Free Republic

Americans have often looked down their noses at the authoritarian ways of other nations and thought, “that will never happen in the United States.” But after enduring our own governmnet’s overreach throughout the pandemic, I wonder how many folks are still sure about that. I can only speak for myself, but every affront to liberty around the globe now seems a potential scourge for the U.S. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau provides the latest example. His illiberal response to the Canadian trucker protests breaks new ground for Democratic countries looking to infringe on their citizens' basic freedoms. Last week, despite...

Something caught my ear in the car, listening to a radio simulcast of the Feb. 21 "PBS NewsHour." Anchor Judy Woodruff dryly reported that "Canadian police have arrested more than 190 protesters and issued 389 charges in connection with the so-called Freedom Convoy." The "so-called Freedom Convoy." It's a journalistic term, the use of which can be interpreted as distancing themselves from something that's not true. After 9/11, we heard about the "so-called War on Terror." Democrats hated that term. Dan Rather used to get out the 10-foot pole and report on "the Republican political lobbying group that calls itself,...

As we race toward this fall's midterm elections, it is obvious to even cursory observers of our political landscape that Democrats are in for a shellacking. As of this writing, both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have job approval ratings that are underwater by double-digit margins. Even more ominous, the RealClearPolitics polling average for voters who have been recently asked about the direction of the country reveals an astonishing 37.5% margin in favor of the idea America is on the "wrong track." Put simply, voters can't stand Biden, hate Harris even more and emphatically think the country...

Yesterday in Ottawa, a police officer stepped into a bar to deliver a message from the Canadian government to the truckers protesting Canada’s vaccine mandates. In the course of his video taped delivery, among other things, he said: "Remove your trucks yourselves now ... or ... you will be forfeiting the trucks to the Crown and those associated with those trucks will be arrested."To which, one trucker responded to the officer, "Just remove the MANDATES, and we'll leave." Apparently, that was an option the police were not yet willing to consider. This morning, Ottawa Police Service Chief Peter Sloly raised...

There may be less of them, but you still see a few "Believe Science" signs out while driving. The challenge is that scientific knowledge makes progress when ideas are questioned, debated and explored. When the pandemic began, the public was told we could shut down for two weeks to flatten the curve. Two years later, we have endured a lot more than a two-week shutdown. Schools were moved to remote learning; colleges were shut for months; restaurants were forced to move to takeout only; and everyone who could move from working in an office to working from home did so....

The insanity must finally end, now. After two years of living in fear, Americans must get up off their knees and embrace their freedoms once again. Our forefathers did not fight and die for this country to be overtaken by insane bureaucrats, fearful politicians, and medical professionals beholden to the federal government and the pharmaceutical industry. For two years, the mainstream news media has constantly sounded the alarm about COVID-19, then the Delta variant, followed by the Omicron variant. Not surprisingly, there is now another variant being promoted. In fact, there will always be another variant on the horizon. This...

Democrats excoriated Sarah Palin as did some Republicans once upon a time for warning Obmacare would produce “death panels.” That is, government bureaucrats making decisions based on charts and graphs and demographic actuarial tables as to who deserved life saving treatments, procedures, etc. and who should just go home and wait for their time to run out. The doctor/patient relationship would no longer be stronger than the government/doctor relationship. Turns out that “fear monger” was prescient. We can only assume the White House was livid when the Supreme Court of the United States destroyed their authoritarian attempt to circumvent Congress...

A day after the January 16th hostage-taking at the Colleyville Beth Israel synagogue in Texas, near Fort Worth, the media reported that, “FBI and local police breached the building and ended the hostages’ 12-hour ordeal.” Details were murky and the media, ever malfunctioning, remained chronically incurious about the story’s nuances. Unclear was what transpired toward the end of the hostage-taking, courtesy of a British Muslim on a mission of Jihad to the U.S. The day after, we didn’t even know if terrorist Malik Faisal Akram died by law enforcement or by his own hand. Akram had aimed to free a...

The nation is in the middle of a pandemic that is becoming endemic as the omicron variant lessens serious cases. This past week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted that a Kaiser Permanente study in Southern California found omicron has a 91% reduction in the risk of death compared to the delta variant. It has a 74% reduction in intensive care unit admissions and a 53% reduction in symptomatic hospitalization. No one in the country with the omicron variant is on a mechanical ventilator. This is all good news. But as omicron spreads, small businesses have had to...

The recent arrival of the omicron variant of COVID-19 has, for far too many, reset the clock of our timeline for a return to societal normalcy. Public health authorities in many countries reimposed loosened travel restrictions that had lapsed. Washington, D.C., under the mayorship of Muriel Bowser, passed a draconian private-sector vaccination mandate, the likes of which had previously only passed muster in iconic deep-blue metropolises such as New York City. The vacillating mandarins who constitute the "public health" apparatus in this country, such as Lord-Emperor Anthony Fauci, quickly began fearmongering about the need to avoid large gatherings for Christmas...

