Free Republic

The Dutch government has said it will ease its Covid-19 restrictions, among Europe's toughest, from Wednesday. Dutch hospitality settings, including bars, restaurants and museums, have been shut since 18 December in a bid to curb the spread of the Omicron variant, reports BBC. But despite the restrictions, Covid-19 cases have continued to increase, with some 60,000 now recorded per day. Prime Minister Mark Rutte told a news conference that the country was "taking a risk" in easing the restrictions. Mr Rutte, who has faced growing calls for a relaxation of restrictions in recent weeks amid falling deaths and admissions to...

A Florida doctor says families of loved ones hospitalized with COVID-19 are resorting to desperate measures when approved treatments have failed.And when it’s not too late, some have seen tremendous success by sneaking medications prohibited by hospitals to patients, says Eduardo Balbona, an independent internist in Jacksonville.He’s helped dozens of seriously ill patients recover using ivermectin and other drugs and supplements not officially approved in the treatment of COVID-19, he says.Hospitals receive payments from the federal government for treating patients with COVID-19. But those payments are tied to their use of approved treatments only, as outlined in the CARES Act....

Moscow and Kyiv on Wednesday agreed at talks in Paris that all parties should observe a ceasefire in the east of Ukraine after more than eight hours of discussions which were hailed by a French diplomat as sending a "good signal." A Russian troop build-up close to the border with east of Ukraine has raised fears the Kremlin is planning military intervention in its pro-EU neighbor as Moscow presses demands over NATO's presence in eastern Europe. An aide to French President Emmanuel Macron, speaking on condition of anonymity, stressed that the Paris talks had been about resolving the separatist fighting...

Josh Duggar Interrogation Audio (RAW) video is 24 minutes long. Josh is currently filing his appeal and wants a new trial or acquittal.

Several prominent doctors joined about 30,000 demonstrators in the “Defeat the Mandates” march in Washington on Jan. 23. Among them was former federal government adviser Dr. Paul Alexander, who declared that COVID-19 mandates and rules have failed to prevent transmission of the virus.“Society has been so terrorized for two years,” Alexander told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program. “We found the science shows us lockdowns, school closures, mask mandates; they all failed. Those policies have failed.“And it’s time now to end this pandemic emergency. The time has come now for us to move forward.”In some highly vaccinated places, such as Israel,...

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former director of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and current board member at Pfizer, said that declining COVID-19 cases should signal to policymakers that it is time to lift more pandemic-related restrictions.“I think certainly on the east coast where you see cases declining dramatically we need to be willing to lean in and do that very soon I think as conditions improve we have to be willing to relax some of these measures with the same speed that we put them in place,” he told “The Squawk Box” in a Monday interview when asked about whether...

A doctor who has been offering free telehealth services to COVID-19 patients during the pandemic says that early treatment for COVID-19 works, claiming that he has a 99.99 percent survival rate.“We have a team of volunteer free doctors that donate their time to help treat these patients that come to us,” Dr. Ben Marble, the founder of myfreedoctor.com, an online medical consultation service, said at a roundtable discussion hosted by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on Jan. 24.He added, “We deliver the early treatment protocols to them as early as we can, and we have a 99.99 percent survival rate. So,...

Yesterday, a group of sportswriters voted David Ortiz into the Hall of Fame. They did this even though Ortiz tested positive for performance enhancing drugs in 2003, around the time he transformed himself from a below average hitter to a star. In other Hall of Fame news, Curt Schilling fell well short of the number of votes required for admission because woke sportswriters with ballots don’t like his politics. Here is what I wrote on the subject when Schilling — or rather the voters — fell short last year. Schilling should view his exclusion as a badge of honor, and...

There was big news on Wednesday about Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer deciding to retire, something folks on the left have been pushing for some time to get his replacement named by Joe Biden. But even that story got messy when reports followed that Breyer hadn’t planned on announcing the news yet and was “upset” or “surprised” (depending upon which report you chose to believe). The report still appears to have validity that he is going to retire, just that he hadn’t planned to announce it when it was announced, but rather on his terms.This may reveal some of that...

As RedState reported earlier, Justice Stephen Breyer is reportedly retiring at the end of this Supreme Court term. With his pending retirement, Republicans are quickly splitting into two schools of thought on what to do next.On one side, you have those who don’t believe any kind of battle is worth the trouble because Democrats will undoubtedly have the votes to confirm a replacement. On the other side, you have those who think the GOP should take a stand, make the case against whoever Biden nominates, and then go on record against them, even knowing that, in the end, they don’t...

