Free Republic

When California lawyers Matthew Smith and Katherine Codekas checked into a hotel in Tokyo last weekend, they decided not to hide where they had been. The couple, along with about 900 other passengers, were released from Feb 19 to 21 after a two-week quarantine on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, where a coronavirus outbreak has left more than 700 people infected and killed four Japanese nationals. Foreign governments evacuated hundreds of their citizens, including about 300 United States nationals, and imposed 14 more days quarantine. But Smith and his wife were not among them. Smith led a mutiny of about...

The coronavirus death toll now tops 3,000 worldwide, with nearly 90,000 cases. But even those numbers are nothing compared to what could happen in the months ahead. CBS News spoke to one of the country's top experts on viruses, Marc Lipsitch from Harvard University, who cautions that 40-70% of the world's population will become infected — and from that number, 1% of people who get symptoms from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, could die. The virus can spread rapidly and people can transmit it before they know they are infected. Lipsitch breaks down his findings in this extended...

Although the media are focused on the coronavirus and the two fatalities that have taken place in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), influenza and related pneumonia are widespread across the country. “CDC estimates that so far this season there have been at least 32 million flu illnesses, 310,000 hospitalizations and 18,000 deaths from flu,” the CDC’s weekly Influenza Surveillance Report said as of February 22, 2020. “The percentage of death attributed to pneumonia and influenza is 6.9 percent, below the epidemic threshold of 7.3 percent,” the CDC reported. Among the deaths are more than...

Kim Jong Un guided “strike drill” of two rocket launch systems on Monday: KCNA State media says weapons tests helped improve readiness and accuracy of soldiers North Korean leader Kim Jong Un personally led a “firepower strike drill” of “long-range artillery sub-units of the Korean People's Army” (KPA) on Monday, state media reported Tuesday morning. Published on the front page of the Party daily Rodong Sinmun and in the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) showed at least two types of multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS) firing at island targets.... (Continued)

Today, Justice Neil Gorsuch threw a little shade at the Trump administration for unilaterally rewriting federal gun laws. "The agency used to tell everyone that bump stocks don't qualify as 'machineguns.' Now it says the opposite. The law hasn't changed, only an agency's interpretation of it," Gorsuch wrote. "How, in all of this, can ordinary citizens be expected to keep up—required not only to conform their conduct to the fairest reading of the law they might expect from a neutral judge, but forced to guess whether the statute will be declared ambiguous….And why should courts, charged with the independent and...

Oscar winner Timothy Hutton, currently the star of the freshman Fox drama “Almost Family,” has been accused of raping a 14-year-old girl in 1983. According to a report published online by BuzzFeed News, Sera Johnston, who last year filed a criminal complaint against Hutton with the Vancouver Police Department, said she was assaulted by the actor while he was in town to shoot the film “Iceman.” Johnston told the site that she was just 14 when she and two friends were invited to Hutton’s hotel room, where she said she was raped and assaulted by both Hutton (who was then...

Abp. Hebda Discourages Priests From Voting in Presidential Primary Theologian: Should tell priests to oppose 'Party of Death' MINNEAPOLIS (ChurchMilitant.com) - The head of the St. Paul and Minneapolis archdiocese is requesting that his clerics refrain from voting in the presidential primary on Tuesday. Archbishop Bernard Hebda is urging priests and deacons of the archdiocese not to vote in Minnesota's "closed" primary on Super Tuesday, stating privacy concerns. "Minnesota's presidential primary is a 'closed' party nominating primary, meaning it is open only to people who align with the party," said Hebda in a e-mail to his clerics. "One has to attest that one agrees with...

I explore Bernie Sanders' adulatory remarks about Cuban health care and education, and pierce through the media mythology surrounding the Castro brothers and what they did to the nation of Cuba.

The Gem State’s population is expected to continue to grow due to a multitude of reasons “Look outside your window today,” said Derrell Hartwick, president and CEO of the Coeur d’Alene Chamber of Commerce. “You can see what the great draws are.” And if you looked outside Friday, you saw beautiful blue skies, sunshine and plenty of green. You saw people biking, walking dogs and sitting down with coffee. And if you went one step further and stepped outside, you felt a warm 60 degrees — and it was still February. Hartwick, who recently moved to Coeur d’Alene, spoke of...

BREAKING: Chris Matthews, longtime MSNBC host, is leaving the network

Village People, the American disco group behind the hits "YMCA," "Macho Man" and "In the Navy," has given the go-ahead for President Donald Trump to plays its songs at events, despite being "inundated" with requests from fans urging the band to block the president's use of the music. "We have received numerous requests demanding that we prevent or ban President Donald TrumpÂ’s use of our songs, particularly 'YMCA' and 'Macho Man,'" the group said in a statement posted to Facebook Monday. "Since our music is not being used for a specific endorsement, the PresidentÂ’s use is 'perfect[ly]' legal." Trump most...

