Free Republic

Public health officials and drugmakers must be transparent about the side effects people may experience after getting their first shot of a coronavirus vaccine, doctors urged during a meeting Monday with CDC advisors as states prepare to distribute doses as early as next month. Dr. Sandra Fryhofer of the American Medical Association noted that both Pfizer’s and Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccines require two doses at varying intervals. As a practicing physician, she said she worries whether her patients will come back for a second dose because of the potentially unpleasant side effects they may experience after the first shot. “We really...

Announced just now via Dana Perino

A federal appeals court on Saturday granted a temporary administrative stay, allowing Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's directive for one location per county for ballot drop boxes to remain in place for now. The grant from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit means the directive from Abbott, a Republican, will stand until the court has considered the state's motion for a stay on its merits. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had filed an emergency motion Saturday for a stay pending appeal to block a district court order that would have allowed county officials to accept hand delivery...

Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson, Moderna and many other pharmaceutical companies are preparing a joint statement. They are hoping to assure Americans any vaccine created to protect U.S. citizens will undergo a rigorous vetting process before release. The joint pledge will create an agreement between the competing companies. Each entity will agree not to seek premature approval for any preventative measure from the government until they meet safety standards. (cont.)

President Donald Trump said he wouldn’t touch Medicare before pitching a budget plan that would do exactly that, along with steep cuts to Medicaid. Democrats are calling it “savage” and “heartless,” while administration officials are insisting they are only slowing explosive growth in future years and that current Medicare benefits would remain untouched. Here are three things to know about the election-year fight on health care spending: Trump proposed spending $1.6 trillion less on future health care spending, including $451 billion less for Medicare. On Twitter, two days before releasing his budget, the president said, “we will not be touching...

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is facing a new sexual misconduct allegation that appears to echo a previous accusation lobbed against him.

Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL) went on with Stewart Varney on Thursday morning to discuss recent developments on Capitol Hill. Roskam told Stewart House Republicans are planning of filing criminal charges against Lois Lerner. Rep. Roskam: The Obama Administration was very lenient with the crimes that Lois Lerner committed. And those are strong words that I’m using but the House Ways and Means Committee voted out a criminal referral to the Department of Justice which was completely dismissed by the Department of Justice… We think that Lois Lerner did two things wrong. Number one, she denied people due process and equal...

During his campaign, Trump said he would cancel all federal funding to so-called “sanctuary cities.” On Saturday, Hodges pledged to ignore President Trump when he takes office. According to Hodges, she will see to it that Minneapolis law enforcement officers will not assist federal agents in tracking down illegal aliens. Hodges released a statement Saturday titled “Support for Immigrant Community Keeps Minneapolis Safer”: “I will continue to stand by immigrants in Minneapolis. For years, Minneapolis has codified in ordinance that our police officers will not do the work of the Federal government and ICE regarding immigration status. If police officers...

Donald Trump just pulled the whole thing off. His triumphant election as the next president of the United States is the most astonishing political story of our lifetimes — maybe ever, in the history of the republic. The brash billionaire, the guy who has never done this before, just beat a fearsome, well-funded and ruthless political machine, the sitting president, and just about everybody’s expectations. Given the monolithic opposition arrayed against him — the president, Hillary Clinton, her campaign, the Democratic Party, the Republican establishment, the international community, the mainstream media — his victory is nothing short of miraculous. There...

Donald Trump’s adult children have spent a decade doing business with politically connected foreign firms—a role that will present potential conflicts of interest whether he wins on Nov. 8 or continues to pursue politics if he loses. Those whom Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have worked with abroad include: the family of a developer in India who is a ruling-party politician, an Azerbaijani government minister’s son and a media company that became the Turkish president’s outlet of choice during the July 15 coup attempt. No recent president has had a portfolio of international business interests as extensive...

