Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy discussed the firing of vaccine chief, Dr. Michelle Fiscus, and Governor Lee’s statement, which exposed his unfamiliarity with the Tennessee Department of Health’s mature minor doctrine.
Michel Patrick Leahy:
Well, we’ve been talking about Governor Billy’s statement yesterday about the termination of Dr. Michelle Fiscus, the state’s former vaccine chief.
And there’s something wrong with the way he’s explained it, it seems to me. By the way, you can call in if you want to disagree or if you have any additional insight into this number.
So here’s the story. Actually, I’m reading the story from Newsweek about this and will elaborate a little bit on some of the headlines that you heard on the radio during the break.
Here’s how Newsweek reported it. Remember, Newsweek is part of The Daily Beast. It’s more of a far-left outfit. So take this with a grain of salt. But they have done the most comprehensive reporting that I’ve seen on this so far.
Tennessee Republican Governor Bill Lee defended the termination of Michelle Fiscus, the state’s former vaccine chief, who was removed from her duties last week.
Fiscus asserts her firing was due to the outrage of some GOP lawmakers over her handling of state outreach efforts regarding COVID-19 vaccines for minors, the Associated Press reported. Asterisk.
The Associated Press is far left right now. Just so you know. Lee did not provide answers when asked by reporters for the specifics of the firing of Fiscus.
“Government needs to provide information and education, provide access, and we need to do so to the parents of those children. That’s the direction the department took regarding individual personnel decisions. I trust the departments to make decisions consistent with the vision.”
I don’t think that’s exactly the truth. Look, we’ll try to reach out to the governor and get them to come out of the program and elaborate on this.
But I just read from you the mature minor doctrine that is currently on the website of the Tennessee Department of Health. And I’m just reading what it says.
Between the ages of 14 and 18, there is a rebuttable presumption of capacity, and the physical physician may treat without parental consent unless the physician believes that the minor is not sufficiently mature to make his or her own health care decisions.
That is the official current policy of the Tennessee Department of Health and seems to be not the policy that Governor Lee is claiming. Thursday is the first time that Governor Lee spoke out about Fiscus’s termination, and he said State Health Commissioner Lisa Piercey did not tell him the motivations behind her termination.
Okay, not paying attention to what’s going on at a very important issue, it seems to me. Here’s again how Newsweek represented it. Anger emerged from some Republicans after Fiscus distributed a memo earlier this year about the state’s mature minor doctrine that allows minors 14 and older to choose to become vaccinated without guardians’ consent.
From our reading of the mature minor doctrine, which is still today on the Tennessee Department of Health website, that is an accurate reading of what the Tennessee Department of Health doctrine is.
I don’t know if Governor Lee has read that or is aware of it, but he ought to be aware of his own policy in the Tennessee Department of Health.
And this is kind of from The Associated Press, now part of the story. Lee also came out in full defense of his administration’s rollback of outreach for childhood vaccines that have sparked national scrutiny alongside Fiscus’s firing over well. I don’t think it’s a rollback of outreach.
I don’t know if that’s actually true either, because we’ve got Kerry Roberts saying that’s how Newsweek describes it. But basically what they’re describing is a rollback, Kerry Roberts says they’ve agreed to stop marketing to minors.
I don’t know if they’ve stopped promoting the idea that parents should be involved in deciding whether or not to have their kids vaccinated for COVID-19.
I’ll get to my take on the science of this, by the way, in a bit. One online post featuring a photo of a smiling child with a bandaid on his arm said, “Tennesseean’s 12 plus are eligible for a vaccine. Give COVID-19 vaccines a shot.”
Earlier this year, Fiscus released a memo detailing Tennessee’s mature minor doctrine which traces back to a 1987 state Supreme Court case.
It led to a firestorm at a legislative meeting last month. Dr. Fiscus is accurate in describing Tennessee’s mature minor doctrine, right? It’s accurate.
Now whether or not she should have sent that out without reviewing it in detail with a general counsel, that probably is a matter of judgment.
Tennessee is one of five states where providers have the discretion to decide if a minor is mature enough to consent to vaccination without a parent according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, which said 41 other sites require parental consent, and five others have a self consent age under 18.
Okay. So look, Governor Lee, despite all of this brouhaha, it does appear that the current doctrine of your government and your administration is to allow children as young as 14 to receive this COVID-19 vaccination without parental consent if the administering physician thinks that they are sufficiently mature.
That, Governor Lee, is your doctrine right now. I agree with the legislators who said that ought not to be the doctrine. But Governor Lee, maybe he’s not aware of that and he’s not paying attention to what the doctrine really is of his own administration.
