Free Republic

I had to read this twice. Did a feminist really write this? Did a liberal really write this? Did the San Francisco Chronicle really publish this? Yes—and it's prime material to get the woke mob all huffy. The issue about COVID, masks, and schools continues to be an issue for liberal America. They want masks all the time, among other things. What is clear is that it’s screwing up kids. You all know this—the mental health crisis that will result of the adults overreacting to a virus with a 99-plus percent survival rate will last for generations. It’s not reported...

MSNBC host Joy Reid said Friday on her show “The ReidOut” that Republicans are attempting to rile up white voters with tactics used by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler while discussing laws banning books about race issues in schools and the teaching Critical Race Theory. Reid said, “Book burning and banning happened to be staples of fascism and communism. The Nazis did it, Hitler, imposing rigid censorship on newspapers and burning all literature he considered dangerous. The Soviets banned books, too, along with the Chinese Communist Party.”

Cop lives mattered outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral Friday. Perhaps not since America welcomed its victorious legions home from Europe in 1945 have New York’s streets seen a uniformed presence quite like the blue wall that stood tall in Fifth Avenue Friday. They had come to honor the sacrifice of NYPD Officer Jason Rivera — murdered at 22 in service to a too-often-ungrateful city. On Wednesday, Officer Wilbert Mora — mortally wounded alongside Rivera in a Harlem apartment last week — will himself be laid to rest from the cathedral. His sacrifice was no less profound, but it will be hard...

Joni Mitchell is joining her old friend and contemporary Neil Young in having her legendary music catalog pulled from Spotify over concerns about vaccine misinformation being spread on the platform’s popular Joe Rogan Experience podcast. In a brief note posted to her official website on Friday, the singer-songwriter wrote, “I’ve decided to remove all my music from Spotify. Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives. I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue.”

A former student of a Missouri boarding school has been identified as the suspect who shot and wounded three Houston police officers after an hours-long standoff Thursday night. Roland Caballero, 31, is in custody after the Thursday night shooting, according to ABC13 and KPRC 2 in Houston. Caballero reportedly was shot in the neck and was taken to the hospital. Two of the three officers had been released from the hospital as of Friday afternoon, according to Houston Police. The third is in stable condition, police said. Caballero attended Agape Boarding School in Stockton, Missouri, as a teenager from around...

SÃO PAULO – On January 21, the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB) released a joint statement with other civic organizations condemning the campaign against the vaccination of children in Brazil. Although the declaration does not directly mention President Jair Bolsonaro, its target is clearly his rhetoric against the COVID-19 vaccine, especially for the youth. On several occasions, Bolsonaro has expressed his opposition to vaccinating young people, claiming that the risk of death from COVID-19 among children and teenagers is “almost zero” and saying that he would not let his 11-year-old daughter be vaccinated. According to the news website...

Ian Anderson has a timely theory for the reason prog-rock — and his band Jethro Tull specifically — wasn't stopped by the rise of punk in the '70s. “I think the punks thought that they were the triple vaccination that would rid the world forever of the horrible virus of prog rock,” he said in a recent interview with The Telegraph. “Unfortunately, like in the real world, the virus tends to bounce back in a slightly revived or even re-energized form.” In a separate interview with The Guardian, Anderson noted that where other punk or rock bands were leaning into...

Does this look like normal behavior to you, America?

President Biden visited the site of a Pittsburgh bridge that collapsed hours before his arrival in the Steel City Friday and vowed to kick-start a national effort to repair faulty infrastructure. Biden’s motorcade reached the remains of the Fern Hollow Bridge just after 1 p.m. The span had crumbled about six hours earlier, injuring 10 people — three of whom were hospitalized. No fatalities were reported.

The Archbishop of San Juan de Puerto Rico, Roberto Octavio González Nieves, expressed his sorrow and repudiated the demolition of the city’s statue of Juan Ponce de León, a Spanish colonizer who was Puerto Rico’s first governor. “I would like to express my sadness over the acts that led to the demolition of the statue of the first governor of Puerto Rico, Juan Ponce de León. Said action must draw our strongest feeling of repudiation,” the archbishop said in a Jan. 24 statement. The statue was torn down the night of Jan. 23-24, shortly before the visit of Felipe VI,...

