Free Republic

NEW YORK (AP) — A government advisory committee on Wednesday recommended that all U.S. adults younger than 60 be vaccinated against hepatitis B, because progress against the liver-damaging disease has stalled. The decision means that tens of millions of U.S. adults — mostly between the ages of 30 and 59 — would be advised to get shots. Hepatitis B vaccinations became standard for children in 1991, meaning most adults younger that 30 already are protected.

Howard Stern says he could launch a White House bid in 2024 against former President Trump, quipping he knows he'll "beat his ass." The SiriusXM host said Tuesday that running for president could be his "civic duty" if Trump, who has repeatedly floated but not confirmed a 2024 bid, was to seek a second term. “I would just sit there and play that f---ing clip of him trying to fix the election, over and over again,” Stern said, referring to Trump's phone call in January with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which the then-president sought to persuade him...

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender American Indian and Alaskan Native (AIAN) adults have higher levels of mental health issues, physical abuse and economic instability than their non-LGBTQ peers, according to a new report. The study, released last month by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law in advance of Native American Heritage Month in November, found 42 percent of AIAN LGBTQ adults have been diagnosed with depression, compared to less than a quarter of non-LGBTQ Native people and just 6.7 percent of the general U.S. population. AIAN LGBTQ adults, particularly women, are also more likely to engage in...

On nearly every long-haul road trip of my life, I've made an essential pit-stop through the Arby's drive-thru for one thing: the fast food joint's top-notch Curly Fries. Now, my obsession with the crispy coiled potato strings is hardly a controversial one. In fact, the fan-favorite has earned Arby's a Fasties Award. But, the chain's latest spin on said fries? That might raise a few brows. Arby's is entering the booze scene with the debut of two French fry-flavored vodkas, modeled after its famed Curly Fries and newly-released Crinkle-Cut Fries. "Arby's recently added a Crinkle-cut option to accompany our iconic...

I’m unapologetically Protestant but, as I’ve said for a while now, our Catholic friends have long led the way on many bioethical issues like abortion and assisted reproductive technologies. For example, back in 2008, the Vatican released a document called “Dignitatis personae,” which said that “The desire for a child, while good, cannot justify the ‘production’ of offspring, just as the desire to not have a child cannot justify the abandonment or destruction of a child once he or she has been conceived.” Now, I recognize that Christians disagree about whether it’s intrinsically wrong to conceive children outside of the...

It was recently announced, with much ballyhoo and excitement, that Amazon has added to their apparently infinite number of assets by paying $8.45 billion for MGM Studios. One strange quirk of their purchase is that they have not bought the rights to...MGM’s pre-1986 pictures. Yet what they have obtained are a rich variety of Hollywood classics, including everything from The Silence of the Lambs and Thelma and Louise to the less obviously distinguished likes of Legally Blonde and Poltergeist. And in the current intellectual property universe, for “rights’, read “remake opportunities’. ...Amazon has struggled to distinguish itself in the streaming...

A new climate assessment released Tuesday by a group of scientists from the University of Vermont says the state is getting warmer and wetter and the changes pose long-term challenges for the state. Vermont is expected to lose around 70 species of birds, while moose numbers will decline and populations of white tailed deer will increase due to rising temperatures in the coming years, the report said. The study found that since 1900, average Vermont temperatures have increased by nearly 2 degrees and precipitation has increased by 21%. Despite the warming climate, Vermont will remain attractive as a tourist destination....

Sen. Ted Cruz went after Hillary Clinton on Tuesday for defending Big Bird, who Cruz had blasted as a propagandist after the Sesame Street character shared he had received his COVID-19 shot. 'Captured in the wild, rare image of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch…,' Cruz wrote, commenting on Clinton's tweet. Clinton had shared a vintage photo with Big Bird from her first lady days, writing, 'It's a bird that teaches children things. Like how to stay healthy. That's it.'

France will start building its first new nuclear reactors in decades as part of efforts to meet its promises to reduce planet-warming emissions, French President Emmanuel Macron announced Tuesday. He spoke as climate negotiators in Glasgow debate how to speed up efforts against climate change, and amid concerns around Europe about recent spikes in energy prices and the continent’s dependence on global gas and oil producers, including Russia. “To guarantee France’s energy independence, to guarantee our country’s electricity supply, and to reach our goals -- notably carbon neutrality in 2050 -- we will for the first time in decades revive...

Hillary Clinton paid for the Steele dossier and then “filled it with rubbish contents,” according to Northeastern University Associate Professor Max Abrahms. In 2016, former MI6 agent Christopher Steele produced a dossier outlining sensational allegations against Donald Trump, alleging among a number of things criminal links with Russia. “What we’ve discovered increasingly, including over the past week, is that the Steele dossier was totally nonsense,” Mr Abrahms told Sky News host Rita Panahi. “We knew previously that it was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign, what we didn’t fully realise is that the contents of that dossier was based...

