Free Republic

They have been called many things: amoebas, spineless cowards, weaklings, and other names not suitable for print in a family newspaper. The modern characterization for many politicians who refuse to take a stand, especially in the midst of the growing and rapid threat of American socialism, is the word "weenie." People fear being called names for expressing personal convictions (assuming they have any) and so they either say nothing or they go along to get along. Not Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who increasingly resembles the type of leader the country needs as the Biden administration appears to try...

Speaking during the release of their latest financial results Monday, Özlem Türeci, chief medical officer at BioNTech, said a third dose should likely be given six to 12 months after an initial round of vaccination. But BioNTech doesn’t see the need to retool the vaccine to target the highly infectious Delta variant. That’s not to say future variants won’t change this stance, with the CEO of BioNTech, Uğur Şahin, adding that it was “quite possible that in the next six to 12 months, further variants emerge that would require adaptation of the vaccine.”

Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott asked the state’s hospitals Monday to consider postponing all elective surgeries Monday in order to combat a surge in hospitalizations due to COVID-19. In a letter to the Texas Hospital Association, Abbott asked medical centers to “to take steps to ensure the availability of adequate hospital capacity to care for COVID-19 patients.” In addition to rescheduling elective procedures “for which delay will not result in loss of life or a deterioration in the patient’s condition.” Abbott also ordered the opening of five new centers to provide antibody treatments for COVID-19 in addition to an existing...

Worthless Bravery In Battle (Wasted Courage). By JAG August 10, 2021 First, love God with all your heart, obey Him, then be successfully-brave during deadly death-dealing battles. The fighters of the tribe of Manasseh were Spartan-like. "They were brave warriors, famous men", but "they were unfaithful to God" so the Lord delivered them into the hands of Tiglath-Pileser King of Assyria, who took them into exile captivity, and slavery. (1 Chronicles 5:23-26.) The Spartans were brave and famous too. But today Sparta exists only in our imaginations, our books, and in our movies. The Spartan-like warrior General George Patton said,...

Editor's Note: This piece was authored by Caleb Ashley.Cancel culture is the left-wing equivalent of eating at Golden Corral. Picking and choosing buffet-style whose careers to end, what brands to boycott, and which political reputations to consume may feel good in the moment, but in the long run it’s terrible for your health. And if the left doesn't leave the buffet soon, down the line it could suffer a massive coronary. The Olympic Games have been a disaster on this score. The Director of the Opening Ceremonies was fired for a Holocaust joke he made 23 years ago during a...

The other day I got an e-mail from the NSRC (Chairman Rick Scott) that I found to be completely offensive in it's tone.

Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot got an icy reception from dozens of police over the weekend when she visited the hospital where the surviving cop at a traffic stop was in critical condition. His female partner, 29-year-old officer Ella French, died from her injuries. She had just returned from maternity leave and left behind an infant daughter. The scene at Chicago Medical Center at midnight on Saturday is described by Chicago Sun-Times. Nearly thirty CPD officers accompanied the critically injured male officer’s family in the waiting area on the seventh floor. The guy’s father is a retired police officer and gave...

PHOENIX — As the delta variant fuels an increase of COVID-19 cases in the U.S., some of President Joe Biden’s critics blame the surge on his border policies, which allow some migrants to enter the country to apply for asylum. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last week accused Biden of “helping to facilitate” the spread of the coronavirus. Fox News host Sean Hannity referred to migrants causing “the biggest super-spreader event” and incorrectly asserted that none was being tested. But public health experts say arriving migrants are not driving the rising infections in the U.S. The main culprits are people who...

A 20-year-old Triangle man who was fatally shot last month by a Dale City woman in what police determined was a justified act of self-defense has been connected to five recent armed robberies at area 7-Eleven stores, police said Monday. The man, identified as Azhar Laurent Smart, 20, of Triangle, was found by police suffering a gunshot wound at 12:25 a.m. on Thursday, July 22, outside a home in the 4100 block of Hoffman Drive, a residential area off Prince William Parkway near the Sheetz gas station, according to a news release issued at the time. Smart was shot by...

One of the region’s most prolific apartment builders has sued the city of Los Angeles over its COVID-19 eviction moratorium, saying his companies have experienced “astronomical” financial losses and are legally entitled to compensation from the city. Palmer’s companies allege that the moratorium...violated the “takings clause” established in the 5th Amendment, which says private property shall not be taken for public use without “just compensation.” “While the eviction moratorium ostensibly protects tenants who are unable to pay rent due to circumstances related to the COVID-19 pandemic, it arbitrarily shifts the financial burden onto property owners, many of whom were already...

