Free Republic

“We’re the police, we’re not just someone, you idiot”.. Two viral videos encapsulate the state of the UK at the moment with police abusing powers given to them to enforce lockdown laws. In one case a man was arrested on his way to work for not identifying himself, while another who went to a shop was hauled away for not wearing a mask properly. West Midlands police were forced to apologise after a man in Solihull was followed, called an idiot, and finally arrested by overly officious police. The police can be seen harassing the man, asking him where he...

By Sujata Rao LONDON (Reuters) - Short-sellers are sitting on estimated losses of $70.87 billion from their short positions in U.S. companies so far this year, data from financial data analytics firm Ortex showed on Thursday. The hefty losses come as shares of highly-shorted GameStop jumped more than 1,000% in the past week without a clear business reason, forcing short-sellers to buy back into the stock to cover potential losses -- defined as a short-squeeze -- while retail investors then piled in to benefit from the surge. Chasing shorted companies became a trend among retail traders, rippling across U.S. markets...

Couldn’t happen to a nicer warmonger. – Wyoming Republican Liz Cheney – the daughter of the guy who helped to convince George W. Bush to bring us Middle East Wars With No End – bought herself a passel of trouble when she voted to impeach the most peaceful President in American history a couple of weeks ago. In a new McLaughlin poll released today, turncoat warmonger Liz Cheney trails by more than 30 points—54 percent to 21 percent—against state Sen. Anthony Bouchard, who has filed to challenge her in the GOP primary in 2022. Indeed, the neocon congresswoman has drawn...

Hey, nobody could’ve seen this one coming! Oh, wait… – During my weekly Saturday morning interview on NewsTalk 93.1 FM in Montgomery, AL, last week, I told host Greg Budell that we should expect the National Guard troop presence and fencing around the Capitol Building to become permanent fixtures in the nation’s capital. That prediction was based on a number of factors, including my 20 years as a lobbyist and having been in D.C. on business the day after the Clinton Administration shut down the stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue that runs in front of the White House. That action was...

Still, one brother discussed new venture with major donor before Biden entered the White House. In the midst of his campaign for president, Joe Biden took his younger brother, Frank, aside to issue a warning. “For Christ’s sake, watch yourself,” Biden said of his brother’s potential business dealings, according to a person with knowledge of the conversation. “Don’t get sucked into something that would, first of all, hurt you.” Biden, whose tone was both “jocular and serious,” according to the person, seemed to know then what is becoming plainly obvious now: His family’s business ties threatened to undermine an administration...

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), one of former President Trump’s most ardent supporters, took aim at House Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney (Wyo.) on her own turf Thursday, holding a rally calling for her ouster. Hundreds gathered outside the Capitol in Cheyenne, where the Florida Republican railed against the No. 3 Republican in the House just one day after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) called on members of the conference to stop attacking each other as divisions in the party become increasingly more evident in the post-Trump era. The decision from Gaetz — who has had a contentious relationship with...

The virulent strain still infecting the nation. Dr. Anthony Fauci is “the highest-paid federal government employee in the U.S. – surpassing even the president,” Fox Business reports, with a salary of $417,608 in 2019. This information was not volunteered but came from a Freedom of Information Act request by OpenTheBooks.com. Dr. Fauci also surfaced in a January 24 Fox News Steve Hilton segment, on another theme the wealthy bureaucrat has been reluctant to discuss. Gain of Function (GOF) research, “improves the ability of a pathogen to cause disease,” and as Nidhi Subbaraman explains in Nature, “involves making pathogens more deadly...

President Joe Biden is talking about unity, but in his first days in office, he’s pursued a divided economic agenda that will undercut the recovery he’s promised to deliver. To bring the country together around revived job opportunity and wage growth, he is going to have to break with the leftist ideology dominating his first moves on the economy. The biggest threat to President Biden’s pursuit of economic recovery isn’t coming from outside his party, but from within it. It’s no secret that Democrats are divided between purple-state centrists and blue-state progressives. But those ideological divisions are now showing up...

In the aftermath of the disgraceful Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, the American ruling class has flexed its muscles like never before. Big Tech oligarchs moved in unison to kneecap upstart Parler, a would-be Twitter competitor, and ban former President Donald Trump and scores of other conservatives. Simon & Schuster, one of the nation's most reputable book publishers, canceled a book deal that it had commissioned with the conservative Sen. Josh Hawley. President Joe Biden, in direct defiance of his campaign-season vows to unify the country, oversaw a deeply divisive and ideological first week in office. And just...

It’s just the flu, bro. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-most-worrying-mutations-in-five-emerging-coronavirus-variants/ Didn’t read the above fear porn link. It supposedly discusses the 5 most “worrying” Coronavirus mutations. The key takeaway is that the left will always require you to wear a mask in order to keep yourself and others safe. - https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/10/health/detection-dogs-covid-19-scent-study-scn-wellness/index.html Apparently dogs can detect Coronavirus. Expect to have a mandatory sniffing in the future to make sure the population stays protected from Covid. https://nbc-2.com/news/health/2021/01/28/miami-heat-using-coronavirus-detection-dogs-to-screen-fans/ Looks like mandatory sniffing a are already happening at Miami Heat games. Yesterday we discussed how accurate anal swabbing was. I suspect we may need a dog sniffing our...

