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On this date in 1314, the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar was burned in Paris. In a boring materialist history, Jacques de Molay was simply the head of an overrich military order whose crusading raison d’etre had become passe* with the Templars’ expulsion from the Holy Land. Scores of trumped-up heresy charges did the work of ecclesiastical assassination for this renowned brotherhood originally founded to safeguard pilgrims in the Holy Land. (There’s a fine podcast episode on the Templars’ history here.) This appears to be some sort of legitimate history. How droll! Ruthless French King Philip the Fair,...

A deadly hospital superbug has been discovered on a remote island beach, marking the first time researchers have seen this multidrug-resistant organism in the "wild". The findings, published Tuesday (March 16) in the journal mBio, may provide clues to the origins of this superbug, Candida auris, which mysteriously popped up in hospitals around the world about a decade ago. "It's a medical mystery, where did it come from," said Dr. Arturo Casadevall, chair of the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study. The new...

Total Vaccine Doses Delivered: 151,108,445 (4,145,700 J&J) Administered: 115,730,008 (1,911,052 J&J) People Vaccinated, At Least One Dose: 75,495,716 Fully Vaccinated: 40,981,464

The Chinese government maintained tight control of a World Health Organization investigation in Wuhan into the origins of the coronavirus, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal, which said that Beijing was granted veto power over which scientists were allowed to take part in the mission. According to the Journal, the constraints placed on the WHO team rendered the scientists unable to conduct a thorough investigation into the virus’ origins. A team of more than a dozen scientists, including one American, visited Wuhan last month, where they met with Chinese authorities and scientists to figure out how the...

A human plasma cell. =============================================================== For the millions of us plagued by hypersensitive, overactive, or downright abusive immune systems, it can feel like you're constantly fighting your own physical self. From incessant allergies to life-threatening anaphylaxis and debilitating autoimmune disease, the system that's supposed to be protecting us can be problematic when it goes wrong. Now, we might be closer to fixing these issues in an entirely new way. Using transgenic mice and cultures of cells taken from human tonsils, researchers have now found evidence of how our bodies might defend against the mistakes that result in conditions such as...

Brett Blomme – a former head of the Cream City LGBTQ+ Foundation which runs a Drag Queen Story Hour program – was arrested on charges of possession of child pornography. Blomme, 38, was taken into custody “following an investigation into multiple uploads of child pornography through a Kik messaging application account in October and November 2020,” according to a statement. A 44-page search warrant filed Friday by a Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) special agent said investigators found Blomme, using the name “dommasterbb,” uploaded 27 videos and images containing child pornography. Two of the files were uploaded at a Milwaukee...

In our era, ideas that until quite recently would have bordered on insane have become thoroughly entrenched in academia and, increasingly, government. The “woke” ruling classes implicitly understand—as in all the cultural revolutions of history—that their power depends on punitively enforcing falsehoods. How could this have happened, so rapidly and so pervasively? How could the accrued common wisdom of mankind have come so quickly to be regarded by so many as not only false, but deeply pernicious? Insightful contemporary writers like Carl Trueman, Yuval Levin, and others have drawn on the resources of important 20th-century theorists like Charles Taylor and...

Someone had to do it. Someone had to say it. Why are these medical experts so damn pessimistic about a virus that has a 90+ percent survival rate? They’ve been wrong about almost everything, and I thought the liberal media was the only institution to hold that title. Okay, I’ll be a little fairer—Dr. Marty Makary of Johns Hopkins noted where the medical experts have been wrong regarding masks, testing, schools, and vaccine distribution. Only pediatricians were the ones who were saying schools were safer to reopen last summer. Those are four big issues that they’ve bungled. And now, they’re...

US defense officials are increasingly warning of the potential for conflict with China over Taiwan. There is almost no way in which the US could intervene in that conflict without devastating losses. Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis, ret, Defense Priorities Thu, March 18, 2021, 7:16 AM·5 min read Shiyu Kinmen County Taiwan China Shiyu, or Lion Islet, one of Taiwan's offshore islands, with the Chinese city of Xiamen in the background. Carl Court/Getty Images US defense officials are increasingly warning of the potential for conflict with China over Taiwan. There is almost no way in which the US could intervene...

The United Auto Workers (UAW) union said that Ford Motor Co.’s plan to build a new vehicle in Mexico instead of Ohio might be a violation of the auto manufacturer’s contractual commitments. “We 100 percent reject the company’s decision to put corporate greed and more potential profits over American jobs and the future of our members. We expect the company to honor its contractual commitments to this membership and when it fails to do so we will take action,” UAW Vice President Gerald Kariem said. “We are intensely exploring our options at this time,” he added. In the letter, Kariem...

