Free Republic

The Brexit negotiations between the United Kingdom and the European Union concluded on Thursday, Christmas Eve, with the EU’s Ursula von der Leyen calling a press conference and boasting the EU got a “good deal” out of the years of negotiations. Update: Boris Speaks Speaking from Downing Street on Christmas Eve, Prime Minister Johnson announced the agreement of what he terms a “comprehensive, Canada-style free-trade deal” — an agreement that Mr Johnson has been seeking since the beginning of negotiations, which the European Union had said was impossible to strike. “I’m very pleased to tell you that we have completed...

The BATFE (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) recently released information on how they will be determining the legality of Pistol Stabilizing Braces and whether they should fall within the National Firearms Act. There are countless concerning angles to this topic, but we will try to get straight to the point. The most recent notice outlines criteria that are judged purely on subjective determinations as opposed to definitive statements that clearly identify what does or does not constitute a legal configuration of a braced firearm. This leaves both firearms manufacturers and owners at the mercy of ad hoc judgement...

Does Section 303(n) of the Communications Act of 1934 mean that the feds can search your home without a warrant if you have a ham radio license, slang for having an amateur radio license? Conspiracy theories have arisen that this Act is used to justify warrantless inspections of homes with wireless equipment, those accused of broadcasting without a license or even anyone’s home. What does the Act say, and what does the government actually do regarding its enforcement?

April’s jobs report was the worst in U.S. history, with 20.5 million jobs lost thanks to the coronavirus and subsequent lockdowns. Some layoffs are temporary and likely to return as soon as lockdowns are lifted, but a full recovery could take quite some time. Exactly how long will depend in large part on the degree to which government policy prevents market dynamism. To climb out of the massive pit the economy has been thrown into, it will take not just the release of workers from their homes, but also entrepreneurs and innovators capable of adapting to a new economic environment....

Rob Bilott (Mark Ruffalo) is a corporate defense attorney out of Cincinnati, Ohio. A part of his job is defending chemical companies. One day, however, an outraged and distressed farmer from West Virginia by the name of Wilbur Tennant (Bill Camp) visits Bilott’s office with a box of VHS tapes, and asks Rob to look at them....When Rob visits Wilbur’s cow farm, he learns that nearly a couple hundred of his cows have died. He tells Rob that he believes that there are chemicals in the water that his cows are drinking from, and that they’re seeping in from the...

Virus isolation The virus was isolated from nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal samples from putative COVID-19 patients. Oropharyngeal samples were diluted with viral transfer medium containing nasopharyngeal swabs and antibiotics (Nystadin, penicillin-streptomycin 1:1 dilution) at 1:4 ratio and incubated for 1 hour at 4°C, before being inoculated onto Vero cells. Inoculated Vero cells were cultured at 37°C, 5% CO2 in 1× Dulbecco’s modified Eagle’s medium (DMEM) supplemented with 2% fetal bovine serum and penicillin-streptomycin. Virus replication and isolation were confirmed through cytopathic effects, gene detection, and electron microscopy. Viral culture of SARS-CoV-2 was conducted in a biosafety Level-3 facility according to laboratory...

In the early days of the outbreak, pundits rushed to the ramparts of Twitter to proclaim that “there are no libertarians in a pandemic.” However, this glee at the apparent failure of markets was soon dashed as more evidence accumulated showing that government intervention was actually the main impediment to success. From an economic standpoint, the channels by which government failure accumulated were legion: Centralizing and restricting testing: the most egregious failure of government has been in its approach to testing, especially in countries not named Germany or South Korea. Highly centralized testing labs (especially in the UK), command and...

If you want to see the difference in how President Trump and the Democrats handle the coronavirus, you don’t have to look any further than Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. She is the new Democratic star who recently gave her party’s response to Trump’s State of the Union address.

Governments in the United States are restricting freedoms to unprecedented degrees in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19. As dangerous as this expansion of power is, in some ways, federal, state and local governments are also reducing their intrusions into our lives by cutting many regulations. This deregulation falls into three categories: help people deal with the virus (including those who are confined to their homes with children who need to be home-schooled); help businesses stay open and cater to their consumers under these unusual circumstances; and free the private health care sector to better respond to the...

