Free Republic

The Biden administration will begin offering coronavirus booster shots Sept. 20, top health officials announced Wednesday, after concluding that a third shot is needed to fight off waning immunity. The administration said it is developing plans to begin offering the booster shots after reviewing a wide array of data. The plan, which applies only to the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, calls for Americans to get a booster shot eight months after receiving their second doses. The officials said they expect that a booster shot will be needed for people who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, but they are still...

Joe Biden’s emergency Afghanistan press conference Monday accomplished exactly the opposite of instilling confidence in the American regime, by neither promising accountability for this catastrophic failure nor releasing a plan to stabilize the situation, reassure our allies, and recapture at least some deterrence against our watching enemies. This is a disaster with evil consequences that will reverberate long and far.The lack of accountability worsens the debacle by teaching Americans, our friends, and our foes that things this grossly incompetent will happen again. As Ben Domenech pointed out Monday, “Whoever Biden doesn’t fire, their performance Biden believes is acceptable. If this...

Recently, our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com reported that Afghanistan topped the list of 170 counties receiving U.S. foreign aid. In FY2018 (the latest year available), Afghanistan received $6 billion in direct foreign aid alone. Since 2001, total U.S. taxpayer cost of all operations likely exceeded $2 trillion, according to estimates from researchers at Brown University. It is impossible to say how much of that money has fallen into Taliban hands, but it’s significant. Those numbers pale in comparison to the 22,000 military casualties, including approximately 2,400 fatalities suffered by American servicemen and women. But as the Taliban continues its rampage, as...

President Biden’s job approval rating plunged 7 percentage points — to the lowest level of his presidency so far — amid the chaotic evacuation of US military forces and American civilians from Afghanistan, according to a new poll.​ The Reuters/Ipsos survey, conducted Monday, found that 46 percent of Americans approved of Biden’s performance — the lowest of the weekly polls taken since Biden entered the White House in January. ​ A similar poll published last Friday showed Biden with a 53 percent approval rating

Republicans flipped a state legislature seat in Connecticut on Tuesday night, in a huge victory in a district President Joe Biden won by over 25 percent in the 2020 election. Republican Ryan Fazio decisively defeated Democrat Alex Gevanter in the state’s 36th Senate District and ended the state Senate’s Democratic supermajority.Congratulations to Republican @ryanfazio for winning Connecticut Senate District 36!Biden won this district by 25 points in 2020 and tonight, we flipped it RED!The RNC was proud to work with the @CTGOP to get out the vote.— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) August 18, 2021!! HUGE GOP win! Flipping a state senate...

Chicago Automobile Trade Association (CATA) drops “Auto Show” in favor of “Grand Theft Auto Show” at McCormick Place to boost attendance. From the desk of Lori: With the full support of the major automotive manufacturers, Kim Foxx and Rock Star Games (maker of the video game, Grand Theft Auto), I am thrilled to announce the 2022 Chicago Grand Theft Auto Show at McCormick Place. LoJack is underwriting the event.

The husband of a Formula One circuit boss shot her and her mistress dead after finding them in bed together — then killed himself, it is believed. Nathalie Maillet, 51 — manager of Belgium’s Spa-Francorchamps track — was found dead alongside Ann Lawrence Durviaux, 53, with the body of Franz Dubois nearby in their house at Gouvy. He is said to have alerted police before turning the gun on himself. Mayor Veronique Leonard confirmed: ‘I was warned around 2.30am by police that a double murder and suicide had been committed.’ Ex-race driver Ms Maillet was appointed in 2016 and oversaw...

America flew just 2,000 people out of Kabul overnight on jets that could have taken 10,000 in the latest night of shambolic efforts to get tens of thousands of people out of Afghanistan and away from the Taliban. Overnight, 18 C-17 US Air Force jets left Kabul last night carrying 2,000 people including 365 Americans, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said on a phone briefing with journalists on Wednesday morning. The jets can easily carry 500 people and on Sunday, one was used to get 640 people out of Kabul. One of the planes that left on Tuesday night had a...

Round blobs known as brain organoids, are grown in a petri dish from stem cells German scientists developed 'optic cups' on the mini-brains which can see light The primitive eyes have retinas, lenses, corneas and nerve cells They're equivalent to the stage of eye formation in a 5-week-old fetus The science could lead to lab-grown retinas for people with vision loss

Taliban blocks access to Kabul Airport? Just yesterday they were telling us they were nice guys Earlier this week, the triumphant Taliban was boasting about their newfound respect for free speech, women’s rights, etc. — all within the boundaries of Sharia law, naturally. I’m going to quit drinking — within the confines of cocktails at five, wine with dinner, a bedtime brandy, and the occasional Bloody Mary at breakfast. Today the Taliban is preventing refugees from gaining access to Kabul Airport, the last remaining thread between death and a chance at escape from the Taliban’s tender mercies. The Wall Street...

