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New Zealand’s government announced Wednesday it is set to shelve most of its remaining coronavirus restrictions on the 4th of April as omicron begins to fizzle out. The hard-left Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, declared vaccine requirements will be removed from public venues such as retail stores, restaurants and bars, meaning the unvaccinated will once again be allowed out.

President Biden to announce fresh measures to combat ‘new phase of the pandemic,’ will issue “stark warning” to unvaccinated Americans

Former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett said Friday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” that she supported coronavirus vaccine mandates. Jarrett said, “I’m all for mandating it. I know in this country, it’s hard to mandate things. I think what we can do is say, look, if you want them to make their own decision, fine, but we’re not going to let you come to sporting events or schools.”

Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP/VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE and AMERICA: Government, Family, Military, Business, Education, Churches, and the Media. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 1 JOHN 5:14 Religion Forum threads labeled "Prayer" are closed to debate of any kind.

This week, while Donald Trump ensnares himself in the most serious threat to his presidency to date, Congress is, to some extent, continuing with the typical business of government. A series of hearings during “Infrastructure Week” are focusing on the administration’s rumored infrastructure plan.Although the White House has been talking up private infrastructure investment as a replacement for public funding, a panel of experts told Congress that, even with perfectly executed public-private partnerships, the federal government still needs to provide its own support — especially for projects, like transit lines, that aren’t guaranteed to generate toll revenue for profit-seeking investors.This...

As of 2008 we are now at 1000 posts for Mainestategop, the blog of those of us who are refugees of New England Socialism and the voice of the New Hampshire based New England Alliance for Liberty and Free Markets. We've come a long way I think and I am just ecstatic. Eight years of fighting liberalism and saving America from liberal failure. I love it. Thank you to all for your continued support.  Now, with that said I want to discuss political issues concerning elections in New England. There's not much to be said, we are voting straight GOP...

President Obama announced Thursday that he is imposing sanctions on additional senior Russian officials and others over the country's annexation of Crimea, warning that broader economic sanctions could be in store if Russia does not stand down. The president, speaking on the South Lawn of the White House, voiced concern that Russian military positioning could point to "further incursions" into southern and eastern Ukraine. He also issued an executive order giving the U.S. authority to impose sanctions on "key sectors of the Russian economy."

LANSING, Mich., Oct. 7 (UPI) -- A proposed law in Michigan is aimed at ensuring beer drinkers who pay for a pint get at least 16 ounces. The measure was introduced in the House last week, MLive.com reported. It would ban what barflies refer to as "cheater glasses" with thick bottoms so they look like they hold a pint but actually take a few ounces less. State Rep. Jim Irwin, a Democrat from the college town of Ann Arbor, said the state regulates meat and other foodstuffs to make sure buyers get what they pay for. Irwin introduced a similar...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Joe Biden says if Congress won't act on gun control, he'll fight for a new Congress. Biden is unveiling two new steps President Barack Obama is taking on gun violence. The executive actions don't require approval from Congress, where gun legislation collapsed earlier this year. One new step will curb the import of military surplus weapons. The Obama administration is also proposing to close a loophole that lets certain weapons be registered to corporations without background checks.

"My understanding is the vice president's going to provide a range of steps that we can take to reduce gun violence," said Obama. "Some of them will require legislation, some of them I can accomplish through executive action. And so I will be reviewing those today, and as I said, I will speak in more detail to what we're going to go ahead and propose later in the week.

Richmond's soda tax may have faltered badly on election day, but the idea is now bubbling up in other Bay Area cities and counties. Officials in San Francisco, Berkeley, Alameda County, Vallejo, El Cerrito and other jurisdictions have discussed, or plan to discuss, placing soda taxes on ballots. "We lost the election, but the movement will eventually win," said Dr. Jeff Ritterman, the Richmond city councilman who sponsored Measure N. "Momentum is on our side."

Prop 30: Your Wallet or Your Kids. NO Either approve $36 billion in higher sales and income taxes or else Gov. Brown threatens to shoot the schools. Don't worry, the income taxes are only on the "very wealthy," but it turns out the "very wealthy" include many small businesses filing under sub-chapter S, meaning lower wages, higher prices and fewer jobs. California already has one of the highest overall tax burdens in the country and yet has just approved a budget to spend $8 billion dollars more than it's taking in. Moral of the story: it's the spending stupid. Prop...

