Free Republic

With COVID-19 vaccination rates accelerating, governments around the world have begun to consider implementing a standardized credential or “vaccine passport” that would let people prove that they’ve been vaccinated. And the idea became more real when the Washington Post reported on Sunday that the Biden administration was working with companies to develop such a structure. Our nation’s primary push right now should be equitable vaccine distribution that gets as many people as possible vaccinated and reaching herd immunity. If we can do so, epidemiologists say, we’ll reach a point where COVID no longer has enough vulnerable hosts to circulate within...

AUSTIN (KXAN) — Hours after the Texas Senate passed a sweeping election restriction bill, a Texas House panel considered another Republican effort to further tighten voting rules in the state. The Texas House Elections Committee held a public hearing on House Bill 6 on Thursday. A hearing on the bill was initially scheduled last week but was abruptly canceled after a procedural error. The bill would provide additional protections to poll watchers — limiting an election judge’s ability to expel them from a polling location — and prohibit government officials from sending unsolicited mail-in ballot applications to voters. People assisting...

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) showed photos of nude women who he claimed he had sex with to other lawmakers, multiple sources told CNN. Two sources, who claim they were shown the material directly, said that the photos were "a point of pride" for Gaetz. The sources also told the news outlet that Gaetz, 38, showed them the photos while conducting business on the House floor, adding that the Florida lawmaker displayed the images on his phone and talked about having sex with the women. One source claimed that they were shown a video of a naked woman with a hula...

(h/t Foldspace)" /> Q is the result of the sacrifices and commitment of countless patriots to win back our captured country from the Deep State and achieve the transformation President Trump promised in this campaign video. President Trump has said the awakening of the public is key to this transformation.Q describes this awakening as follows: "The Great Awakening ('Freedom of Thought’), was designed and created not only as a backchannel to the public (away from the longstanding 'mind’ control of the corrupt & heavily biased media) to endure future events through transparency and regeneration of individual thought (breaking the chains...

Two paramedics have told a Minneapolis court that George Floyd had no pulse and did not appear to be breathing when they arrived at the scene. What was the paramedics' testimony?Mr Bravinder said the initial call-out was deemed non-life threatening although that soon changed. He told the court he initially thought that a struggle was taking place when he and his partner arrived on the scene, but quickly realised that Mr Floyd, 46, was limp. Asked about video footage showing him gesturing to Mr Chauvin, Mr Bravinder said he wanted to "have him move" and this was "so we could...

The Chinese regime is accelerating its efforts to challenge the U.S. dollar’s dominance in global markets and trade by taking advantage of the economic shifts caused by the pandemic, a Chinese professor recently revealed.In the post-pandemic world, China should be the “one who decides the benchmark of value,” Di Dongsheng, associate dean of the School of International Studies at Renmin University in Beijing said in a video posted on Chinese social media on Feb. 4. “The currency that fixes the price will eventually be the renminbi.”The professor last April described the pandemic as an opportunity “unseen in 100 years” for...

George Floyd’s girlfriend on Thursday testified in court.“I went to go pick Floyd up from his house that night. I thought I was taking him to work. He wasn’t feeling good. His stomach really hurt. He was doubled over in pain. Just wasn’t feeling well. And he said he had to go to the hospital. So I took him straight to the hospital,” Courteney Ross, 45, said in court in Minneapolis.“We went to the ER, and they were checking him out in the ER. And it was getting late. And I had to get home to my son. So I...

The Times has reviewed receipts from Cash App, a mobile payments app, and Apple Pay that show payments from Mr. Gaetz and Mr. Greenberg to one of the women, and a payment from Mr. Greenberg to a second woman. The women told their friends that the payments were for sex with the two men, according to two people familiar with the conversations. In encounters during 2019 and 2020, Mr. Gaetz and Mr. Greenberg instructed the women to meet at certain times and places, often at hotels around Florida, and would tell them the amount of money they were willing to...

PHOENIX - An Arizona election bill to purge inconsistent voters from the popular permanent early voting list is in limbo after the state House took the highly unusual step of cutting off debate on April 1. The measure is one of several Arizona bills that would reshape the election procedures in a state that has become one of the most closely contested presidential battlegrounds. Former President Donald Trump and his allies have aggressively pushed disproven or unsupported allegations that Trump's loss here was marred by fraud. It's part of a broader national fight over voting rights in the wake of...