VIDEO California's besieged governor, Gavin Newsom, went on a whiny self-pitying recall rage rant during an interview by the Sacramento Bee editorial board. The contrast in attitude to Larry Elder's appearance before the same group (video link below) was startling. It is obvious that the horrid prospect of being tossed out of office via recall is getting under his skin which accounts for his over-the-top bitterness.

Under Biden's change, heirs would be forced to pay taxes on the appreciation of assets, potentially over the entire lifetime of the recently deceased relative. President Joe Biden has proposed amending the inheritance tax, also known as the “death tax,” but farmers around the country are raising concerns about the plan. In the American Families Plan introduced earlier this year, Biden proposed repealing the “step-up in basis” in tax law. The stepped-up basis is a tax provision that allows an heir to report the value of an asset at the time of inheriting it, essentially not paying gains taxes on...

Some employers are starting to tack on a $20 to $50 monthly surcharge to their unvaccinated workers, according to a health benefits consultant group. “Employers have tried encouraging employees to get vaccinated through offering incentives like paid time off and cash, but with the Delta variant driving up infections and hospitalizations throughout the country—at the same time that vaccination rates have stalled—we have received inquiries from at least 20 employers over the past few weeks who are giving consideration to adding health coverage surcharges for the unvaccinated as a way to drive up vaccination rates in their workforce,” Wade Symons,...

A wicked cold snap and massive drought in July have devastated Brazil’s coffee belt. According to Bloomberg, preliminary reports show the South American country may lose millions of bags of arabica coffee.A formal damage report of Brazil’s coffee belt is due in the coming weeks. The government report is set to show up to ten million bags (each bag weighing 132 pounds) of arabica coffee, or one-third of annual purchases by the U.S. may have been damaged. The view is part of a government official who asked not to be named because the figures are internal data. Days after the...

There is no COVID-era surge in global cargo demand. There’s a lengthy albeit temporary spike in congestion compounded by a localized, stimulus-and-savings-driven demand boom in America. That explanation for skyrocketing rates gained more traction Friday when liner giant Maersk released details of its quarterly performance. Maersk — which pre-reported record Q2 2021 results on Monday — estimated that global container shipping demand was up only 2.7% in the second quarter versus the same period two years ago, prior to the pandemic. And yet, Maersk’s average freight rate (including both contract and spot business) was $3,038 per forty-foot equivalent unit, up...

Tucked into US President Joe Biden's expansive infrastructure bill is a plan to knock down "racist" roads that he says harm minority communities - but not everyone he's trying to help agrees. A fine layer of soot covers the straw-yellow paint of the wooden houses that line Interstate 81, a highway in downtown Syracuse, New York state, held up by rusted steel girders and dingy pillars of cement. Civil rights activists call this mile of the interstate a "racist highway" because roads like this one divide minority neighbourhoods and pollute these communities. Urban planners want to tear it down -...

Congress is barreling toward a high-stakes showdown over the nation's borrowing limit, with neither party ready to blink. Congressional leaders will soon need to find a way to pass legislation raising or suspending the debt ceiling, or risk a default that could have catastrophic ramifications for global financial markets. So far, they appear content to play a game of chicken reminiscent of the 2011 standoff that resulted in the S&P taking the historic step of downgrading the U.S. credit rating. One option for Democrats would be to try to raise the debt ceiling on their own as part of a...

"Those who fail to heed history are doomed to repeat it." This aphorism has been attributed to Edmund Burke, George Santayana and Winston Churchill. Regardless of who said or wrote it first, President Joe Biden should heed it now, before his poorly planned bug out from Afghanistan and his "phase-out of combat troops" from Iraq become disastrous retreats like the sad finale of the Vietnam War in Saigon on April 30, 1975. On April 14, Biden foolishly announced all U.S. troops would depart Afghanistan by Sept. 11. His crack national security team subsequently decided a bug out on the 20th...

White House Chief Medical Adviser Anthony Fauci said Monday that he hopes mask requirements for children will not be necessary for much longer so that the face coverings will not have a "lasting negative impact" on them. After the Center for Disease Control and Prevention updating its guidance last month to recommend that schools require masks for all children 2 years of age or older, regardless of vaccination status, Fauci encouraged mask mandate opponents to "keep an open mind." "It's not comfortable, obviously, for children to wear masks, particularly the younger children," Fauci told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. "But...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in an interview with CNN that aired Monday evening said she had fears of being raped during the Jan. 6 insurrection in which she recounted people banging on her office doors while she hid. "I didn't think that I was just going to be killed," Ocasio-Cortez told CNN anchor Dana Bash. "I thought other things were going to happen to me as well." The New York Democrat said that "white supremacy and patriarchy are very linked in a lot of ways," and remarked on what she sees are the sexualization that violence. When asked by Bash...