Free Republic

After President Biden claimed allegations of family payments from Hunter Biden’s business associate are "not true," one China expert and author has signaled an "admission of corruption" from the First Family. "The spokesperson for Hunter Biden's legal team said that, oh, this is okay because this was seed money, good faith seed money," Gatestone Institute senior fellow Gordon Chang said on "Mornings with Maria" Monday. "Now, in these types of transactions, nobody pays millions of dollars without a contract." On Thursday, GOP lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee revealed that they had obtained bank documents showing that the president's son,...

If you value truth, ignore the "experts." Most aren't really expert at much. They prefer titles to original thoughts — and the more titles they insist on announcing, the more likely they seek nobility, not knowledge. They could more accurately be called "opinion connoisseurs." They are experts in fashionable opinion and possess an insatiable need to tell everyone else just what the very best people are supposed to believe. The "experts" told us that COVID came from a wet market, that two weeks of isolation would flatten the curve, that lockdowns posed few health risks, that closed schools posed few...

Ruth Ben-Ghiat spends a lot of time thinking about authoritarianism. An historian at New York University, she is an expert on the rise of fascism in Italy and, most recently, author of the the book, "Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present," tracing the erosion of democracy from Russia to the United States of America. She is keenly focused on what happens when those in power lose their grip on it. "The authoritarian playbook has no chapter on failure," Ben-Ghiat wrote in a November 2020 piece for The Washington Post. "Nothing prepares the ruler to see his propaganda ignored and his charismatic...

Te world only has 10 weeks worth of grain left, the lowest levels ever seen, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine is creating a "seismic" threat to global food supplies, Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker told the United Nations Security Council. "[T]he Russia-Ukraine war did not start the food security crisis. It simply added fuel to a fire that was long burning. A crisis we detected tremors from long before the COVID 19 pandemic exposed the fragility of our supply chains," Menker told the United Nations. Her software company, Gro Intelligence, uses human and artificial intelligence to predict food security and...

One expert has a warning for Americans who are shocked now at the soaring price of gasoline: You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Gas could hit $7 a gallon if Russia-Ukraine tensions escalate and demand ticks up even further as the weather gets warmer and more Americans hit the road, according to an energy markets analyst.

There is no transcript of this video. There is a great interview with Dr. John Mather, who is the senior project scientist on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The Youtube is very well done in explaining the JWST, what it is designed to do, how it is supposed to work, and how it will be deployed and emplaced over the next month.

Irritated by the publication of emails exposing his deceit and greed, Dr. Anthony Fauci went on MSNBC's "MTP Daily" to denounce his critics. Aided and abetted by the show's host Chuck Todd, Fauci declared "those who attack me are attacking science and truth." "These Republicans—Blackburn, Rubio, McCarthy—who say I lied to America because they find contradictory statements in my emails are ridiculous," Fauci declared. "How do they know I wasn't lying in my emails? There is no way of telling which were the lies. That I know this and they don't proves that I am the scientist and they are...

The main symptoms of COVID-19 appear to have changed — with headaches and sore throats now more common than fevers and coughs, according to a warning by UK experts. “COVID is acting differently now, it’s more like a cold,” Tim Spector, a professor of genetic epidemiology who has been tracking symptoms throughout the pandemic, told the Telegraph. Now, the most likely warning sign is a headache, followed by a sore throat and runny nose, the King’s College London professor said.

The brainchild of progressive President Woodrow Wilson, the modern administrative state is rooted in a preference for rule by an enlightened clerisy. “Trust the experts.” Then came COVID-19. The virus dealt an irreparable blow to the credibility of our ruling class and its ­appeal to its own authority as a ­coterie of highly credentialed and capable experts. No single person exemplifies this fall more than Dr. Anthony Fauci . As Steve Deace and Todd Erzen detail in their new book, “Faucian Bargain: The Most Powerful and Dangerous Bureaucrat in American History,” Fauci has repeatedly contradicted himself throughout the pandemic ....

The brainchild of progressive President Woodrow Wilson, the modern administrative state is rooted in a preference for rule by an enlightened clerisy. “Trust the experts.” Then came COVID-19. The virus dealt an irreparable blow to the credibility of our ruling class and its ­appeal to its own authority as a ­coterie of highly credentialed and capable experts. No single person exemplifies this fall more than Dr. Anthony Fauci . As Steve Deace and Todd Erzen detail in their new book, “Faucian Bargain: The Most Powerful and Dangerous Bureaucrat in American History,” Fauci has repeatedly contradicted himself throughout the pandemic ....

