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A group of black pastors has started a petition to urge Congress to censure Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., over his remarks about two Supreme Court justices last week. Schumer has been under fire from Republicans and some Democrats for comments aimed at conservative Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh during a pro-choice rally that many perceived to be threats. "Those remarks, made during a rally at the Supreme Court on a pending case, were clearly intended to influence the decision on that case," a petition from the Coalition of African American Pastors addressed to Senate Majority Leader Mitch...

This letter has been reposted with the permission of Rabbi Reuven Fink.As so many of us are now contemplating going into a Shabbos of seclusion, I want to share a few thoughts with you. We all woke up Tuesday morning prepared for our usual schedules of work or school or whatever we usually do. By late afternoon we learned that the state and the county health departments ordered a voluntary quarantine of those who were in a number of venues where the Coronavirus might have been. I said to myself, “but at all of those places we were performing mitzvot....

It’s starting to look like a classic standoff between Capitol Hill and the White House: Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Democrats insist that a Coronavirus stimulus bill primarily address paid sick leave while President Donald Trump and some Republicans hold strong for a payroll tax cut. On Tuesday, Trump came to the Capitol to sell Senate Republicans on his plan to temporarily suspend or reduce the payroll tax ― a 12.4% levy evenly split between employees and employers. Some Republicans have floated the idea of eliminating the payroll tax for 90 days to help the economy deal with the fallout...

Shi’ite Iraqi Islamic scholar Hadi Al-Modarresi thought that the Wuhan Virus was divine and a tool by which God was smiting his enemies. He thought he would sit back as all of his beliefs were proven right as the virus swept across the lands of heathens. He thought he’d go untouched. He thought wrong. According to Memri.org, Modarressi went on a rant on television calling the virus God’s punishment, specifically against China, for the government abusing Muslims:

“The war has literally exploded and battles are uninterrupted day and night. But now that need for beds has arrived in all its drama. One after the other the departments that had been emptied fill up at an impressive pace. “The boards with the names of the patients, of different colors depending on the operating unit, are now all red and instead of surgery you see the diagnosis, which is always the damned same: bilateral interstitial pneumonia.” The doctor urged people not to describe Covid-19 as a bad case of the flu. “Now, explain to me which flu virus causes...

Following another round of devastating primary losses on Tuesday, Bernie Sanders delivered a statement to the media from Burlington, Vermont. The one-time frontrunner was facing calls to drop out, with some are already declaring the race over. But Sanders made it clear that he's not going anywhere, saying he looks forward to debating Joe Biden on Sunday, and telling the former vice president directly that he has questions he expects him to answer during that debate. Sanders began his speech with an anti-Trump tirade. “Tragically, we have a president today who is a pathological liar, and who is running a...

ROME — Expressing alarm both about mounting infections and slow government responses, the World Health Organization declared Wednesday that the global coronavirus crisis is now a pandemic but also said it's not too late for countries to act. By reversing course and using the charged word “pandemic” that it had previously shied away from, the U.N. health agency appeared to want to shock lethargic countries into pulling out all the stops. “We have called every day for countries to take urgent and aggressive action. We have rung the alarm bell loud and clear,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO chief....

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told lawmakers during a House Oversight Committee hearing Wednesday that COVID-19 — the disease caused by the novel coronavirus — is probably about 10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu. President Trump has often compared COVID-19 to the flu, which affects tens of thousands of Americans each year, in an effort to calm people down, but Fauci clearly wasn't trying to downplay the seriousness of the virus' spread. Fauci is a member of the White House's coronavirus task force. At the same time, he did clarify...

Public officials banned large gatherings in San Francisco and the Seattle area to try to contain the rapidly spreading coronavirus outbreak that’s infected more than 121,000 people across the world since December. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is banning large gatherings in several counties across the state to try to contain the COVID-19 outbreak that that has killed at least 23 residents, he announced Wednesday. Moments after Inslee announced the order, San Francisco health officials announced that they are also banning gatherings of 1,000 or more to slow the spread of the new coronavirus. “I am ordering ... that certain events...

Ontario health officials are investigating how a man who attended a major conference in Toronto contracted COVID-19, fearing the case marks the start of local transmission of the virus in the province. Public Health Sudbury and Districts, which posted details of the case online Tuesday evening, said a man in his 50s tested positive for COVID-19 after attending the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada conference on March 2 and 3. According to organizers, the annual event attracts 25,000 attendees from more than 130 countries.

