Free Republic

If you had any doubts that power has gone to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s head, his order that everyone has to eat when drinking at a New York bar should resolve the issue. He theoretically has the power, since the Legislature basically made him a dictator for the duration of the pandemic with its grant of emergency powers before it fled Albany in early March. But it’s one thing to issue an order — another to make it stick. Nonetheless, His Royal Highness Andrew I insists that New Yorkers at a restaurant or bar must order food, not just drink. The...

Children are left to surf the Internet, often without proper (or any!) supervision. Pedophiles, often jobless, are also stuck at home with computers. A couple of weeks ago, Utah authorities arrested a 43-year-old man named Danny Steven Hardman in Salt Lake City, not far from where I live with my wife and children. The charge: four counts of sexual exploitation of a minor. Authorities allege Hardman was grooming two six-year-old girls via Facebook and through playing online video games with them. He managed to convince the children to send him sexually explicit images of themselves. Child sexual exploitation and trafficking...

Every person I know in his 70s says kids should go back to school. Behind ensuring Americans have food, ensuring our children are well educated is a very close second in societal priorities. For those who don’t get the outrage, let me try to put it in simple terms. Yes, COVID-19 is dangerous, especially to our elderly population and those who are high-risk. Yes, there will be some young, healthy people who die from COVID, as is true with the 38,000 people who die from car accidents each year, or the 2,000 children who died last year from cancer. As...

The governors of Texas and California, the nation’s two most populous states, recently reimposed coronavirus lockdowns despite falling death rates and health-care capacity far beyond hospitalization rates. Numerous other governors have delayed reopenings or reversed them in similar situations.Lockdowns are not necessary to prevent coronavirus deaths, since the current capacity for treating cases is far above what is needed and people are going to get this disease until there’s a cure. Further, lockdowns accelerate systemic weaknesses such as our national debt, poor education, large numbers of working-age men who do not work, failure to pay for decades of overspending at...

Measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus – such as DMV closures, stay-at-home orders and restrictions on large gatherings – have taken a big bite out of new voter registration efforts...declines for the Democrats in the key general election battleground states of Colorado, Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, as well as in Maine..."If these college campuses are vacant in the fall, it really changes some of these battleground states if the students aren’t there," McDaniel explained. "For example, in New Hampshire, you’re not going to be able to do same-day registration and turn out all these college kids..."

For months, Governor Jared Polis and other state officials have been accused of picking winners and losers through public-health orders announced to stop the spread of COVID-19. Polis's decision to shut down bars and clubs statewide mere weeks after their limited reopenings has renewed that criticism — and it's likely to continue with news that he's now extended Colorado's emergency order to thirty days from July 6 ... Now comes more fuel for the fire: a just-released study that found Colorado has the second-most restrictive COVID-19 rules among the fifty states and the District of Columbia. ... Colorado's current overall...

A doctor at Stanford University said the spike in hospital patients in Texas has "nothing to do with COVID-19.” Dr. Scott Atlas, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and the former chief of neuroradiology at the university’s medical center, joined Fox News’s The Story on Monday and said the public should not panic about the spike in hospitalizations. When I looked at every single hospital area in Texas today, 15-20% of people in the hospital as inpatients are COVID-positive patients. That means 80-85% have nothing to do with COVID-19. And the same thing goes with some of these...

Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University, just defied the liberal media to speak out and say that people are “mistaken” if they actually think coronavirus lockdown policies are keeping people safe from COVID-19. Bhattacharya, who recently led the largest COVID-19 antibody study in the U.S., carried out tests on staff members of 27 Major League Baseball teams to figure out how much coronavirus has already spread. Based on the results of this and prior research of his, Bhattacharya has concluded that lockdowns are not a good thing and may even be causing further harm. “I think...

The American Academy of Pediatrics has released a needed opinion that is strongly in favor of getting children back to school this fall. It’s just what the nation needs right now in times that seem anything but normal. “The AAP,” the group’s statement reads, “strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school.“ “Schools are fundamental to child and adolescent development and well-being,” AAP’s statement points out. They “provide our children and adolescents with academic instruction, social and emotional skills, safety, reliable nutrition, physical/speech and mental...

