Free Republic

In an interview with VICE's Anand Giridharadas, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said people should just say "no" to going back to work when the President speaks about reopening the economy and society. "When we talk about this idea of 'reopening society' you know, only in America, does the President, when the President tweets about liberation, does he mean go back to work," the Congresswoman said. "When we have this discussion about going back or reopening, I think a lot people should just say 'no,' we’re not going back to that. We’re not going back to working 70 hour weeks just...

14-year-old Huma Younus was abducted from Sindh province, Pakistan, and forced to marry, according to her family. A high court ruling in Pakistan validating the marriage and forced conversion to Islam of a 14-year-old Christian girl has heightened fears that it will encourage others to commit such crimes, sources said. Advertisement The High Court in Sindh Province on February 3 dismissed a petition to have the marriage and forced conversion of a Catholic girl overturned. The court ruled that both were valid since a girl under sharia (Islamic law) can marry after her first menstrual cycle. Huma Younus was...

CLERMONT COUNTY, Ohio (FOX19) - A local drive-in movie theater is helping high-school seniors have a memorable moment despite limitations imposed due to the coronavirus. Starlite Drive-In in Amelia could have as many as 20 graduations in the next couple of months, according to the venue’s owners. "I saw all these kids, even kids that worked at the drive-in, aren't going to have a graduation this year and I thought that maybe some schools were having that same problem and this would be a good solution," said Jeff Groner, who owns the theater with his parents. According to Groner, the...

A North Dallas salon owner says come Friday, she is opening for business. This, despite state and county orders in place ordering hair and nail salons along with barbershops to remain closed to in-person services. ‘Salon A La Mode’ on Belt Line Road is set to reopen Friday morning. **SNIP** Despite Dallas County and state orders, Luther is opting to open her salon of three years to the 19 tenants who rent space from her, if they would like to come in and work, and to willing clients. “We have some ladies that have been getting their hair done by...

Democratic try-hard Stacey Abrams, who in 2018 lost her race for governor of Georgia, is still everywhere because the national media thinks Joe Biden should pick her as his running mate. In her latest nationally televised interview, she was asked on ABC's The View whether she was "concerned" that Biden might decline to select, not just a woman, but a "woman of color," as his No. 2. "I would share your concern about not picking a woman of color," she said, "because women of color, particularly black women, are the strongest part of the Democratic Party, the most loyal." Hmm......

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden made another gaffe Wednesday when he asked his fellow former Vice President Al Gore if there was still time for the U.S. to “agress the climate change.” “We don’t organize the world. Who organizes it?” Biden said during a virtual climate change town Tuesday. “Anyway, look, one more question here,” Biden continued. “Is it too late to aggress the climate change in a meaningful way?” Gore appeared to raise his eyebrows as Biden butchered the question.

Police chiefs from Texas to Washington are standing up against draconian orders from local leaders demanding strict adherence to extreme social distancing measures to curb the spread of the novel Wuhan coronavirus. The Houston Police Officers’ Union declared Wednesday that its members would refrain from enforcing local County Judge Lina Hidalgo’s ruling deeming it mandatory for any individual over the age of 10 to wear a mask in public. “The Houston Police Officers’ Union believes everyone should be wearing a mask in public, in order to protect themselves from the virus and we are encouraging all of our officers to...

A 2,000-pound great white shark called Unama'ki appears to be heading away from the coastal waters of the United States and moving into the open ocean. The shark was tagged with a monitoring device by marine research non-profit OCEARCH in September last year, and tracking data shows that the 15 foot, five-inch-long female is swimming eastwards. It is currently not clear why, but OCEARCH speculates that one of the reasons could be that the animal is pregnant. "Very interesting! Take a look at @UnamakiShark's track. She is veering off into the open ocean. Could she be going out there to...

Your brain pays attention to when, as well as what, you eat.Most of us do not need another reason to enjoy chocolate at any time of the day. For many chocoholics, which includes most of the post-menopausal women in the world, the presence of stimulants in chocolate, including sugar, phenethylamine (think amphetamine) and theobromine (think caffeine), can interfere with falling asleep if consumed prior to bed time. A recently published study discovered that eating a little chocolate for breakfast may lead to better sleep at night. Good sleep is a rare experience for most of us. Worse, the quality of...

In a post oil era, Mohammed bin Salman would lose his power of patronage but the collapse of Saudi economy is bad news for the regionSaudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) can no longer plead youth or inexperience. That time has passed. What you see is what you get. The misrule, blunders and war associated with him as crown prince will only continue with him as king. The full repertoire of the crown prince's statecraft was on display in a stormy telephone call he made to Russian President Vladimir Putin on the eve of an Opec meeting last...

