pulls no punches, tells it like it is and doesn't take any guff from liberal, leftist or commie/socialist/fascist callers. He's the guy we'd all like to sit down with and have a cheeseburger and a cold one, while talking about the state of America, and the crazies who are pulling the strings, behind-the-scenes. Get a fresh refill of your favorite coffee, a warm croissant, the Hoppe's Cleaning...