Free Republic

"If you're going into that coffee shop to pick-up and go, you don't need to show proof. But if you're gonna linger, you're gonna eat that muffin, you're gonna sit down with your laptop, you gotta show proof of vaccination." Clip...

CHICAGO — Mayor Lori Lightfoot and health officials announced Tuesday that individuals 5 years of age and older will be required to show proof that they are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to dine indoors and visit gyms or entertainment venues where food or drinks are served. According to the mayor’s office, the new requirement goes into effect Jan. 3 and is in response to the rise in COVID-19 cases in part by the omicron variant. It is similar to the requirements already in place in other large cities, including New York City and Los Angeles. “There’s no denying that we’re...

For more than a century, the U.S. government has failed to prevent Americans from consuming politically disfavored intoxicants. Worse, it has systematically made drug use more dangerous by forcing consumers to rely on black-market products of unknown composition, and by pushing traffickers toward increasingly potent substances that are easier to smuggle. The ongoing opioid crisis, which has driven drug-related deaths to record levels, illustrates both of those phenomena. But instead of recognizing the lethal effects of prohibition, President Joe Biden is doubling down on a strategy that has never worked as intended. Last week, Biden signed two executive orders aimed...

The US Army is wrapping up early clinical trials on a universal vaccine it hopes will target all existing coronavirus variants. Named SpFN, for Spike Ferritin Nanoparticle, it has shown promise in non-human primate trials and early human trial results are expected "this month," according to a press release from the US Army Walter Reed Army Institute of Research released Thursday. The jab could also help protect against other coronaviruses beyond COVID-19, which offers hope against future pandemics. A new design The vaccine is designed on a new platform called "self-assembling protein nanoparticle." Unlike most currently available vaccines, which use...

Seventeen years ago, I reprised a Christmas column I'd written in the 1990s for a Texas newspaper. The original column and the 2004 interpretation celebrated a holiday prayer conceived by my favorite grand-aunt, Aunt Lillian, a before-the-big-meal "grace" of gratitude and humble spirit composed with a mother's grasp of Thanksgiving and Christmas appetites and enthusiasms. In 2004 I spent several months on active duty in Iraq. My family and I felt a great deal of gratitude for my return. I gave Lillian's prayer before both Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Allow the detour, but Aunt Lillian was a delightful lady and...

There's a whole host of reviews of the 2022 Lucid Air electric sedan popping up online, from long-form written works to quick walkaround videos and lengthy first-drive critiques. If you can only find time to watch a few, we encourage you to check out our own Tom Moloughney's first drive review, as well as the latest from Throttle House (above). If you're not a Throttle House fan or subscriber, we suggest you check out the YouTube channel. Not only are its videos highly informative, but also hilariously entertaining. We will warn you, however, that there may be a few instances...

President Lincoln receives the following telegram from Major General William T. Sherman “I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about 25,000 bales of cotton.”

When an entire society, particularly its professions, radically transforms the meanings of right and wrong and then lives by those inverted meanings as part of normal day-to-day events, they cannot be excused from accepting responsibility for the consequences of their actions.” Life Unworthy Of Life: Racial Phobia And Mass Murder In Hitler’s Germany, —James M. Glass Many friends are staggering around stunned that friends and family canceled Christmas gatherings “because of Omicron.” I am unable to “process” this. Here’s a piano dropped from a 7th floor window, something I’ve been meaning to tell you all, which I learned about via...

Chinese electric vehicle brand Nio has debuted a new mid-size family sedan with a battery option for all-day driving. The ET5 can be specified with an "ultra long range" pack that delivers up to 1,000 km of driving – although all might not be as it seems. The ET5 will be a sprightly drive, with peaks of 360 kW (483 horsepower) and 700 Nm (516 lb-ft) through a two-motor AWD system. It'll hit 100 km/h (62 mph) in 4.3 seconds from a standing start, which will handily see off most combustion cars at the lights. It's got a tidy cabin,...

New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, has exposed herself as a biased and unfit prosecutor by promising to go after former President Donald Trump, and she should be investigated, disciplined and potentially disbarred, legal expert Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax. ''The role of the prosecutor is not to get people, it's to do justice,'' Dershowitz said on Tuesday's ''Spicer & Co.'' ''She is not in the justice business. She is in the political-gotcha business. ''She is so undignified,'' he added. ''She brings the law into contempt and people, when they see her make statements like that, say, 'this is...

