Free Republic

Game-changing news has emerged out of Iceland. As of this week, Iceland is the first country in the world to completely drop ALL Covid measures. There will be no lockdowns or social restrictions. There will be no mandatory Covid testing and if you happen to catch Covid you do not have to isolate. There will be no vaccine passports and no vaccine mandates. Anyone regardless of their vaccination status can travel to the country with no test required. The unvaccinated will not face any form of discrimination or exclusion from society. Iceland is returning to going back to life as...

“People who spend a lot of time in front of Fox News or MSNBC,” writes Kevin Williamson in National Review Online (NRO), “are not in the main what you’d call happy and well-adjusted people.” Williamson is one of the bright young writers of NR and NRO, presided over by Rich Lowry (or is it Richard now?) who have made National Review increasingly irrelevant to modern American conservatism. Williamson’s estimation of Fox News viewers resembles Hillary Clinton’s description of populist conservatives as “deplorables” and Barack Obama’s snide remark about those voters who cling to their religion and guns. Bill Buckley (who...

Before March had arrived, we witnessed the early probing of forward Russian troops into Ukraine. Initially, this force consisted of young inexperienced troops and old equipment. *snip* Ukraine begged for experienced Western fighting forces and their sophisticated weaponry to intervene to take on the might of the massive Russian heavily armed force in static formation before the heavy tanks began to roll. But that help was not forthcoming. *snip* Ukraine is, like Israel 1948, 1967, 1974, alone militarily. And if/when we finally act, whatever they receive may be too little too late. It pains me to see the obstinacy of...

“Blood is not thicker than morality,” radio host and author Laura Schlessinger once noted. This comes to mind when pondering how Fox News’ normally astute Tucker Carlson, who generally exhibits more philosophical depth than is the television news norm, stumbled a bit last Tuesday night. At issue was a Tucker Carlson Tonight segment about TV host Chris Cuomo’s “indefinite suspension” from CNN for using his press connections to help his brother, ex-NY governor Andrew Cuomo, craft a defense against the sexual misconduct allegations that ended his political career. Carlson had much to say that was true: Chris Cuomo is a...

With Democrats quaking in their boots over the plunging public support for Joe Biden and the political party that sold him as a moderate and as physically and mentally capable of doing the job, the White House messaging team and their media supporters face an enormous challenge. And they are bungling it as badly as the rest of the administration is bungling economic policy, diplomacy, and national security. The gist of the messaging lately is: 1. Things are really going well; don’t believe your lying eyes or empty pocketbook. 2. It’s your fault. 3. All this suffering is in a...

Thanks to a series of leaks from the hard drive of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop computer, we know there is more than enough evidence to appoint a special counsel, or at least convene a grand jury to investigate bribery, tax fraud, and probably several other categories of crime involving the Biden Crime Family. Three recent articles by highly respected reporters Miranda Devine (who has a book on the subject about to come out and whose work informs the other two writers), Byron York, and Emily Jashinsky present evidence typed in Hunter’s own hand of the schemes whereby Hunter acted as...

Activists from Black Lives Matter, not happy with merely defunding the police or raking in huge corporate donations as their objective, now want President Trump banned from all digital media and future office.That's the report from the Washington Examiner, which notes that they've put out and updated their list of demands:"We are joining Rep. Ilhan Omar, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Rep. Cori Bush, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, and others who are demanding Trump be immediately convicted in the United States Senate," reads the first demand on the BLM website. "Trump must also be banned from holding elected office in the future."The group...

A basic rule of international relations is that you do not impose sanctions without an end state in mind. You also need to be able to muster strong international support by providing clear proof of the charges you are bringing. Does the U.S. have that support? When you levy charges against another country and then apply sanctions, there will invariably be pushback. The situation can easily escalate into a major crisis. Has Biden thought through his dealings with Russia and President Vladimir Putin? What does he intend to accomplish with the latest round of sanctions against the Russian Federation? In...

In his lengthy address to the country on April 21, after numerous fatuous promises of enhanced social welfare programs, environmental protections, support for education, and the like — promises meant to divert attention from the genuine grievances behind the countrywide protests planned for that day — Putin proceeded to warn "organizers of provocations against the Russian Federation" against "crossing the red line in relation to Russia." As he continued, it became clear that the United States is included in these warnings, especially considering that the expulsion of ten American diplomats was to take place that same day. Putin appears to...

The funeral of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, at Windsor Castle on April 17, 2021, an emotional if muted affair, arouses mixed emotions. It was a sad personal family farewell but also an event of public significance, political and military, and a spectacular display of pageantry. The setting itself was symbolic of British history: Windsor Castle, where ten kings have been laid to rest. The royal procession proved a collaboration of the various branches of the armed forces, military bands, royal marine buglers, and an honor guard from all the armed forces. Symbolically, the naval cap and sword of Philip,...

