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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Internal Revenue Service chief Charles Rettig said on Tuesday that Congress needs to provide clear statutory authority for the tax agency to collect information on cryptocurrency transfers valued at over $10,000 that largely go unreported. “I think we need congressional authority,” Rettig said in testimony to the Senate Finance Committee. “We get challenged frequently, and to have a clear dictate from Congress on the authority for us to collect that information is critical.”

Fraternal Order of Police President Steve Zona argues the officer being thrown to the ground in Jacksonville is just another indication of what happens when anti-law enforcement rhetoric comes from activists, elected officials. https://youtu.be/wphpHM306xo

Critically ill COVID-19 patients treated with non-altered stem cells from umbilical cord connective tissue were more than twice as likely to survive as those who did not have the treatment, according to a study published today in STEM CELLS Translational Medicine. The clinical trial, carried out at four hospitals in Jakarta, Indonesia, also showed that administering the treatment to COVID-19 patients with an added chronic health condition such as diabetes, hypertension or kidney disease increased their survival more than fourfold. All 40 patients who took part in the double-blind, controlled, randomized study were adults in intensive care who had been...

PORTLAND (WGME) -- Eight Mainers have died with COVID-19 after being fully vaccinated, according to the Maine CDC. While it's a rare occurrence, it can leave families in shock and heartbroken. Eager and ready for normalcy, Arthur Mitchell got his second dose of the Moderna vaccine on March 8. “Counted out his two weeks to be fully vaccinated, was very excited about that,” daughter Margaret Staggs said. Staggs says once the family was fully vaccinated, they finally relaxed after a year of restrictions. “We probably all took a deep breath and let our guard down a little bit,” Staggs said....

Hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug touted as a magical Covid-19 cure by former US President Donald Trump last year, has been found effective in a prophylactic study published in the Journal of The Association of Physicians of India.Hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug touted as a magical Covid-19 cure by former US President Donald Trump last year, has been found effective in a prophylactic study published in the Journal of The Association of Physicians of India (JAPI) last week. The study showed that hydroxychloroquine, popularly known as HCQ, could prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection in varying degrees depending on its dosing regimen. The highest prevention...

A poll released Monday indicates 78 percent of those unwilling to get vaccinated are unlikely to change their mind, as President Joe Biden struggles to reach his vaccination goal. According to a Gallup poll, among those not planning to be vaccinated, 51 percent say they are “not likely at all” to change their mind and get vaccinated. Another 19 percent say “they are somewhat likely to change their mind and get vaccinated — equivalent to five percent of all U.S. adults.” The poll notes a total of 24 percent of those surveyed do not plan to be vaccinated, while 12...

When Fulton County, Ga., poll manager Suzi Voyles sorted through a large stack of mail-in ballots last November, she noticed an alarmingly odd pattern of uniformity in the markings for Joseph R. Biden. One after another, the absentee votes contained perfectly filled-in ovals for Biden — except that each of the darkened bubbles featured an identical white void inside them in the shape of a tiny crescent, indicating they’d been marked with toner ink instead of a pen or pencil. Adding to suspicions, she noticed that all of the ballots were printed on different stock paper than the others she...

Last week, a black Amazon delivery driver sucker-punched an elderly white woman after the victim rejected the driver’s snide remark about the “white privilege” of getting annoyed while waiting for a package. A few months back, a Yale lecturer spoke about her “fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way.” This ideology justifies blatant racism in the name of promoting “equity.” It is spreading throughout American classrooms, corporate boardrooms, and legacy media outlets. One of its architects has even called for a totalitarian bureaucracy to enforce his vision of “equity.” Marxist...

The Pentagon defended the military’s diversity and inclusion training programs amid a torrent of criticism, saying they are essential for recruiting the “right people” in its duty to defend the nation.​ Pentagon spokesman John Kirby was asked during Tuesday’s briefing about GOP lawmakers creating sites urging whistleblowers in the armed services to expose progressive diversity training programs, some of which have reportedly deemed white people “inherently evil.” “We certainly respect the oversight that Congress provides. I’m not going to comment on any specific one initiative that members of Congress might be doing​,” Kirby said. “What I can speak to is...

White House (coronavirus) adviser and top government epidemiologist Dr. Anthony Fauci's forthcoming book appears to have been scrubbed from Amazon and other major distributors following the release of thousands of his emails Wednesday.Fauci's book, titled "Expect the Unexpected: Ten Lessons on Truth, Service, and the Way Forward," was announced on May 17 with a November publication date, according to its original Amazon listing. The listing described the book as offering "inspiration in [Fauci's] unique perspective on leadership, expecting the unexpected, and finding joy in difficult times."

