US Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana recently advocated for libraries to be replaced with “church-owned” alternatives. “Over time, American communities will build beautiful, church owned public-access libraries. I’m going to help these churches get funding,” he tweeted. “We will change the whole public library paradigm. The libraries regular Americans recall are gone. They’ve become liberal grooming centers.”
Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It’s not how white men fight.
In an interview with Swiss journalist Darius Rochebin, Chinese ambassador to France Lu Shaye said that former Soviet countries "have no effective status in international law."
“In international law, even these ex-Soviet Union countries do not have the effective status because there is no international agreement to materialize their status of a sovereign country,” he said.
“He denies the very existence of countries like Ukraine, Lithuania, Estonia, Kazakhstan, etc.,” Antoine Bondaz, a China expert at the Paris-based think-tank Foundation for Strategic Research, wrote on Twitter.
Also, when asked whether he thinks Crimea belongs to Ukraine, the ambassador said, "it depends on how you perceive the problem," adding that "it's not that simple." He also said Crimea was "Russian at the beginning," without specifying what he meant by beginning.
Ukraine has not yet commented on the issue.
On the other hand, Sen. Mike Lee has loudly defended Thomas from criticism, calling the Justice a “hero” and saying he has done nothing wrong.
Lee is now attempting to fundraise off the Thomas scandal. Last week, Lee sent a fundraising email titled “Stand with Clarence Thomas.”
“The hypocritical woke Left is at it once again with their latest smear attacks against Justice Clarence Thomas,” the email reads.
The email accuses Thomas’ critics of targeting him because he stands in the way of “advancing their radical agenda” before making his fundraising pitch about protecting the Supreme Court.
“The need to retake the Senate majority and protect the Court from being manipulated, warped, and taken over by radical leftists is greater than ever,” the message says. The email then directs recipients to a landing page where they can show their support for Thomas by providing their cellphone number and email to the Lee campaign. After signing up, users are asked to donate to Lee’s campaign.
Both Lee and [Mitt] Romney have taken campaign donations from Crow. The Texan gave Lee $16,800 for his 2016 and 2022 reelection bids. He kicked in $5,400 to Romney’s 2018 Senate campaign. For his 2012 presidential run, Crow donated $5,000 directly to Romney’s campaign and gave $2.3 million to super PACs that supported his White House bid.
The top Republican in Tennessee’s House called Thursday’s protests over gun violence at the Tennessee Capitol an “insurrection,” drawing comparisons to the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
House Speaker Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville, made the comments during an appearance on the Hal Show on 98.7 FM.
“Two of the members, Reps. (Justin) Jones and (Gloria) Johnson, have been very vocal about Jan. 6 in Washington, D.C., about what that was,” Sexton said. “What they did today was at least equivalent, maybe worse, depending on how you look at it, of doing an insurrection in the capitol.”
House Democratic leaders on Friday said Sexton is trying to “change the narrative” and demanded Republicans issue an apology for referring to parents and children who went to the Capitol as “insurrectionists.”
More than a thousand people, including many teenagers, showed up to the Tennessee Capitol calling for lawmakers to address gun violence after six people were killed — including three children — in a mass shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville.
Protesters started their rally in front of the State Capitol at War Memorial Plaza at 8 a.m. They then proceeded to the statehouse shortly afterward, entering in an orderly manner and passing through a security point operated by Tennessee State Troopers.
The demonstrations in Nashville on Thursday were not violent, and the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security said no arrests were made, no use of force incidents were reported and no property was damaged.
A public service video featuring a Uyghur actor who portrays a “black-hearted drug dealer” preying on Chinese women recently went viral in China.
But researchers and activists have criticized the choice of a Uyghur for the role, saying it plays on old racist tropes about Uyghur men, who have historically been victims of drug trafficking rather than perpetrators.
“I’m a black-hearted drug dealer, but I’d never tell you this,” the actor, Turghunjan Mehmet, says to the camera from a dimly-lit room.
“I’d never tell you that I’d package methaqualone as candy and give it to you,” he says. “Its street name is ‘Buddha’s Virtue.’ It can trigger severe coma and lethal respiratory failure.”
The camera shows him giving the candy to an apparently Han Chinese woman in a coffee shop.
[Squaw Valley, California was renamed Yokuts Valley]
Nathan Magsig, Fresno County Supervisor for District 5, was none too happy about it. By 1 p.m. he issued a “clarification” to readers of the Facebook group “Squaw Valley: The Original 93675” that, in actuality, muddied the waters. After reporting that the [United States Board of Geographic Names]’s decision about Yokuts Valley, Magsig stoked white grievance and anger with falsehoods:
▪ Magsig claimed that the USBGN “decided to ignore the comments and resolutions by my office and the residents of Sq— Valley.” Not true! The USBGN carefully considered everything that Magsig had submitted (at the board’s request) — and weighed them with considerations from all interested parties. Carefully considering is not “ignoring.”
▪ Magsig claimed the USBGN “does not have the authority to name recognized locations” that are not on federal land. Not true! In September of this year the USBGN renamed over 650 places, not just federally owned lands, that previously had had “squaw” in their names. Furthermore, the USBGN worked closely with the California Advisory Council on Geographical Names, which had plenty of local input. The implication that the USBGN’s decision was arbitrary and without local input is manifestly false.