Officials are not ready to set a date for when the statewide stay-at-home order can be lifted, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday. But some progress has been made on testing availability, putting California slightly closer to reopening. The governor said he wished he could provide a timeframe but emphasized that “there is no light switch, and there is no date, in terms of our capacity, to provide the kind of clarity that I know so many of you demand.” “No one wants to be able to share that information more with you than I do,” Newsom asserted. As in other...

CNN won’t send staffers back into its offices until at least September. In an internal email obtained by The Daily Beast, network chief Jeff Zucker told staff that the vast majority of company staff will “not be returning to the office in any significant way” before the end of summer. “Our expectation is that the rest of you will not return before early September, with a few exceptions in July for newsgathering and some in August, depending on the political conventions,” Zucker said, noting that some dates could be subject to change. “But, to be clear, production of our programs...

Sy Rogers, a pastor and former president of Exodus International, has died. Rogers, 63, was notable in the evangelical world for leaving a homosexual and transsexual lifestyle behind to follow Christ. Rogers had been battling kidney cancer; he went to be with God on Monday, April 20, 2020. “I’ve lost a friend, and we’ve all lost a giant,” Joe Dallas, author and ministry leader, wrote in a tribute to Rogers.

My heart commands me to support the 19 Democratic senators who want the next stimulus package to include local news businesses, injured like other industries by the coronavirus apocalypse. Lord knows the senators have a case. About 33,000 news media workers have been laid off, furloughed or had their wages cut since the pandemic arrived, and few news outlets have dodged the damage. Some daily newspapers have reduced the number of days they go to press, and others have stopped printing altogether. This industrywide death spiral hits me personally because I grew up on newspapers, delivering them when I was...

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Wednesday that the oil hedging program the finance ministry put in place to protect government oil revenues from falling crude prices would yield 150 billion pesos ($6.11 billion). The program is expected to compensate for lost revenues after the price for Mexico’s main Maya crude export dropped to historic lows as the novel coronavirus and the fallout between oil powerhouses Russia and Saudi Arabia roils markets. “This coverage gives us around 150 billion pesos,” Lopez Obrador said. “That is, it compensates for income lost because of the oil price drop.” Lopez Obrador...

Devin Haney, a 21-year-old world boxing champion, said this week he'd "never let a white boy" beat him. Haney competes in a wildly-competitive 135-pound weight class, a division in which Gervonta Davis, Ryan Garcia, Teofimo Lopez, and Vasyl Lomachenko also campaign in. On a possible showdown with Lomachenko, Haney said: "Fight a white boy 10 times, I'm gonna beat him 10 times." The comments are similar in tone to Bernard Hopkins' notorious statement to Joe Calzaghe ahead of their 2008 bout, which Calzaghe, who is white, comfortably won. A 21-year-old American boxer likened to Floyd Mayweather said he'd "never let...

More from the famous Scottish Fold cat family of South Korea. Here, Mama Cat Suri is "helping" with "cleaning plates" of food and snarfing down daughter Raon's treats. Video, 6 minutes & 32 seconds

Majorities of Michigan voters are concerned about coronavirus, think President Trump was too slow reacting to it, and favor waiting to reopen the economy. That contributes to Joe Biden leading the presidential race in a Fox News Poll of Michigan registered voters released Wednesday. Biden’s 8-point advantage over Trump, 49-41 percent, is slightly larger than the poll’s margin of sampling error. However, both candidates remain below 50 percent and 10 percent of voters are still up for grabs.

Tucker Carlson blasted American universities and the federal government Wednesday night after some of the country's richest colleges received $14 billion in coronavirus aid money meant for small businesses. "University presidents get to pay themselves and they pay themselves more than you might think, a lot," the "Tucker Carlson Tonight" host said. "Columbia University, for example, is getting $12.8 million in bailout money despite having an $11 billion endowment. The president of that school, a person called Lee Bollinger, makes more than $2 million a year." Carlson name-checked other institutions who benefited from the aid, making special mention of the...

Oklahoma is set to become the latest state to reopen some businesses on Friday amid the coronavirus pandemic after Gov. Kevin Stitt announced that hair salons, spas, nail salons and pet groomers can open their doors. Stitt’s announcement, in which he said that the shops will be open by appointment only and will have to maintain social distancing and “strict sanitation protocols,” comes as a number of states have moved to reopen their economies as the country continues to battle the coronavirus pandemic that has sickened more than 839,000 people and killed almost 40,000. “We rolled out a three-phased reopening...