NCAA president Mark Emmert has decided to punish Penn State with severe penalties likely to include a significant loss of scholarships and loss of multiple bowls, a source close to the decision told ESPN's Joe Schad on Sunday morning. But Penn State will not receive the so-called "death penalty" that would have suspended the program for at least one year, the source said. The penalties, however, are considered to be so harsh that the death penalty may have been preferable, the source said. The NCAA will announce "corrective and punitive measures" for Penn State on Monday morning, it said in...

November 2012 Statewide Ballot Measures Proposition 30 Initiative Constitutional Amendment 1578. (12-0009) - Final Random Sample Update - 06/20/12 Temporary Taxes to Fund Education. Guaranteed Local Public Safety Funding. Initiative Constitutional Amendment. Qualified: 06/20/12 Proponent: Thomas A. Willis c/o Karen Getman (510) 346-6200 Increases personal income tax on annual earnings over $250,000 for seven years. Increases sales and use tax by ¼ cent for four years. Allocates temporary tax revenues 89 percent to K-12 schools and 11 percent to community colleges. Bars use of funds for administrative costs, but provides local school governing boards discretion to decide, in open meetings...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday accepted the recommendations of Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch and Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman for dealing with disturbances in Judea and Samaria. The ministers formulated the recommendations after meeting with ISA, IDF, Israel Police and State Attorney's Office teams, which were: The immediate issuing of administrative detention orders against rioters; Immediately increasing the number of those barred from various areas; Trying rioters in military courts; Giving IDF soldiers the authority to detain people; and Increasing both the number of special ISA, Israel Police, IDF and State Attorney's Office investigation teams and the resources for...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Decrying the human toll of the nation's economic and financial crisis, a group of corporate and labor leaders advising President Barack Obama is calling for sweeping and urgent changes in government policies, from liberalized immigration and less restrictive regulations to a more business friendly tax system and greater spending on infrastructure. In tackling the nation's economic crisis and its stubborn 9.1 percent unemployment rate, the president's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness is putting the names of some of the country's top corporate CEOs as well as the head of the AFL-CIO behind proposed initiatives and policy overhauls...

The following is adapted from a speech delivered on February 16, 2011, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Phoenix, Arizona. TO BEGIN, consider one of the most important measures of property, the kilogram. It’s a measure of mass or, for non-scientific purposes, weight. According to the papers last week, a global scramble is under way to define this most basic unit after it was discovered that the standard kilogram—a cylinder of platinum and iridium that is maintained by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures—has been losing mass. You may think that this is impossible. Of all the...

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) – Israel and Iran would be expected to attend talks on making the Middle East free of nuclear weapons, according to a draft final document of a UN non-proliferation conference released Tuesday. A nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East is among the most contentious issues at the conference reviewing the 189-nation Non-Proliferation Treaty, a global mandate for fighting the spread of atomic weapons. The draft calls for an initial conference in 2012 "to be attended by all states of the Middle East, leading to the establishment of a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and...

Now that we have been painted into a corner with the passage of this Constitution-trampling explosion of government, we have only 4 options left before things get ugly: 1) Vote them out in 2010. This option requires much patience and will not actually mean anything unless those elected actually reverse all the spending, bailouts and takeovers. Most likely, Democrats will be punished for a few years while Republicans ride the tidal wave of public outrage into office, at which point they will throw us some symbolic scraps from the table, rather than making a serious commitment to uprooting federal tyranny....

Cuba is ready to use just about everything at its disposal, from its well-oiled civil defense system to the soldiers of a totalitarian government, to keep swine flu cases to a minimum. Everything but a vaccine. As the U.S. prepares an extensive health survey for side affects from its extensive inoculation plans, Cuba’s No. 2 health official says relying on a shot to contain a world pandemic is risky as best — and demoralizing at worst. "Nobody knows if it would work," said Dr. Luis Estruch. "How safe would it be?" Cuba’s sophisticated public-monitoring system and geographic isolation as an...