Free Republic

The prevailing narrative surrounding the sudden shift away from face mask and vaccine mandates by city and state governments is that they started reading the polls. This is absolutely not true.“Somebody’s been reading the polls.”The statement on a social media post from a popular user highlighting the lifting of face mask mandates across the country struck me as odd. The polls have nothing to do with why politicians, mostly Democrats, are suddenly dropping face mask and vaccine mandates across the country. I’ll explain the real reason behind the hasty — albeit temporary — retreat from authoritarianism in a moment, but...

VAERS data released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention included a total of 1,151,450 reports of adverse events from all age groups following COVID vaccines, including 24,827 deaths and 200,331 serious injuries between Dec. 14, 2020, and Feb. 25, 2022. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today released new data showing a total of 1,151,450 reports of adverse events following COVID vaccines were submitted between Dec. 14, 2020, and Feb. 25, 2022, to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). VAERS is the primary government-funded system for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S.The data...

Floundering in his attempts to wield political power while lacking a political office, Donald Trump looks increasingly like a stray orange hair to be flicked off the nation’s sleeve. His residual power, which he must use or lose, is to influence his party’s selection of candidates for state and federal offices. This is, however, perilous because he has the power of influence only if he is perceived to have it. That perception will dissipate if his interventions in Republican primaries continue to be unimpressive. So, Trump must try to emulate the protagonist of “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.”...

MIT scientist Stephanie Seneff’s paper, “Worse Than the Disease: Reviewing Some Possible Unintended Consequences of mRNA Vaccines Against COVID-19,” published in the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice and Research in collaboration with Dr. Greg Nigh, is still one of the best, most comprehensive descriptions of the many possible unintended consequences of the mRNA gene transfer technologies incorrectly referred to as “COVID vaccines.” December 9, 2021, their paper was reprinted in the Townsend Letter, the Examiner of Alternative Medicine. Seneff, Ph.D., a senior research scientist at MIT who has been conducting research at MIT for over five decades, has spent...

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has an odd way of trying to lure tourists. At a Friday press conference in Times Square, the mayor made a direct call to travelers to return to the city – which he then declared was “so boring.” “It is time for us to enjoy our city again. All of these ‘nos, nos, nos.’ We’ve become a city of ‘nos.’ I want to become a city of excitement,” Adams said while announcing the citywide COVID-19 vaccine mandate for most indoor spaces would officially be lifted on Monday. So does that mean Adams didn’t ‘enjoy’...

Explanation: From somewhere else in the Milky Way galaxy, Comet 2I/Borisov was just visiting the Solar System. Discovered by amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov on August 30, 2019, the first known interstellar comet is seen in these two Hubble Space Telescope images from November and December 2019. On the left, a distant background galaxy near the line-of-sight to Borisov is blurred as Hubble tracked the speeding comet and dust tail about 327 million kilometers from Earth. At right, 2I/Borisov appears shortly after perihelion, its closest approach to Sun. European Southern Observatory observations indicate that this comet may never have passed close...

Becky Spelman is a candidate for the pro-business, libertarian United Australia Party against the weak-kneed Morrison government's Education Miniater Alan Tudge in the upcoming federal election. Here she is seen wearing party colours with a loyal, friendly, talented team-mate. Drifter is a labrador-Collie who can take spectacular catches. In Australia, doing that is called taking a screamer. Some of us think Drifter would be a better Education Minister than Tudge. This dog was one of the stalwarts of the Occupy Parliament protest which held the steps of state parliament 24 hours a day for several weeks last November. Tudge shares...

WNBA champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist Brittney Griner has been detained in Russia and could face up to 10 years in prison after customs officers found "vapes" containing hashish oil in her luggage back in February, reports say.

Putin’s hubris, yes-men for generals, lack of fighting conviction among the men, poor logistics and strong Ukrainian leadership and determination have combined to turn the Russian invasion of Ukraine into a military quagmire. Meanwhile, the West has upped the stakes in a financial war. The underlying assumption is that the Russian economy is weak and those of the Western allies are stronger. A few key metrics shows this is incorrect. The underlying resilience of the Russian economy and its financial system is not generally understood, and instead EU sanctions could end up undermining the whole euro system and the euro...

How does any rational or caring human being watch us lose a 20-year war against cave-dwelling barbarians, and not just lose that war, but lose it in the most humiliating fashion imaginable, and less than a year later already have a war-boner for Ukraine? I’m convinced the unholy alliance between Neocons, the corporate media, and the Democrat party is the Seventh Seal.

