Free Republic

Few in the media seemed eager to attend a ceremony last week in Washington, D.C., where the prestigious American Academy of Sciences and Letters was awarding its top intellectual freedom award. The problem may have been the recipient: Stanford Professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Bhattacharya has spent years being vilified by the media over his dissenting views on the pandemic. As one of the signatories of the 2020 Great Barrington Declaration, he was canceled, censored, and even received death threats. That open letter called on government officials and public health authorities to rethink the mandatory lockdowns and other extreme measures in...

Censorship of wrongthink by Big Tech at the behest of the government is government censorship, which violates the First Amendment. One warm weekend in October of 2020, three impeccably credentialed epidemiologists—Jayanta Bhattacharya, Sunetra Gupta, and Martin Kulldorff, of Stanford, Oxford, and Harvard Universities respectively—gathered with a few journalists, writers, and economists at an estate in the Berkshires where the American Institute for Economic Research had brought together critics of lockdowns and other COVID-related government restrictions. On Sunday morning shortly before the guests departed, the scientists encapsulated their views—that lockdowns do more harm than good, and that resources should be devoted...

White coat supremacy -- a major threat to freedom and democracy in America. Francis Collins, the first appointed National Institutes of Health director to serve more than one president, stepped down on December 19, leaving behind a record open to question. For example, in an October 8, 2020 email, Collins told Dr. Anthony Fauci, “there needs to be a quick and devastating public takedown of its premises. I don’t see that on line yet. Is it underway?” Collins’ target was the Great Barrington Declaration, signed by more than 900,000 epidemiologists and public health scientists to show concern about the damaging...

Illinois State Police and the Illinois Emergency Management Agency are making plans to send additional law enforcement personnel to Chicago in the event a shortage of city police officers leads to dangerous situations. WGN Investigates has learned a coordinator from the Illinois Law Enforcement Alarm System (ILEAS) sent an email to a dozen police officials from Kankakee to Barrington asking them to ask members of their specialized units whether they would be willing to respond to critical situations in Chicago – and how quickly they could get there.

From October 2-4, 2020, the American Institute for Economic Research hosted a small conference for scientists to discuss the harms of the Covid-19 lockdowns, and maybe hint at a path back to normal life. Organized by Martin Kulldorff, Sunetra Gupta, and Jay Bhattacharya, the conference made a scientific case for shifting away from the heavy-handed lockdowns of the initial Spring 2020 outbreak. On their final day together in Great Barrington, the scientists wrote a short statement of principles, calling it the Great Barrington Declaration. This Declaration, their Declaration, touched a nerve well beyond the scientific community, and well beyond anything...

Lawmakers in the nation’s smallest state are planning a large package of bills in conjunction with gun control activists that could see bans on certain types of semi-automatics and their magazines. Allied with the Rhode Island Coalition Against Gun Violence, Sen. Joshua Miller, D-Cranston, and Rep. Jason Knight, D-Barrington, are introducing proposals in both chambers of the legislature that would add the same types of firearms restrictions seen in neighboring Connecticut and Massachusetts. Knight argued the move is needed to protect public safety in the aftermath of a high-profile school shooting in Florida this week. “It will take a multi-pronged...

Authorities say twin 97-year-old sisters apparently froze to death after falling down outside a Rhode Island home, one of them while coming to the rescue of the other. Barrington Police say Jean Haley, of Barrington, and Martha Williams, of East Providence, died Saturday. Police say the twins had returned to Haley's home with their 89-year-old sister, who is also from Barrington, Friday night after they had dinner together. Some time after the younger sister left, Williams was going to her car. Police say she fell in the driveway. When Haley went to call for help, authorities say, she tripped on...

GREAT BARRINGTON, Massachusetts (Reuters) - A walk down Main Street in this New England town calls to mind the pictures of Norman Rockwell, who lived nearby and chronicled small-town American life in the mid-20th Century. So it is fitting that the artist's face adorns the 50 BerkShares note, one of five denominations in a currency adopted by towns in western Massachusetts to support locally owned businesses over national chains. "I just love the feel of using a local currency," said Trice Atchison, 43, a teacher who used BerkShares to buy a snack at a cafe in Great Barrington, a town...