Free Republic

Almost 70 percent of Americans say the U.S. would benefit from new curbs on migration at the southern border, according to an Economist/YouGov poll of 1,671 citizens. The February 11-13 poll asked, “If Congress passes a new bill restricting the admission of new migrants at the border, do you think this would be good or bad for the United States?” Sixty-nine percent of the Americans responded that it would be “good,” while only 14 percent predicted “bad.” That result shows five Americans believe migration curbs will benefit America for every one American who believes migration curbs would be harmful. The...

California lawmakers have repealed the state’s controversial “medical misinformation” law meant to silence and punish physicians and surgeons who communicate and treat their patients in a way that deviates from the “official government position” regarding COVID-19... Assembly Bill 2098 (AB 2098) aimed to empower the state’s medical board to revoke the medical licenses of any healthcare professional who spread what the state deemed as “misinformation” about the safety, efficacy, and development of the COVID-19 shots, as well as alternative treatments to the virus... Senate Bill 815, which passed with a 35-1 vote, primarily makes reforms within the California Medical Board.......

ARLINGTON, Va. — Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley is billing herself as the person who can forge a national consensus on abortion, citing her experience creating a consensus around another highly contentious debate during her tenure as governor of South Carolina.Haley, who formerly served as governor of South Carolina and United States Ambassador to the United Nations during the Trump administration, gave a speech on abortion before a crowd of pro-life activists at the headquarters of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America on Tuesday. In her speech, Haley expressed a desire to “start a constructive conversation about where we go from...

The White House on Monday downplayed and would not confirm a report that the Department of Energy determined a lab leak was the most likely cause of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying there is no government consensus yet about what caused the outbreak. “The intelligence community and the rest of the government is still looking at this,” John Kirby, a White House national security spokesperson, said at a press briefing. “There’s not been a definitive conclusion, so it’s difficult for me to say, nor should I feel like I should have to defend press reporting about a possible preliminary indication here,”...

There’s a great article in Bari Weiss’ The Free Press that has great bearing on why consensus in science is often a bad thing, and how the consensus is enforced. Called "The Reason There’s Been No Cure for Alzheimer’s," it was written by Joanne Silberner, a former NPR reporter. What I loved about the article was its insightful reporting about how the scientific process works in practice, rather than how it should in theory. Most people have little idea how academic science works, what the incentives are, how peer review works, how money gets distributed, and all the minutia that...

Ben Sasse is brilliant, a consensus builder and will be a great leader of a great University. Ben and family, welcome to Florida! https://t.co/FMlssqdT9q— Jeb Bush (@JebBush) October 6, 2022

ABC legal analyst Sunny Hostin said Wednesday on ABC’s “The View ” that President Joe Biden should govern via executive order because he can’t build consensus with “insurrectionists” and “crazy people.” Co-host Whoopi Goldberg said, “In a recent New York Magazine interview, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warned Democrats they could be in trouble going into the midterms. She thinks they’re still in the game, but the president and moderate Democrats need to stop thinking they can return to an era where a backroom deal with the GOP could be reached because that kind of thinking killed the Build Back Better Bill....

[Catholic Caucus] Cardinal in Key Synod on Synodality Post: ‘Reforms Need a Stable Foundation’The event, commonly known as the Synod on Synodality, has been described as the most important Church event since the Second Vatican Council in 1962-65. VATICAN CITY — A Jesuit cardinal who will play a central role in the 2023 Synod on Synodality has said that reforms in the Catholic Church require “a stable foundation.” In a wide-ranging interview in the February edition of the German magazine Herder Korrespondenz, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich was asked whether he could envisage the introduction of women deacons. He said: “I would...

A group of more than 120 retired military officers have written President Joe Biden to tell him his election was less than legitimate – while questioning his mental acuity.The letter echoes former President Donald Trump's claims of widespread election fraud – which have not been borne out in the courts – and comes on a day when Rep. Liz Cheney ripped Trump for his claim that the election was 'stolen.'

Activists pushing climate change socialism are frustrated by their inability to persuade rational people of their irrational arguments. At heart: can you be a scientist while rejecting the scientific method? There is absolutely zero evidence of man-made global warming -- none whatsoever. Moshe Pritsker, a former post-doctoral researcher at Harvard Medical School and CEO of JoVE, told Live Science. "The reproducibility of published experiments is the foundation of science. No reproducibility -- no science." Just because one can buy a lab coat for $46.39, that doesn't make them a scientist. Today "science" has degenerated into "thought experiments." That is, "imagineering"...

