Free Republic

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released new guidance to help summer camps mitigate their coronavirus risk. Given that summer camps involve both children and the outdoors—two factors that render COVID-19 significantly less worrisome—and will be opening in the wake of widespread vaccination, one might have expected the CDC to depart from its characteristic over-caution.

A record-breaking surge of mail-voting Democrats in Florida has handed Joe Biden a massive lead over President Donald Trump in his must-win home state. But here come the Republicans. The start of in-person voting Monday is expected to trigger a conservative wave that will build over the next two weeks and crest on Election Day. Around two-thirds of participating Florida GOP voters are likely to cast a ballot in person this fall, raising the question of whether Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, will be able to hold off a Trump comeback by the time the polls close at 7 p.m....

The New York Times reported on Jan. 11 that the FBI “began investigating whether President Trump had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests” soon after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017. In other words, the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation on the president. *** If indeed the FBI took the unprecedented step of opening a counterintelligence investigation directed at the president premised on his threat to national security, I hope the bureau had much stronger evidence for doing so than the Times story provided—and I hope that something of investigative substance actually turned on...

The Justice Department's inspector general has sent a criminal referral regarding former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to the US attorney's office in Washington, according to a source familiar with the matter. A McCabe spokesperson, the Justice Department and US attorney's office all declined to comment.

Mueller’s indictment is an ineffectual response to a provocation by Russia. The Russians are engaged in “information warfare” against the United States. That was the big soundbite at Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s press conference Friday afternoon, announcing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s election-meddling indictment against 13 Russians and three Russian businesses. That is certainly a fair assessment of what the indictment alleges. The account is disturbing, but its form leaves many of us underwhelmed. Our government says Russia is levying war. It is attacking a foundational institution — the electoral system of our democratic society and, more basically, our society’s...

We need a full-blown investigation of how the FISA court came to grant warrants to spy on Carter Page. In a word, the Grassley-Graham memo is shocking. Yet, the press barely notices. Rest assured: If a Republican administration had used unverifiable hearsay from a patently suspect agent of the Republican presidential candidate to gull the FISA court into granting a warrant to spy on an associate of the Democratic nominee’s campaign, it would be covered as the greatest political scandal in a half-century. *** We need full disclosure — the warrants, the applications, the court proceedings. No more games. Read...

The FBI and Justice Department hyped Trump–Russia collusion. Rod Rosenstein can right that wrong. The most bitter dispute over the Nunes memo involves Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. This might seem odd since the memo, published last week by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee chaired by Devin Nunes (R. Calif.), does not address the Mueller investigation. Rather, it homes in on potential abuses of foreign-intelligence-collection authorities by Obama-era Justice Department and FBI officials, said to have occurred many months before Mueller was appointed. Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/456185/nunes-memo-rod-rosenstein-can-clean-mess

Representative Nadler is a shrewd lawyer but he has spent his life in legislatures rather than courtrooms. Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has written a six-page response to the FISA-abuse memo published Friday by the committee’s Republican staffers under the direction of Chairman Devin Nunes (R., Calif.). I won’t get sidetracked by the fact that Nadler’s “Dear Democratic Colleague” letter has been “exclusively obtained” by NBC News — i.e., that it was leaked to the media, whereas the so-called Nunes memo was provided to committee Democrats before publication so they could...

Campos was shot about six minutes before the suspect opened fire on the crowd at the Harvest Festival. After Campos was shot, he didn't call the police, he instead radioed down to the hotel for help. Assistant Sheriff Fasulo said that's standard protocol in the hotel industry.

Up to three Ebola-infected people could embark on overseas flights every month from the three most-affected African countries, according to a new study that projected travel patterns based on infection rates and recent flight schedules. The findings, published Monday in the journal Lancet, suggest that Ebola cases could be spread overseas by unwitting travelers from the worst-hit countries—Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The World Health Organization has estimated that, by early December, there could be as many as 10,000 new cases a week in west Africa.

Today, I served as a poll watcher at an early voting location in Jacksonville, Florida. Jacksonville is a red city, but the location where I was stationed is pretty blue. The polling location only had 8 voting stations, so the line moved slowly even though the staff was efficient. Only 613 votes were cast over a 6 hour period and the poll workers seemed pleased with that level of voting. For two separate hour long periods, I kept some statistics on demographics. The results: Black males = 30 13.5% Black females = 52 23.3% White males = 58 26% White...