To enforce President Joe Biden’s forthcoming COVID-19 mandate, the U.S. Labor Department is going to need a lot of help. Its Occupational Safety and Health Administration doesn’t have nearly enough workplace safety inspectors to do the job. So the government will rely upon a corps of informers to identify violations of the order: Employees who will presumably be concerned enough to turn in their own employers if their co-workers go unvaccinated or fail to undergo weekly tests to show they’re virus-free. What's not known is just how many employees will be willing to accept some risk to themselves — or...

Given the CDC's record of issuing "science" based on political motives and leanings, the study was met with skepticism. Further, a number of other studies have shown natural immunity is far superior to vaccination in terms of protection against infection. The Brownstone Institute has a solid analysis of the CDC study compared to a recent Israeli study, which shows natural immunity offers better protection. Concerning the Covid recovered, there are two key public health issues. 1. Would the Covid recovered benefit from also being vaccinated? 2. Should there be vaccine passports and mandates that require them to be vaccinated in...

A bombshell new book reveals how a no-name “f–king idiot” MAGA fanatic grabbed power in the final days of the Trump administration — becoming “deputy president” and creating a “Gestapo” to root out traitors. With the White House dissolving in paranoid disarray in President Donald Trump‘s final year in office, Johnny McEntee, 29, emerged seemingly out of nowhere to become head of the ultra-powerful Presidential Personnel Office, according to “The Final Act of the Trump Show” by ABC’s chief DC correspondent, Jonathan Karl. McEntee had virtually no political experience, starting out with the administration carrying Trump’s luggage, Karl writes in...

The ‘Can Opener Bridge’ is a railroad bridge in Durham, North Carolina. It has a clearance of 11 feet 8 inches, which is too low for many modern trucks. Signs have been put up to warn large trucks to detour away from the underpass. This video shows what happens when trucks ignore that warning.

The final $1.2 trillion INVEST in America Act passed the Democrat-led House in a late night vote on Friday. Tucked away inside the infrastructure bill are some controversial policies, including these five: ====================================================================== 1. The cryptocurrency tax provision in the Senate version of the bill was the subject of scrutiny from Democrats and Republicans. The language was not amended in the final bill that passed the House. The legislation includes an IRS reporting requirement for brokers of cryptocurrency transactions. ====================================================================== 2. Under the "national motor vehicle per-mile user fee pilot" section of the bill, there is a pilot program to...

We are reaching the point that many of us predicted and feared. The public-health community and media elites are starting to pivot to forever masking. With vaccines now available for everybody aged five and up who wants one, highly effective anti-viral drugs on the horizon, the southern surge over, and COVID-19 settling into an endemic pattern, the justifications for maintaining masking requirements keep evaporating. So naturally, the masking obsessives are preparing new reasons to keep up the policy. We are reaching the point that many of us predicted and feared. The public-health community and media elites are starting to pivot...

A new study suggests that a million years ago, glaciers began sticking more persistently to their beds, triggering cycles of longer ice ages. Here, ice discharged from Iceland’s Breiðamerkurjökull glacier on its way to the Atlantic ocean. Credit: Kevin Krajick/Earth Institute Why did glacial cycles intensify a million years ago? Researchers find clues on the bed of the Atlantic Ocean. Something big happened to the planet about a million years ago. There was a major shift in the response of Earth’s climate system to variations in our orbit around the Sun. The shift is called the Mid-Pleistocene Transition. Before the...

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is calling for a series of investigations into Rep. Paul Gosar after the Arizona Republican took to Twitter this week to advertise violence against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and President Biden. The Speaker is also urging House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to join Democrats in backing investigations into Gosar by both the House Ethics Committee and outside law enforcement agencies. "Threats of violence against Members of Congress and the President of the United States must not be tolerated," Pelosi tweeted Tuesday. "@GOPLeader should join in condemning this horrific video and call on the Ethics Committee...

GLASGOW, Scotland (AP) — Barack Obama expressed confidence at U.N. climate talks Monday that the Biden administration will ultimately get its $555 billion climate package through Congress, and faulted U.S. rivals China and Russia for what he called a “dangerous lack of urgency” in cutting their own climate-wrecking emissions.As nations complained of lagging trust and progress in the climate talks, Obama, one of the leaders who paved the way for the historic 2015 Paris climate deal, threw in a touch of his trademark hope but admitted that “images of dystopia” were creeping into his dreams.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) excoriated Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) on Twitter Monday after he posted an anime video with his face superimposed on a figure violently attacking characters depicting Ocasio-Cortez and President Biden. "This dude is a just a collection of wet toothpicks anyway," Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a tweet thread. "White supremacy is for extremely fragile people &sad men like him, whose self concept relies on the myth that he was born superior because deep down he knows he couldn’t open a pickle jar or read a whole book by himself," she added.