It is no secret that I have had a lot of foreign policy disagreements with the bipartisan War Caucus in Washington D.C. during my time in office. From Iraq to Syria, and Yemen to Afghanistan, it seems that there is always a war they want to be in.I was heartened when President Trump spoke of stopping our “endless wars” and I was hoping for more restraint from President Biden. Unfortunately, that wasn’t his history and it doesn’t seem to be his current direction. The endless wars are ramping up again even as I write today.The war-as-first-resort crowd, including the Biden...

Data, transparency, and surveillance. That is what has been missing from the greatest experiment on humans of all time throughout this pandemic. Now, military medical whistleblowers have come forward with what they claim is perhaps the most accurate and revealing data set on vaccine safety one could possibly find. The pro-pharma politicians and media claim the CDC’s pharmacosurveillance tool “VAERS” is not good enough to trigger investigations into the shots because anyone can supposedly submit a vaccine adverse event entry. Thus, all the concerning safety signals from VAERS are being ignored, even though that system was put in place as...

Neil Young's discography will no longer be available on Spotify. The musician, 76, gave the music streaming platform an ultimatum earlier this week between his music and Joe Rogan's podcast. On Wednesday, Spotify confirmed that it would be removing his songs for the time being. "We want all the world's music and audio content to be available to Spotify users," a spokesperson for Spotify said in a statement to PEOPLE on Wednesday. "With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators. We have detailed content policies in place and we've removed over 20,000 podcast...

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said Tuesday on MSNBC that not only the government, but Big Tech companies have a role to play when it comes to censoring so-called “misinformation” and curating “accurate” information to the public. Murthy made the comments after he was specifically asked by MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski about alleged misinformation on Joe Rogan’s highly popular “The Joe Rogan Experience” and general Facebook posts. “What do you think are the best ways to push back on misinformation about COVID that continues to be aggressively pushed, whether it be Joe Rogan’s podcast or all over Facebook?” the host...

Join together with fellow FREEPERS to pray for AMERICA: For those in Authority in Government, Family, Military, Business, Healthcare, Education, Churches, and the Media. I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession, and thanksgiving be made for everyone: for kings and all those in authority that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. ~ 1 Timothy 2:1-2 Religion Forum Threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind.

Actor Jussie Smollett’s sentencing hearing has been set for March 10, according to defense attorney Tina Glandian. Smollett was found guilty by a Cook County jury last month of five counts of disorderly conduct for lying about a racist and homophobic attack on himself in 2019 near his Streeterville neighborhood home. The jury found Smollett not guilty of a sixth count. The charges are low-level felonies that carry a possible sentence of three years but are also eligible for probation.

Officials are urging people to avoid downtown Ottawa this weekend with a cross-country ‘Freedom Convoy’ of truckers expected to arrive at Parliament Hill. Police say they don’t yet know how many demonstrators to expect downtown, or how long they plan to stay. But they have developed a strategy that will manage the demonstrations and respond to events as they happen. “This will be a significant an extremely fluid event that could go on for a prolonged period,” Acting Deputy Chief Trish Ferguson told a briefing of the city’s police services board on Wednesday. “We are planning for a range of...

Over 120 priests and employees with the Catholic church community in Germany came out as queer and launched a campaign demanding an end to institutional discrimination against LGBTQ people.The Roman Catholic Church in Germany on Sunday faced renewed calls for better protection of LGBTQ rights and an end to institutional discrimination against queer people. Around 125 people, including former and current priests, teachers, church administrators and volunteers, identified themselves as gay and queer, asking the church to take into account their demands and do away with "outdated statements of church doctrine" when it comes to sexuality and gender. The members...

On Tuesday, Carrie Lukas showed up to Forestville Elementary School with her two young children, ages 9 and 7, unmasked. The school is located in the Fairfax County Public School system, the largest district in Virginia and one of the largest in the country. Despite Gov. Glenn Youngkin's executive order leaving the decision of whether children should be masked up to parents, Lukas' children were sent home and suspended. Further, the school's security officer called the police to shoo away a handful of other parents who had gathered, and Luke Rosiak, a reporter for The Daily Wire, whose child will...

Blood sugar control, which is impaired in individuals with diabetes, is affected by various factors—including the timing of meals relative to sleep as well as levels of melatonin, a hormone primarily released at night that helps control sleep-wake cycles. "We decided to test if late eating that usually occurs with elevated melatonin levels results in disturbed blood sugar control," says Richa Saxena, Ph.D. "In natural late eaters, we simulated early and late dinner timing by administering a glucose drink and compared effects on blood sugar control over two hours," explains Saxena. "We also examined differences between individuals who were carriers...