Free Republic

Six states, led by California’s fulltime climate alarmists, this week enacted a ban on the sales of high-end gaming computers. Niche Gamer reports that Dell is already following the 2017 law that just went into effect. According to the gamer-focused site, Dell has “pulled the sale of seven of its eight Alienware gaming desktops” from California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington. Trying to order one of the banned machines will alert buyers, “This product cannot be shipped to the states of California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont or Washington due to power consumption regulations adopted by those states. Any orders...

Have the CDC Geniuses Been Right About Anything? Happy Wednesday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. Crudités and wine on the mezzanine at 3:42 PM sharp. Pants optional. Full disclosure: I’ve never really trusted doctors. Yeah, I wanted to be one back in the day but then I decided to hit the road and tell jokes for a living. Save me your sob stories about your parents’ disappointment in your career choices. Anyway, that’s just one of the many reasons I haven’t gotten swept up in the Cult of Fauci. Even if I were in awe of physicians, Fauci is really...

In the movie Die Hard, a nebbishy expert is trying to explain what he calls “Helsinki Syndrome,” the idea that hostages become psychologically attached to hostage takers, to a TV audience. The perfectly coiffed news anchor turns to the camera and interjects, “As in Helsinki, Sweden.” Thirty years later, the satire is still pitch perfect: moronic but self-assured media personality intones obviously false information to a mass audience. As the Covid-19 era draws to a close, today’s audience has been conditioned to accept as fact alarmist headlines, many of which are purely speculative or simply detached from reality. Call it...

<p>On Tuesday afternoon the Centers for Disease Control officially recommended vaccinated individuals wear masks indoors. For children under 12, the CDC wants mask worn for hours inside the classroom.</p><p>"CDC recommends universal indoor masking for all teachers, staff, students, and visitors to K-12 schools, regardless of vaccination status. Children should return to full-time in-person learning in the fall with layered prevention strategies in place," the guidance states.</p>

A new policy memorandum from the Biden administration took effect Monday which seeks to end the use of what are, in fact, accurate terms for illegal aliens by those handling the adjudication of immigration cases. The memo first circulated last week within the Department of Justice explains that "illegal alien" and associated legal terms are not to be used in internal or external communications within the subgroup that handles immigration cases and that such apparently intolerable terminology be replaced with more woke social justice-y language. It's all part of President Biden's larger practice of implementing Orwellian "newspeak" regarding illegal immigrants...

Dr. Leana Wen — “New data suggests that fully vaccinated individuals are not just contracting COVID, but could be carrying higher levels of virus than previously understood, facilitating spread.” New data suggests that fully vaccinated individuals are not just contracting COVID, but could be carrying higher levels of virus than previously understood, facilitating spread, my NBC News colleagues are reporting. New indoor masking guidance expected today. — Ken Dilanian (@KenDilanianNBC) July 27, 2021 👀 🚨 👀 “CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said recent studies had shown that those vaccinated individuals who do become infected with Covid have just as much viral...

Iran’s Jask oil terminal is now fully set to start loading vast quantities of crude to any major buyer in the world via the Gulf of Oman, with the first shipment of 100,000 metric tons of oil set to dock, load, and sail again within days. The significance of this new terminal can barely be overstated, as it will allow Iran to transport oil and petrochemicals from its major oil fields via Guriyeh in the Shoaybiyeh-ye Gharbi Rural District of Khuzestan Province 1,100 kilometers to Jask Port in Hormozgan province. In short, this 42-inch Guriyeh-Jask pipeline and Jask Oil Terminal...

More than 2 million people in Greater Sydney will not be unable to leave their local government area (LGA) for work as NSW attempts to stem the spread of COVID-19. Premier Gladys Berejiklian added Parramatta, Georges River and Campbelltown to the list of LGA's subjected to Authorised Work Orders. They now join Fairfield, Canterbury-Bankstown, Blacktown, Liverpool and Cumberland LGA's from midnight. Under the orders, workers are not allowed to leave their LGA's unless they work in health, aged care or are essential workers listed by the government including supermarket workers, those in logistics, distribution and other critical services. "We now...

The United States’ coronavirus death rate is still roughly at a pandemic-low, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended Tuesday that vaccinated individuals and children wear masks indoors. According to Google’s coronavirus tracking system on July 26, 275 people are dying from the virus on a seven day average, while overall infection cases are rising. Around the high of coronavirus deaths on January 20, when President Joe Biden took office, 3,056 people were dying on a seven day average. Since January, coronavirus deaths have steadily decreased – presumably due to the vaccine developed under the Trump administration....

