Free Republic

New details emerged Wednesday about New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s pandemic memoir, including how he enlisted government staffers to help with the book — for which he was offered more than $4 million, according to a new report. Top aides, including Melissa de Rosa, Stephanie Benton and other junior staffers assisted the governor with drafts of “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic,” which was published in mid-October, The New York Times reported. The governor’s book deal — which came as he was riding high in popularity due to his nationally televised coronavirus briefings — ended with a $4...

The site – 81m.org – tracks the “likes” and “dislikes” on videos published by the official White House YouTube account, and from the data, extrapolates an “approval rate.” In many cases, the approval rating is in the single digits, even as low as 2.72 percent for the video “President Biden Participates in a Virtual Event with the House Democratic Caucus.” The site also reveals how the YouTube account is manipulating dislikes:

Monopolist billionaires are recruiting -- paying -- nasty internet trolls to harass their critics, while simultaneously demanding that their Tech Monopolist cronies ban and censor their critics. YouTube, for example, just created another new tool so that Disney can silence its critics -- allowing corporations to turn off the "Dislike" counter on their videos. This is all obviously being done by mutual request. And you know that Bezos' cronies at Twitter aren't going to ban his Troll Army or punish Amazon for organizing a harassment campaign. This

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) on Monday vetoed a bill that would bar trans athletes from participating in women's sports, something that is overwhelmingly popular in the state. Noem previously sent back the bill to the state legislature, under the "Style and Form" revision process. According to the governor, "legal scholars" have warned her about the potential lawsuits associated with the bill, especially when it comes to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and their demands. Instead, she wanted to form a coalition to take on those who file litigation against South Dakota, something that would be a strain...

MOSCOW — The war in eastern Ukraine, which has been on a low simmer for months, drawing little international attention, has escalated sharply in recent days, according to statements on Tuesday from the Ukrainian and Russian governments. In the deadliest engagement so far this year, four Ukrainian soldiers were killed and another seriously wounded in a battle against Russian-backed separatists in the Donetsk Region of eastern Ukraine, the country’s military said. The soldiers’ deaths, along with a buildup of Russian forces on the border, has seized the attention of senior American officials in Europe and Washington. In the past week,...

HIPAA protects a patient's personal health information, leaving many concerned that a vaccine passport would violate those protections. HIPAA is used to protect sensitive medical information but only applies to how physicians, hospitals and health insurers share a patient's information with third-party entities, according to a report by The Washington Post. A vaccine card would qualify as protected health information, but an airline is not a healthcare provider. HIPAA also doesn't protect medical information that a patient shares about themselves. An airline still has to follow state privacy and identity theft policies. "Once they get the data, they have to...

A wildlife park has welcomed its newest arrival – complete with a rare gene that’s sure to make it one of the park’s biggest attractions.A Victorian wildlife park has been blessed with a rare new attraction after one of the park’s wombats gave birth to a striking golden joey. The golden wombat is the result of a rare gene in southern hairy-nosed wombats. The new golden wombat, named “Honey Bun”, was born at Ballarat Wildlife Park to mum Nulai and dad Willy. The light-coloured wombats aren’t commonly found in the wild and it’s thought their lighter colour could make them...

Leaked internal documents reveal that Amazon “ambassadors,” a social media propaganda force, were trained to defend the company and Jeff Bezos along with targeting Bernie Sanders under a program codenamed “Veritas.” Amazon admitted in 2018 that the ambassadors were employees paid to “honestly share the facts,” about working at the company’s warehouses. Amazon workers have been forced to urinate in bottles due to the company’s strict working schedules.

Over the past year, we’ve seen pet-friendly staycations, all-you-can-eat staycations, and sexy staycations, but a McDonald’s-themed staycation might be just what we need to get through the rest of phase three (however long that might be). As part of its McDonald’s Night-In campaign, the fast food chain is teaming up with Klook to launch its first-ever McDelivery x Klook ‘Happiest Night-In’ Staycation at Oakwood Premier AMTD Singapore. More from AsiaOne Read the condensed version of this story, and other top stories with NewsLite. Where to stay Located in the heart of the Central Business District (CBD), Oakwood Premier AMTD Singapore...

The end is near. A new COVID spike is upon us. We can’t ease restrictions. Keep wearing masks. Keep living in fear. The medical experts are working overtime at the panic factories to keep us afraid. For some, it will continue to work. Coastal elitists, liberals, and the entire viewership of CNN will keep believing it because they’re just stupid people. Yet, it seems the narrative has finally come off the hinges. Well, it already has—but here we have a textbook example of when the boomerang circles back and breaks liberal America’s face. We have panic on one hand, but...