Donald Trump engaged in crude and demeaning conversations about women over a 17-year-period with radio shock-jock Howard Stern, according to a review by CNN's KFile of hours of newly uncovered audio. Among the topics Trump discussed: his daughter Ivanka's physique, having sex with women on their menstrual cycles, threesomes, and checking out of a relationship with women after they turn 35.

snip..."These little measures that keep slipping through, they cumulatively have a very detrimental effect to safe, legal and timely abortions," said Heather Busby, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Texas. "They've done plenty of damage at this point." Tension over new abortion laws erupted in in June 2013 when Republicans weathered a 13-hour filibuster by Davis, who went on to lose badly to Abbott in the governor's race. New laws required abortion clinics to meet hospital-level operating standards and mandated that doctors who perform abortions obtain hospital admitting privileges. Clinics unable to make costly upgrades closed and women in rural swaths...

~snip~ "What I call the Benedict Option is this: a limited, strategic withdrawal of Christians from the mainstream of American popular culture, for the sake of shoring up our understanding of what the church is, and what we must do to be the church. We must do this because the strongly anti-Christian nature of contemporary popular culture occludes the meaning of the Gospel, and hides from us the kinds of habits and practices we need to engage in to be truly faithful to what we have been given."

The mother of alleged shooter Kenneth Morgan Stancil III told a local television station that the victim, Stancil's former boss at the school's print shop, had made unwanted sexual advances toward her son. "We’re absolutely investigating that possibility," police Sergeant Jeremy Sutton told reporters at a news conference.

“There are few politicians alive today who have a better understanding than the Clintons of the perils of paper trails—and the benefits of not having them. It really wasn’t all that long ago that Mrs. Clinton was failing to answer questions about how her Rose Law firm billing records vanished. Or using executive privilege to sit on documents that showed her involvement in the Travel Travel Office firings. Or grappling with testimony from a Secret Service agent who said Mrs. Clinton’s top aide had removed files from Vince Foster’s office. Or explaining her connection to Sandy Berger, who was prosecuted...

Covering Clinton, what is one thing that has surprised you about her? Amy Chozick: Hmm. She likes to drink. We were on the campaign trail in 2008 and the press thought she was just taking shots to pander to voters in Pennsylvania. Um, no.

~snip~ "We know there are doubts, questions across the community," French President Francois Hollande said Monday. "I will not just let what was said in Israel pass, leading people to believe that Jews no longer have a place in Europe and in France in particular." French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Monday the government would defend French Jews against what he described as "Islamo-fascism." "A Jew who leaves France is a piece of France that is gone," Valls told RTL radio ~snip~ German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Monday that her government will do everything possible to make sure Jewish sites...

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback signed an executive order Tuesday rescinding a protection for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender state workers put into place eight years ago by then-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. Sebelius’ executive order in 2007 said state workers could not be discriminated against, fired or harassed because of their gender identity or sexual orientation. Brownback, a Republican, issued an additional executive order affirming that state employees could not be discriminated against because of their race, religion, gender, age or country of national origin. “This Executive Order ensures that state employees enjoy the same civil rights as all Kansans without creating...

Among other things, the questionnaire asked how the church can care for families with gay children and discern "positive and negative elements" in heterosexual civil unions. It also asked how the church can better provide sacraments for Catholics who divorce and remarry outside the church. Church teaching holds that without an annulment, or a church decree that the first marriage was null, such Catholics are living in sin and are thus ineligible to receive communion. Francis has sought to end what he calls "de facto excommunication" for these Catholics, and the issue was a source of heated debate during the...

Minnesotans are currently facing a fast and furious onslaught by the transgender lobby, which seems to be dictating policy to the Minnesota State High School League. The MSHSL decides policy for all extracurricular activities in public, private, religious, and home schools. It’s currently in the process of outlawing all sex distinctions in high-school sports. On December 4, it plans to install an athletic policy granting transgender students the choice to play on either boys’ or girls’ teams. In this scheme, there would be no accounting for sex differences in high school sports on the field or in locker rooms, bathrooms,...