The mesh-like fossil would push back the oldest known animal on Earth by more than 300 million years. But like many claims of very old life, the study is kicking up lively debate. Relatives of the humble sea sponge have filtered Earth's waters for hundreds of millions of years or more, long before the first plants took to land. Their simplicity has led scientists to suggest sponges were the earliest animals to arise on our planet. But exactly when that happened remains under debate. Now, a study published in the journal Nature suggests that mesh-like structures in an ancient reef...

On July 28, Tanzania's president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, got her COVID-19 vaccine, marking the official launch of the country's vaccination campaign. It's a stark contrast to the country's COVID stance earlier this year. On February 2, health minister Dr. Dorothy Gwajima stood before press cameras with her deputies. They all drank concoctions containing ginger, garlic and lemons to assure the public that the best way to beat the coronavirus was through natural remedies. "The government has no plans to receive COVID-19 vaccines that are being distributed in other countries,'' Gwajima told the press conference. It was part of President John...

Rosanna Arquette, who has stated she will always take a knee in protest of the national anthem, accused the late military veteran Ashli Babbitt of being a “terrorist” who wanted “to kill.” ✌🏼rosanna arquette @RoArquette Ashli Babbit died because she was a terrorist breaking into the Capitol with the intent to kill she was not a hero. It’s too bad she lost her life being a terrorist against democracy.

God doesn’t whisper on sexual sin. His love for sinners keeps Him from doing that. He doesn’t whisper on sexual sin—because He doesn’t whisper on His love for sinners.God isn’t ashamed of the Gospel. He isn’t embarrassed by His Word. He isn’t anxious about telling people good things that might offend them. God isn’t afraid to tell the truth about sexual sin.God isn’t tempted to lie about pornography, fornication, adultery—and especially, homosexuality, and transgenderism.He loves sinners too much for that. God isn’t tempted to hide His love, mercy, and grace from homosexual and transgender people. God isn’t like you and...

Peacock Network’s costly event shed 49% of viewers from 2016 Rio Games NBC’s primetime coverage of the Tokyo Olympics continued to spiral downward on Monday, averaging 14.7 million viewers for a 49% drop compared to the equivalent night from the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games.

SYDNEY, July 28 – Australia’s biggest city, Sydney, extended a lockdown by four weeks on Wednesday after an already protracted stay-at-home order failed to douse a COVID-19 outbreak, with authorities warning of tougher policing to stamp out non-compliance. Far from a planned exit from lockdown in three days, the city of 5 million people and neighboring regional centers spanning 120 miles of coastline were told to stay home until Aug. 28 following persistently high case numbers since a flare-up of the virulent Delta variant began last month.

More than half a century since they were modernized, hate crime laws in the U.S. are inconsistent and provide incomplete methods for addressing bias-motivated violence, according to a new report by advocates for better protections. The report, first shared with The Associated Press ahead of its Wednesday release, is a comprehensive national review of hate crime laws that shows gaps and variances in the laws. Due to the complexity of hate violence, certain statutes meant to protect racial minorities and marginalized groups are less effective, as a consequence of bias in the criminal justice system, the report says. The existing...

When there’s a White House press briefing in which the press corps doesn’t appear friendly with the Biden administration, you know it was a tough day at the office. Tuesday’s briefing was one of those rare days as Fox’s Peter Doocy was joined by over a half dozen colleagues in asking tough questions Press Secretary Jen Psaki refused to answer about the return of masks, even for vaccinated Americans. The Associated Press’s Alexandra Jaffe didn’t wait for Doocy, leading off the Q&A by wondering “how will the White House get Americans to start wearing masks when they’ve gone for more...

Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said Tuesday the Chinese coronavirus could be “just a few mutations” away from evading vaccines. Speaking on Tuesday following her agency’s decision to surrender, reversing course and recommending vaccinated people to begin to wear masks again in certain indoor settings and areas, Walensky said they are concerned by the virus’s variants and believe they could potentially “evade” the vaccines down the road.

Chinese government scientists have unveiled plans for a first-of-its-kind, experimental nuclear reactor that does not need water for cooling. The molten-salt nuclear reactor, which runs on liquid thorium rather than uranium, is expected to be safer than traditional reactors because the molten salt cools and solidifies quickly when exposed to the air, insulating the thorium, so that any potential leak would spill much less radiation into the surrounding environment compared with leaks from traditional reactors. The prototype reactor is expected to be completed next month, with the first tests beginning as early as September. This will pave the way for...

Climate scientist Dr. Willie Soon has urged his fellow academics to pay closer attention to the sun’s activity, which suggests several decades of global cooling rather than warming. Speaking this week with Alex Newman of the New American, Soon, a Malaysian astrophysicist and aerospace engineer, said that “what we predict is that the next 20-30 years will be cold. It will be cold, so it will be a very interesting thing for the IPCC to confront.” The sun is in a “weakened state” and far less active than during the 1980s and 1990s, Soon noted, which should last until “around...