The NFL, NHL, and other sports organizations are freaking out because many of their fully vaccinated athletes are testing positive for COVID-19. In Europe, some more concerning sports-related news has been circulating below the radar for several months alleging an extraordinary number of otherwise healthy young athletes have died suddenly of heart attacks in the last six months. Some even suggest that the deaths are COVID vaccine (vax)–related, although the evidence is hotly disputed. The absence of mainstream news about the alleged spike in athlete deaths inspired some personal research. By now, most everyone paying attention knows that the vax...

Coughing all over the place during his rare public appearances, multi-vaxxed Joe Biden gives all appearances of having COVID. But if he does, he's got politics on his mind and therefore isn't about to be honest about it. The latest nonsense then comes from White House spokesweasel Jen Psaki, who's making curious claims. Following a report that Biden was exposed to COVID by a staffer who caught the disease, Psaki tried to spin the obvious to us about whether Biden has COVID, this time with a positively Jesuitical evasion about the president's status. She claimed this: .@PressSec says Biden is...

CNN has gone above and beyond the call of propaganda to spin economic coverage to benefit President Joe Biden’s White House. A new poll it released shows that effort has floundered. CNN’s new poll of registered voters found that Americans gift-wrapped Biden with the “lowest net economic rating of any president at this point through their first term since at least Jimmy Carter in 1977.” Fifty-five percent of voters disapprove of Biden in comparison to 44 percent who approve. The average of all polls taken in December has Biden at -13 points on the economy, according to CNN. That's “18...

Militant transgender advocates are imposing their agenda with uncompromising zeal on public school students. That's fine with resident Joe Biden. On Friday, the Biden administration announced that, by April, it will enhance the legal entitlements of transgender public school students, with new guarantees regarding access to bathrooms, locker rooms and sports competitions. These issues are grabbing the headlines, but they're less harmful to most students than the damage being done by the distortion of the school curriculum. Children as young as 5 are being encouraged to disregard their anatomy and choose their gender based on their feelings. Last week, a...

There was a time when every kid, and a lot of cops, fantasized about becoming FBI agents. Its agents were known as the best of the best. That was then. After Mid-Year Exam, Crossfire Hurricane, and numerous other scandals, being a part of the FBI is no longer a thing of pride. Many retired agents admit to being embarrassed and ashamed of what the bureau has become.When it comes to preventing crime, the FBI has dropped the ball far too many times. The FBI had credible warnings about the attack on 9/11, the Pulse Nightclub slaughter, the San Bernadino shooting,...

President Trump was asked by Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo why he didn’t fire Dr. Anthony Fauci from his coronavirus task force, despite concerns many on the political right have about Dr. Fauci’s job performance on the coronavirus task force. Trump responded, “I didn’t… because if you fire him [Fauci] you’re going to have a firestorm on the Left.”

In a recent column in the London-based Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Nadim Koteich, a Shi'ite Lebanese journalist and media figure known for his opposition to Hezbollah, wrote that this organization is holding Lebanon hostage and is beggaring the country, for instance by preventing it from reaching an agreement with Israel that would enable it to exploit its natural gas resources. Referring to the deal that is currently under discussion, for alleviating Lebanon's energy crisis by importing gas from Egypt and electricity from Jordan, Koteich wondered why, as a country on the shores of the Mediterranean, Lebanon could drill for its own offshore...

The family of a Dallas' QAnon cult member is sounding the alarm. Multiple members of the Leek family confirmed that their relative, who left her husband and children behind in Delaware to follow a fringe QAnon cult leader to Dallas last month, has been drinking a chemical cocktail containing chlorine dioxide, an industrial disinfectant, among other substances. Their relative has been drinking this cocktail alongside her fellow cult members and has been the one to mix it up and distribute it amongst the group as well, says family, who have declined to reveal the name of their relative in the...

But I’m not only a Democrat, I’m also a realist. And I believe in facts, more than I do in headlines. Here’s why I think Democrats have a brighter future than Republicans believe they do: APPROVAL RATINGS The president’s approval rating is in the 40’s and if history plays out, that would translate to dozens of Democrats losing their seats in the House in the midterm elections next November. After all, Republicans only need to net five seats to take back the House; one in the Senate. But in election terms, the midterms are a lifetime away. And once you...

The UK is reducing its COVID-19 isolation period from 10 to seven days starting Wednesday for people who get a negative rapid test two days in a row. The UK Health Security Agency, which is the equivalent of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, made the decision as the Omicron variant spreads rapidly across the country. As cases surge, many industries have been left short-staffed in the past week as workers who test positive have to isolate. “We want to reduce the disruption from COVID-19 to people’s everyday lives,” Health Secretary Sajid Javid said. The British health agency...