Free Republic

The Minnesota chief medical examiner who conducted the autopsy on George Floyd’s body and deemed his death a homicide testified Friday in former officer Derek Chauvin’s murder trial. Dr. Andrew Baker, chief medical examiner for Hennepin County, said the way police held Floyd down and compressed his neck "was just more than Mr. Floyd could take," given the condition of his heart. Baker took the stand on Friday morning as the second week of testimony at the trial of Chauvin, 45, came to an end.... Baker testified that Floyd’s "use of fentanyl did not cause the subdural or neck restraint....

Liberals are fond of predicting the future, and their predictions, which are always dire, then become the pretext for more government. Otherwise, they say, we'll all starve, a class war will break out, or the Earth will come to an end. Liberals are wrong about the future because their theories are based on ideology, not on the facts. Unlike conservatives, whose ideas are grounded on prudence and a clear view of human nature, liberals really have no conception of what drives human beings: their thinking is built on a handful of fixed ideas that can be traced to a number...

“Education is not the answer to the question. Education is the means to the answer to all questions”Wow, this story out of the Academy has it all: gaslighting, reeducation, power, control…did I mention control? A Medical Student Questioned Microaggressions. UVA Branded Him a Threat and Banished Him from Campus. And along with the story it becomes official: independent thought is no longer tolerated on college campuses. First Amendment rights need not apply. We’ve come a long way baby.Welcome To The New Thought Police, Baby! They’ll Do All Your Thinking For You.And now, the story. The setting: University of Virginia (UVA)...

link to patriots.win article and graphic showing unbelievable percent change resulting from handcount in several counties.

The fishing vessels arrived one and two at a time, dropping anchor off the disputed Whitsun Reef near the Philippines. As the Chinese-flagged fleet grew larger, the vessels tethered themselves together, hunkering down for a gray zone standoff that has captured policymaker interest throughout the Pacific region. And with that, Beijing burst Washington’s deterrence bubble. In congressional testimony last month, officials advocated for new, multibillion-dollar investments in long-range strike capabilities and a sophisticated missile system in Guam. These new platforms, it was argued, are essential to reassuring our regional allies and deterring China. And yet, the Whitsun spectacle lays bare...

A torrent of media stories from 2013-2014 presented frightening tales of “unprecedented” colony collapse disorder (CCD) among honeybees, conjuring up visions of a “bee-pocalypse” and “a world without bees,” a world in which flowers and agriculture would be decimated.Many articles blamed neonicotinoid pesticides, while others added climate change and biotech (GMO) crops as likely culprits. Some mentionedVarroa destructor mites and various viruses and diseases as possible causes. Virtually none suggested that organic food industry chemicals could also be implicated in bee deaths. The overall tone was “deep concern,” bordering on hysteria. But it sold papers and air time.Over the next...

In the former Soviet Union, nearly every decision people made -- from their jobs to their hobbies to their clothing -- was politicized. Personal choices that were insufficiently collectivist for Communist Party officials negatively impacted careers, housing, and rations, which were allocated by political pull and socialist virtue-signaling rather than merit. Some decisions, such as starting a small business or storing some extra food, could result in the gulag or a firing squad. The personal was the political. I am concerned that the U.S. is trending in this direction, where many aspects of life are politicized. Americans are more politically...

It finally happened. Arizona has gone "sanctuary" and wait until the Democrats go ballistic screaming that laws have to be respected in the U.S. This is from Fox News: Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed a gun rights law this week that preemptively protects gun owners in the state from any federal gun control laws that are passed, according to reports. The Second Amendment Freedom Act was signed two days before President Biden announced several executive actions, including asking the Justice Department to propose a rule to stop "ghost guns," which are "kits" people can buy legally, then assemble to create...

In the first few months of the Biden administration, America has seemingly sent a message internationally that the U.S. is no longer making its security a top priority, and not just at the southern border. The current migrant crisis, which has spiraled into a human tragedy, was created by President Biden when he declared his intention to legalize as many as 11 million illegal Central American and Mexican residents of the U.S. in the wake of his victory in this past November’s election. This incredibly dangerous messaging from Biden, along with the administration’s decision to cease border wall construction, played...

Class warfare, racial warfare, gender warfare, and the countless other forms of identity politics injected into schools, workplaces, government offices, and every area of life are aimed at forcing Americans to identify radically and tribally, rather than nationally. Divide and conquer. David Horowitz, a veteran of the radical politics of the Left, has the knowledge, the experience, and the training to expose not just what the movement he was once a part of is doing, but the ideological origins of its tactics, and how they feed it into its dreadful vision for America. America is delegitimized through revisionist history smears,...

