Free Republic

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing a Chattanooga church filed suit in federal court Thursday to challenge the city’s ban on drive-in church services. Originally, the city and its mayor, Andrew Berke, tailored its COVID-19 restrictions to a statewide order that allows for drive-in church services but abruptly reversed course to specifically to prohibit them. On April 9, Berke posted a message aimed at churches on the city website and on his official Facebook page regarding the order, stating that “drive-in services…even in their cars with the windows rolled up, for any length of time, will be considered a violation of...

Comedian Chelsea Handler suggest that it took lockdowns for the country to go a month without a school shooting but failed to acknowledge that this occurred just as there were more firearm background checks than anytime on record. “Last month was the first March without a school shooting in the United States since 2002. It took all schools to be closed and everyone forced to be inside because of a pandemic, but we finally did it,” Chelsea Handler said. Ironically, Handler did not mention that there were more firearm background checks in March 2020 than any month, in any year,...

I am in the shelter in place camp. I am also in the camp of thinking we cannot stay sheltered in place for long. I am also in the camp of thinking we must treat this as a regional problem, not a national problem. I am also in the camp of thinking we need the White House to form an articulable plan to help the 50 states reopen. When I was in campaign management, we had a date certain -- the same date every campaign uses, i.e., the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. From there, we worked...

My mom was not a model of ethnic sensitivity. Once she made me cringe when a bunch of visiting rural Cajuns (led by a friend of mine) took us out to New York City’s Little Italy. We couldn’t find a spot, so I suggested parking in neighboring Chinatown. Mom took a stand on principle. Absolutely not. “Oh no,” she said, in her twangy, George-Costanza’s-mom Astoria accent. “I haven’t trusted those people since Pearl Harbor.” She’d been 14 when that happened, and her brother ended up getting wounded fighting at Normandy. Though not against … the Chinese. I stepped in, pedantically,...

An Idaho evangelical church might have had its app pulled from the Google Playstore for having references about the coronavirus within the app. Christ Church, a church in Moscow, Idaho, alleged that its app was supposedly suspended on Good Friday, April 10. The church’s Twitter account made a speculation: “We presume they're talking about Pastor @douglaswils' short lessons on responding faithfully to the COVID-19 crisis. Or maybe Pastor @TJSumpter's sermon calling God's people to humble repentance.” An image provided by the church in its tweet showed an apparent notification from Google’s Playstore, which said: “We don’t allow apps that lack...

This may seem like bad news on the surface, but it is actually very positive news on two fronts. First, it demonstrates that many Americans have been infected and either never presented symptoms or presented symptoms mild enough to prevent them from seeking medical attention. It was previously known that some carriers of the coronavirus never get sick at all, but this study shows the number is much higher than previous estimates. More importantly, it shows the mortality rate from infection is much, much lower than other studies have indicated. According to this comprehensive study by one of the leading...

Welcome back to history, America, it was wondering where you were. The coronavirus pandemic has upended most everything we assumed about the future, including the assumption that the Drudge Report would forever be a grounded center-right news aggregator. Of course, it is not just the United States where things have reverted to a mood from a few centuries ago. In the town of Ragland, New Zealand, locals erected a sign at the town line telling outsiders to stay out and stop buying up all of the town’s flour. The good progressive government currently in power in New Zealand made sure...

One of the top progressive Super PACs has reportedly not seen one single backlash from its coronavirus ads against President Donald Trump that mostly use his own words, showing that Trump’s daily press briefings may actually be doing the president more harm than good in critical swing states.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is easy to cast as just another lumbering UN bureaucracy and there is more than a bit of truth in that. Established in 1948 in the aftermath of the Second World War, its mandate comes from no fewer than 193 member states, each with their own peculiarities and vested interests. The organisation is lauded for its role in the eradication of smallpox, the near-eradication of polio and the fight against the three big global killers of HIV, malaria and tuberculosis. But, as it freely admits, it also gets things wrong. It reacted too slowly to...

Rarely has a word been subject to so much misuse in recent years as “stimulus.” The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES), overwhelmingly passed by Congress and signed by President Trump on March 27, represents an apex of this language malpractice. The stated purpose of this $2.2 trillion “stimulus plan” is to boost our economy in the wake of virus-induced mass layoffs and business closings. But the implicit purpose is paying people not to work. Section 4022, a residential landlord bailout, effectively does that. And it may prove very expensive. Fear of COVID-19 has triggered an economic downturn...