Late the night of March 31-April 1, which was in 1923 the dark between Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday, the Catholic priest Konstanty Budkiewicz (Konstantin Budkevich) was shot in the cellars of Lubyanka. Born to a Polish family in present-day Latvia, Budkiewicz (English Wikipedia link | Polish) went to seminary in St. Petersburg. He was in that same city, now a 50-year-old vicar-general, when the Bolshevik Revolution shook Petrograd. Given the Bolsheviks’ anti-clericalism, this was bound to be a trying position: Catholic clergy, especially of relative prominence, faced intermittent harassment. The outlander Latin rite and any Pole’s hypothetical association with...

The saga of Matt Gaetz continues apace. Last night, it was reported that he was under FBI investigation for sleeping with a 17-year-old and paying for her travel. Later, Gaetz would appear on Tucker Carlson’s show to deny the charges and claim that a man named David McGee had tried to extort him and his father in exchange for favorable treatment.Today, Gaetz’s father provided an email proving he was, indeed, working with the FBI. Here’s the text of that.“I can confirm that your client is working with my office as well as the FBI at the government’s request in order...

Facebook on Wednesday removed an interview with former President Donald Trump on his daughter-in-law’s Facebook page, drawing immediate backlash from conservatives renewing their ongoing complaints against Big Tech and Section 230 Lara Trump, who is married to Trump’s son, Eric, promoted an interview on Facebook and Instagram with the former president Wednesday for her show "The Right View.” Soon after, Facebook removed the interview because content posted “in the voice of Donald Trump” is not allowed while he remains banned from the platform, a Facebook employee said in a screenshot of an email posted by Lara Trump. (Facebook did not...

The Pakistani President tested positive for COVID-19 on March 29, 14 days after receiving his first injection with a Chinese vaccine; on March 20, the Pakistani Prime Minister tested positive for COVID-19, 2 days after he received his inoculation.Pakistani President Arif Alvi announced on Twitter that he tested positive for COVID-19. Both he and his wife were inoculated with a COVID-19 vaccine made by Sinopharm on March 15.وازا مرضت فھوا یشفیناور جب میں بیمار ہوتا ہوں تو وہی شفا دیتا ہےI have tested positive for Covid-19. May Allah have mercy on all Covid affectees. Had 1st dose of vaccine، but...

March 31, 2021 — The neo-Nazi group The Base was identified as a domestic extremism concern in a non-published version of a recent report by U.S... The non-public version of the report also reported that Americans had traveled to Ukraine to fight with pro-Russian forces against the country's elected central government, two of the sources said.

CommentaryPresident Joe Biden followed his raft of heavy-handed climate executive orders by announcing his loftiest goal yet: slashing U.S. carbon dioxide emissions in half by the end of the decade.Biden’s ambitious climate fantasy is doomed to fail—not only failing to reach his emissions target, but also failing utterly to make the slightest impact on climate change.The best solution for preserving the natural beauty of our nation, contrary to the president’s pontificating, is to fully embrace domestically produced energy. Long-term environmental quality is a product not of big-government mandates, but of freedom and economic prosperity.Biden’s plan is hopeless because modern life...

President Joe Biden's dog Major was involved in yet another biting incident requiring medical attention. The notoriously unruly canine attacked a National Park Service employee just days after being returned to the White House. The dog had been forced to undergo training following a separate biting incident earlier this month. Equally disturbing were reports of a wayward turd deposited on the hallway outside the White House Diplomatic Reception Room. The seemingly unending canine-related chaos has many voters wondering whether Biden is fit to serve as commander in chief. As the saying goes: There are no bad dogs, only bad owners....

After Gov. Brian Kemp signed Georgia’s new voting legislation into law, some in Hollywood are calling for a boycott of the state’s bustling film and TV industry. "Star Wars" actor Mark Hamill and "Ford v Ferrari" director James Mangold were among the first to announce they plan to avoid working in the state until something is done about the new law, which some, including President Joe Biden, say restricts voting access and eligibility in the state, which leaned in favor of the Democrats on the ticket in the 2020 general election. The new law adds early voting access for most...

Iowa Democrat Rita Hart has dropped her election challenge to Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks’s 2020 victory in Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District. Hart on March 31 withdrew her challenge to her state-certified, six-vote loss with the House Administration Committee. A number of Democratic lawmakers in recent days said House leaders shouldn’t attempt to overturn the election results. “After many conversations with people I trust about the future of this contest, I have made the decision to withdraw my contest before the House Committee on Administration,” Hart said in a statement. “Since Election Day, and throughout this entire process, my mission has...

The Biden administration on Wednesday released a comprehensive $2+ trillion spending proposal ostensibly focused on infrastructure. But there’s much more to this plan than meets the eye.A glance at the proposal reveals many items that appear only tenuously related to infrastructure. In fact, several don’t appear to be related to infrastructure at all. Here are 9 of the most suspect items in Biden’s “infrastructure” proposal, taken directly from a fact-sheet on the plan the White House released.1. $10 Billion to Create a ‘Civilian Climate Corp’ The Biden administration proposes spending $10 billion to create a “Civilian Climate Corp.” The White...