The myriad apparati of the Left – blue state governments, broadcast, print and social media and academia – have exercised suffocating control over America and Americans for the past two years. Their unprecedented power grabs have been facilitated by massive propaganda campaigns and deliberate deceit, the reckless promotion of fear, and deprivation of fundamental rights. But their stranglehold on the country is finally loosening, You can certainly feel it. You can practically see it. It’s like a watching cracks form in a massive sea of ice, or tugging on the thread of a knitted piece of fabric to make the...

From the moment COVID-19 appeared, the pandemic became inseparable from politics. Political frenzy was inevitable since the SARS-CoV-2 virus may have escaped from a level-4 security virology lab in Wuhan, China. The rapid-fire spread soon threatened to indict the Chinese communist government for nearly destroying the world economy and killing millions. Western elites, in response, feared that their own lucrative investments in China would be jeopardized by such disclosures - and so acted accordingly in defending Beijing. Nonetheless, one scenario that remains intriguing is that the escaped virus was birthed by gain-of-function research scientists, overseen by elements of the Chinese...

Since its start, the Biden Administration has insisted the way to end the pandemic is vaccination alone, has censored communication about COVID treatments, and has used Biden’s bully pulpit and regulatory coercion to dissuade states, localities, physicians and pharmacists from making treatments available to those in need. That is a state sponsored policy of medical neglect which predictably and invariably leads to avoidable death. State and local governments and physicians have received an unmistakable message from this Administration that they must encourage and administer COVID-19 vaccines and not dilute the vaccinate message with discussion of therapeutics. The choice to propagandize...

Over past week or so, the powers that be have begun changing the narrative on the COVID-19 pandemic. I’ve come across probably a dozen articles in decidedly mainstream news sources that reflect an abrupt about-face on COVID. Throughout the fall and even up until Christmas, the mainstream media was pitching the usual panic porn about COVID: clamoring for third and even fourth “boosters”; defending the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates and the layoffs and firings of the unvaccinated; cheering for New York’s and other cities’ vaccine “passport” requirements; and – of course – echoing Biden’s apocalyptic prediction that the omicron variant...

Have you noticed how many on the right have changed from being for vaccine choice to becoming anti-vaccine regarding COVID-19? It’s so subtle that most of us haven’t noticed, but there is definitely a shift taking place. This is worrisome, because a lot of elderly people with susceptible conditions are placing themselves at risk of dying without getting the vaccine. Now, what if this is because there is a secret effort on the left to push this shift, since it will result in fewer voters on the right? A look at the data across the U.S. in counties with the...

resident Joe Biden campaigned against President Donald Trump by claiming he, unlike his opponent, would shut down Wuhan coronavirus and get America back to normal. Yesterday, the U.S. posted a record number of virus cases. After Biden rejected a comprehensive testing plan in October, tests for the disease are nowhere to be found. Amid a record-breaking surge, the U.S. is now averaging more COVID-19 cases per day than at any other point in the pandemic, according to new data updated on Wednesday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Federal data shows the nation is now reporting an average...

Blaming the unvaccinated is the sharpest tool in resident Joe Biden's shed, and that is not healthy for America. Consider Biden's address to the nation on COVID-19 from the White House State Dining Room Tuesday. Biden started off well enough as he offered that he shared the public's frustration and loss and commended Americans who have been vaccinated. Then he turned to vaccination shaming. "You have an obligation to yourselves, to your family and, quite frankly -- I know I'll get criticized for this -- to your country" to get vaccinated, Biden declared. He added, "I honest to God believe...

In March 2020, when COVID-19 first exploded onto the scene, sports fans waited with bated breath to see which teams, and which leagues, would bow out on precautionary grounds. The answer quickly became clear: all of them. But actions that were more justifiable at that particular juncture, when we knew nothing about what was then called the "novel coronavirus," is now silly and perhaps inexcusable. As we approach 2022, and as the exceedingly contagious but exceedingly nonlethal omicron variant spreads like wildfire, sports leagues and organizations should all commit to resisting COVID hysteria and keeping their doors open. The initial...

In a July tweet poll that - given its mere 5,248 respondents - was almost certainly massively suppressed by Twitter, Republican Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie asked the following question: “Legalities aside, which is more immoral? (1) Subjugating people to second-class status because they haven’t been vaccinated, or (2) carrying a fake vaccine card to subvert the subjugation? Which is more unethical?” Given Massie’s conservative and libertarian audience, it’s no surprise that 91.5% of those respondents felt that the first option was more unethical than the second. However, several who disagreed with Massie’s premise were quick to express their thoughts in...

South Africa has practiced and modeled good science and good sense. Dr. Angelique Coetzee (pronounced koot-see-a) was among the first to alert South African epidemiologists to what has now been named the omicron variant of COVID-19. Or, as dubbed here, the “OMG! variant.” A calm clinician, Coetzee had deduced that what she was seeing in her patients—and successfully treating—was a heretofore unseen COVID variant with attendant mild disease. Quickly were South Africa’s skilled and responsible epidemiologists alerted and the genetic sequencing commenced. And, voila: A mutation! Also a completely unremarkable occurrence in the annals, and course, of epidemics. As molecular...