Free Republic

A 28-year-old man in Alabama who believed COVID-19 was a “hoax” has died from the virus — and now his family is urging people to get the vaccine. Curt Carpenter lost his battle with the bug after spending 51 days in the intensive care unit at Grandview Medical Center in Birmingham, the Montgomery Advertiser reported. “I know that if Curt had survived, he would have made sure everyone knew how serious this disease is, and how important the vaccine is,” his mom, Christy Carpenter, told the newspaper. Christy said her son did not take the threat of the pandemic seriously...

Post-vaccination “breakthrough” COVID-19 infections are being taken “seriously,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said Friday as federal officials expressed concern about rising coronavirus cases in the US. “With regard to the breakthrough cases of people who have been vaccinated and ultimately have gotten infection, obviously this is something that we take seriously and follow closely,” the nation’s top infectious disease expert said during virtual White House coronavirus briefing.

One can spend several days trying not to overreact to President Trump’s latest, unprovoked tweetstorm against the late Sen. John McCain R-Ariz., yet still conclude that there is something sick and twisted about Trump’s obsession with the singular American hero Trump disparages. Tom Rogan already in these pages has eloquently explained why, fake heel spurs or no fake heel spurs, Trump could never be fit to wear McCain’s discarded shoes. And lawyer George Conway, husband of top Trump aide Kellyanne Conway, has presented a persuasive case that Trump’s fulminations about McCain and other bizarre eruptions are signs of a personality...

Michael Cohen, U.S. President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer, said on Thursday he paid a firm to manipulate online polling data "at the direction of and for the sole benefit of" Trump. The Wall Street Journal reported that Cohen had paid the data firm RedFinch Solutions to manipulate two public opinion polls in favor of Trump before the 2016 presidential campaign. "As for the @WSJ article on poll rigging," Cohen wrote on Twitter on Thursday, "what I did was at the direction of and for the sole benefit of @realDonaldTrump @POTUS. I truly regret my blind loyalty to a man...

No wall funding

President Trump will not yet move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem -- at the least postponing an oft-repeated campaign pledge -- however, the White House said Thursday the delay was only in the interest of serving a possible peace deal and the move would happen eventually. Trump signed the Jerusalem Recognition Act Waiver on Thursday morning, officially delaying the move of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv. “No one should consider this step to be in any way a retreat from the President's strong support for Israel and for the United States-Israel alliance,” the White House said in...

I've read and participated in many threads here discussing Donald Trump as the last chance to correct the course of this country. To put America first, to cut waste, drain the swamp, etc. etc.. Many have said that he is "our last hope". So my question is this: What happens if he loses?

Rock legend Bob Dylan was treated like a complete unknown by police in a New Jersey shore community when a resident called to report someone wandering around the neighborhood. Dylan was in Long Branch, about a two-hour drive south of New York City, on July 23 as part of a tour with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp that was to play at a baseball stadium in nearby Lakewood. A 24-year-old police officer apparently was unaware of who Dylan is and asked him for identification, Long Branch business administrator Howard Woolley said Friday. "I don't think she was familiar with his...

Exactly one week after the highly-publicized arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates stirred a national discussion on race relations, legendary singer-songwriter Bob Dylan was detained by police officers in a "low-income, predominantly minority neighborhood" in Long Branch, New Jersey. Makes one wonder why it took so long for this to get reported, and if news outlets that were convinced Gates's arrest was racially motivated will see the delicious irony in a white rock star being questioned by police just because he was "wandering around the neighborhood." The Associated Press sure didn't (h/t Clarence Page): Rock legend Bob Dylan was...

Congratulations, #NeverTrumpers – Tuesday night you became the dog that caught the car. What are you going to do with it now? Because it's still skidding toward a cliff. Sen. Ted Cruz's Wisconsin whipping of GOP front-runner Donald Trump has brought into focus the new convention-al wisdom: It's going to be contested, baby! Trump can't reach a majority of delegates, according to the new Beltway buzz, and because Cruz has a target-the-delegates strategy while Trump has a bluster-about-myself strategy, the tactical Texan is going to win. "It's still possible for Trump to exceed the 1,237 majority needed to win on...

"The interview you just did is as good as I have ever seen Ted Cruz," Gingrich remarked, referring to the Texas senator's interview earlier in the program. "He was clear, he was vigorous, he was prepared to be combative, but at the same time, he was getting into big issues and big ideas." Predicting that Cruz is "going to do well" in the Wisconsin primary on April 5, Gingrich added, "and this ought to be a wake-up call to Trump, that he had better rethink some of the underlying patterns of his campaign." He also offered some advice for how...

Trump's foreign policy often gets discussed as isolationist for its skepticism of allies and foreign entanglements, or as realist for its obsession with self-interest and with cold cost-benefit. In either case, the theory is meant to explain why Trump so disdains virtually every facet of America's international role, from its alliance networks to its foreign military bases and security guarantees. But the more you hear from Trump, the clearer it becomes that something else is going on: He either does not believe in or simply does not understand the international order that has governed the world since the end of...

Sarah Palin's 24-year-old daughter revealed on Thursday that she is pregnant with her second child, and it sounds like it wasn't planned. Interestingly, Bristol does not reveal who the father of her unborn child is.