Free Republic

At the beginning of the pandemic, public health officials waffled over masks: Do they help? By how much? The World Health Organization declined to recommend mask adoption until June 2020, for instance, partly because of a lack of real-world studies of their efficacy (although laboratory experiments clearly show masks partly block viruses). As recently as July 2021, City Journal published an article arguing that “the best medical” research suggests mask-wearing during the pandemic “has likely provided little to no health benefit.” Because of the lingering uncertainty, we set out last year to conduct the first large-scale study to answer two...

Congressman Langevin responds to Bishop (Thomas) Tobin on abortion rights legislationPROVIDENCE — Democratic US Representative James R. Langevin this week responded to Catholic Bishop Thomas J. Tobin’s criticism of his support for an abortion rights bill, saying he is guided by the Constitution.And while Bishop Tobin has castigated other Catholic politicians for supporting abortion rights, Langevin said Pope Francis has suggested that bishops and priests need to be “guides and shepherds” rather than “disciplinarians.”Last month, Langevin announced he had changed his stance on abortion rights and would back federal legislation that would enshrine a nationwide right to abortion.“Although I remain...

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Schools across Pennsylvania are still dealing with the low rate of vaccinations for young children, which has increased the need for masks in the classroom. According to Gov. Tom Wolf, getting vaccine shots into the arms of school-aged children remains a roadblock in lifting the mask mandate in schools across Pennsylvania. "I think the key is not so much the date as when the vaccine becomes available to all school children and how fast we can get them vaccinated," Wolf said. The governor's mask mandate went into effect in early September. However, Wolf said he initially planned...

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday advised a lower court to reconsider earlier decisions that blocked an estimated $3.6 billion from being used for construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall championed by former President Donald Trump. After taking office in January, President Joe Biden has sought to halt funding for the border wall construction that was pushed by his predecessor. The Biden administration had argued that the Supreme Court did not need to weigh in on the border wall funding case because the project was closed down by the new administration. But the Court's Monday ruling called for a reassessment...

The United States has “real reasons for concern” over China’s expanding size and range of its military capabilities close to Japan that also pose threats to Guam and Hawaii, as well as Australia, the deputy secretary of defense said Friday. Kathleen Hicks said President Xi Jinping’s rhetoric is making “clear their intentions” to be a global military power. Speaking in a Center for Strategic and International Studies online forum, she said the growth of Chinese military capabilities is “the mark on the wall” for the Pentagon when it identified Beijing as a “pacing competitor.” Hicks added that “doesn’t mean we’re...

China has been taking advantage of a 'data void' in order to flood social media platforms with Chinese-backed conspiracy theories regarding the origins of Covid-19, which in turn affects algorithmic results from popular search engines such as Google and Bing, according to the Washington Post, citing a Tuesday report by the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD).The Chinese posts have almost exclusively focused on a theory that Covid-19 was created in a lab at Fort Detrick, home to the US Army's Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) - which will ring a bell for anyone who read The Hot Zone,...

Whether Democrats or Republicans, there's one political question that most Americans can agree on: Mayor Bill de Blasio is leaving NYC in much worse shape than he found it eight years ago.Yet, despite facing near-universal criticism, and polling at under 1% nationally during his presidential campaign (which became the butt of endless jokes), political reporters in New York State are sounding the alarm Wednesday morning that the mayor best known for surging crime rates and economic inequality (and eating his pizza with a fork and knife) is exploring a run for governor of the Empire State.Earlier this morning, the NYT's...

Republicans have been against raising the debt limit — especially given that Joe Biden wants to break the bank and pass massive spending spree legislation — and have already voted twice against it.So in order to raise the debt limit, Democrats have been trying to figure out how to get around the filibuster and raise it by a simple majority. Democrats have been tossing around the idea of an exception to the filibuster.But Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) said today he isn’t having any of that. He said once again today that he’s standing by the filibuster and he isn’t going...

Joe Biden has been throwing a big fit over Republicans not wanting to go along with raising the debt ceiling.He even claimed that if the GOP didn’t agree to do it they would be the equivalent of sending a “meteor headed to crash into our economy.” Imagine using that terminology to describe not wanting to keep spending into oblivion.Earlier, we reported that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had thrown out a potential offer for a short-term suspension of the debt ceiling.My new statement on the Democrats’ self-created debt limit crisis: pic.twitter.com/XwuqyS9oZ0— Leader McConnell (@LeaderMcConnell) October 6, 2021“We have already made...

