Emord’s Sacred Fire of Liberty, Biden religious Roe, Supreme court legitimacy, Roe v Wade support, Flip-floppin Joe, DHS Disinformation board, Law makers oppose, Durbin supplement bill, COVID death toll math, FDA rebukes Pfizer CEO, Patient outcomes, FDA extrapolation, ADHD nutrition and MORE!

May 5th, 2022 3-5PM ET

Thursday on The Robert Scott Bell Show:

Sacred Fire of Liberty!

It’s that time of the week where we get to explore the political healing that this country needs so desperately! Jonathan Emord is back to help us dissect the latest political news that’s fit to print:

The Supreme Court Leaker(s) Should Be Prosecuted and Barred from Legal Practice On May 2, Politico published from an unnamed source a draft copy of a decision for the majority of the court authored by Justice Samuel Alito.  On May 3, Chief Justice John Roberts issued a statement confirming the authenticity of the draft.  The draft suggests that a majority is predisposed to overturn Roe v. Wade in favor of state resolution of abortion questions, based on the absence of any provision in the Constitution addressing, let alone legalizing, abortion.  While on the merits I agree with the reasoning in the draft, we must understand that it is not final and should not be deemed the definitive position of the Court, which must await an ultimate iteration and formal release.  Moreover, the decision lacks concurrences and dissents, so even were it a true copy of the majority opinion, it lacks full context.  The leak of the draft ought to be our focus.  The leak is a crime, an obstruction of justice. That crime is in need of investigation.  The person or persons responsible must be prosecuted and subjected to an appropriate punishment.  The leak is a breach of a solemn and legally binding trust and a betrayal that threatens judicial review and independence.

Biden brutalized over ‘incoherent’ and ‘vile’ claim that Roe is in line with ‘all basic mainstream religions’ Conservatives on Twitter showed no patience for President Joe Biden’s latest statements defending abortion. On Tuesday, President Biden weighed in on the news of the leaked Supreme Court opinion draft which signaled the court’s intention to dismantle Roe v. Wade.  Biden, whom the mainstream media have defended as a “devout Catholic” even though the Catholic faith explicitly forbids abortion, made a religious argument in defense of abortion to the press. “Roe says what all basic mainstream religions have historically concluded, that the existence of a human life and being is a question. Is it at the moment of conception? Is it six months? Is it six weeks? Is it quickening, like Aquinas argued?” Biden asked. From there the president argued that we should abdicate our judgment on when life begins, including with the Supreme Court, “So, the idea that we’re going to make a judgment that is going to say that no one can make the judgment to choose to abort a child based on a decision by the Supreme Court, I think goes way overboard.” Breitbart senior editor-at-large Joel Pollak blasted Biden’s statement, tweeting, “Leaving aside the idiocy of this statement, this means codifying Roe means violating the First Amendment prohibition on the establishment of religion by Congress.”

Roe v Wade leak: Liberal media cast doubt on ‘legitimacy’ of Supreme Court, government A number of liberal media members repeatedly cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and at-large the U.S. government after a leaked opinion draft revealed the high court may soon strike down Roe v. Wade, putting abortion protections into the hands of states. Wall-to-wall coverage of the controversy saw a range of hosts and guests rip into the high court and the federal government, questioning its ability to reliably function. “I can’t shake the fact that Justice Sotomayor let us know that this was the direction the court was headed when they ruled to allow SBA to go into effect. When she said the justices were essentially digging their heads in the sand, they were ignoring decades and decade of precedent,” MSNBC political analyst Juanita Toliver said. “And honestly, at this point, I think we’re all right to question the legitimacy of the court for doing that, for ignoring decades of precedent.” “We need to be focusing on the legitimacy of the court itself,” Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick similarly chimed in on the liberal network, noting that she feared the public perception of the court was heading in the wrong direction. During Tuesday’s “Morning Joe,” Mika Brzezinski asked co-host Joe Scarborough what the leaked draft could mean for the Supreme Court. “Well, for the Supreme Court, in a word—illegitimacy,” Scarborough replied. Moments later he added that Americans would now “rightly conclude” that their votes “no longer matter.”

