Free Republic

The Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday used its emergency powers to pass a new ordinance that establishes fines for violations of COVID-19 public health orders including the wearing of face coverings. Violations of coronavirus pandemic public health orders can also pertain to inadequate social distancing and group gatherings. For individual health order violations involving non-commercial activities, the amount of the fine is $100 for a first violation, $200 for a second violation and $500 for each additional violation within one year of the initial violation. For violations involving commercial activity, the ordinance designates a fine of $250...

President Donald Trump is home alone, so suddenly one of the hottest new tickets in town is an invitation to the White House. The President is going to start hitting the Washington dinner party circuit. In most cases, actually, his guests will come to him as he tries building bridges in a city that he has spent years railing against. "It's very good -- a beautiful relationship," said Trump, all smiles Monday as he hosted congressional leaders at the White House for his first round of evening visitors. A piano played Billy Joel's "New York State of Mind," as the...

The True Meaning of Easter By: Paul Arinaga There's a lot of controversy about the true meaning of Easter. Some claim that it's actually a pagan celebration in origin. Others lament that retailers, greeting card companies and television are changing Christianity's greatest feast into something with meaning "the size of a jelly bean." In any case, the most common view about the real meaning of Easter is that it's a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and that through this act, sin and death are conquered. Easter also can be seen as a season of joy. The time...

If knowledge is power, then gossip is powerful currency, traded daily on high school phone lines and at the supermarket check-out lines. "The best piece of gossip always has a little hint of scandal involved," says Paula Froelich, a columnist for the New York Post's "Page Six." "And it's also pretty salacious. And at some point your mouth drops and you go, 'oh no she didn't!'" While Mom always said "No one loves a busybody," some scholars believe gossip is a healthy, essential tool in helping people work together and defining the rules of the tribe. ....

The average Internet user in the United States spends three hours a day online, with much of that time devoted to work and more than half of it to communications, according to a survey conducted by a group of political scientists. The survey found that use of the Internet has displaced television watching and a range of other activities. Internet users watch television for one hour and 42 minutes a day, compared with the national average of two hours, said Norman H. Nie, director of the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society, a research group that has been...