The Democrats' latest tally for ballots cast through Wednesday shows that Democrats have cast 205,205 more absentee or early votes than Republicans have. What's even more eye-popping is that so far, nearly 3-million people have voted (2,982,896). Of the 1,302,982 absentee ballots cast, Democrats cast 35.64 percent, Republicans cast 49.41 percent, and others cast 14.95 percent. Of the 1,679,914 early votes, Democrats cast 53.22 percent; Republicans, 30.32 percent; and other, 16.46 percent.

Nearly 20 percent of all Florida voters have cast ballots already. That includes 1,128,241 abentee ballots (35.4% by Democrats and 49.96% by Republicans; and 1,193,987 early votes (53.66% by Democrats and 30.25% by Republicans). All told, 115,418 more Democrats have voted than Republicans. Also 357,298 independent and minor party voters have cast ballots.

Through Sunday, it appears absentee and early votes have Democrats up by 80,287 votes. Of the 1,010,046 people who voted early, 53.7 percent were Democrats, 30.19 percent Republicans and 16.02 percent other. Of the 1,059,518 absentee ballots returned so far, 35.31 percent were from Democrats, 50.23 percent Republicans, and 14.46 percent other. All told, 2,069,564 people have voted already -- 44.33 percent of them Democrats, 40.45 percent Republicans, and 15.22 percent other.

Is there any metropolitan area in a swing state that is more McCain friendly Jacksonville, Florida? Charlotte, North Carolina? St. Louis, Missouri? In 2004, in Duval County, which shares the same borders as Jacksonville, voted Bush over Kerry at a 58% to 42% margin. I believe the margin could be greater for McCain this year. I just drove two miles from my sister's house and counted 28 McCain/Palin signs and 0 for "that One."

POLL: ARG Florida Primary A new American Research Group Florida survey (conducted 1/20 through 1/21) finds: 29 McCain 22 Romney 17 Huckabee 16 Giuliani 6 Thompson 6 Paul 1 Keyes 3 Undecided

Romney's win in Michigan keeps his candidacy alive - but what are the odds that he will win the nomination? I'm not sure, but they are much reduced from what they were six months ago. Early last year, the Romney campaign put together a plan that - if it panned out - would probably have won him the nomination. The idea was for Romney to build a huge war chest that would enable him to compete everywhere. He would then win Iowa and New Hampshire, emerge as the consensus Republican candidate, and overwhelm the rest of the field. But the...

DULUTH, Ga. — Townspeople who joined in the three-day search for runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks are getting increasingly peeved that they still have not heard an apology from her. Her attorney said Wilbanks plans to issue a statement Thursday. Jose Armando Nino drives his lawnmower past a billboard with the likeness of runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks in Duluth, Ga., Tuesday, May 3, 2005. Wilbanks, who had vanished Tuesday, April 26 after saying she was going out jogging, initially told authorities she was abducted. But she later admitted she took a cross-country bus trip to Albuquerque, N.M., to avoid her lavish,...

Posted, Saturday, Feb. 5, 2005 -- 2:15 p.m. Tell me if you think this is strange . . . . I started working for ESPN.com in July of 2001. Three times over the next four years, my bosses decided to send me to the Super Bowl -- New Orleans (SB 36), Houston (SB 38), and Jacksonville (SB 39) -- about 10 weeks before we knew who would be playing in the game. Each of those times, my beloved Patriots ended up making the big game. The one year they didn't make it was Super Bowl 37 (note: I'm tired of...

I have completed my in-depth analysis of the registration situation in Florida. From it, I have concluded that Bush has a real advantage relative to his 2000 position in the Sunshine State. He will likely carry it once again. Unfortunately, Florida is too big for me to do the kind of comprehensive analysis I did with Iowa, Minnesota, New Hampshire and other states. There is just too much data. It makes analysis, well...unruly. Furthermore, counties in Florida are really diverse. However, this is not to say that there are not some important points to be made about Florida. Overall, I...