Poll: Plurality of Likely Voters Support Overturning Roe v. Wade A plurality of likely voters support overturning Roe v. Wade, a Rasmussen Reports survey released Wednesday found. The survey presented respondents with the following: “According to a leaked draft of a majority opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court is prepared to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in the United States. Would you approve or disapprove of a Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade?” Overall, a plurality, 48 percent, said they would approve of overturning Roe, and of those, 32 percent “strongly” approve. In contrast, 45 percent disapprove, and of those, 35 percent do so “strongly.” Predictably, opinions are divided along party lines, as 64 percent of Democrats oppose overturning Roe, compared to 66 percent of Republicans who approve. Independents remain more divided, as 48 percent support overturning Roe and 44 percent disapprove. Likely voters were also asked if they agreed with the statement that the 1973 decision was “egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences”? On that, 47 percent agree, while 46 percent disagree. Per Rasmussen Reports: Sixty-six percent (66%) of GOP voters, 31% of Democrats and 46% of unaffiliated voters agree with Alito’s draft opinion that Roe v. Wade “was egregiously wrong from the start.” Sixty-two percent (62%) of Democrats, 29% of Republicans and 46% of unaffiliated voters disagree with Alito’s opinion. Eighty-five percent (85%) of Democrats, 38% of Republicans and 55% of unaffiliated voters agree with Biden’s statement that ““a woman’s right to choose is fundamental.” Fifty-two percent (52%) of men and 45% of women would approve of a Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

Flip-Floppin’ Joe Biden Once Voted to Overturn Roe v. Wade President Joe Biden opposed the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize abortion one year after Roe v Wade. “I don’t think that a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body,” he told the Washingtonian in 1974, one year after the court legalized abortion. “I don’t like the Supreme Court decision on abortion. I think it went too far,” he added. Biden doubled down years later in 1982 when he voted to approve a constitutional amendment that would have allowed abortion to become a state issue instead of a federal one. Then-Senator Biden “was the only Democrat singled out by the New York Times at the time as supporting the amendment that the National Abortion Rights Action League called “the most devastating attack yet on abortion rights,’” the New York Post reported. On Tuesday, however, President Biden flip-flopped and supported the Court’s 1973 decision. “Roe has been the law of the land for almost 50 years, and basic fairness and the stability of our law demand that it not be overturned,” he said. “I believe that a woman’s right to choose is fundamental.” “But even more, equally profound is the rationale used. It would mean that every other decision relating to the notion of privacy is thrown into question,” Biden claimed. Biden’s 180-degree change is a result of how radical the Democrat Party has become. In the last 20 years, the Democrat Party has begun championing critical race theory, glorifying abortion, lifting public safety measures through soft-on-crime initiatives, and professing transgenderism to be a protected class.

The DHS Disinformation Board and the Attack on Individual Sovereignty In his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas revealed a startling, heretofore secret, initiative within his agency to police the online speech of American citizens.  Mayorkas, whose infamous abandonment of border security has rendered his official title an oxymoron, divulged (conveniently on the heels of Elon Musk’s planned liberation of Twitter from censorship and in time for deployment during the November 2022 mid-term elections) that DHS had initiated a “Disinformation Governance Board” to be chaired by left wing activist Nina Jankowicz.  Jankowicz favors government regulation to rid conservative voices from media and endorses as fact two major falsehoods: that the Hunter Biden laptop story is fake and that the Trump-Russian collusion story is real.  She envisions a dystopian world where government speech police block content deemed “disinformation,” a term she and DHS leave undefined to preserve unbridled censorship discretion.  In short, she relishes the role of tyrant. In his testimony, Mayorkas said that the Disinformation Governance Board would work with a network of local authorities to “identify individuals who very well could be descending into violence by reason of ideologies of hate, false narratives, or other disinformation and misinformation propagated on social media and other platforms.”  In other words, the Board would be America’s new online speech police, complementing the role formerly played by Big Tech in league with governing Democrats, where politically selected bureaucrats would declare opinions with which they disagree forbidden.