Again, it seems like that to me. By the way, you can jump in on this topic. I would like to hear from you. GOP lawmakers said in a meeting Wednesday they have received private reassurances from Piercey and a governor’s office officials that the state Health Department of Education and 89 of 95 County Health Departments won’t be offering COVID 19 vaccines to minors without their parents’ permission. Okay, well, that’s an assurance.
But that assurance conflicts with the current mature minor doctrine (Chuckles) that is promoted as the Tennessee Department of Health website. What’s wrong with that picture, Governor Lee?
Apparently, he seems to be unaware of any of this. Not a good situation in my view. You got to be on top of it. And I would say the mature minor doctrine needs to be changed.
I’ll do this over the break and look into that 1987 Tennessee Supreme Court decision upon which apparently this mature minor doctrine is based.
Listen to the first hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed liberal, feminist, author, and freedom lover Dr. Naomi Wolf to the newsmakers line to discuss her permanent ban from Twitter after questioning COVID vaccines, citing current state legislation and Moderna website published content.
Leahy: And we are welcoming to our newsmaker line. Our good friend Dr. Naomi Wolf, the author of the 1991 feminist classic, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women.
She was an advisor to Al Gore in 2000. And now the left doesn’t like her because she’s talking about some health freedom issues. Good morning, Naomi.
Wolf: Good morning to you. How are you?
Leahy: I’m glad to have you on. So Twitter has suspended you? Oh, my goodness. What did you do? (Laughs)
Wolf: (Chuckles) Well, that is a good question. I certainly didn’t violate any of the Twitter rules, and Twitter is set up so that there’s no way to know why you’re suspended. There’s no one to call and there’s no editor to challenge this decision about.
I know it’s widely reported that I was de-platformed for reporting on adverse reactions to the COVID vaccine. And it is true that I’ve broken some stories about that which were picked up in many other news outlets, and I’m proud of the reporting I did.
People deserve all the information about any medical process. But I don’t believe that’s the real reason I was actually de-platformed in the act of posting a two-minute video in which I literally read verbatim a press release from a state senator in Oregon named Kim Thatcher, who had introduced a bill to ban vaccine passports and mask mandates in the state of Oregon.
There were a couple of other things that I had posted that day that I also think were over the target, honestly. So that is my best guess about why I was de-platformed.
Leahy: The mainstream media has reported and they apparently know why you were de-platformed, right?
Wolf: Yeah. Which is such terrible reporting. A, nobody in the news media has called me for comment to find out from me why I think I was de-platformed or what I actually said. And a lot of tweets have been taken out of context.
But if Twitter won’t talk to me about why I was de-platformed then who’s talking to mainstream media? Right. It’s almost as if they’re just making it up or else Twitter is leaking to news outlets without giving me the courtesy of contacting me and saying, look we are de-platforming you for this reason.
It’s dangerous and scary, not just because of what happened to me and my 140,000 followers who now can’t talk to me. It’s really much more dangerous and scary for everybody else out there and for democracy because if indeed, the reason was that I was reporting a transparent civic process, a state bill, then that means Twitter and these big tech platforms have the power to silence one side of the aisle or one side of the political discussion even though I’m not a Republican.
Which is the irony. And only let people hear about bills on the Dem side. And we’ve seen the de-platforming of conservative voices across a range of voices and commentators. So that’s really, really scary.
That quickly becomes a one-party state in the Chinese Communist Party model. So that’s super terrifying. And it’s also super terrifying because this is the world that we’re living in now. It’s not going to stop just me.
If somebody says something about the administration that is not okay or reveals some flaw in a product then that industry has a lot of power, it’s really a way to suppress dissent and debate. And that’s just not American.
Leahy: Naomi, in studio with us this morning is our all-star panelist, Clint Brewer. Clint is a recovering journalist, and Clint has a question for you. (Wolf chuckles)
Brewer: I haven’t fully recovered, so I’m going to ask a question live on the air. Ms. Wolf, some of the language around medical freedom concerning the pandemic is not dissimilar to language around pro-choice arguments.
Wolf: Right.
Brewer: You’ve got a nuanced history on the issue of abortion. For the listeners reconcile your positions on medical freedom as it relates to COVID and on abortion. And do you think there’s a growing number of people who share that sentiment that I think you’ll explain?
Wolf: I’m not sure I fully understand your question. I think what you’re saying and I’ve made this point on Twitter is that liberal feminists like myself who are pro-choice, have always had a gospel of my body, my choice and that it is really dangerous and unethical when the state can say, you have to have this baby or you can’t have an abortion or any other kind of forced decision making by the state that gets between a woman and her doctor, a woman, and her body. Is that the analogy you’re looking for?
Brewer: Exactly. And it sounds like a similar argument to medical freedom around COVID. I mean, people should be able to make a choice about masks. They should be able to have a choice about vaccines and control their body in between them and their health care professionals.
