Free Republic

Bishops are keeping sacraments suspended indefinitely and allowing Washington churches to be treated differently than other establishments in terms of opening. Washington state Catholic leaders would rather stick it to the president than let him defend their right to celebrate Mass. Following President Donald TrumpÂ’s direction on Friday for states to allow houses of worship to reopened and to declare public worship as essential, Gov. Jay Inslee immediately thumbed his nose, and Washington bishops quickly follow suit.In a disappointing response, the bishops demonstrated that rather than stand up for their flock and acknowledge the presidentÂ’s commitment to religious freedom, they...

The coronavirus lockdowns are America’s most regressive government actions since the draft. Even as liberals have quickly noted the virus’s disparate incidence, they have ignored the inequities of government responses. Ironically, these responses have been most regressive in states with the most “progressive” governments. In just four months, coronavirus has gone from takeoff to lockdown in the U.S. America’s first Wuhan virus case appeared on Jan. 21, and the first American died Feb. 12. California went into lockdown March 19, followed by New York the next day, and New Jersey on March 21. Two months later, America is only now...

We are all too familiar with the hackneyed charge that thoughts of heaven are delusional. But according to Steven Pinker, they're malignantly so. That’s a new twist. There should be an algebraic equation to calculate something we experience far too often in the public square today. It would determine the ratio between a person’s absolute brilliance in one arena – their uncontested expertise – and their regularly articulated ignorance in others. This would then be multiplied by the confidence with which they say such things. It would be applied to things like Stephen Hawking’s pontifications on subjects such as religion...

Amid the pandemic, the SpaceX launch should inspire us to be risk-takers, trying new things and starting new ventures. We can only achieve great things if we don't let fear dictate how we live our lives. Two American astronauts, Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, will strap themselves in the Dragon capsule, which sits on top of the Falcon 9 rocket — both built by Elon Musk’s company SpaceX — and depart for the International Space Station on May 27.This extraordinary event embodies much historic significance. The Falcon 9 rocket will be launched from the same launch pad at the Kennedy...

I’d rather go to a dimly lit club than enjoy live music from my car. But these days, drive-in concerts don't sound so bad. All things being equal, I’d rather go to a dimly lit club with smoke curling in the air and drum solos reverberating in the ears of everyone around me than enjoy live music from my car. But barring this—and it appears the good stuff will be barred for awhile—drive-in concerts don’t sound so bad. I’d have to car pool since I don’t have a vehicle, but heck, I’d even be glad to take an Uber. Like...

Vote-by-mail would federalize a state-based electoral system, introducing something Democrats tend to use when they're desperate for a win: chaos. Leftists know that changing the rules of the game can bring victory, and have long tried to change election rules to do just that. When COVID-19 came, facing a contentious race with a populist incumbent president, Democrats turned to their vast network of money-men, many under the umbrella of the “dark money” empire known as the Arabella Network, and set about using the new crisis to their advantage. Their latest push is an expansion of vote-by-mail and its cousin, ballot...

America is starting to reopen for business across the country -- except for a handful of states where lockdown orders are expected to remain in place for weeks to come. With very few exceptions, the cities and states that have ordered their businesses to remain comatose and their millions of workers to go without paychecks are blue, blue, blue. This list includes New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois, California and Oregon. They all have Democratic governors. Once great and mighty cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle and Manhattan are ghost towns. They all have Democratic mayors. These governors and...

In the DC comic universe, there is the “Legion of Doom.” A group of supervillains assembled by Lex Luthor in order to form the most powerful and sinister collection of evil vermin the world has ever known. But at least, in the fictional world of those comics, that “Legion of Doom” is accountable to the super-heroes who regularly humiliate them before smashing them into pulp. In the real world, truth has become exponentially much more tragic than fiction. For in our real world, there will be no accountability for the “Legion of Lockdown” which seeks to loot our national treasury...

Earlier this month, Chinese authorities announced plans to test all 11 million people in Wuhan within ten days, a plan they referred to as “ten days of mass battle.” This was prompted by the discovery of a half dozen new cases of the virus in one apartment building. In the end they didn’t quite get it done in ten days. They did however test about 9 million people using a technique called sample pooling: Most of those nine million samples have already been processed, according to a daily record of nucleic-acid tests by Wuhan health authorities. In total, they...

The story is remarkable, to the glory of God. It is a story that needs to be told. But first, for some background. I first met Satish Kumar in Hyderabad, India, in 1995. He was a young man, fairly new to the ministry, and at the very beginning of his journey. When we next met, in 2015, he was pastoring the world’s fastest-growing church, having exploded from 25 to 130,000 members in just 10 years. (I was there to witness the miracle firsthand). Now, Pastor Kumar informs me, they have eight church satellites with a total membership of 330,000. This...