Democratic, Republican lawmakers speak out against Biden’s disinformation board: ‘Cancel this whole thing’ Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers questioned the creation of the Biden administration’s “Disinformation Governance Board” within the Department of Homeland Security, saying the mission of the board was unclear, and of questionable constitutionality. Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas revealed the creation of the disinformation board while testifying before a House Appropriations subcommittee about his department’s 2023 budget. Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers spoke out against the disinformation board itself, and DHS’ rollout. “I still have yet to be explained what this thing is,” Rep. Peter Meijer, R-Mich., told Fox News Digital at the Milken Institute 2022 Global Conference. “The one thing that’s unquestionable is this is terrible communication.” Meijer added that he believes the board has a “questionable mission” and should be disbanded. “I have implored the Biden administration to just cancel this whole thing,” he said. “Before we even get to what this questionable mission is — is so ham fisted and just off base that they should just cut their losses on this thing.” Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., said he is looking at the board “from a position of deep skepticism whenever any government gets involved in managing information, identifying disinformation.” “As far as I’m concerned, the government has no business saying that this is disinformation and this is information,” he added.

New Bill Threatens Jail Time for Supplement Companies Senator Dick Durbin’s (D-IL) bill that threatens tens of thousands of products has officially been introduced. We need all hands on deck to oppose it. Action Alert! Sen. Dick Durbin has launched his supplement attack by introducing his “Dietary Supplement Listing Act of 2022” with Senator Mike Braun (R-IN). This bill threatens your ability to access the supplements you rely on to stay healthy. We need to send a strong message to Congress that this is bad for consumers, bad for health, and bad for the economy. The bill threatens fines and jailtime for companies that do not comply. If a company does not submit the proper information, in the correct form, by the proper date, the supplement is considered misbranded. For the first offense, violators can be imprisoned for one year and fined $1,000 dollars; for the second offense, violators can be imprisoned for three years and fined $10,000. Given the safety record of supplements that will be detailed below, the punishments here hardly seem to fit the crime. This bill creates a lose-lose situation for consumers and supplement companies: if companies don’t comply, they face fines and jail time; if they do comply, companies are orchestrating their own demise by giving the FDA the list it needs to sweep the market of as many as 41,000 supplements that do not comply with the agency’s overreaching (and incomplete) “new supplement” guidance. Supplement companies lose, the economy suffers, and consumers lose access to critical health products. It’s bad, but it may not even be the biggest threat to your supplements right now. Separately, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, is independently moving forward with plans to attach a similar mandatory product registration provision for supplements to the reauthorization of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act that must pass by the end of September. Durbin’s policy, then, has twice the chance of success because it is moving forward on two distinct paths.

Hour 2

Covid-19’s full death toll is nearly three times higher than reported, WHO data suggests About 14.9 million people around the world died as a direct or indirect result of Covid-19 in the period between January 1, 2020, and December 31, 2021, according to new estimates from the World Health Organization — nearly three times more deaths than were officially reported. There were 5.4 million Covid-19 deaths reported to WHO during that timeframe, resulting in an excess mortality estimate of 9.5 million more deaths than what was reported. “Excess mortality is the difference between the number of deaths that have been recorded and those that would be expected in the absence of the pandemic,” said Samira Asma, assistant director-general for the Data, Analytics and Delivery for Impact Division of WHO. The 14.9 million deaths include “deaths directly attributed to Covid-19 that were reported to WHO, deaths directly attributed to Covid-19 that were not counted or reported … deaths indirectly associated with the pandemic due to the wider impact on health systems and society,” Asma explained. The figure also subtracts any deaths that were avoided due to changes in social behaviors, such as fewer fatalities from car wrecks because of lockdowns or travel restrictions. The estimated range of excess deaths was 13.3 million to 16.6 million over the 24-month period, according to the methodology used in the WHO report.

FDA rebukes Pfizer CEO’s suggestion to take more Paxlovid if COVID-19 symptoms return The FDA rebuked Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla’s proposed solution to reports that some patients experienced a relapse of COVID-19 symptoms after treatment with the company’s antiviral Paxlovid. After reports said some patients who took Paxlovid rebounded and started feeling symptoms again, the CEO told Bloomberg that patients can take another course, “like you do with antibiotics.” “Paxlovid does what it has to do: It reduces the viral load,” Bourla, Ph.D., told Bloomberg in an interview. “Then your body is supposed to do the job.” The FDA isn’t on board with the suggestion. “There is no evidence of benefit at this time for a longer course of treatment … or repeating a treatment course of Paxlovid in patients with recurrent COVID-19 symptoms following completion of a treatment course,” John Farley, M.D., director of the Office of Infectious Diseases, said in a post. About 80,000 US COVID-19 patients have sought treatment with the antiviral as of April 22, CNBC reports. It’s not clear how many patients have had a COVID-19 rebound after taking the full course of the treatment, but many reports of rebounds have surfaced in the last week, puzzling doctors. Pfizer received an emergency use authorization from the FDA in December to sell its antiviral, the first of its kind to fight COVID-19. Since then, the U.S. has ordered 20 million courses and is working to bolster the pill’s availability. The drug is heavily endorsed by the Biden administration and was even prescribed to Kamala Harris. Despite the accolades, it’s not in as high demand as anticipated, and it recently was found ineffective for post-exposure protection.