Wolf: Yes. I mean, I do agree with you, and I would go further. I think with abortion, good people can reasonably make arguments in both directions. But when it comes to whether or not to wear masks, whether or not to accept an experimental medical procedure, which is still the COVID-19 vaccine that hasn’t completed its clinical trials.
I would go further and say, really, there are so many laws, including the Constitution, that make it unlawful to coerce people to have that vaccine. It’s unlawful. It violates HIPAA, for instance, to have a vaccine passport system.
It violates the Fourth Amendment and the Right to Privacy to ask whether someone’s vaccinated or not vaccinated before they can enter a business, which is what was happening to me when I was in New York City, where the signs like this all over the city.
It violates the Equality Act to say, and I’m hearing from people across the country, you can’t have a job unless you get vaccinated. Your child can’t go back to college unless he or she accepts this experimental vaccination.
I’m not an anti-vaxxer, but I absolutely believe in the rule of law and the Constitution and our human rights law that you need a convention. You can’t force a medical treatment on people.
It’s illegal to experiment on people. That’s the Nuremberg Code. We have a nexus laws in the free world that prevents us from being forced to accept medical treatment or from being experimented on. My condition is not anti-vaccine, and I wouldn’t even call it medical freedom. It’s just Western democracy with its rule of law.
Leahy: Naomi, Yahoo News about 22 hours ago posted this story about you. I’ll read it and get your reaction. ‘Twitter has suspended author Naomi Wolf after she posted outlandish vaccine misinformation on the platform, including a claim that the shots were a ‘software platform that can receive uploads.’ Did Yahoo contact you before they wrote that story? And what’s your reaction to that?
Wolf: Well, they certainly did not. And this is such a gross example of big news outlets that really rely now, and I’m in the news business and I know your guest is there as well. They really rely on a kind of unholy partnership with Big Tech. The language in that Tweet is from the Moderna website.
And they were boasting on the website that their lipid nano-particle technology is like software that you can kind of upload or change in the future. And they were boasting about that as a revenue model, as opposed to a traditional vaccine where you just get it once.
After I reported on that, we did hear that there were going to be booster shots. There are going to be booster shots and it’s not just going to be one injection. I literally used the language off the Moderna website and their analogy.
And the trouble with Twitter, of course, is you can take these out of context. And certainly, Yahoo News has no excuse for taking that out of context.
Listen to the full third hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Dr. Naomi Wolf” by Dr. Naomi Wolf.
Live from Music Row Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed (TN-16) Senator Janice Bowling to the newsmakers line to discuss her proposed legislation regarding Covid-19 vaccine mandates and medical cannabis.
Leahy: And joining us now on our newsmaker line by our good friend from Tullahoma, State Senator, Janice Bowling. Senator Bowling welcome to the Tennessee Star Report.
Bowling: Michael Patrick, thank you so much. Thank you for inviting me. I look forward to our discussions today.
Leahy: Well, you know, I think the last time we met was at a Tea Party event down here, too. I don’t remember the name of the place. There was a great barbecue place I think down in Tullahoma and you were the featured speaker and did a great job there.
Bowling: Well, thank you so much. I believe that would have been Praters Barbecue.
Leahy: Exactly! What a great place that was. It was a fun event.
Bowling: It was a fun event. He’s a great guy. He lives in Warren County. And in my district Patrick when I was elected eight years ago all of my courthouses were Democrat. A lot of people don’t realize that. And now two of them actually Republican. Two of them are purple if you will. Others would come to change into the Republican Party if we would allow them to run as Republicans because these are old-time southern Democrats that are pro-gun, pro-God, pro-life, and pro-less government. And they’ve recognized that the party left them a long time ago.
Leahy: A long time ago. Now the regular session of the Tennessee General Assembly resumes a week from tomorrow. You have some legislation there. I guess the theme would be around healthcare and freedom of choice. You’ve got two or three bills about the vaccine. Tell us about what bills there are?
Bowling: The vaccine bills are really straightforward. They’re just saying that there can be no mandate and that people have the liberty to determine what they want to put in their bodies and what they don’t want to put in their body. Some facts of this ‘vaccine’ are really more of a therapy. It does not meet the classic definition of vaccine which would be a part of a dead card and attenuated part in some way of a viral pathogen that they would then put in your body.
So that it would stimulate your body to create your immune system to create antigens to fight that pathogen. So this is more of a Messenger RNA. It’s the first time ever that a synthetic Messenger RNA would be put into the body. And then it would and they’re still not sure because they never tested it. But my point is whether you think it’s fantastic or whether you want to not take it and you would prefer to continue doing what you’re doing with maybe taking Ivermectin or a Vitamin D3 of 3,000 national units a day. Zinc and Vitamin C things that are good treatments for prophylactics against getting Covid-19.
