Free Republic

More than 1 million people in France have made appointments to get the coronavirus vaccine after French President Emmanuel Macron said COVID-19 passes would soon be needed for daily activities.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki declined to blame communism for the current unrest in Cuba on Wednesday, when asked by Peter Doocy of Fox News whether communism was the reason that people might want to flee Cuba for the U.S. The context of Doocy’s question was a previous query about a statement Tuesday by Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas that Cubans and Haitians should not come to the U.S. by sea — though the administration is making illegal entry easier through the southern land border with Mexico.

VIDEODuring my weeklong suspension from YouTube I had time for deep self-reflection and came to realize that the Community Guidelines of which I was in violation of are absolutely perfect because they have been set forth by Silicon Valley billionaires who we all know are always infallible. However, during that period I saw something that shocked me to my very core and made me wonder if it represented a rip in the very fabric of the universe.

The Navy’s surface warfare community is weighed with a culture that values administrative chores over training to fight, ship commanders that are micromanaged and an aversion to risk, according to a new survey overseen by a retired Navy admiral and Marine general at the behest of a group of Republican lawmakers. That culture was at least partially responsible for a string “of high-profile and damaging operational failures in the Navy’s Surface Warfare community,” the report found.The study, titled “A Report on the Fighting Culture of the United States Navy Surface Fleet,” surveyed 77 current and recently retired surface sailors “about...

Chief Scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO) Soumya Swaminathan stated in a media briefing on COVID-19 on Monday that the organization "is in the process of coming out with the standards for the digital certification of vaccination," and that the group "wants to make sure that these certificates are interoperable between countries across national borders." These guidelines will be published in the next week to 10 days, according to Swaminathan. The hope is that countries will adopt these standards alongside their own certification methods. However, vaccine passports shouldn't be used to prevent or permit "travel or entry, because it's...

The derelict ABC, CBS and NBC morning news networks bypassed a new inflation report showing consumer prices skyrocketing at record paces in the U.S. They ignored the report as if it didn’t exist. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported at 8:30 a.m. July 13 that the “Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.9 percent in June on a seasonally adjusted basis after rising 0.6 percent in May.” The dangerous spike was the “the largest 1-month change since June 2008 when the index rose 1.0 percent.” The statistic destroyed the median 0.5 percent increase forecast by a...

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer has sought to head off far-right claims of voter fraud ahead of Germany’s general election in September while highlighting threats of cyberattacks from both inside and outside Germany. At a press conference on Wednesday flanked by the heads of Germany’s election authority, domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, and cybersecurity agency, the BSI, Seehofer laid out the security threats to Germany’s election and how the authorities are planning to fend them off. “Our authorities will do everything thinkable to make sure the Bundestag election will be carried out in an orderly and secure way,” Seehofer told...

Santa Ana Police Department officers were called to the area around 2 p.m. after workers at a nearby business heard the woman’s cries for help and weren’t sure where the sounds were coming from. The officers eventually spotted the woman, and rescuers were called to the scene. She was trapped inside a space just eight inches wide, according to firefighters. “We heard a lady in the back, behind our shop, screaming, screaming, screaming,” said the owner of the shop, who did not want to be named. But they couldn’t find anyone. “We called the cops and the cops came in...

About 1.8 million out-of-work Americans have turned down jobs because of the generosity of unemployment insurance benefits, according to Morning Consult poll results released Wednesday. Why it matters: U.S. businesses have been wrestling with labor supply shortages as folks capable of working have opted not to work for a variety of reasons. One of the more politically controversial reasons has been the availability of unemployment insurance benefits, in particular emergency provisions that were introduced because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, 26 states opted to cut emergency benefits early with the intention of incentivizing people to take open jobs. By the...

Look, on a subject as serious as this, you probably should follow the conditions of your parole. Then again, I'm not a lawyer, this is America, and adults can make and face the consequences of their decisions. Take Thomas Robertson. He is one of the 500+ Americans who have been arrested and charged for their alleged role in the Capitol Hill riot on January 6. As a former police officer, the man owned firearms. He was told by the judge that he should refrain from buying more and turn over the ones he already possessed. Did he listen? No—he bought...

The mayor of Miami, Florida, has called on the US to consider military action to overthrow the Communist regime in Cuba — even if that means launching airstrikes. Francis Suarez — whose father was Miami’s first Cuban-born mayor — told Fox News on Tuesday that “what should be being contemplated right now is a coalition of potential military action in Cuba.” He highlighted previous US military action in Panama, Kosovo and Pakistan, the latter of which “probably saved thousands” of lives by killing Osama bin Laden when President Biden was vice president.

