Free Republic

Irely on experts. Everyone should. Sick? Visit the doctor. Tooth trouble? The dentist. Car trouble? The mechanic. Climbing Mount Everest? Hire a guide. Want to come closer to God? A church near you meets at 10:30 or 11 this Sunday. Experts are indispensable aides to lives well-lived. Trust Us, a new documentary from the Pacific Legal Foundation, discusses experts in a wholly different role. These experts do not offer advice. They issue commands. The documentary considers the role experts assumed in the twentieth century: figuring out what you should do and how you should do it. You aren’t just to...

Before Covid, four types of pneumonia added together were the highest cause of death in the UK. In a newly implemented Medical Examiner System to certify deaths, the Medical Examiner was certifying all types of pneumonia deaths as covid-19 deaths, a former Director of End-of-Life Care has said. On Saturday, Sai, a former NHS Director of End-of-Life Care, wrote a Twitter thread which, amongst other things, gave a personal account of the changes to the system of reporting deaths implemented in the NHS: “When four different diseases [are] grouped and now being called covid-19, you will inevitably see covid-19 with...

Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, kicked off a new informational YouTube series Tuesday about COVID-19 vaccines that aims to reach Black and brown communities. Fauci participated in a question-and-answer interview with two doctors, Jamie Rutland and Italo Brown, in the first video of a planned “Barbershop Medicine” series from YouTube Originals. In the approximately nine-minute long video, posted to the American Public Health Association's YouTube channel, the doctors and Fauci discuss the importance of the COVID-19 vaccine and address vaccine hesitancy in Black and brown communities. "Sometimes, the source matters — especially for communities that bear the major...

New York Democratic leaders say they want more people to vote — except they won’t allow anyone but registered Democrats to vote in party primaries. The New York State Democratic Party plans on blocking a proposed resolution at its May 23-24 convention that would allow independent or “unaffiliated” voters to vote in this year’s Democratic primary for governor. New York’s restrictive voting laws became a national embarrassment in 2016 as many younger voters realized they couldn’t vote for Bernie Sanders in the presidential primary against Hillary Clinton because they missed the deadline to enroll as Democrats.

REUTERS - Opponents of Iran's initial agreement to curb its nuclear program are being "disingenuous" when they say the deal could still allow the Middle Eastern state to build nuclear weapons, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency said on Tuesday. The initial accord reached last week between Iran and major world powers - which would lift crippling economic sanctions in exchange for Iran's agreement to step back from developing nuclear weapons - is likely the most realistic deal that could be reached, CIA Director John Brennan told an audience of students and faculty at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts,...

DENVER — Bankers should beware of the Obama administration’s newly issued green light for banks doing business with the legal marijuana industry, according to the head of the Colorado Bankers Association. Memos released Friday by the Justice Department and Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network were intended to give banks leeway to open accounts for marijuana businesses in states like Colorado and Washington that have legalized retail pot. Instead, the guidance “only reinforces and reiterates that banks can be prosecuted for providing accounts to marijuana related businesses,” said the CBA in a Friday statement. “In fact, it is even stronger...

Most women can go as long as five years between cervical cancer screenings as long as they make sure to get both a Pap smear and an HPV test when they do get examined, a government panel said Wednesday. The interval between cervical cancer screenings can safely be extended for women between the ages of 30 and 65, according to the new recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. Women ages 21 to 30 should still get a Pap smear every three years, the interval currently recommended. But those younger than 21 and older than 65 can skip the...

Fresno-Close observers have often noted that many of the posters at Democratic Underground appear to be conservatives pretending to be liberals. Today Jim has admitted that such suspicions were only part of the story. According to Jim Robinson, he set up the site and uses his hand selected minion conservatives to show how absurd the liberal mind is. "The toughest part of the job has been to ban Freeper's fast enough. We cannot afford to have any sane rhetoric or logic." said Jim.More

This year, Washington will spend an eye-popping $22,039 per household. That is the inflation-adjusted highest since World War II, and $5,000 per household more than spent just four years ago. With difficult decisions ahead, government waste should be the easiest place to start controlling spending. So it isn't surprising the federal government costs 33 percent more than in 2001.

<p>Most Americans know behavior that deserves to be called "poor judgment" when they see it. But at the Justice Department, the definition evidently doesn't include smearing innocent taxpayers or throwing a stink bomb in the middle of a contentious gubernatorial race.</p>