Free Republic

Massive protests erupted in China’s far western Xinjiang region on Friday as long-simmering frustrations over the country’s strict COVID-19 policies hit a boiling point when claims circulated online blaming lockdown restrictions for hindering escape from a deadly apartment building fire. Multiple videos said to be from the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi and shared on social media painted a picture of residents furious at the draconian “zero-COVID” policies imposed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Crowds chanted “End the lockdown!” pumping their fists in the air as they walked down a street, according to videos circulated on social media. What sounded...

Connecticut, Illinois and New York joined California on Friday in ordering nonessential workers to remain at home to slow the spread of coronavirus, which means more than 1 in 5 Americans live in a state under general stay-at-home orders

Writing in The Atlantic on October 31, Brown University economist Emily Oster penned a pre-emptive plea for amnesty for Covid-policy hardliners. Why? Because they were all well-intentioned and their pronouncements rested on benign ignorance. Judging by the numerous responses in print and social media and online commentary, the viral article lit the fuse on widespread, simmering but still raw anger. To many it suggests the lockdown zealots are incapable of introspection, of accepting culpability. Instead, they just want to move on to the next excuse to unleash blanket authoritarian control all over again. Jessica Hockett has coined the word “Osterism”...

Brown University Professor Emily Oster wrote an article for The Atlantic magazine suggesting that "those of us who made mistakes during the pandemic should be forgiven and granted amnesty." Among the admitted "mistakes" were exaggerating the severity of the disease, the lockdowns of businesses and schools, the censoring of dissenting opinions about policies and treatments dealing with covid, coercing people to get vaccinated, and abuse of emergency powers. Oster claims "ignorance led to honest mistakes." However, there is plenty of evidence indicating that conscious deception drove many of actions of key decision makers in the pharmaceutical corporations, health authorities, and...

As the election nears, Biden administration officials are dreading three words: Chairman Rand Paul. The Kentucky senator, who has clashed with Anthony S. Fauci and other health officials throughout the pandemic, is in line to lead a Senate committee should he win reelection and Republicans retake the chamber next week. (While Paul is heavily favored in his own race, control of the Senate is viewed as a toss-up by pollsters.) GOP control would give the libertarian doctor — an outspoken critic of the government’s coronavirus policies — the power to lead investigations and help set legislative priorities next year, either...

I live in a picture-perfect region — the Hudson Valley, memorialized by painters and poets; a patchwork of autumn reds and yellows, majestic hillsides, storied waterfalls, and little homesteads dotted picturesquely on the slopes of sleepy hamlets. Towns in our area look like Norman Rockwell paintings: there is Main Street, Millerton, with its white 19th century church steeple, its famous Irving Farm cafe with the excellent curated coffee beans, its charming antiques mall, its popular pizzeria. When you drive to Millerton, it looks like you are driving into the heart of archetypal America; everything that Woody Guthrie songs memorialize, everything...

If any vestiges of our free republic are to remain, every last freak who perpetrated these crimes against society should be held accountable. Instead of amnesty, we need trials. In a recent article at the far-left Atlantic calling for a “COVID amnesty,” which many found stunning in its chutzpah, Brown University “mommy economist” Emily Oster asks that we give a pass to those involved in ruining the lives of countless people and probably killing many more for years to come. I know I’m not alone when I say my best counteroffer is, “Hell no,” and you can stick that “COVID...

Let’s declare a pandemic amnesty, we need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID. Oh, really? As time goes on, today is Day 962 of 15 Days To Flatten The Curve, it is coming to light that we as a global people were lied to, deceived, tricked and fooled to such a degree as to beggar imagination. Masks did nothing to slow the spread of the virus, social distancing did nothing to slow the spread of the virus, and lockdowns did nothing but increase mental illness, create poverty, stupefy...

Our democratic system of government in America is at stake, but only because one side is completely depraved and has hordes of useful idiots at their disposal. Democrats lie and hope that our attention spans are short, as do their media allies. Recently, The Atlantic published an article in which the author called for a “pandemic amnesty” and that we need to forgive each other because “we were in the dark about COVID.” Lies. We were not left in the dark at all. The media, Big Pharma, and Big Government all worked together to destroy our freedoms and ruin the...

A real doozy of an article in The Atlantic begs for mercy. In her recent article in The Atlantic, a Brown University professor, Emily Oster, is calling for "pandemic amnesty." She is telling me to "forgive and forget" everyone who was yelling obscenities at me for not wearing a mask in a public park or calling me a mass murderer for posting a picture with a friend visiting. I must forget all this, the author insists, because all those people had nothing but my well-being in mind! The author admits that many (if not most!) measures imposed on us by...