Rumble — Is Merrick Garland creating an East German Stasi-like FBI? Why is the DOJ getting involved in school board meetings and going after Moms as if they’re domestic terrorists? They’re spying and gathering intelligence on patriotic parents and unleashing the full force of the government to attack the constitutional rights of citizens throughout this country. This is an American Marxist overreach.

PFIZER LEAKS: Whistleblower Goes On Record, Reveals Internal Emails from Chief Scientific Officer & Senior Director of Worldwide Research Discussing COVID Vaccine ... ‘We Want to Avoid Having the Information on the Fetal Cells Floating Out There’

Source: AP Photo/Paul Sancya I mean, you already know the tale about ‘two separate rules’ so I don’t really need to say much regarding Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s (D-MI) mask antics. Yeah, she gave away the game like so many of her colleagues when it comes to COVID. She admitted that she’s only wearing one in public because she has a Republican tracker tailing her. 'Rules for thee but not for me' part XVII (via Free Beacon): Video

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has issued a throwdown to Joe Biden’s school board cops over at the Department of Justice. This week, Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered the FBI to begin looking into cases of “domestic terrorists” showing up at school board meetings across the nation to rail against mask mandates and the racist “critical race theory” programs. PJ Media’s Stacey Lennox noted that Garland’s response to a complaint by a National School Boards Association was an obvious attempt to chill free speech and turn understandably concerned parents into “domestic terrorists,” as the letter called the parents. PJ Media’s Megan...

Terry McAuliffe, the Democrat candidate for the Virginia governor’s race, warned that President Joe Biden is “unpopular” in Virginia in off-the-cuff remarks during a video conference. “We’ve got to get Democrats out to vote,” McAuliffe, the former governor of the state, said in the Tuesday night virtual event with Virginia Democrats. “We are facing a lot of headwinds from Washington, as you know. The president is unpopular here in Virginia, so we have got to plow through,” McAuliffe said, referring to Biden. Virginia’s off-year elections are viewed as a bellwether contest for the party that controls the presidency and could...

THE US has blocked radioactive fuel to China over fears Beijing wants to triple its nuke stockpile. President Joe Biden's administration ordered the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to block exports to China on "national security" grounds, The Times reported. The export of radioactive materials to China's state-owned nuclear company the China General Nuclear Power Group is now banned under the order. It comes after Chinese state media called for a tripling of the nation's nuclear arsenal to fend off the "warmongering" US. The Global Times - the newspaper of the ruling Communist Party, which has a circulation of 1.5million - published...

An 18-year-old student who opened fire during a fight at his Dallas-area high school and injured four people on Wednesday has been taken into custody, authorities said. Timothy George Simpkins fled from Timberview High School in Arlington after the Wednesday morning shooting and drove off in a silver Dodge Charger, police said. The Arlington Police Department tweeted hours after the shooting that Simpkins had been taken into custody without incident and charged with multiple counts of aggravated assault with a gun.

Twitch has suffered a huge data breach. On Wednesday, an anonymous 4chan user shared a 135GB torrent link on the site which includes a slew of internal Twitch information. Pretty much the entirety of Twitch has been leaked by an anonymous hacker. Video game news outlet VGC seems to have been the first to report the data breach and have verified the files mentioned in the leak. In an email to Mashable, a Twitch spokesperson confirmed that a breach occurred. "We can confirm a breach has taken place," Twitch said in a statement. "Our teams are working with urgency to...

President Joe Biden’s administration appears to be making a concerted effort to criminalize — and penalize — political dissent. The most recent step down that road came in the form of a letter from Attorney General Merrick Garland, indicating the Justice Department’s plan to coordinate with local law enforcement in order to quash protests at school board meetings.

Dom Perrottet@Dom_Perrottet We're moving forward with our staged NSW reopening. A few adjustments to Monday's 70% relaxations and further easing once we hit 80% double vaccinated.

On Oct. 5, the Washington state Department of Health issued a statement, saying it is “aware” of the woman’s passing, but did not identify her by name. “Sadly, this is the first such death in Washington state. We send our deepest condolences to her family and loved ones.” In the statement, secretary of health, Umair Shah, added that losing a loved one at any time is tragic, and a “pain that’s become all too familiar in the last year-and-a-half of this pandemic.” The Epoch Times reported Oct. 5 that Jessica Berg Wilson, 37, a mother of two young daughters in...