Fr. Michael Pfleger Endorses Pro-Abortion CandidateCV NEWS FEED // Fr. Michael Pfleger, who is something of a local celebrity in the Archdiocese of Chicago, is endorsing State Sen. Jacqueline Collins, D-Chicago, in the primary to replace Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill.Collins announced her candidacy Friday, and while she is one of 17 Democrats contending for the 1st Congressional District seat, Pfleger’s endorsement places her in a prominent position among them.“Collins starts off in the top tier in a field with many strong contenders” thanks in part to the priest’s endorsement, the Chicago Sun Times reported:Collins has been connected to Pfleger —...

“Sorry to be a free speech absolutist.”Billionaire Elon Musk has been seen as very helpful to Ukrainians when he quickly launched Starlink internet services after the country lost access to the web. The orbital internet technology is far more challenging for Russia to cut off than localized ISPs.But it wasn’t just Russia wanting to deny Ukrainians an uncensored internet. World leaders called on Starlink to block Russia news broadcasts from reaching Ukrainians as well.“Starlink has been told by some governments (not Ukraine) to block Russian news sources. We will not do so unless at gunpoint. Sorry to be a free...

Ukraine is considered the “breadbasket of Europe,” and the Russian invasion is choking off grain exports, sending global food prices to record highs. Grain prices surged to record highs last week as world food prices are now higher than they were during the 2011 Arab Spring, leaving us with an abundance of caution that political uprisings due to food price shocks could be right around the corner. On Friday, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Food Price Index (FFPI), a measure of the monthly change in international prices of a basket of food commodities, reported record-high prices for February....

Zelensky pleads for US military aid, says if Biden acted sooner ‘there would not have been war’ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky chided the Biden administration for not slapping sanctions on Russia’s Vladimir Putin sooner in an emotional, approximately hour-long Zoom call with 280 US senators and House members Saturday morning. “If you had started sanctions months ago, there would not have been war,” he said, Fox News reported. Zelensky thanked the US for the assistance it has already sent, and pleaded for additional American military aid for his besieged country, a Senate source said. Dozens of lawmakers unmuted themselves to...

“‘Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy’” (Matthew 5:7). When we are merciful and we receive mercy, we experience God’s cycle of mercy. God is merciful to us by saving us through Christ; in obedience we are merciful to others; and God in faithfulness gives us even more mercy, pouring out blessing for our needs and withholding severe chastening for our sin. But only those who are merciful qualify to receive mercy. David said of the Lord, “With the kind You show Yourself kind” (2 Sam. 22:26). Yet James says, “For judgment will be merciless to one who...

HOUSTON, Texas – U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, put out the following statement after a call with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy today: “The Ukrainian people and President Zelenskyy are showing the world what a free country looks like when fighting for its survival against totalitarian aggression, even at overwhelming odds. We have all been moved by their bravery and heroism. “It is incumbent upon the United States to ensure that our Ukrainian allies have what they need to defend themselves, and that Putin does not have resources he needs to fund his war machine....

It was near 23rd Avenue around 11 a.m. Thursday morning, when Denver Police said someone broke into a box truck and took a dolly and a box of human remains. Sources told KDVR/KWGN it was a blue and white cardboard box about 20 x 15 x18 inches with “Science Care” written on the sides. Inside the box? Human heads. Science Care is a program for donating bodies to science to help improve scientific research and education. FOX31 has reached out to the company to learn more about the intended destination. Police also told us they were on their way to...

Anyone able to input best locations to eat really good sushi in Austin these days. Know of a good place in Pflugerville, but haven't been in a long time. Thanks in advance.

In 2014, the Obama Administration was behind a coup to install a leader in Ukraine. Less than a decade later, the same group installed Biden in the US with a coup. We shared yesterday the actions that Obama and Biden took in 2014 to rid Ukraine of its Russia-leaning President and replace him with a leader picked by the Obama regime and others in Obama’s State Department. This was discussed at length in 2014 after a phone call from Victoria Nuland was leaked showing that the Obama Administration, including Joe Biden, was picking the next leader for Ukraine after being...

[…]Singing gay love songs once killed the careers of artists like Patrick Haggerty, whose band Lavender Country in 1973 released what's widely considered the first country album recorded by an out gay performer. Even artists who came out decades later, like k.d. lang and Chely Wright, said their careers stalled after they made their sexuality public.Now, out queer people are some of the most celebrated country stars. Brandi Carlile and Lil Nas X are Grammy winners. T.J. Osborne, one half of the Brothers Osbourne, came out last year, the first out gay artist signed to a major country label. Trixie...