The chairman of the Michigan GOP and member of the University of Michigan board of regents is being asked to resign after calling the top three elected women in the state witches. An organization of Catholic sisters is also joining the calls for him to step down. “Anger and frustration,” said Sister Jane Herb. Herb, the president-elect of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, said she was not only disturbed by Michigan Republican Party chairman Ron Weiser comments toward Michigan’s top elected officials but also that they came from an elected leader. “To know that the leader of the Republican...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans' membership in houses of worship continued to decline last year, dropping below 50% for the first time in Gallup's eight-decade trend. In 2020, 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque, down from 50% in 2018 and 70% in 1999. U.S. church membership was 73% when Gallup first measured it in 1937 and remained near 70% for the next six decades, before beginning a steady decline around the turn of the 21st century. As many Americans celebrate Easter and Passover this week, Gallup updates a 2019 analysis that examined the decline in...

CNA Staff, Mar 30, 2021 / 06:00 am MT (CNA).- Cardinal Christoph Schönborn said Sunday that the Vatican’s rejection of blessings for same-sex couples was marked by a “clear communication error.” Renewing his earlier criticism of the intervention by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the Archbishop of Vienna told the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) March 28 that he was concerned by both the timing and form of the ruling. “I wasn’t happy -- neither about the timing nor about the way in which communication was being made,” he said on the discussion program “Pressestunde”.CNA Deutsch, CNA’s...

OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) -- An Asian couple from Oakland had much of their life savings stolen and their home ransacked after they were tied up by robbers in front of their 7-year-old daughter. What one robber said to the family at the end of their terrifying ordeal shows the economic struggle for some during COVID-19.

Photo: pominovenie-vyatlag.blogspot.comA great spiritual event took place on Memorial Saturday, March 27, when the Church commemorates the departed, as a chapel was consecrated on the site of a former Soviet Gulag. The Chapel of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church was consecrated by His Grace Bishop John of Urzhum and several local clerics in the village of Sorda in the Kirov Province, on the burial site of the infamous Vyatlag Gulag, reports the site Field of Memory Vyatlag. Photo: pominovenie-vyatlag.blogspot.comThus, a place formerly representing the depths of human evil now represents the heights of glorification in Christ...

It has taken me a few hours to diminish the anger that surfaced when I first saw these two pictures below. As readers will note I have taken exception to the lack of strong leadership from the church during this COVID crisis. During a time when fellowship is most needed, most urgently needed, many churches are collapsing under their own fear. This is not a good outcome. Suffice to say, there is absolutely nothing sensible about the position of this church as pictured; NOTHING. First, for vaccinated people there is absolutely nothing to fear from the decision of another person...

“That’s what the propagandists know… If the same thing is said over and over again, regardless of how untrue it is, it ultimately sinks in,” says Sharyl Attkisson. A five-time Emmy Award-winning journalist, Attkisson never imagined she would see her profession become plagued by the bias and censorship she now sees in media today. How did things get to this point? Tonight, we discuss the proliferation of third-party fact-checkers, how big tech is controlling online discourse, and what she expects will happen if Trump launches his own social media platform.

Checked The Motley Fool. Can't afford a subscription. Their guru David Gardner is supposed to be the bee's knees.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has found herself mired in a controversy involving one of the chief cultural battles going on right now. She vetoed a bill barring biological men from competing against and dominating women in sports. That we are even needing to have states pass these laws says nothing good about the intellectual heft of our society, but I digress.Noem had her reasons for booting the bill, and one of RedState’s writers covered the legal ramifications in detail. Of course, the issues of technicality and messaging are two different things. You can be arguably right on the merits...

If you’re like me, you’re tired of the left’s constant call to “science” while they continue to ignore the wealth of data and evidence that their COVID-19 restrictions are not only unnecessary but, in some cases, more detrimental in their effect than had they done nothing. This follows my piece from a few days ago, where I showed we knew the target population a year ago derived from the data from the Diamond Princess.Now, it appears that Joe Biden’s begging for the continuance for mask mandates for the vaccinated, but this is counter to the data and evidence coming from...

Lt. Gov. Jon Husted said Thursday he would respond to a letter from Asian Americans in his community critical of him for using the term “Wuhan virus” to describe the coronavirus. But he once again stood by his use of the term, laying out a detailed defense, and declined the opportunity to apologize for using what many view as hurtful language targeting Asian Americans.... Husted ignited controversy last Friday when he tweeted out an article in which former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Robert Redfield said, without providing evidence, he believed the theory that the coronavirus pandemic...