People are becoming outraged upon discovering the types of businesses and organizations that are receiving COVID-19 bailouts through the CARES Act and subsequent legislation. Left-leaning media outlets are receiving millions of dollars. The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington was given $25 million. Elite universities like Harvard got the bailout money. After public outcry, Harvard, Stanford and a few of the other universities returned the money. Even the Los Angeles Lakers received millions, but they also returned it. Planned Parenthood affiliates improperly received $80 million and now the government wants it back. There’s another category of businesses receiving...

As our country struggles forward against economic recession and pandemic, we will look to the heroes of our past and present to show us the way forward. During Memorial Day, calls to suicide hotlines reportedly “surge” from veterans who find themselves overcome with war-time memories, or riddled with survivors’ guilt as they think of their fallen brothers and sisters in arms. This year, there is increased likelihood that some veterans will experience acute struggles on Memorial Day due to isolation, and constraints on cemetery visitations and social gatherings resulting from the coronavirus response.On Memorial Day, Americans are called to reflect...

The past three months have been a period of extreme trial and tribulation for the people of United States. They are struggling to regain a sense of optimism and confidence in the face of what now appears to have been an unnecessary Wuhan Virus pandemic lockdown and the resultant dictatorial and unconstitutional behavior of many state and local politicians. Further, the citizenry is becoming increasingly aware of the Democrat party hierarchy’s illegal and unconstitutional utilization of the power of government to spy on and potentially depose a duly elected President. Despite this exposure, this same cabal has unabashedly and deliberately...

We Americans gamble every day. Risk taking (gambling if you will) is part and parcel of our culture. Consider the slang expressions we use that are drawn from poker. A guy who can’t be trusted is sometimes called a “four flusher.” Norwegian farmers say, “You betcha,” which is Minnesotan for "you bet". Or, when something looks like a sure thing, “You can bet the farm.” In truth, we take risks every morning when we crawl out from under the covers.  One of the biggest problems with the daily reports coming from our health experts concerning the Wuhan Flu numbers is...

In order to attempt to stop a pandemic that kills far less than half of one percent of those who contract it, including a statistically infinitesimal percentage of those under 65, most of the world conducted a massive, overreaching, draconian lockdown effort that threw millions into poverty, shuttered businesses for good, disrupted critical supply chains, demolished liberties, and left much of the global economy in ruins that will take years, if not decades to rebuild. To call this ongoing absurdity an overreach is to put it mildly, but overreach is the term that seemingly has defined everything we’ve done attempting...

In addition to addressing the general looming mental health crisis, we must be specifically prepared for the mental health problems we will see in frontline health care workers. I am a psychiatrist at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. I have many great colleagues on the medical side of things who are performing heroically during this pandemic, many of whom I met as a medical intern 15 years ago. The ties we developed during that grueling year are lifelong. I check in with them regularly to see how they are managing during this difficult time and lend an ear when I...

Churchgoers across the country are reasserting their fundamental rights of conscience—rights that too many political leaders have forgotten or denied. On Friday, President Trump said churches and houses of worship are “essential” and called on governors nationwide to allow them to open this weekend. If they don’t, Trump said he would “override” governors, citing forthcoming guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.In remarks Thursday, the president criticized some governors who have “deemed liquor stores and abortion clinics as essential” but not churches. “It’s not right. So I’m correcting this injustice and calling houses of worship essential.”Trump is right,...

California doctors warn a surge in suicides is outspacing deaths from coronavirus as pandemic lockdowns take a far greater toll on American life than the virus itself.Dr. Mike deBoisblank who serves as the head of the trauma department at John Muir Medical Center in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay told ABC 7 his hospital has seen a “year’s worth of suicide attempts in the last four weeks.”“We’ve never seen numbers like this, in such a short period of time,” deBoisblank said, pointing at the state’s stay-home orders as the primary culprit for the spike in crises.Now...

Do you remember the 1957-58 Asian flu? Or the 1968-69 Hong Kong flu? I do. I was a teenager during the first of these, an adult finishing law school during the second. But even though back then I followed the news much more than the average person my age, I can't dredge up more than the dimmest memory of either. I don't have any memory of schools closing, though apparently, a few did here and there. I have no memories of city or state lockdowns, of closed offices and factories and department stores, of people banned from parks and beaches....

A recent New York Times op-ed by Jonathan Safran Foer titled “The End of Meat is Here” chastises meat-eaters as haters of poor people, racists, and enemies of the environment. “If you care about the working poor, about racial justice, and about climate change, you have to stop eating animals,” the novelist wrote. He added, “We cannot protect our environment while continuing to eat meat regularly. This is not a refutable perspective, but a banal truism.”Are Americans eager to nix meat from their diets? Fat chance. In fact, more people are consuming wild fish and game meat in wake of the coronavirus pandemic. For those...