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) released a video Tuesday highlighting that Vice President Kamala Harris has not visited the U.S. southern border since being tapped more than two months ago to oversee the border crisis. Boebert was in McAllen, Texas, with a delegation last week where she created the video depicting the Colorado congresswoman walking along a border barrier carrying a cardboard cutout of Harris in lieu of the vice president’s real live visit. “You can’t just hear about what’s happening. You have to come down here to see for yourself to really understand the devastating reality at our southern border,”...

America Has Long Had a Racist Political Party The Democratic Party prospers on the votes of the very people it has spent much of its history oppressing. And the names of those oppressors are well known.The official Donkey Party website, Wikipedia, and a hundred other prejudicial sources online such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, would never tell you what I am about to relate. It is not a secret; many noted historians have written about it at great length, but the Left does not want you to know it. They have obscured the facts or tried to rewrite their...

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said on Tuesday that he had a "constructive" meeting with a group of civil rights leaders but that he was unmoved on his opposition to a sweeping bill to overhaul federal elections. "There was nothing basically for-or-against. ... Basically everyone's position was discussed," Manchin told reporters after the meeting. Asked if the meeting changed his position on S.1, known as the For the People Act, he added: "No, I don't think anybody changed positions on that."

The premier world wildlife, science and history publication National Geographic seems to be succumbing to the woke mind virus. Well, senior staff at the famous magazine are, at least. According to one conservative commentator, Editor in Chief Susan Goldberg sent out a mass email from the magazine over the weekend in which she denounced her own “white” “privilege.” Now that’s what you call a “humblebrag.” But, yes, Susan Goldberg, the head editor of National Geographic and the first woman to have ever held that position at the prestigious left-wing rag, added an extra line to her signature in a National...

ransomnote: The linked report is complex and should make data-philes very happy. Nicely detailed disclaimers and linked tables of data. I'll collect some of the plain-English summaries to post together here.In ConclusionMeasuring vaccine effectiveness in the real world is a messy business. In this article I used the ‘infection opportunities’ framework to make the data that have been made available by Public Health Ontario better suited for such analysis. The most surprising findings of that analysis are that the risk of infection was:almost 20% higher for vaccinated people in the 0-13 days following the first dose than it was for...

TENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME MATTHEW 5:13–16 Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus uses the images of salt and light to show how we are to bring salvation to the world. In our rather privatized and individualistic culture, we tend naturally to think of religion as something for ourselves designed to make our lives richer or better. Now there is a sense in which that is true, but on the biblical reading, religiosity is like salt, light, and an elevated city: it is meant not for oneself but for others. Perhaps we can bring these two together by saying that we...

Bishop apologizes to fired LGBT Catholic educator at theology gatheringAfter eight years serving as the director of religious education at a Catholic school in Pennsylvania, Margie Winters was fired in 2015 because of her marriage to a woman.Her story is similar to those of a number of other Catholic educators in the U.S., fired because their relationships violate the church's teaching against same-sex marriage. But on June 4 this year, Winters received something different: a clerical apology for the way she was treated.As part of a discussion during the annual gathering of the College Theology Society, held virtually, Bishop John...

Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday deflected questions about why she has not yet visited the southern border after being tasked with handling the “root causes” of migration, saying “we’ve been to the border.” NBC’s Lester Holt asked Harris whether she has plans to visit the border, having gone 76 days without a trip there since being named border czar. “I – at some point – you know – we are going to the border. We’ve been to the border,” Harris said. “So this whole – this whole – this whole thing about the border. We’ve been to the border....

What’s in Store for Your SonsIn the 1970s, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson playfully warned mothers about the downsides of the cowboy business: “Mammas don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys / Don't let ‘em pick guitars and drive them old trucks / Make ‘em be doctors and lawyers and such.” That song was written before today's full-blooded assault on masculinity in American culture. It was a time when you could poke a little fun at traditional male identity while still honoring it. I have been a professor at Bucknell University for twenty years, and alas, I find...

If Congress follows the president’s lead and does not renew the Hyde Amendment, court precedents may require state Medicaid programs to cover abortions in most if not all cases.If Congress enacts them into law, the legislative concepts outlined in President Biden’s first budget will have far-reaching effects on American debt, deficits, and taxation. One specific policy may have an effect even as a proposal. By suggesting a repeal of the Hyde Amendment, the president gave conservative states another reason not to expand Medicaid. While coverage of the Biden budget has focused on its support of taxpayer funding for abortion, fewer...