More than 80 members of the U.S. Congress have signed a letter concluding that the Biden administration broke the law by dropping a lawsuit filed on behalf of a pro-life nurse forced to participate in the performance of an abortion in violation of federal conscience laws. A coalition of 21 senators and 63 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, all Republicans, signed a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra last Wednesday.They objected to the administration's move last month to drop a lawsuit filed by the Trump administration against the University...

[H/T ExTexasRedhead]ONE: A bombshell. Alex Berenson, former New York Times reporter, August 6: “Covid vaccine maker Moderna received 300,000 reports of side effects after vaccinations over a three-month period following the launch of its shot, according to an internal report from a company that helps Moderna manage the reports.”“That figure is far higher than the number of side effect reports about Moderna’s vaccine publicly available in the federal system that tracks such adverse events.”BOOM. 300,000 vaccine adverse effects NOT reported to VAERS, the federal database. Berenson: “The 300,000 figure comes from an internal update provided to employees by IQVIA, a...

Apparently, actual terrorist organizations are fine. Questions continue to swirl over why some social media platforms like Twitter are giving the Taliban, a terrorist organization under U.S. law, a public platform having permanently banned American dissidents and the President of the United States himself. After Facebook and YouTube moved to ban any accounts associated with the Taliban following their takeover of Afghanistan, Twitter faced scrutiny as to why it hadn’t followed suit. When a Taliban representative was asked for a response on the ban, he chided Facebook for tacitly supporting free speech while silencing those who express the wrong opinions....

President Joe Biden plans to spend Wednesday pivoting his priorities back to the coronavirus pandemic, even as thousands of Americans remain stranded in Afghanistan. The president plans to meet with his coronavirus team in the Oval Office on Wednesday afternoon, according to his schedule, before delivering remarks about the pandemic at 4:30 p.m. The White House is expected to advise Americans to get vaccine boosters eight months after they were first vaccinated. The White House is also holding a briefing with Biden’s coronavirus team public health officials.

With Ramat HaSharon approaching its centennial year, archaeological evidence indicates the Tel Aviv suburb’s history goes back much further than previously thought. “The excavation unearthed evidence of agricultural-industrial activity at the site during the Byzantine period – about 1,500 years ago. Among other finds, we discovered a large winepress paved with a mosaic as well as plastered installations and the foundations of a large structure that may have been used as a warehouse or even a farmstead,” said Dr. Yoav Arbel, who directed the excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority. “Inside the buildings and installations, we found many...

The leftist governing party of the devolved Scottish parliament is calling for its emergency coronavirus powers to be made “permanent”, giving them the ability to shut schools, enforce mask-wearing, and impose lockdowns without time limit. The Scottish National Party (SNP) — which, despite being in favour of superstate EU membership, exists to campaign for the North of Britain to break away from the United Kingdom — published on Tuesday an announcement for a 12-week public consultation on removing the expiry date of the leftist government’s ability to enforce wide-ranging lockdown measures, also apparently broadening them beyond the scope of dealing...

The Australian government is going to seize 24,000 children from it’s citizens and place them in a stadium quarantine camp to be forcibly vaccinated. Parents will not be allowed to attend.As was reported by the Daily Expose in the United Kingdom and Red State in the United States, Australia’s Brad Hazzard, the Minister for Health and Medical Research, has told parents in a press conference that 24,000 children will be sent to a stadium to get the experimental Covid-19 vaccine, and parents will not allowed to be present. Hazzard insisted to parents that their children would be “well looked after.”

Variant garners attention after deadly Belgian nursing home outbreakIt doesn't yet have a Greek letter to represent it, but the B.1.621 variant of COVID-19 is being eyed closely after its role in a deadly nursing home outbreak in Belgium. Originally detected in Colombia in January, B.1.621 was recently named a "variant of interest" by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control -- though neither the World Health Organization nor the CDC has elevated it to this status just yet. B.1.621 has been detected in the U.S., though it (along with version B.1.621.1) currently accounts for just about 1% of...

*The Taliban's 'Angels of Salvation' are going door-to-door to round up suspected looters amid chaos in Kabul *Footage shows alleged thieves being dragged out of their homes at gunpoint and being shamed in the street *Robbers have their faces tarred and are strapped up to the backs of trucks to be paraded through the city *Journalist Zahidullah Nazirzada was reportedly shot dead today raising the Afghan national flag in Jalalabad *A young woman was shot dead by Taliban in north of the country for reportedly refusing to wear a hijab *Harrowing image shows her parents crouching next to her body...

Restaurant Rules Hello. Hi, table for two, please. Sure, and your name. Jessie. Great. And do you and your guest have your vaccination cards? We do. Can you tell us who our server will be? Um, looks like Brad will be your server tonight. Great. Can you show us Brad's vaccination card? Um... And also, can you provide me with proof that Brad is not a carrier of HIV, Hepatitis A or B, or any other communicable diseases? Um... Also, we would prefer not to be served by someone who is on or uses recreational drugs such as marijuana, cocaine,...