Places with highest daily reported cases per capita Seven-day average of daily new reported cases per 100,000 residents

Musicians have taken sides in the ongoing discourse surrounding Neil Young’s battle with Spotify. Young made headlines on Jan. 24 when he demanded his music be pulled from Spotify due to the streaming site’s support for The Joe Rogan Experience, a popular podcast which has been scrutinized for promoting lies about COVID-19 vaccines. “I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines – potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them,” the rocker wrote at the time. “I want all my music off their platform. They can have [Joe] Rogan or Young....

The 45th president weighed-in on Joe Biden’s blunders and the current state of how elections are run. Donald Trump highlighted election practices that are illegal in many states and the abuse of U.S. election procedures by Democrats. In an interview with Lou Dobbs on Thursday, Trump said mail-in ballots and drop boxes are ripe for fraud. This comes as Georgia launched a formal probe into those practices in its 2020 elections in violation of the state law. Trump also stressed stolen elections are having disastrous consequences for the U.S. Trump then commented that runaway inflation, labor shortages and the supply...

A Republican lawmaker in Arizona is pushing legislation in the state's House of Representatives that would allow the state's Legislature to overturn primary or general election results. The legislation was introduced by state Rep. John Fillmore, a Republican, and it would be a significant overhaul of Arizona's voting procedure. If passed, the majority of early and absentee voting would be eliminated, and Arizonans would be required to vote in their respective home precinct, according to a report. However, the most dramatic change the legislation would bring would be the requirement to convene for a special session following an election to...

Neil Young, who recently chose to have his music removed from Spotify in protest of vaccine misinformation promoted by podcast host Joe Rogan, says his decision has nothing to do with censorship. “I support free speech,” Young wrote in a letter posted to his Neil Young Archives site. “I have never been in favor of censorship. Private companies have the right to choose what they profit from, just as I can choose not to have my music support a platform that disseminates harmful information. I am happy and proud to stand in solidarity with the front line health care workers...

With $60 million on hand, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation’s coffers are overflowing — but it’s unclear who controls all that money, according to a report. The organization’s executive director stepped down just months after the nonprofit declared it had raised over $90 million, and in the year since, there’s been no one at the helm, according to a Washington Examiner investigation.

President Biden said Friday he plans to send a small number of U.S. forces to Eastern Europe in the “near term” amid growing fears of a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine. “I’ll be moving troops to Eastern Europe in the NATO countries in the near term,” Biden told reporters at Joint Base Andrews upon returning from a trip to Pittsburgh. “Not too many.”

At a short hearing Friday, Judge Bruce Schroeder approved two deals — one, agreed to by Rittenhouse, was to let authorities destroy the rifle; the other was to divvy up the $2 million bail with actor Ricky Schroder and a Texas non-profit organization led by Atlanta lawyer Lin Wood. Under the agreement, $920,000 will be paid, in trust, to Richards & Dimmer, the Racine law firm that defended Rittenhouse. Another $925,000 will go to #FightBack Foundation. Schroder, who posed with Rittenhouse soon after he was released on bail, gets back $150,000 he contributed. snip Rittenhouse was 17 at the time...

The Biden administration is exploring ways for Medicare beneficiaries to get over-the-counter, at-home COVID-19 tests for free. The White House is requiring private insurance companies to cover the cost of eight at-home COVID-19 tests per person each month, if the customer files for reimbursement. The requirement was put in place as a result of the massive surge in infections due to the omicron variant.

On Friday, Michael Adder, the political cartoonist for the Washington Post, mocked the Freedom Convoy of truckers crossing the breadth of Canada and heading for the nation’s capital, Ottawa, to protest against Canada’s vaccine mandate. Adder created a cartoon of numerous trucks, all labeled in capital letters “FASCISM,” adding the hashtags, “fascism” and “supplychain.” Roughly five hours later, The Post printed an opinion piece attacking the convoy. The author, David Moscrop, wrote, “The movement shares an affinity with Trumpist toxic authoritarianist politics.”