“Beyond Summorum Pontificum: The Work of Retrieving the Tridentine Heritage”: Full Text of Dr. Kwasniewski’s Roman Forum LectureThe following is the transcript of the lecture I gave at the Roman Forum on July 3. A video of the lecture has been posted at Remnant-TV (link). A synopsis (less than one-third the length) was published at Crisis Magazine on July 7, under the title “Summorum Pontificum at Fourteen: Its Tragic Flaws.” As we near the imminent restriction or suppression of this motu proprio, it is important to step back and look at the bigger picture: What is—or is not—the role of...

While most artists have to work long and hard to attain a stature where their paintings command prices in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, Hunter Biden's first go at it is raking in big money. Presidential Press Secretary Jen Psaki praised his success as "yet another demonstration of the American dream. Hunter's ability to thrive at so many different pursuits reminds me of Leonardo Da Vinci. He is an internationally successful businessman with enormously profitable ventures in Ukraine and China. He is an author of a very moving autobiography. And now he is a painter of great renown." Psaki...

In a major speech Tuesday, President Joe Biden linked voter ID requirements to repressive Jim Crow laws in the South after the Civil War, declaring it’s “not hyperbole” and insisting it’s time to ask: “Are you on the side of truth or lies?” Biden delivered his fiery remarks at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia in opposition to state election reform laws. The president said his Justice Department would bring civil actions against states because of their election laws and called on Congress to pass legislation to give the federal government control over election administration in the states. Generally, Republicans...

Torrance Stephens, PhD From Memphis & a graduate of Morehouse, he is an infectious disease scientist who has taught & conducted research as faculty of Emory University nearly 20 years ============================================================================== Ghostface Killah of the WuTang Klan made a song on his first solo album called ‘Motherless Child.’ Although not the original, it used a sample from a version recorded by O.V. Wright's "​Motherless Child" which was taken from an old Negro spiritual from the times of slavery. The way I see it, a new stanza should be made to state ‘I feel like a fatherless child.’ Nothing against the...

On the heels of his Vax-a-Million sweepstakes, Gov. Mike DeWine said Tuesday that his administration will roll out a new statewide COVID-19 vaccine incentive initiative. DeWine, speaking with reporters Tuesday, declined to offer details, though he hinted that the new program will award more prizes of smaller amounts of money in a way that offers vaccinated Ohioans better odds of winning. The new initiative will be unveiled “sometime in the next week or so.” DeWine said 59% of Ohioans age 18 or older have been vaccinated, but he worries about both the fast-spreading Delta variant of the virus and some...

The Poor People's Campaign has announced a "season of nonviolent, moral direct action," targeting the U.S. Senate with disruptive activities every Monday, July 12 through Aug 2. According to the campaign's co-chair, the Rev. William Barber II, "The Senate must end the filibuster, protect and expand voting rights, and pass a minimum wage of $15 an hour." Barber is getting national attention. Even President Joe Biden recorded a video expressing his support. Concern about poverty is something we all share. What bothers me is that the factors driving poverty, according to the research of my organization and others, are ignored...

In recent closed meetings the government’s Election Assistance Commission (EAC) eliminated the requirement that banned voting machines from connecting to the Internet. The AP reported (emphasis added): Key elements of the first federal technology standards for voting equipment in 15 years should be scrapped because language that would have banned the devices from connecting to the internet was dropped after private meetings held with manufacturers, according to a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday. The lawsuit against the U.S. Election Assistance Commission [EAC], filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., claims those meetings should have been open and that changes to...

Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Hallie Jackson Reports” that “paranoid” Republicans are attempting to take away the voting rights of Black and Brown Americans because two Democrats won their U.S. Senate races in Georgia. Jackson said, “I want to ask you about voting rights. As you know, President Biden put this front and center those Texas Democrats have put this front and center. They’re calling for a carve-out on the filibuster. You have long called for abolishing the filibuster, at least you have lately. What does that look like specifically, this narrow cave on constitutional issues? Is...

Students for Life Action is calling for the removal of Dr. Anthony Fauci after his agency was caught using tax dollars to fund an experiment that involved implanting aborted babies’ scalps onto rodents. The College Fix reports the pro-life organization has collected nearly 2,000 signatures on a petition and more than 20,000 on an email petition urging federal leaders to fire Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical officer. “Fauci’s actual job as a high-ranking official at HHS is to protect Americans from conception — yet he is doing the exact opposite: sacrificing the most vulnerable American children to appease Corporate...