Scott Pruitt and Steven Koonin have climate scientist-activists and their media promoters ranting and sputtering in an epic meltdown. Pruitt is, of course, President Trump’s outspoken administrator in charge of the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Dr. Koonin, a physicist and professor at New York University, was undersecretary of the Energy Department in the Obama administration. Pruitt and Koonin, along with Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, and an impressive lineup of distinguished scientists have stirred the proverbial hornets’ nest by proposing (of all things!) — a scientific debate. Climate alarmists say this is “dangerous,” even “un-American.” And why...

The Trump administration has asked a conservative group known for promoting climate skepticism to help recruit academics for a “red team” on global warming, the Washington Examiner reported Monday. President Donald Trump and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have enlisted the help of the Heartland Institute, a group widely considered to be the central hub for the academic push against what conservatives call “climate alarmism.” The institute has become a type of boogeyman in liberal circles, mostly because of its skeptical position toward manmade global warming. “The White House and the Environmental Protection Agency have reached out to the Heartland...

A growing list of 31,487 U.S. scientists (and counting) has signed a petition strongly rejecting as unproven the hypothesis of man-made global warming or climate change. These signers include four NASA astronauts, at least two Nobel Prize winning physicists, 9,029 Ph.D.s and some of the nation’s top climatologists. Only U.S. scientists are included in this particular petition. Only relevant scientific fields are included. The “Global Warming Petition Project” includes a dramatically strong statement to which 31,487 scientists have already signed their names: "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Most Americans are willing to pay a little more each month to fight global warming — but only a tiny bit, according to a new poll. Still, environmental policy experts hail that as a hopeful sign. Seventy-one percent want the federal government to do something about global warming, including 6 percent who think the government should act even though they are not sure that climate change is happening,..

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said Wednesday that building a consensus among the justices is important, although he admits he can’t do it on his own. Roberts’ comments at The Greenbrier resort in West Virginia come as the justices have struggled to reach decisions in several cases this term with the court split evenly between conservative and liberal members. The court has had eight members since the February death of Justice Antonin Scalia. “I try to achieve as much consensus as I can,” Roberts said. “We kind of have to have a commitment as a group. I think...

Climate skepticism is just bad science: "There is no cohesive, consistent alternative theory to human-caused global warming" At some point in the history of all scientific theories, only a minority of scientists-or even just one-supported them, before evidence accumulated to the point of general acceptance. The Copernican model, germ theory, the vaccination principle, evolutionary theory, plate tectonics and the big bang theory were all once heretical ideas that became consensus science. How did this happen? An answer may be found in what 19th-century philosopher of science William Whewell called a 'consilience of inductions." For a theory to be accepted, Whewell...

As campuses across the country are roiled in paroxysms of self-righteous indignation over race, groups of black students, perhaps inspired and emboldened by the anarchistic successes at University of Missouri, have formed coalitions and presented elaborate, and breathtakingly audacious, lists of demands which they have nailed to the doors of their respective university administrations.....[SNIP]...So while these sanctimonious moral brats may feel aggrieved and in need of campus-wide support systems to provide them "safe" spaces in which they can escape racism and oppression, the idea that universities should be compelled to set up mandatory training and teaching about racism, oppression, cultural...

It is safe to predict that when 20,000 world leaders, officials, green activists and hangers-on convene in Paris next week for the 21st United Nations climate conference, one person you will not see much quotedis Professor Judith Curry. This is a pity. Her record of peer-reviewed publication in the best climate-science journals is second to none, and in America she has become a public intellectual. But on this side of the Atlantic, apparently, she is too ‘challenging’. What is troubling about her pariah status is that her trenchant critique of the supposed consensus on global warming is not derived from...

Millions of people in the United States could be forced to abandon their homes if planet-warming emissions continue unabated through 2100, pushing global sea levels up by more than 14 feet (4.2 meters), researchers said. In the United States, between 20 and 31 million people are living on land that would be submerged by rising oceans without aggressive cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, according to a study published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A December 18, 2009 Washington Post poll, released on the final day of the ill-fated Copenhagen climate summit, reported “four in ten Americans now saying that they place little or no trust in what scientists have to say about the environment.” This was the month the tide turned in public perceptions of climate change. Several recent polls have found “climate change” skepticism rising faster than sea levels on Planet Algore (not to be confused with Planet Earth, where sea levels remain relatively stable). Many of the doubt-inducing climate scientists and their media acolytes attribute this rising skepticism to the stupidity of...