Amid all the political name-calling and finger-pointing over who’s to blame and how to attack the Wuhan coronavirus, one thing surprisingly gets little mention at all: regulation. But bad regulation not only slowed our response, it likely added to our death count. We’re happy to note that in recent days and weeks, President Trump has helped ease the regulatory burden of our response to the coronavirus, pushing Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control, our main health agencies, to bend, suspend and in some cases upend useless rules. But that doesn’t mean...

Coronavirus is frightening. I'm working from home, practicing "social distancing." Experts say it'll help "flatten the curve" so fewer people will be infected simultaneously. Then hospitals won't be overwhelmed. But the infection rate grows. Doctors and hospitals may yet be overwhelmed. It didn't have to get to this point. Coronavirus deaths leveled off in South Korea. That's because people in Korea could easily find out if they had the disease. There are hundreds of testing locations -- even pop-up drive-thru testing centers. Because Koreans got tested, Korean doctors knew who needed to be isolated and who didn't. As a result,...

It didn’t have to get to this point. Coronavirus deaths leveled off in South Because Koreans got tested, Korean doctors knew who needed to be isolated and Not in America. In America, a shortage of COVID-19 tests has made it hard for people to get tested. Even those who show all the symptoms have a difficult time. Why weren’t there enough tests? Because our government insists on control of medical innovation. That’s the topic of my new video. When coronavirus appeared, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made its own tests and insisted that people only use those CDC...

On Thursday night, President Trump participated in a Fox News town hall in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the city that Joe Biden frequently boasts about as his hometown. Pennsylvania, of course, was one of the pivotal states that, unexpectedly, gave the majority of its votes to Trump in the 2016 election. During the town hall, one of the people who got the microphone was David Hines, the Director of Operations for the City of Pittston. Martha MacCallum described Hines as a “lifelong Democrat who crossed over and voted for Trump in 2016.” David asked a substantive question about controlling the EPA’s excessive...

Having recently tackled the scourge of “assault” weapons in the Commonwealth, Virginia Democrats now have set their sights on the looming major public health threat of unlicensed art therapy. Citing the risks posed by “toxic chemicals” in paint and glue, by scissors “which have sharp edges capable of causing cuts or punctures,” and with objects like clay that can be dangerous “if thrown,” Democrats are stepping up to correct what surely was an oversight by our Founding Fathers who failed to  envision such dangerous implements in the hands of unlicensed civilians (consider the danger to have one’s skin punctured by...

It’s been 50 years since cleaning up the air in the United States began in earnest. Skies are much clearer now than in the mid-20th century. Leaded gasoline is gone, power plants have been abandoning coal and sulfur dioxide has dropped by 91%. Despite these growing improvements, why have epidemiologists been unable to show the demonstrable public health benefits that their computer models predict?

Apple could be forced to abandon its Lightning connector cable if European lawmakers get their way. The cable is used to charge and sync Apple devices, including the iPhone. But members of the European Parliament urged the European Commission on Monday to force tech giants to adopt a single universal charging method. Apple products do not accept the other two non-wireless types of charger which are available - USB-C and micro-USB, which work on Android devices. Regulators will vote on the matter on a yet to be determined date, but Apple says the proposed regulation would stifle innovation and be...

With the new decade upon us, policymakers should make a New Year’s resolution to revamp a set of environmental rules that are more outmoded than the disco era and leisure suits they predate. Recently, 33 industry groups sent a letter to the White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Mary Neumayr requesting to “expeditiously proceed” with plans to modernize the outdated National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulations.NEPA was enacted with the best of intentions while the Environmental Protection Agency was still in its infancy. It began, modestly enough, as an effort to better understand potential negative impacts that major construction...

Regarding his book: "By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission" .....

My address to the Colorado Independent Cattlemen’s Association I’m not a cattleman and I’m not going to pretend I know everything you are facing. But I do know that the major weapon being used against your industry is the misnamed control devise called Sustainable Development. I know why and I know who the players are. I hope I can leave you today with some ideas on how to fight them. To begin, let’s set the terms and make one thing very clear. The use of the word sustainable may sound like a comfortable term, not threatening. After all, you, your...

Illinois's new No Salary History law went into effect on September 29th, which means that employers will no longer be allowed to ask job applicants for past wages during the hiring process. It's a huge victory for equal pay! The practice of using past pay to determine salary offers is a major contributing factor to the gender wage gap. We want to make sure all of Illinois knows about this win for economic justice! So Women Employed has created a toolkit to help job applicants understand their rights, employers understand their responsibilities, and advocates spread the word. As a valued...