The liberal New York Times devoted two stories between Apr. 15 and Apr. 17, attacking President Donald Trump’s decision to freeze funding to the World Health Organization. The effort attempted to insulate one of the president’s biggest liberal critics on the matter from conservative scrutiny: billionaire Microsoft Co-Founder Bill Gates. The Times piece published Apr. 17 and headlined, “Bill Gates, at Odds With Trump on Virus, Becomes a Right-Wing Target,” grumbled Gates “has effectively assumed the role occupied by George Soros, the billionaire financier and Democratic donor who has been a villain for the right.” NPR reported that the U.S....

The Deep state coup attempt (sometimes called the soft coup or the "insurance policy") was an effort by high-level ( Obama administration intelligence community officials) and holdovers to sabotage the agenda of ( President Donald Trump,) remove him from power, and hide the illegal actions of the Obama administration. Major players in the coup attempt were (Barack Hussein Obama,) (Hillary Rodham Clinton,) John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Rod Rosenstein, Sally Yates, Bruce Ohr, Andrew Weissmann and a host of other lower level (DNC) operatives in the ( US intelligence community) and partisan aligned ( mainstream media organizations.)...

Scientists have been chasing silicon-based lasers for years—they’d provide a faster, cheaper way to move data across or between computer chips. Now researchers say they’ve gotten efficient light emission from silicon by forcing it into a new shape. Replacing copper wires with beams of light makes it possible to send data from one transistor on a chip to another, or from one chip to another, at higher speeds and with less power, without having to worry about the excess heat generated by electrical resistance. Other types of lasers can do that, but the semiconductors they’re made of are more expensive...

Several states have started to outline how they will reopen after a month of lockdown measures designed to combat the coronavirus pandemic.

America's economy is in freefall. More than 20 million people have filed unemployment claims in recent weeks. And the worst is yet to come. Unemployment could reach 30 percent in the second quarter, according to the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Yet America's immigration policy is running on autopilot. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is scheduled to start doling out 85,000 "H-1B" guest-worker visas this month. Most of these aren't for foreign doctors or nurses either -- the visas will largely go to computer programmers and IT technicians. There's zero reason to import foreign laborers while...

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WSFA) - Alabama Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth says some businesses required to close under the ongoing stay at home order should be allowed to immediately reopen. Ainsworth and the Alabama Small Business Commission’s Emergency Task Force released a report Friday morning with recommendations to Gov. Kay Ivey for reopening businesses in Alabama. The task force is a subcommittee of business leaders and members of the Alabama Legislature. [Read the full report here] These are just recommendations. Alabama issued a statewide stay at home order on April 3. The order, which is set to expire May 1, prohibits all...

Sunny Hostin said Friday that former Vice President Joe Biden should choose a black woman as his running mate, claiming that black women will “have to risk their lives to vote.” During a segment of ABC’s “The View,” Hostin argued that because black women were a strong voting bloc and Republicans opposed a large-scale move to vote by mail, the threat of coronavirus would put black women at increased risk come Election Day.

A Yellowstone County judge whose misconduct case sparked public input from hundreds of Montanans is being suspended without pay for 30 days. District Judge Ashley Harada’s month away from the office will begin May 1, according to the order from the Montana Supreme Court. In the order, signed by six of the seven justices, Chief Justice Mike McGrath said the misconduct was a serious violation of the public trust. "They manifest a flagrant disregard and threat to the rule of law and public confidence in the independence, impartiality, and integrity of our judicial system,” the order said.

Three armed robbers got the shock of their lives when they broke into a Florida apartment — and were shot at by the person inside, police said. Chilling surveillance video shows the trio walking up to a second-story Neptune Beach residence on Tuesday evening, as one of them uses his body to push in the door. Seconds later, about five gunshots ring out and the three men scurrying out, with one even leaping over the balcony to the ground. Police said one of the home invaders was shot in the chest and was being treated at a hospital, local outlet WJXT...

Once I saw a “Vote” mask by Resistance by Design, I knew it was only a matter of time before pro-abortion face masks entered the fray. Lo and behold, I was right. At a time when the world is going to extreme lengths to save lives from coronavirus by doing things like wearing face masks in public, the pro-abortion industry is trying to encourage death with new “Abortions Are Essential” face masks. How ironic. Yes, a group called We Are Pro-Abortion (WAPA) is selling black and white face masks with the word “pro-abortion” written all over them along with the...