Coronavirus panic has anxious New Yorkers swarming drugstores and supermarkets for germ-killers. And with public-health specialists stressing the importance of keeping your hands clean during a viral outbreak, hand soaps and sanitizers are flying off the shelves. SNIP “From what we know about this coronavirus, it’s similar to [previous epidemics of] SARS [severe acute respiratory syndrome] and MERS [Middle East respiratory syndrome], so it should not be that difficult of a microorganism to kill,” Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, medical director of the special pathogens unit at Boston Medical Center, tells The Post. “Soap and water, and alcohol-based hand sanitizers, can kill...

Extended sub-title: The reckonings of one of the South’s white suburban women, whose loyalty is key to whether Trump is reelected SNIP TO EXCERPT: She is 39, a high school English teacher with a PhD and part of a voting demographic whose rebellion could upend the political map of the country: not just suburban women, not just white suburban women, but white suburban women in the South, whose loyalty Trump will need to remain in power. It is the kind of loyalty that has always been expected of white Southern women, who have long played a role as allies of...

The 'Hardball' host made the shock announcement on Monday night, after more than 20 years at the network. MSNBC host Chris Matthews announced his retirement from the network on Monday night after more than 20 years at the left-leaning cable channel. He will be replaced at 7 p.m. by a rotating group of hosts. While Matthews was expected to retire in the near future, the sudden announcement comes amid of a series of recent flaps and controversies. Last Monday, Matthews apologized to Bernie Sanders for comparing his rise in the 2020 campaign to the German invasion of France. "Let me...

In the 1960s, Milton Friedman reportedly visited a construction site in a foreign country. To his surprise, the canal builders used no heavy machinery and instead armed thousands of men with shovels. He questioned the bureaucrat about this odd choice and the bureaucrat responded that it was a jobs program. “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal,” Friedman said. “If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.” Friedman’s absurd proposal illustrates the absurdity of make-work bias—the belief that conserving labor makes us poorer. Make-work bias was particularly popular during the Industrial Revolution, when legions...

Economist Warwick McKibbin estimates up to 68 million people will die from the coronavirus, including as many as almost 100,000 Australians. Preliminary economic modelling based on past viruses by Professor McKibbin suggests the loss to Australia's economic output will be between $US4 billion ($6.1 billion) and $US103 billion ($157 billion) in the first year, depending on how the virus spreads, stimulus interventions by governments and actions by health authorities. The local economy's annual gross domestic product (GDP) loss would be between 0.3 per cent and 7.9 per cent in 2020, if a pandemic breaks out. Professor McKibbin, a former RBA...

A man who felt like he was being ignored set his hospital bed on fire while another patient was in the room in an attempt to get a nurse’s attention, according to the New Smyrna Beach Police Department. According to authorities, John King admitted to setting a plastic bag on fire on Saturday because he felt the AdventHealth New Smyrna Beach staff were ignoring his request to bring him his clothes and he believed that the fire would get their attention. King’s roommate in the hospital explained to officials that he had seen King light a small object on fire,...

Desperate to avoid coming down with a winter cold or worse, plenty of us will be dosing up on vitamin C supplements — and doctors in China are even looking into its effectiveness against coronavirus. Research into new and exciting uses such as battling sepsis and memory loss is also under way. We spend more than £880 million on vitamin C supplements globally, with that figure expected to top £1.1 billion by 2024. Its popularity is rooted in the belief that vitamin C can prevent colds — a theory first set out in 1970 by Nobel Prize-winning scientist Linus Pauling....

A federal judge on Monday ordered former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to deliver a sworn deposition in response to a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch over her role in the Obama administration’s response to the 2012 terror attack on the U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya. U.S. District Court Royce Lamberth wrote in court filings that Clinton’s written answers to questions regarding the matter in a separate case were “incomplete” and “unhelpful” and demanded more information.

Democrats over the past week have attacked the president’s handling of the coronavirus in political advertisements and mischaracterize the president’s statements. In addition, some members of the media have suggested Trump is to blame for the coronavirus, also mischaracterized his statements, and attacked him or his allies for criticizing Democrats for playing politics. Here are the top ten examples of those attacks and mischaracterizations: New York Times Op-Ed Calls Coronavirus the “Trumpvirus”New York Times columnist Gail Collins on February 26, 2020, linked President Trump to the coronavirus in an op-ed piece titled, “Let’s Call It Trumpvirus.” “If you’re feeling awful,...