Free Republic

COVID shutdowns championed by U.S. governors and D.C. bureaucrats are responsible for destroying nearly 40% of small businesses since the virus was unleashed on the world—and we know now that it was for little to no damned good reason. A study by the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences revealed recently that shutdown orders made little to no difference in COVID’s impact. ... While bureaucrats gave Walmart, Costco, Lowe’s, and other big-box stores “essential” status, allowing them to stay open during the COVID pandemic, 38.9% of America’s small businesses, the providers of most of the country’s jobs, were forced...

Scripture makes no allowance for being a participating member of a church body from arm's length. Administering the sacraments isn't possible without physical presence.After in-person services were canceled last year during “two weeks to flatten the curve,” pastors turned to “online church.” Motivated by love, they recreated Sunday gatherings as best they could, even sometimes encouraging Christians to attempt “communion” with whatever crackers and juice they had in their kitchens. For weeks under lockdown in Washington state, I tuned in. I sang the worship songs along with my children. I paid attention to the sermon. But no matter what well-meaning...

The US military pulling personnel out of Israel but first... Two members of the legislative assembly in Canada's Alberta province booted from the caucus of the ruling "United Conservative Party" tonight. They were opponents of the restrictive COVID-19 policies of Premier Jason Kenney with one of them coming out this morning calling on Kenney to resign as Premier... Defense Minister Benny Gantz ordering Border Police units deployed to deal with unrest across Israel that engulfed many cities last night as mobs of Jews and Arabs fought each other. Those units and other police overwhelmed in rioting today and tonight... Alert...

We’ve locked down the economy instead of the virus. Jobs are recovering slower in New York and other states holding on to stringent COVID-19 restrictions than in states that fully reopened their economies, even though continued lockdown measures don’t appear to be saving lives, ... Measures like limiting travel, keeping restaurants operating below capacity and leaving non-essential businesses closed have kept unemployment in New York State among the highest in the nation, while states with fewer restrictions are seeing jobs bounce back faster from the pandemic-induced recession, the study shows. Tragically, the data also suggests lockdowns didn’t do much to...

Ventura County just announced that it is dropping lawsuits against the remaining five businesses which had resisted COVID lockdown restrictions. BUT, not churches as we learned today from a VC church... .. Per Emily Gardner, Principal Assistant County Counsel, the businesses are: The 5 most recently dismissed cases involved the following businesses: The Original Pizza Cookery Oxnard Bootcamp LLC (referred to as Colosseum Bootcamp) House of Gains Gym, Inc. (referred to as House of Gains) Mrs. Olson’s Coffee Hut Westlake Fitness LLC (referred to as Anytime Fitness Westlake) The previously dismissed cases involved the following businesses: Endo Fitness TO LLC...

Pastor James Coates’ church had been admitting believers exceeding 15 percent of the building’s capacity, violating lockdowns in Alberta... EDMONTON, Alberta,.... Canadian Pastor James Coates, who was jailed for holding church services amid COVID lockdowns, will soon be released from prison. His legal team announced today that Crown prosecutors agreed to drop most of the charges. “The Justice Centre today announced that Crown Prosecutors have agreed to withdraw all but one of the Public Health Act offences that Pastor James Coates has been charged with. The Justice Centre expects Pastor Coates will be released from jail in the coming days,...

A year ago the first COVID-19 lockdowns swept across the country, bringing much of the nation to a standstill, creating historically high levels of unemployment, closing schools in some cases for a full year, and confining tens of millions of people to their homes lest close proximity to friends and neighbors help spread the coronavirus. Much of those decisions — the shutdowns, the capacity limits at grocery stores, the masking orders, the directives for Americans to remain six feet apart at all times even while outdoors — were driven by dire predictions that a massive COVID surge was just around...

The announcement that Texas and Mississippi are lifting their COVID lockdowns and mask mandates is welcome news. “It is really over now,” reporter Alex Berenson tweeted on March 3. “The vaccines will be the excuse,” he added, although cases were plunging well before a significant number of people had been vaccinated. One certainly hopes that Berenson is correct, although President Biden immediately responded in a predictably unhinged fashion, calling the reopenings “Neanderthal thinking.” Meanwhile, the CDC continues to wax hysteric and Dr. Fauci predicts that we may be wearing masks into 2022. And, thanks to the Teachers Unions, students still...

Dutch riot police used water cannon to disperse around two thousand people at an unauthorised protest in Amsterdam on Sunday against a national lockdown to slow the spread of coronavirus. The protesters gathered on a square in front of the Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum art galleries, carrying signs reading “Freedom: stop this siege” and chanting “What do we want? Freedom!”. None wore masks, which are not mandatory outdoors, and few respected social distancing rules, prompting the authorities to disperse the crowd due to health concerns, the Amsterdam authorities said in a statement. The city had declined an application for...

California has one of the strictest lockdowns in the country, though coronavirus cases are reportedly higher than ever before.

Christmas in California has effectively been cancelled by Emperor Gavin Newsom. And now it looks like here in L.A. we're going to be locked in our basements by the local yahoos in charge until February. But the continuing destruction of normal social and economic life in California in the name of fighting the COVID-19 pandemic is old news. Instead, let's talk about the yahoos in Washington who are continuing to screw up the whole country. The federal yahoos, it's no surprise, are the slippery politicians in Congress. Mostly Democrats but also some Republicans, for a decade they haven't had the...