Fifteen days to slow the spread turned into, please forget we stripped you of your human dignity. Brown University economist Emily Oster’s recent Atlantic article asks for amnesty for the people who brutally attempted to subjugate Americans with vaccine and mask mandates, lockdowns, and social distancing idiocy on the grounds: “We didn’t know.” She claimed that during the height of the Covid insanity, “most errors were made by people who were working in earnest for the good of society.” No, Ms. Oster, they weren’t. Most decisions were made by people, like flight attendants and front desk clerks, whose normal job...

I wrote my forthcoming book, “Rise of the Fourth Reich: Confronting COVID Fascism with a New Nuremberg Trial, So This Never Happens Again,” exactly because of people like Emily Oster. She is legion, and if those like her are allowed to get away with the nonsense she tried to pull this week in the pages of the Atlantic, fascism will be what’s for dinner for a very long time. Oster, who is a professor at Brown University with a Twitter bio that says – I kid you not – “unapologetically data-driven,” wrote a column titled “Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty:...

Declare a Real Pandemic Inquiry Instead of AmnestyI’ll admit, I nearly spit out my coffee when I saw Brown Professor Emily Oster’s new headline in The Atlantic this morning. It’s the headline we’ve been waiting to see—and, in the revisionist, gaslighting style that’s become the journalistic norm on the response to Covid—it’s about the closest thing to an outright admission of guilt that we’ve seen since Covid began.My latest in @TheAtlantic https://t.co/w6GIOEMhZv— ProfEmilyOster (@ProfEmilyOster) October 31, 2022The article is about as pathetically transparent as it is self-serving. Gee, I wonder what Oster did and said during Covid for which she...

An essay by Emily Oster, Ph.D., published this week in The Atlantic suggesting “We need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID” is fanning the flames of fury among those whose lives were destroyed by ad hominem attacks, de-platforming, delicensure, demonetization, demonization and debilitating vaccine injuries.Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty,” an essay in this week’s “Ideas” section of The Atlantic included this subhead: “We need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID.”The author of the article, Emily Oster,...

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten is calling on Americans to grant amnesty to COVID tyrants. image Given Weingarten was one of the worst offenders during the pandemic, driving parents and teachers away from public schools in droves, it's no wonder she's asking everyone to simply forget about it. She's a main reason student test scores are in the toilet and why kids across the country have been set back for years after AFT lobbied the CDC to keep schools closed. Not to mention the billions Weingarten extorted from American taxpayers.

'What has happened to me has only furthered the cause of Christ, and for that I rejoice,' said Pastor Tim Stephens ... Canadian pastor who was arrested twice in 2021 for continuing to congregate with his church in Calgary, Alberta ... The Provincial Court of Alberta tossed out charges against Pastor Tim Stephens alleging he violated provincial public health orders regarding physical distancing .... Stephens was imprisoned twice last year for keeping his Fairview Baptist Church open. .... Stephens' acquittal comes weeks after Danielle Smith, Alberta's new premier, promised a plan to pardon COVID offenders in the province. Her administration...

I put up the Atlantic article yesterday:Let’s Declare a Pandemic AmnestyElsewhere, in response to that screed, someone had dug up an LA Times article from January of this year, a relatively recent article in context of the Covid travesty:Column: Mocking anti-vaxxers’ COVID deaths is ghoulish, yes — but may be necessary The last part of the LA Times article, if I can summarize (not sure if if its part of the "shall not be excerpted" category), says to the effect "mocking and/or punishing those who question or reject the 'official' Covid narrative may be necessary", along with the Leftist catchphrase...

It's clear that zero-Covid is now primarily about politics, power, mass surveillance, not health. Its rigid enforcement has become a gauge of loyalty to the president. Defeating the virus has become central to the cult of Xi, for whom it is a measure of the Chinese Communist Party's superiority over the West. The scene is something from a horror film. Hordes of terrified shoppers battling a crew of uniformed guards, desperate to escape the building in which they have been locked. It looks like hysteria after a terror attack — yet this is footage from a Saturday afternoon at an...

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer fancies herself the smartest woman in the room. In reality, she's a failed Democrat hack. Throughout COVID she locked down her state with an iron fist. Even as other states relaxed their restrictions Whitmer further tightened the screws on freedom and common sense. This week, as she debated Republican challenger Tudor Dixon, she ran from her own record of failure. Now, Mark picks apart Whitmer's bankrupt ideas and failed policies as Governor of Michigan. Will this debate finally turn the tide in Dixon's favor?

The media claims that I am anti-government but the truth is the government is anti-you. Government officials have spent the last five years labeling concerned parents as "domestic terrorists". They destroyed the economy with needless lockdowns and mandates. The FBI is arresting Christians for praying near abortion clinics. The White House is in the middle of starting a major nuclear war. They are doing all of this while claiming that normal Conservatives like you and me are biggest threat facing the United States of America today. I carry this Constitution with me every day. I believe in government but I...