Leahy: So your bill specifically would prohibit that. I guess one of them would prohibit employers from requiring that as a condition of employment you take the vaccine?
Bowling: That’s exactly right. It protects the condition of employment, the mandate to take it, and then there are also some other things that I’m looking at that would involve discrimination against people who choose to take it or not take it. And so a discrimination would be a direct or indirect act or practice of exclusive, distinction, restriction, segregation limitation refusal denial, or other actions practiced and of differentiation on people who have chosen not to take the vaccine versus the general public. Maybe those who have or have not taken it. And I think it’s kind of funny to, well not funny, but absurd that they would be inquiring into your private medical information in order to discriminate against you.
Leahy: What are the prospects of that bill the particular one I guess we’ll start off with that is not making it mandatory where employers can’t make it mandatory that you take it as a condition of employment getting passed? What committee does is it in? Do you have a House co-sponsor? What are its prospects for passage?
Bowling: That House seat is the House co-sponsor and the prospects I think are very good. I was interviewed with a different reporter a few days ago and she commented, well, no one’s doing this. And I said exactly and that’s why we want to codify the reality of right now. This is a simple bill that shouldn’t be controversial. It should be something that we would never take a private personal medical decision to be used as a condition for employment.
And as to whether or not you can use public transportation or go to an event as to whether or not you’ve had this vaccine. And as I’ve said earlier, it’s really more of a therapy than immunization in the classic sense. So I think there are already people who are getting Covid-19 after having both shots. A congressman recently I think received both shots, and then he has acquired Covid-19. But it’s not a frightening thing because there are Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin and other very good treatments.
I think our problem initially was that we believe the Communist Chinese Party and their prescribed treatment which was ventilators. And once we determined in America that that really would be a last resort, not a first choice, people began to look and see other methods of treatment. And Hydroxychloroquine was just announced the week before last by the American Medical Association to be the treatment of choice. Amazing isn’t that?
Leahy: Yeah, it really is a different from what you heard at the beginning of this back in March of 2020. Now what kind of opposition does this bill have how vigorous is the opposition and what’s their argument against it?
Bowling: As of this point we have only been up there for organization. Then we were up there for the special session. And last week I had to go up for some government ops meetings that I was chairing. So next Monday when we get back into our regular session and we have until Thursday close of business next week to file all of our bills. Then we will start really hearing more things that people are going to support. Things that people going to oppose because I have some gun carry bills that some people oppose. And I guess if there weren’t some people opposing it I would worry about it.
Leahy: Good point. So Senator Bowling here’s another bill that I’ve seen that you’re interested in putting forward. And since you’ve got a strong conservative record, and I think you’ve been proposing this for some time people might think well, this is not necessarily conservative. But I think you probably have a response to that. So you’re going to I think introduce again a bill to make medical cannabis legal. Do I have that right?
Bowling: We certainly do. And you certainly have the history of that right as well. I am conservative. I’m very conservative. And I was so opposed to medical cannabis until I studied the facts and eliminated the urban legends. And, why I studied the fact, goes back to legislation I carried in 2015 and got it passed.
The repeal of the Intractable Pain Act of 2001. Our General Assembly in 2001 at the behaves of purview pharmaceutical passed legislation that gave the legal standing for these pill mills. It said if the patient has pain they shall be given this wonder drug that has no side effects and no addictions whatever. And the wonder drug was OxyContin. And you know the rest of the story.
Leahy: Yeah, not a pretty picture of what happened thereafter with addiction around the state and around rural areas everywhere.
Bowling: Especially in rural areas. And I went to a joint meeting of many District Attorneys and they were charting it and plotting it directly from that action in 2001 by the General Assembly. Now, they were well-intentioned but they had been given misinformation. and when we got that repealed in 2015, unfortunately, the administration at that time came back with some legislation that re-codified the distribution and the dispensing, and the prescribing of OxyContin.
I don’t think we should mandate in a legislative form any particular drug. But if we want to make it legal for the patients and the doctor to make a medical decision of what’s best for that patient, then there should be options out there not just opioids. And essentially right now, we’re losing over 2,000 Tennesseans a year to opioid addiction and that doesn’t count the people whose lives have been ruined and the families and the communities who’ve been left with the tremendous void due to the loss of someone who got addicted because it had been prescribed and dispensed for medical purposes. (Inaudible talk)
Leahy: State Senator Janice Bowling thank you. Will you come back so we can have more time to go into all these issues?
Bowling: Oh – this issue is an issue to my heart. I would really be grateful if I can come back.
Listen to the second hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