A man and woman were arrested Tuesday and charged with trespassing at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, the Palm Beach Police Department said. The two individuals were reportedly taken into custody by Palm Beach Police after parking their pickup truck on the property and refusing to leave after being told to do so by authorities. The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office bomb squad inspected the vehicle to ensure it wasn't carrying an explosive device. Trump was not at the resort Tuesday. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro met with Trump there over the weekend. Palm Beach police did not release the...

Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, right? Guess this all depends on where you're at and what you have to work with. In this case, this homemade pistol is quite a blasphemy to many Glock enthusiasts. But, for some a thing of beauty. Take a look at these pics, the homemade Glock that is nothing short of dismal. These photos were shared on an all-Russian forum. Somewhere in Russia, one basement tinkerer (aspiring gunsmith) is very proud of his creation. From a distance it resembles a beat up Glock that just got runned over by a truck. Notice...

With the rise of Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries, I have caught myself calling other Democratic candidates “moderates” compared to Sanders. The reality is there are no moderates left in the Democratic Party. The Democratic National Convention published its party platform in 2016, which outlines the party’s position on a wide array of issues. Multiple times throughout the platform, it is made clear that the murder of a baby should be legal throughout all nine months of pregnancy. The platform is also deceptive by labeling abortion as “safe and legal.” There’s nothing safe about ending the life of...

Bill and Hillary Clinton have become something like a disease on the body politic. Perhaps we can call it Clintonitis. It comes in two forms: Clintonitis-B and Clintonitis-H. The Wall Street Journal has published the following exchange between Fareed Zakaria and Hillary Clinton from an interview on CNN this past Sunday. The Journal places it under the bland heading of Notable and Quotable. In case you missed it, you may observe even without the benefit of the video clip (at the first link above) that the woman is in the grip of stark raving Clintonitis-H: Fareed Zakaria: There was an...

DENVER (KDVR) — Denver’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade has been canceled amid the coronavirus outbreak, officials said Tuesday. Mayor Michael Hancock made the announcement Tuesday morning alongside Theresa Melaragno, the president of the Denver St. Patrick’s Day Parade Committee. The parade was scheduled for Saturday. “Following discussions with public health officials at the city and at the urging of the Mayor during consultation yesterday and this morning, the Denver St. Patrick’s Day Parade Committee has made the tough decision to cancel this year’s parade due to the on-going situation surrounding COVID-19,” Melaragno and Hancock said in a written statement. Heralded...

KEY POINTS A new synthetic messenger RNA (or mRNA) nucleic acid vaccine is the leading candidate for a vaccine to combat COVID-19Another American-made drug, remdesivir, made by Gilead Sciences in California is already being used to treat Chinese taken ill with COVID-19Production of Moderna's vaccine is expected to begin 2021 China again says it's moving ahead with developing new vaccines to combat COVID-19 -- which might make it into production by 2021 -- but the only drug right now that's actually helping cure coronavirus patients in China is an American-made drug originally developed to fight Ebola virus disease (EVD).Zheng Zhongwei, director of...

Dublin, Ireland, canceled its St. Patrick’s Day parade this year. So did Boston. But Savannah is still looking at putting on the green and marching despite the growing concerns about COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus that is itself marching across the world. Georgia had 17 confirmed and presumptive cases of COVID-19 as of Tuesday evening, March 10, most in the Atlanta area. There have been no confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Chatham County, although Candler Hospital reported on Tuesday, it has one admitted patient under investigation. As of Tuesday afternoon the patient has neither a confirmed...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claimed many restaurants "are feeling the pain of racism" because people are avoiding Chinese food out of fear of contracting the coronavirus. "Honestly, it sounds almost so silly to say, but there's a lot of restaurants that are feeling the pain of racism," the New York Democrat said Tuesday night on Instagram Live. "People are literally not patroning Chinese restaurants. They're not patroning Asian restaurants because of just straight-up racism around the coronavirus." The COVID-19 virus, which originated in Wuhan, China, has hurt Chinese businesses in New York City, according to local business leaders. However, Peter Tu,...

A scene from Bong Joon Ho’s 2019 film, winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and Best Picture at the Academy Awards of 2019. Parasite (2019) Peach scene

U.S. lawmakers pushed Wednesday for a ban on imports from a vast area of northwest China where the government has detained more than a million ethnic Uighurs after a report found widespread use of forced labor on farms and factories in the region. The U.S. already bans imports of goods made with forced labor but the report by the Congressional-Executive Commission on China found that the crackdown on the predominantly Muslim Uighurs and other ethnic groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region makes it impossible to ensure goods meet American standards. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang rejected the findings...