The extent to which personal data mined from these vaccine passports can be used for nefarious purposes is, at this early stage of rollout, speculative fiction: the sky is the limit. If the U.S. government mandates proof of vaccination to access government services as the Israeli government and other regimes around the world have already done or proposed to do, this new power is nearly certain to be abused. The PATRIOT Act, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), and other post-9/11 surveillance regimes advanced by the national security state — already burdensome and arguably unconstitutional themselves — have been wildly...

There is only one way to end the endless mask mandates, and that is to just stop wearing them. One hundred days. That’s what President Biden asked for before he was inaugurated – 100 days of masking. That was the linchpin of his plan to end the coronavirus pandemic. It was in his executive order requiring people to wear masks when they are on U.S. Government property, including national parks and forests, even when there are no other people around for miles. Just give him that 100 days and everything will be fine. Well, April 30 is the 100th day....

“They Are Giving Hemingway Another Look, So You Can, Too…Lynn Novick and Ken Burns consider the seminal writer in all his complexity and controversy in their new PBS documentary series. Could there be anything more subversive than turning a spotlight, in this moment, on Ernest Hemingway?” wrote Gal Beckerman in the The New York Times this month.“Subversive?” Ah! At least the term appears in connection with the docuseries. And considering that Ernest Hemingway eagerly joined Stalin’s KGB (technically the NKVD at the time), secretly contributed tens of thousands to the Cuban communist party and (literally) drank, as a spectator, to...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem Psalm 30Psalm 30[a] A psalm. A song. For the dedication of the temple.[b] Of David. 1 I will exalt you, Lord, for you lifted me out of the depths and did not let my enemies gloat over me. 2 Lord my God, I called to you for help, and you healed me. 3 You, Lord, brought me up from the realm of the dead; you spared me from going down to the pit. 4 Sing the praises of the Lord, you his faithful people; praise his holy name. 5 For his anger lasts only...

On MSNBC’s MTP Daily Friday afternoon, host Chuck Todd just couldn’t believe that Republicans weren’t caving to left-wing pressure to enact federal gun control measures. The anchor wailed that the GOP had become “very extreme” when it came to protecting Second Amendment rights and bemoaned the lack of “moderate” Republicans who would sign on to Democratic Party agenda items. snip Haake feared that “mainstream Republicanism got squashed during the Trump years” and warned “there is a much diminished sense of what it means to be a moderate Republican anymore on any of these issues.” He frustratingly asked: “Who, in what...

If you are a political leader who wishes to effect “fundamental change” during your lifetime, there are only two ways to achieve that goal: Receiving a massive electoral mandate or, failing that, using the government’s military force against those citizens who resist fundamental change. The Democrats, with their grandiose plans for gun control, court-packing, erasing America’s sovereign border, and adding new states, are acting as if they have that mandate. As their desperation to end the filibuster shows, they don’t. That leaves only force. In November 2020, Biden apparently won more votes than any other president in American history, including...

Thousands of illegal immigrants are streaming across the United States’ southern border every day under President Joe Biden.In response, climate alarmists are following former Chicago Mayor and President Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s shameful advice to “never let a crisis go to waste” by repeating the false claim that many of the immigrants are “climate refugees.” Meaning they are being forced to flee their homelands by disasters caused by anthropogenic global warming.Research shows this claim is false. Millions of people flee their homelands each year. But the causes are what they have always been: war, political persecution, crime, and...

+929 DEAD +85,368 NEW CASES ***574,840** TOTAL DEAD

The U.S. Supreme Court in a divided decision late Friday ruled in favor of lifting restrictions on in-home religious gatherings, overturning a lower court ruling that upheld Gov. Gavin Newsom’s limits on people from different homes. The 5-4 unsigned ruling follows other similar decisions recently regarding churches and the coronavirus pandemic. The decision noted it was the fifth time the court has rejected the Ninth Circuit’s analysis of California coronavirus restrictions. Chief Justice John Roberts dissented but did not sign the dissenting statement submitted by justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer. The ruling stated that before it can...

I just watched a documentary about the horrors of 9/11. You remember that day, don't you? This year will mark the 20th anniversary of 9/11. Sept. 11, 2001. The day the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center collapsed in New York City. The day about 3,000 of our fellow Americans died. Most of their bodies were never found. They literally melted and disintegrated. You do remember, yes? They were someone's fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, and sons and daughters. Do you remember all those people jumping from 100 stories up and splattering on the sidewalk? I do. I...