New York’s bloviating Gov. Andrew Cuomo, half of the Cuomo Brothers comedy team with brother Chris on Comedy Central, I mean CNN, has tried to excuse his incompetent stewardship over the health of the people of New York during the Chinese virus pandemic, by criticizing red states like Texas for opening up their economies “early” after the economy and job-killing lockdowns that have proven as great a threat to public health as any virus. Gov. Cuomo, last seen joking about his availability on the dating scene as he ordered New York nursing homes to accept COVID-19 patents, in effect a...

The Doctor Is In: Scott Atlas and the Efficacy of Lockdowns, Social Distancing, and Closings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZqGSnVt8c8&feature=emb_rel_end

Married parents were about 20 percent less likely to be depressed than unmarried parents, and they spent more time home-educating their kids, during coronavirus lockdowns. Worry and stress rose to a historic high during the Covid-19 panic, at least since the financial crisis of 2008-2009, according to recent survey evidence from Gallup. Parents of young children had an added responsibility of teaching their children while schools and daycare were closed.Compared with parents who handled these alone, married parents spent more time teaching their children at home, according to an early June survey from the Census Bureau that tracks Covid-19’s effects...

A new wave of mandates is here, supposedly in the interest of our health? But if this is true, why are they ignoring the tools that can save our lives?

A federal judge on Friday struck down orders issued by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio that limit the size of church services. The ruling, a preliminary injunction delivered by District Judge Gary Sharpe, notes that by endorsing protests for racial justice while simultaneously discouraging large gatherings in churches, both Cuomo and de Blasio undermined their claim that their lockdown orders were "generally applicable."

Prior studies have suggested a weak connection between the intrusive government measures to slow the spread of COVID-19 and the progression of the virus. Texas is in the news, and not in a good way, over an increase in COVID-19 cases over the past four weeks. There’s quite a bit of speculation over why the virus, which largely bypassed the Lone Star State until the end of May, suddenly seemed to become more pernicious.Some point to a lack of enforcement for social distancing measures and masks. Yet California, a state of similar size and demographics, where Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom...

Sweden's top virus expert has said the 'world went mad' with coronavirus lockdowns which 'fly in the face of what is known about handling virus pandemics'. Anders Tegnell, who advised Sweden to avoid full lockdown in favour of a 'herd immunity' strategy, said world leaders caved to political pressure amid panic - and that the crippling economic downsides of lockdown will far outweigh the benefits. Sweden has confirmed 68,390 cases of coronavirus and 5,230 deaths - far above its Nordic neighbours, but its economy is intact and actually posted slight growth in the first quarter of this year. Tegnell also...

We were told that the governmental interest in ensuring that hospitals aren’t overrun with too many COVID-19 patients was so strong that it superseded the Bill of Rights. All businesses had to be shut, masks must be worn, church services had to be canceled. As Chief Justice John Roberts said in upholding California’s ban on church services, “When those officials ‘undertake to act in areas fraught with medical and scientific uncertainties,’ their latitude ‘must be especially broad.’” The very first action one would expect a government to undertake to stem the tide of a virus is to not purposely admit...

A vocal group of Spring Grove Area residents on Monday night emphatically opposed any school reopening plan that requires district students and staff to wear masks. And at least two school board members backed their demands, with one calling the coronavirus pandemic and efforts to mitigate it "a crock of s—." At a Monday board meeting, several residents argued that no one is afraid of the virus and cited a petition with 400 signatures in support of their plan for a regular reopening of the district's schools that doesn't follow state and federal health guidelines. Health experts have said masks...

The Labor Department on Friday reported jobless rates in May for the 50 states, and the news is the greater than usual variation. Some state economies are recovering much faster than others, and the worst performing tend to be those that have imposed the most severe lockdowns. The national jobless rate was 13.3 percent in May, but 10 states still have unemployment rates above 15 percent. From highest down, they are: Nevada (25.3 percent), Hawaii (22.6 percent), Michigan (21.2 percent), California, Rhode Island and Massachusetts (16.3 percent), Delaware (15.8 percent), Illinois and New Jersey (15.2 percent), and Washington state (15.1...

Amidst the loneliness and suffering caused by the extended lockdowns, Americans have an opportunity to reconnect with their Creator. It seems to be part of human nature to postpone, for as long as possible, a realistic appraisal of looming catastrophe. At the start of the U.S. Civil War, both sides were so certain of a short, bloodless conflict that the first battle at Manassas was attended by hundreds of holiday picnickers from nearby Washington. Some sipped champagne, hoping to catch a glance what they assumed would be fleeting hostilities.The initial U.S. response to COVID-19 followed a similar pattern, as many...