Free Republic

Scott Adams: If the Arizona audit is finding any indications of voting irregularities, wouldn't we have heard about it by now? Josh Barrett: No. Loose lips sink ships. SA: If that were true we'd all be at the bottom of the ocean. This would have leaked somehow. JB: We got what we were looking for Josh Barrett Twitter

Paper from the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, Operational sub-group (SPI-M-O) summarising further modelling on easing restrictions for England (Roadmap Step 2). It was considered at SAGE 85 on 31 March 2021. This paper should be read alongside the accompanying modelling papers from SAGE 85: Imperial College London: Evaluating England’s Roadmap out of Lockdown, 30 March 2021 University of Warwick: Road Map Scenarios and Sensitivity, 29 March 2021 LSHTM: Interim roadmap assessment: prior to Step 2, 31 March 2021 This updates earlier SPI-M-O statements on modelling on easing restrictions, that was tabled at SAGE 81 on 18 February 2021......

Pennsylvania plans to lift its covid-19 mitigation orders on Memorial Day, and Gov. Tom Wolf said the state’s masking order will be dropped once 70% of Pennsylvanians 18 and older are fully vaccinated.As of Tuesday morning, about 32.4% of all Pennsylvania residents were fully vaccinated and about 50% were partially vaccinated.

Oligarchy, and Remedies Those who live under oligarchies are not citizens—because oligarchy validates itself, decides for itself, within itself. It is committed above all to negating a people’s capacity to rule itself. What are hundreds of America’s biggest corporations doing as they browbeat the public to abolish the requirement of identification for voting? What are Twitter, Facebook, et al. doing when they prohibit people from sharing facts that are inconvenient to government policy or (and) the Democratic Party? What did banks do when they turned over to the FBI the records of persons who happened to have traveled to D.C....

Saudi officials met on Monday with the Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus in an effort to reinstate diplomatic ties, which were cut almost a decade ago, an independent Arabic newspaper reported.

Facebook created the Oversight Board a year ago to make final calls on the most difficult decisions the social network makes about what users can post. Each case is decided by 5 members of the 20-person board. They consider Facebook's rules and international human rights principles and seek out the views of outside experts and members of the public. In the Trump case, the board received more than 9,000 public comments. The final decision must be approved by a majority of the full board, and Facebook has agreed to abide by its ruling. The Trump case is the biggest test...

The Pentagon is to cancel all US-Mexico border wall construction projects paid for using military funds Former President Donald Trump ordered the diversion of billions of dollars in Pentagon money to pay for the barrier after being denied funding by Congress President Joe Biden announced a halt to border wall construction after taking office in January Trump launched his presidential campaign in 2015 with a pledge to build a wall along the US-Mexico border and to make Mexico pay for it Mexico refused and so did the House of Representatives after Democrats took control in 2018 Trump ultimately bypassed Congress...

Liberal activist LeBron James is one of just two players on the Los Angeles Lakers who hasn't received a COVID-19 vaccination, his teammate Dennis Schröder (the other unvaccinated player) revealed on Monday. "Nearly the whole team is vaccinated," Schröder told a media outlet from his native Germany. "Only LeBron and I are not, I think." James's refusal to get the COVID-19 vaccine reflects a dangerous anti-science ideology that experts have warned could put lives at risk. Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the most respected scientific experts in the country, has expressed "extreme confidence" in the FDA-approved vaccines and urged every...

Coca-Cola has paused its controversial diversity plan — that included penalties on outside law firms if they failed to meet racial diversity quotas — after intense backlash. The pause comes after the orchestrator of the plan, Coke’s former general counsel Bradley Gayton, abruptly resigned last month after less than a year on the job and as criticism of the quotas mounted. Some questioned whether Gayton’s policies violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which says employers can’t treat people differently based on their race. Coca-Cola hired Gayton in September 2020 after spending nearly 30 years as the...

....As observed in prior weeks, Black and Hispanic people have received smaller shares of vaccinations compared to their shares of cases and deaths and compared to their shares of the total population in most states. For example, in Colorado, 10% of vaccinations have gone to Hispanic people, while they account for 42% of cases, 25% of deaths, and 22% of the total population in the state. Similarly, in the District of Columbia, Black people have received 36% of vaccinations, while they make up 54% of cases, 69% of deaths, and 46% of the total population. However, the size of these...