Representative Linda Sanchez (D-CA) Thursday on CNN’s “Newsroom” that it was not appropriate for journalists to be inside centers that are housing the surge of unaccompanied children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Anchor Poppy Harlow asked, “My last question is so transparency … All of our reporters down there have been asking nonstop to get into these facilities where Alejandro Mayorkas said are not meant for children. Are you concerned over the lack of transparency?”

Church likely to undergo a transformation in the post-pandemic eraWASHINGTON — The churchgoing experience may be different once the threat of COVID-19 is minimized and church experts are forecasting fewer Catholics overall in the pews.Fewer people attending church will require a radical restructuring of parish life in many parts of the U.S. in the post-pandemic era, said Matthew F. Manion, faculty director of the Center for Church Management at Villanova University near Philadelphia."From what I'm seeing, the pandemic speeds along processes that were already happening," said Timothy P. O'Malley, a theology professor at the McGrath Institute for Church Life at...

Joe Scarborough boasted on Thursday he's "always been a champion of the filibuster." But now he wants the Democrats to abolish it! His argument is that because of increased political polarization, there are few moderates left, and thus that "nothing can get done" with the filibuster in place, which in effect requires 60 votes to pass legislation through the Senate. Scarborough was somewhat coy in the way he first phrased things, saying Democrats must "do something significant" about the filibuster. He made his support for abolishing the filibuster more explicit a bit later, saying Democrats must "make sure that 50-plus-one...

The front-page headline in Monday's Wall Street Journal said: "Biden weighs how to pay for Agenda." Who purchases something they know they can't afford, and then worries about paying for it later? Only government. After less than two months in office, President Biden and a majority Democrat Congress have engaged in record spending with insufficient money to pay for it. That may be about to change. Bloomberg.com reports the president wants to raise individual income taxes, as well as taxes on corporations (and expand the estate tax) to pay for another round of spending on infrastructure and programs and policies...

AstraZeneca Plc AZN.L is preparing to file for U.S. emergency use authorization (EUA) for its COVID-19 vaccine later this month or early April after accumulating enough data to judge the inoculation's efficacy, sources with knowledge of the ongoing clinical trial told Reuters on Friday (12 Mar). AstraZeneca said in February it expects its vaccine could receive U.S. emergency use authorization at the beginning of April and could immediately deliver 30 million doses to locations around the United States.

Joe Biden is lying about his 2011 dealings with Vladimir Putin in Moscow, and the Russian president isn’t putting up with it. I know this because I was an eyewitness to the events of that day. Events that Washington, D.C.’s media have failed to press Biden on – and that give an extraordinary insight into how our now-president was humiliated by his Russian counterparts.

A silent war against pandemics is taking place around the clock, every day of our lives. This war occurs not in government labs or hospitals. Rather, it is happening inside of you and me, even at this very moment. Within every human body on the planet, God has installed the best defense system against viruses, bacteria, and plagues of all kinds. This defensive team is called the immune system, and it is brilliantly effective and capable of adapting to meet new threats.The War InsideWarding off disease from our bodies begins at the simple, mechanical level — the physical barriers of...

Last year, we began what was supposed to be a short lockdown to flatten the curve of COVID-19-related hospitalizations. It's a year later and we are still mostly locked down. This past year has been particularly hard on young adults, according to a story in The Wall Street Journal titled "Pandemic Loneliness Is Hitting Young Adults Especially Hard." In fact, "61% of young people ages 18 to 25 reported serious loneliness in the prior month, compared with 24% in adults ages 55 to 65," wrote reporter Anne Marie Chaker. These statistics came from a report from Making Caring Common, part...

It took the IRS just two days to start processing $1,400 stimulus checks after President Joe Biden signed his $1.9 trillion relief package into law. The third direct payments of the pandemic began to show up in bank accounts last weekend.As of Wednesday, millions of Americans had already received more money to take care of bills, pay down debt, save or invest.But if you keep refreshing your online banking and still aren't seeing the cash, what's happened? Here are seven potential reasons you haven't gotten your money yet.Advertisement1. The IRS is sending out the stimulus checks in 'batches'The IRS has...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is holding a public health roundtable discussion with renowned doctors and epidemiologists who are expected to discuss Florida’s overall response to the Chinese coronavirus. The event, taking place at the Florida State Capitol, features experts in the field of public health, including Sunetra Gupta, Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at the University of Oxford; Dr. Scott W. Atlas, MD, a Robert Wesson Senior Fellow in health care policy at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University; Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Professor of Medicine at Stanford University; and Dr. Martin Kulldorff, PhD, biostatistician, epidemiologist, and professor of medicine at...