Free Republic

I recently resigned from my position as full tenured professor at the University of Toronto. I am now professor emeritus, and before I turned sixty. Emeritus is generally a designation reserved for superannuated faculty, albeit those who had served their term with some distinction. I had envisioned teaching and researching at the U of T, full time, until they had to haul my skeleton out of my office. I loved my job. And my students, undergraduates and graduates alike, were positively predisposed toward me. But that career path was not meant to be. There were many reasons, including the fact...

Medical journals are increasingly and dangerously kowtowing to academia’s political zeitgeist. From manipulating public health data to using Orwellian language, the publication of “fashionable nonsense” has contributed to a credibility crisis. If the public comes to believe that it cannot trust medical journals on the easy stuff, then why would we expect people to trust them on anything?

In June of 1993, standing proud, I entered through the hallowed gates of medicine as I recited a time-honored oath. For more than two millennia, students of medicine worldwide have made a similar pledge. We committed “to do no harm and commit no injustice.” We vowed to rise above borders and fickle winds of “current thought.” And we promised to be guided by a moral duty to always to do the right thing. It was crystal clear: the patients’ well-being is the priority. Among it’s various versions, the Hippocratic oath supercedes transient ideologies as an ethical ideal that supersedes the...

Justin Thomas has lost an endorsement deal with Ralph Lauren after he used an anti-gay slur during the third round of last weekend's Sentry Tournament of Champions in Hawai'i. Thomas, 27, the third-ranked player in the world, was overheard on a greenside microphone cursing at himself for missing a par putt at the fourth hole on the Plantation Course at Kapalua on Jan. 9. He apologized profusely after the round and said after missing a playoff by a stroke that the issue was bothering him enough for it to be a distraction. "We are disheartened by Mr. Thomas' recent language,...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Rules Committee Chairman James McGovern (D-MA) unveiled the rules for the 117th Congress on Friday, which contain “future-focused” proposals, including the elimination of gendered terms, such as “father, mother, son, and daughter.” “This package, which will be introduced and voted on once the new Congress convenes, includes sweeping ethics reforms, increases accountability for the American people, and makes this House of Representatives the most inclusive in history,” said the House Committee on Rules in a statement.

The public policy scholar Joseph Overton stated that an idea must fall within a certain range of acceptability to be politically viable. The Overton Window, as this concept has come to be known, describes the range of publicly palatable ideas at a given time, and it applies not only to politicians, but to the general public as well. Recently, however, the rules have changed. [snip] The Overton Window has become the Overton dartboard.

The BMW driver whose ride was surrounded and trashed by a gang of bicyclists on Fifth Avenue was attacked in broad daylight while driving with his elderly mom — who screamed during their escape, “We’re going to die, they’re going to kill us!” Max Torgovnick, 36, recounted the harrowing run-in to The Post one day after it unfolded around 4 p.m. Tuesday at 21st Street and Fifth Avenue. “It’s something that I never expected to happen in New York City,” said Torgovnick, a lifelong city resident. “That’s something like you would see on the streets of a war zone. I...

Barack Obama will never forgive Benjamin Netanyahu for being right about the Iran nuclear deal. In his new memoir, Promised Land, Obama writes that the Israeli prime minister’s “vision of himself as the chief defender of the Jewish people against calamity allowed him to justify almost anything that would keep him in power.” In fact, Netanyahu put his job on the line by doing something few Israeli voters support—he challenged an American president and potentially endangered the U.S.-Israel relationship. In March 2015, he went over Obama’s head to make his case to the representatives of the American people and told...

White House advisor Hope Hicks has tested positive for COVID-19 after traveling with President Trump to a rally in Duluth, Minn. Hicks traveled aboard Air Force One with the president to Tuesday night’s debate and to his rally in Minnesota the following day.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows that 52% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Forty-six percent (46%) disapprove. The latest figures include 40% who Strongly Approve of the job Trump is doing and 41% who Strongly Disapprove. This gives him a Presidential Approval Index rating of -1.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 51% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Forty-eight percent (48%) disapprove. The latest figures include 38% who Strongly Approve of the job Trump is doing and 42% who Strongly Disapprove. This gives him a Presidential Approval Index rating of -4.

The U.S. economy added 1.4 million jobs in August as the unemployment rate unexpectedly tumbled, indicating the nation's labor market is continuing a slow, but steady, recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. The Labor Department's payroll report released Friday showed the jobless rate fell sharply to 8.4%, down from 10.2% in June and a peak of 14.7% in April. It marks the first time since March that unemployment is below 10%. Economists surveyed by Refinitiv expected the report to show that unemployment dropped to 9.8% and the economy added 1.4 million jobs. It's well below the combined 7.5 million jobs added...

New Jersey's death toll from the novel coronavirus jumped Thursday as the state accounted for more than 1,800 probable deaths in its new total. Gov. Phil Murphy said that the state began compiling probable deaths in which people died from what seemed like COVID-19 complications, but were never lab confirmed to have the coronavirus.

So for what it's worth, this was just posted on a neuro MD site: The author is a triple board certified Neurologist. He has published in Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. and Cell Mol Neurobiol. He trained at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York Presbyterian, Hospital for Special Surgery, Montefiore, Northwell and Mount Sinai. He has been in Private Practice for the past 12 years in New York. Surviving COVID-19 with Neurological Involvement from the perspective of a Neurologist "To be honest, it was very scary to go through no matter how much specialized medical training one...

COVID-19 projections assuming full social distancing through May 2020

This month marks the two-year anniversary of one of the most important articles ever written on journalism. On Aug. 7, 2016, after Donald Trump formally secured the Republican nomination and the general election was underway, New York Times media columnist James Rutenberg began with a question: “If you’re a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation’s worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him?”

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (JTA) — Brazil’s front-running presidential candidate has announced he will close the Palestinian embassy in Brasilia in addition to moving his country’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. “Is Palestine a country? Palestine is not a country, so there should be no embassy here,” Jair Bolsonaro, a lawmaker from the Social Liberal Party, declared on Tuesday when the National Congress reopened after a three-week recess. “You do not negotiate with terrorists,” he added.

Failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has paid Huma Abedin nearly $65,000 from her campaign funds since her November election defeat, Federal Election Commission filings show.

Canadians across the country have been reaching into their wallets to donate money to the family of an American soldier whom Omar Khadr is accused of killing in Afghanistan 15 years ago. The online fundraising effort – part political protest, part generosity – comes amid a furor over the $10.5 million sources said the federal government paid Khadr for breaching his rights while he was an American prisoner at Guantanamo Bay.

Colin Kaepernick won't be catching on with the Seattle Seahawks following a recent free-agent visit, but Pete Carroll believes it's only a matter of time before the quarterback finds a new home. The veteran head coach told reporters Friday that, although Seattle won't be signing Kaepernick right now, the team is well aware of what he's capable of doing on the field.