Question of The Day!

Hi Super Don & RSB:
I have several friends and family who either took the Covid shots or their spouse did and they are getting UTI’s (repeatedly). I am wondering if there is a homeopathic remedy that you’d recommend and share. I hate to see them continue to use antibiotics over and over, damaging their GI tract and the UTI’s just come back again and again. Please help.
Thanks,
Diane

DA Commissioner Califf Says Business Of Health Is Booming In U.S. But Patients’ Outcomes Aren’t Improving At a hearing last month, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Robert Califf pointed to the fact that the U.S. is one of the greatest inventors in the world of medicines and other healthcare technologies, but in last place for life expectancy among other high-income countries. What’s conspicuous about this factoid is that the U.S. spends the most in the world on healthcare – both in absolute and relative (per capita) terms. Of course, the provision of healthcare isn’t the sole cause of rising life expectancy. Other factors play a role, too, including baseline characteristics of health, such as levels of obesity and socioeconomic determinants of health. Nonetheless, healthcare contributes greatly to improvement in life expectancy. As such, clearly, something’s not right in the U.S. The money that’s being spent isn’t leading to the desired outcomes. During the hearing, Califf elaborated on what he considered to be a catalyst for a flawed healthcare system. “I’m in love with the term sub-optimization,” Califf said. He went on to define sub-optimization as a system with many parts that are incentivized to optimize their own growth, often driven by profit motives, but the system as a whole is less than the sum of the parts in terms of producing overall well-being.

Public Health Watch: FDA Uses ‘Extrapolation’ in 1 in 4 Drug Approvals Extrapolation is used often in scientific research to, as a paper published in 2004 puts it, “project, extend, or expand (known data or experiences) into an area not known or experienced so as to arrive at…knowledge of the unknown area by inferences.” In drug approvals, however, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) often uses extrapolation to apply pivotal clinical trial findings “to a broader population of patients than was represented in those trials,” according to the researchers behind an analysis published on April 19 by JAMA Network Open. This is often necessary, the researchers wrote, because the pivotal trials used to gain FDA approval “are necessarily limited in the populations they cover.” Most recently, the agency initially used extrapolation in its approval of aducanumab in 2021 for all patients with Alzheimer’s disease, “even though it was studied only in those with mild disease,” they noted. If this sounds a bit scary—or even “antiscience”—perhaps it should. “I think one message [from out study] is to scrutinize the trials on which approval was based and not necessarily assume that because something is approved by the FDA that it’s not important to examine the details of the approval,” study coauthor Aaron S. Kesselheim, MD, JD, MPH, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a faculty member in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics Brigham and Women’s Hospital, both in Boston, told Contagion.

Vitamins, minerals improve symptoms for children with ADHD Children with ADHD and emotional dysregulation who were given a micronutrient-dense formula made of all known vitamins and essential minerals were three times more likely to have better concentration and improved moods, research from Oregon Health & Science University found. The findings, featured on the May cover of the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, may provide another treatment option for clinicians and families. In the study, 54% of the children who were given supplemental vitamins and minerals showed improvement in their symptoms, versus 18% in the placebo group. “These findings, replicating results of a previous randomized trial of micronutrients in children with ADHD conducted in New Zealand, confirm that supplementation with a broad range of nutrients may benefit some children,” said lead author Jeanette Johnstone, Ph.D., assistant professor of child and adolescent psychiatry in the OHSU School of Medicine. “ADHD is a common diagnosis, affecting upward of 7% of children, and common pharmacologic treatments can cause adverse side effects. Supplementing micronutrients may be an exciting integrative treatment for many families.”