When you think about Hunter Biden, what is the first thing that comes to mind? And please don't crack any jokes. Come on, pipe up. What do you associate Hunter Biden with? Laptops? Perhaps but it could be another L-word, namely locomotives. Yes, did you now that Hunter Biden is a noted locomotive expert? You don't believe me? Well, that is how Politico's "Transition Playbook" described him on Friday in "How high speed trains got railroaded in Biden's infrastructure plan."

Rieli Franciscato, 56, spent his career in the government’s indigenous affairs agency, Funai, working to set up reservations to protect uncontacted tribes. Kanindé, an NGO that Franciscato helped found in the 1980s, said the indigenous group had no ability to distinguish between friend or foe from the outside world.

Bioethicist Dr. Zeke Emanuel is predicting that up to 250,000 Americans could die directly from the coronavirus by the end of the year. In an interview with CBS News chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett, Emanuel, who is the vice provost for Global Initiatives and chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, slammed the Trump administration's response to the pandemic as "incompetent and pretty disastrous." "Before the year is out, we'll probably have, I would think, between 220,000 and 250,000 Americans who died directly from COVID, not to mention those people who are...

The global spread of the coronavirus is “much, much worse” than seen with Ebola — which, unlike COVID-19, “requires very close contact for transmission,” according to the professor who helped discover the earlier illness. Professor Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told Sky News that the coronavirus pandemic has the potential to turn into a “really bad situation.” “This is much, much worse than Ebola,” he said. “Ebola requires very close contact for transmission. People are very scared of it, but frankly it is usually very contained. There are some exceptions. But because (COVID-19)...

RUSH: The Drive-By Media wants you to think that this massive stock market plunge is because of the coronavirus. Some of it is, but the vast majority of this has nothing to do with the coronavirus, absolutely nothing to do with the coronavirus. I am here to tell you what the massive market plunge is all about. Now, I don’t know what’s gonna bring it to a screeching halt, but something will because this is gonna end as all things end. The coronavirus is being hyped beyond what it is. Rahm Emanuel, right here we have it, “Coronavirus Could Be...

Stanford Law School professor Pamela Karlan, one of three expert witnesses called by Democrats to testify on the first day of the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment inquiry, donated $1000 to the presidential campaign of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) in July, according to to Federal Elections Commission (FEC) data. Karlan gave the Warren for President, Inc. campaign committee two separate $500 donations on July 29, 2019, the FEC reports.

Sebastian Thrun, the godfather of the self-driving car industry, explains how Larry Page taught him to be a visionary, not just an 'expert' "Back in 2009, when I had become officially the godfather of self-driving cars, and the world expert (maybe there were four or five experts, but I was certainly at the top of my field), Larry Page comes to me and says, 'Hey, Sebastian, I want you to do a car in California that can drive anywhere in California, any road. Up to that point, the best we had ever seen was an empty dessert track, or an...

Here is an interesting news item, right out of progressive ideology. I wanted to highlight this because the role of expertise has been, in my experience, one of the most misunderstood aspects of progressivism. Millennial dads have pathetic DIY skills compared to baby boomersIn this story, the "shocking" statistics are reported: Many millennial dads reported not owning a cordless drill (46%), a stepladder (49%), a set of screwdrivers (38%) or even a hammer (32 percent) — an item owned by 93% of boomer dads. Why the decline in DIY? Now this article tries to chalk it up to increases in...

National security expert Malcolm Nance said on Monday that President Donald Trump’s tweets, actions and response to ongoing investigation surrounding him and his 2016 presidential campaign are leading many to question whether he is a traitor. “Rhetorically, the president of the United States cannot go around tweeting about people who are investigating his activities as being treasonous because we may have that as a fact at the end of this,” Nance, who formerly served as U.S. Navy senior chief petty officer, said on MSNBC. “The president of the United States may have committed treason.” **SNIP** “These phrases, ‘taking down an...

**SNIP** The investigation would be limited to the "current credible allegations," according to the statement from the Senate committee. That classification would fall under "any kind of allegation where there are witnesses that can be interviewed and any kind of information that can be gathered to determine whether the allegations are true or false," Gomez said. Agents will conduct interviews, complete database checks and research people's criminal histories and any kind of civil litigation they've been involved with in the past, Gomez said, describing the background check as a "special operation." The interviews will be confidential and conducted by professionals...