We have a brand-new public health crisis -- gun violence. Now that the last pandemic is dying out, President Asterisk has decreed that people shooting each other is our next pandemic. It turns out murder is not a morality problem, it’s a health problem. It’s no wonder we haven’t dealt with this crisis effectively -- we didn’t really understand it. It seems to me that our political rulers just need to have another dance with their new-found emergency powers. Perhaps Dr. Two-Mask Fauci can lead us out of this crisis. He can use science to address gun violence with the...

The relentless campaign to demonize supporters of President Trump entered the realm of self-parody this past week, with warnings that the U.S. Capitol and democracy itself were in danger on March 4 because QAnon saw that date as the real inauguration day. It was all balderdash, a PsyOp aimed at delegitimizing support for Trump or questioning the integrity of the presidential election. Even the Washington Post admitted there was nothing to it, calling the reports a "mirage." At the Capitol, a March 4 threat from militant Trump supporters proves a mirage https://t.co/pHUgunuHEN — The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) March 4, 2021...

The following was published on January 15, 2021 under the title “Statement.”It has now been re-titled as “Retraction” and posted on the home page of American Thinker.______We received a lengthy letter from Dominion's defamation lawyers explaining why they believe that their client has been the victim of defamatory statements. Having considered the full import of the letter, we have agreed to their request that we publish the following statement:American Thinker and contributors Andrea Widburg, R.D. Wedge, Brian Tomlinson, and Peggy Ryan have published pieces on www.AmericanThinker.com that falsely accuse US Dominion Inc., Dominion Voting Systems, Inc., and Dominion Voting Systems...

This week Dr. Thomas Lifson’s blog, American Thinker, announced that it was closing its comments section.It is news to almost nobody who reads American Thinker that a political witch hunt is underway. Parties in and out of government are looking for excuses to suppress and destroy voices that oppose the left.Because AT lacks the ability to monitor comments in real time, and because our position that comments are a forum, not something we publish, is being called into question, we can no longer publish comments.We take this action with a heavy heart.This was followed up by a statement by Deputy...

We received a lengthy letter from Dominion's defamation lawyers explaining why they believe that their client has been the victim of defamatory statements. Having considered the full import of the letter, we have agreed to their request that we publish the following statement:

We received a lengthy letter from Dominion's defamation lawyers explaining why they believe that their client has been the victim of defamatory statements. Having considered the full import of the letter, we have agreed to their request that we publish the following statement: American Thinker and contributors Andrea Widburg, R.D. Wedge, Brian Tomlinson, and Peggy Ryan have published pieces on www.AmericanThinker.com that falsely accuse US Dominion Inc., Dominion Voting Systems, Inc., and Dominion Voting Systems Corporation (collectively “Dominion”) of conspiring to steal the November 2020 election from Donald Trump. These pieces rely on discredited sources who have peddled debunked theories...

Yesterday, we announced that we are closing comments at American Thinker. We immediately received a couple of hundred very unhappy, angry, and sometimes insulting emails about that decision. Without divulging why we made that decision, here are a few points to ponder.

Remember the Trump-hating Lincoln Project? That was the big-dollar NeverTrump group that included among its luminaries George Conway, the unhinged Trump-hating husband of the unfortunate Kellyanne Conway. They included many Dubya Bush administration operatives who'd been left out of the Trump administration and wanted revenge. Their loathing of Trump only got greater after that, and they threw their support to Joe Biden, raising $78 million and creating extremely nasty presidential campaign ads to take down Trump. They worked closely with Democrats and took their money, promising to help peel away Republicans to help Joe Biden. When that didn't happen and...

In her Georgia complaint, Sidney Powell included the declaration of Navid Keshavarz-Nia, an expert witness who stated under oath that there was massive computer fraud in the 2020 election, all of it intended to secure a victory for Joe Biden. Dr. Kershavarz-Nia's name may not mean a lot to you, but it's one of the weightiest names in the world when it comes to sniffing out cyber-security problems. We know how important Dr. Kershavarz-Nia is because, just two and a half months ago, the New York Times ran one of its Sunday long-form articles about a massive, multi-million-dollar fraud that...

Many pundits suggest that if you haven’t made up your mind by now on your choice for President, you haven’t been paying attention. They’re largely correct, but there are some (a minority) who are paying attention and are seeing a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. (Apologies to Winston Churchill) This may be best exemplified by David French’s recent column where he quotes theologian John Piper at length. The upshot of his post is that a leader’s immorality destroys society. To that end, he cites “unrepentant sexual immorality,” “unrepentant boastfulness,” “unrepentant vulgarity,” and “unrepentant factiousness” as key markers...