Free Republic

The most high-profile opponent of Australia’s brutal COVID-19 lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and violent suppression of public criticism has been Monica Smit. Her resistance is continuing. She has announced that she will be suing the Victoria police. The court case is scheduled for July 23 and is expected to take 15 days.

Apart from the extreme limitations on personal freedom and travel, this means either a colder, hungrier population or massive depopulation. Two days ago I posted what I thought would be quite an innocuous twitter thread about the implications of the U.K. government’s target of “net zero” by 2050. Reminder of what ‘net zero’ really means. ... Key points: all airports except Heathrow, Belfast & Glasgow to close by 2030. NO FLYING at all by 2050. No new petrol/diesel cars by 2030; by 2050 road use restricted to 60% of today’s level. 2. Food, heating and energy restricted to 60% of...

The ruling on Wednesday is the first win in appellate court for a restaurant seeking business interruption insurance losses.. Oceana Grill, Bourbon Street’s tourist-centric restaurant loved by New Orleans hotel concierges, has won the country’s first victory in appellate court for an insured business seeking damages related to COVID-19 shutdown losses. A split Louisiana court found the policy’s definition of “direct physical loss or damage” ambiguous, ruling in favor of the restaurant on Wednesday, June 15. Cajun Conti, the company that owns Oceana Grill, among other French Quarter tourist haunts, sued Lloyd’s of London on March 20, 2020 — the...

The number of homeschoolers in Florida has spiked in a dramatic way since the start of the pandemic.The state saw an overall 35.2% increase in the number of homeschoolers between 2019-2020 and 2020-2021, according to the Florida Department of Education.But the increases were even steeper in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties.The counties both experienced over 60% increases in the number of children being homeschooled between the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 academic years.Escambia among top 25 Florida counties for pedestrian accidents. This program may help.Now, some local parents who began homeschooling their children because of the spread of COVID-19 do not intend...

" The reason why they backed down was because they did not want their health officials on the stand" 53:40

There’s a silent shutdown surge culminating across America following President Biden’s vaccine mandate on businesses coupled with staffing shortages after government shutdowns and enhanced federal unemployment benefits that only recently ended. "Damn this pandemic and the situation we were put in. Business has been off considerably, but the hardest part being the inability to find staff to hire. Despite paying more than any restaurant I am aware of, no one wants to work," owner of Bubbalou's Bodacious Bar-B-Que, Boo McKinnon, wrote on Facebook last Saturday after she locked the doors of her Winter Park, Florida, restaurant location for the last...

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...

Chicago, Ill., Mar 31, 2021 / 06:01 pm MT (CNA).- Amid a plan to merge and close dozens of parishes, the Archdiocese of Chicago has disproportionately closed parishes that minister to black Catholics due to low attendance, according to an archdiocesan official. “There have been disproportionate numbers of closings in the Black Catholic community, but this is going on all across the Diocese,” Cliff Barber, chief strategy officer of the archdiocese, said in a March 29 interview with the Chicago Crusader, a publication that focuses on the African American community. “There has been some shared pain here, but it’s just...