This is animal advocate abuse. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals demanded this week that people stop using “speciesist” terms such as “chicken,” “pig” or “rat” as insults for humans — and promptly got ripped as dodos for the stunt. The PETA tweet was so widely mocked online that it soon boasted an embarrassing ratio of almost 11,000 comments to just over 3,000 likes as of Thursday morning. “Calling someone an animal as an insult reinforces the myth that humans are superior to other animals & justified in violating them,” the animal-rights advocacy group said in its earnest call...

The decadeslong decline in U.S. cigarette sales halted last year as people in lockdown lit up more frequently and health concerns around e-cigarettes caused some vapers to switch back to cigarettes. Before the pandemic, U.S. cigarette unit sales had been falling at an accelerating rate, hitting 5.5% in 2019, as smokers quit or switched to alternatives like e-cigarettes. The pandemic put the brakes on that slide. In 2020, the U.S. cigarette industry’s unit sales were flat compared to the previous year, according to data released Thursday by Marlboro maker Altria Group Inc. People had more opportunities to smoke because they...

In the last 36 hours Mammoth Mountain reported 69-81 inches of fresh snow. We are expecting up to 10 feet of snow from this storm.

Arlington, Va. – On Wednesday, President Joe Biden’s coronavirus coordinator, Jeffrey Zients, announced that the Department of Health and Human Services will use the Public Readiness and Preparedness (PREP) Act to allow retired doctors and nurses to administer vaccines and to enable licensed doctors and nurses to vaccinate people across state lines. Americans for Prosperity (AFP) has encouraged Congressional action on these and other laws to increase access to vaccines and health care more broadly but welcomed Zients’ announcement. "'We applaud the Biden administration’s decision to enable retired doctors and nurses to administer COVID-19 vaccines and operate across state lines,'...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Thursday said hearing that Chief Justice John Roberts would not preside over former President Trump's upcoming impeachment trial "crystalized" the GOP argument that the proceedings are unconstitutional. Paul emerged as a hero for Trump supporters this week after he used a little-known procedural tactic, a privileged constitutional point of order, to strike a severe blow to Democrats' hopes of convicting the former president on a House-passed article of impeachment. Forty-five GOP senators voted this week to support Paul's motion that said Trump's impeachment trial of Trump is unconstitutional since he's no longer in office. "We've...

Yet another impeachment is "backfiring," as the Senate is unlikely to convict and political division will only spur President Donald Trump's voting base to retaliate at the ballot box, according to Trump campaign pollster John McLaughlin on Newsmax TV. "It's backfiring," McLaughlin told Thursday's "Greg Kelly Reports." "What they're doing on impeachment, people see it is unfair, unconstitutional, going against the president. "They really want them to deal with the coronavirus." McLaughlin appeared with constitutional legal expert Alan Dershowitz, who derided Democrats for "trying anything" to disqualify Trump from running in 2024, "that they're prepared to twist and turn and...

Rush Limbaugh on Thursday pointed to GameStop stock as the latest example of Washington elitists coming after ordinary Americans. Shares of GameStop, a video game retailer, have soared in recent weeks, going from $17.08 to $347.51 at Tuesday's close. Brokerage platforms such as Robinhood and TD Ameritrade restricted trading on Wednesday and Thursday following an unexpected surge in trading volume of various stocks. Limbaugh said the move was made to protect hedge fund billionaires, per Fox News. "Folks, it's not just political now. The elites are bent out of shape that a bunch of average, ordinary users have figured out...

After promising to unite us in his inaugural address, Biden almost immediately set about to do more to divide us than any president in American history. Setting aside for the moment the plethora of executive orders that he issued in his first week (over 30), the purpose of which was to wipe out as many of Trump's accomplishments as he could (clearly not a unifying undertaking), let's just look as what he didn't do to further the cause of unity. Impeachment. If Biden was possessed of an ounce of leadership, let alone statesmanship, the first thing he should have done...

Marjorie Green confronts David Hogg Anti-gun activist David Hogg hit back at freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in a CNN interview this week and accused the congresswoman of asking him “triggering questions” during a 2019 confrontation, video of which has only recently been covered by the mainstream media. “I remember thinking… I’m just going to keep a straight face and practice my mindfulness meditation that I have often done to cope with my PTSD and my ADHD as well. They’re clearly trying to get a rise out of me by asking incredibly triggering questions, saying the name of my shooter...

Des Moines police last week investigated what appears to be a crime of opportunity that turned deadly when the victim of a street robbery returned fire and fatally shot his alleged assailant, according to a police spokesperson. Randle Cody Jr., 45, died Wednesday from multiple gunshot wounds and his death was ruled a homicide, according to the King County Medical Examiner’s Office. The medical examiner classifies deaths as natural, accidental, homicide, suicide or undetermined. A determination of homicide means only that a person was responsible for another person’s death and does not necessarily indicate criminal culpability. Around 4 p.m. Wednesday,...