Republicans overturned Kelly’s veto of an elections bill making it harder for individuals and groups to collect absentee ballots and deliver them for voters. House Bill 2183 focuses largely on mail-in voting. It limits who is permitted to return a mail-in ballot for another person and makes it a misdemeanor for one person to return more than 10 mail-in ballots. The measure also requires the signature on a mail ballot to match the signature election officials have on file, creating a potential for votes to be discarded, and bans the Secretary of State from extending mail-in vote deadlines. The bill...

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Tuesday said that interest rates may need to increase to keep the recovering economy from going into overdrive on the heels of significant government spending. “It may be that interest rates will have to rise somewhat to make sure that our economy doesn’t overheat, even though the additional spending is relatively small relative to the size of the economy,” she said in response to a question on a panel hosted by The Atlantic about whether the economy could absorb the large dose of spending President Biden was proposing.

Authorities are investigating a Florida principal who was seen on camera paddling a student for damaging a computer. WINK reports the child’s mother recorded the video of Central Elementary School Principal Melissa Carter. It reportedly happened April 13. WINK reports the school called the 6-year-old girl’s mother saying she’d damaged a computer and that there would be a $50 fee. The mother went to the school to pay the fee and was taken to the principal’s office. Her daughter, the principal and a school clerk were in the room. The mother said she began to get nervous, so she hit...

The Human Rights Campaign says the White House is preparing to directly confront the flood of anti-trans and LGBTQ legislation. The Department of Justice may also join the fight.The Biden administration is preparing to directly confront the rash of anti-LGBT, and specifically anti-trans bills proliferating in state legislatures, according to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the country’s leading LGBTQ advocacy organization.Separately, the Department of Justice has told The Daily Beast it will “fully enforce our civil rights statutes to protect transgender individuals,” giving hope to campaigners that the DOJ is preparing to challenge in the courts the legality of bills...

The government sometimes needs help. It can’t do everything… and it most certainly can’t do everything well. Some Americans have stepped up and use their resources and expertise to help the government function more effectively. An example of this is Michael Bloomberg’s efforts to fund “Special Assistant Attorneys Generals.” in the actual Attorneys Generals offices in half a dozen large cities across the country. Those SAAGs are tasked with a specific focus on climate change and act as liaisons between AG leadership and NGO’s and other interested parties. The goal was to step up and move the issue of climate...

THIS is the astonishing moment a driver filling up his car douses three hooded men with petrol during an attempted raid. The CCTV footage shows the man at the petrol station before a white van brakes at high speed and parks beside him. Three men jump out with one running around the man's car towards the driving seat in what appears to be an attempted robbery. Yet the quick-thinking customer begins dousing all the would-be thieves with petrol.

A man in West Baltimore brutally attacked two Korean owners of a liquor store and beat both women with a cement block as they fought back. This happened Sunday night. Amy Kawata TV @AmyKawata 🎥 CAUGHT ON CAMERA: A violent and brutal attack on 2 Korean woman store owners in West Baltimore. Surveillance video shows a man attack the women with a cement block as they try to fight back. 🚨Warning: this video is graphic.. @wjz VIDEO AT LINK......................

In 1971, first-time novelist Frederick Forsyth, a former RAF pilot, journalist, and war correspondent, published “The Day of the Jackal,” a grippingly realistic thriller about an anonymous hired assassin known only as the Jackal, who very nearly assassinates French president Charles de Gaulle in revenge for his abandonment of France’s long-time colony of Algeria in 1962. Outraged at what they saw as a national betrayal, a disaffected section of the French army, which had failed to unhorse de Gaulle in a coup attempt the year before, continued to make attempts on de Gaulle’s life, only to see each one fail....

Some left-wing Americans are having trouble emerging from coronavirus lockdowns, according to a new report in the Atlantic. “Progressive communities have been home to some of the fiercest battles over COVID-19 policies, and some liberal policy makers have left scientific evidence behind,” writes reporter Emma Green, who notes that some ordinary Americans of liberal political persuasions have become so committed to lockdowns that they are having trouble returning to normal life.

More firearms were sold in April 2021 than in April 2020, setting a new total record for the month. "NSSF’s Adjusted National Instant Criminal Background of nearly 1.7 million background checks in April was the strongest April on record and is on pace with the background checks that we’ve seen for more than a year. Background checks for firearm sales were nearly one percent higher than April 2020," National Shooting Sports Foundation Public Affairs Director Mark Oliva released in a statement. "Firearm sales remain elevated on two distinct concerns. Americans are buying firearms for concerns for personal safety and for...