▪ Magsig claimed that he expected the California Legislature also to “ignore” his office’s comments and resolutions. Not true! While the Legislature does have the authority to change place names, in the case of Sq— Valley, this is not a future decision. AB 2022 already became law (past tense) in November. And the CACGN has already selected “Yokuts Valley” as the replacement name. It is ironic that Magsig complained about being “ignored,” while for two years he blocked requests from the local Indigenous community (and others) to get a hearing on this issue; he has dismissed the statements of Indigenous leaders that the word “squaw” is a derogatory and racist slur; and he has refused to acknowledge the fact that genocide cleared the way for white settlement of this region.
"I'm fine with Trump not tweeting. The important thing is that Twitter correct a grave mistake in banning his account, despite no violation of the law or terms of service," Musk said in a tweet. "Deplatforming a sitting President undermined public trust in Twitter for half of America."
“The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated,” Musk tweeted Saturday night. “Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” Latin for “the voice of the people is the voice of God.”
Security chief Chris Tang told lawmakers that 517 people under the age of 18 had been prosecuted in connection with the 2019 protests by that date, adding that youths judged to hold "extreme ideological views" had been sent for "re-education."
"At present, all young persons in custody are required to receive Chinese-style marching training," Tang told the Legislative Council on Oct. 26.
"The Correctional Services Department emphasizes strict discipline training for young persons in custody, hoping to make them understand the importance of discipline and abiding by the law," he said.
"Juvenile inmates trained under the Rehabilitation Centres Ordinance are ... subjected to strict disciplinary training and hard physical training, to enable them to understand the cost of crime, and to reflect on their own misdeeds," he said.
Inmates are also required to undergo patriotic education and activities to "enhance their national identity, to instill the correct values ... and to help them rediscover meaning in life," Tang said.
They also take classes in "moral and civic education" and "national security law education," programs that have been imposed on children and university students across Hong Kong since the National Security Law sparked a citywide crackdown on public dissent and political opposition from July 2020.
"The Correctional Services Department will assign a dedicated case manager to assess these persons in custody to identify the special rehabilitation needs of each person in custody, and match each person in custody according to the three principles of the above-mentioned rehabilitation program," Tang said.
Some 160 property owners have signed a petition opposing this Rogerdale Place stop, claiming it would destroy their quality of life. They assert that a bus stop would draw strangers into their close-knit community who would then park illegally, litter their roads, create hazardous conditions for their children and pets, and lower their property values. What is making them really angry and frustrated, they've said, is that the the county transit and commuter services division is moving forward with their plan to keep this stop without considering the feelings or the input of the affected neighborhood. They say a county survey carried out in 2019 was flawed and should be redone. That survey elicited 56 responses for a bus stop of which two explicitly called for a bus stop outside the community, that got positive responses for a bus stop asked whether a bus stop should be located within or without a community.
That message was delivered forcefully and vociferously at an Oct. 26 community meeting that Supervisor Matthew Letourneau, R-Dulles, called to assuage their concerns. His explanations were largely drowned, and met with disdain and jeers, especially when he said "We are at this point where we can't undo [the service]."
Letourneau's explanation that the bus service would get more cars off the road and alleviate congestion also were ignored. His assertion that some residents told him that they were pressured to sign out of fear of angering their neighbors was greeted with booing.
The Dulles district supervisor, who also sits of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (Metro), was joined by Scott Gross, manager of Loudoun County government's commuter and transit services division, whose explanations and rationale for why this bus stop would not pose safety concerns to the community also were shouted down.
Shouts of "skip the stop" and "we don't want a bus stop in our community" peppered the hour-long meeting that at times seemed more like a market brawl. Calls for holding another survey of the residents were turned down by Letourneau who said "we can't redo every survey for every community. That's not how it is done."
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) is the latest Republican politician to insist that kids are using litter boxes in schools as part of a rant attacking transgender youth.
During a recent tele-town hall event, Johnson was questioned by a caller who claimed that his niece told him that her school had provided litter boxes for students who believe they are cats. The caller, who identified himself as a former Democrat, wanted to know whether the senator had heard about things like that happening and whether Johnson would support a federal law similar to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law.
One of the things that COVID did was that parents were looking over their kids’ shoulders and they became aware of the indoctrination of our children by radical leftists within our education system,” he said.
He went on to claim that he’d heard “on a radio talk show” that England’s National Health Service (NHS) has declared that “transgenderism” is “just a phase for children” and that we shouldn’t “accommodate the phase.” Johnson continued his misinformed rant saying that children should not be given “gender-blocking drugs” or receive “sex change operations.” In reality, gender-affirming genital surgeries are not performed on minors.
Johnson concluded by claiming that teachers are “pushing this stuff on our kids.”
Speaking at a Heritage Foundation event, Alito said the release of his draft opinion made the justices presumed to be in the majority “targets for assassination because it gave people a rational reason to think they could prevent that from happening by killing one of us.”
The draft from Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was published by POLITICO on May 2.
“It was a grave betrayal of trust by somebody,” Alito, who authored both the draft and the final majority opinion, told the Heritage Foundation’s John G. Malcolm.
The draft proved substantially similar to the final majority opinion that was issued in June. That ruling overturned the Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade, which had established a right to abortion throughout the country.
“It certainly changed the atmosphere at the court,” Alito said of the unauthorized disclosure of the draft.
Saturday’s Donald Trump rally in Nevada naturally featured some extremist comments, chief among them a false—and racist—tirade from Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), who claimed that Democrats are in favor of “reparations” because they are “pro-crime.” Tuberville’s speech also called for an end to food stamps, education reform, and closing the border. “No, they’re not soft on crime, they’re pro-crime. They want crime!” Tuberville said to the fringe crowd. “They want reparations because they think the people who do the crime are owed that. Bullshit!” The remarks at an event intended to promote Stop the Steal loons like Adam Laxalt, a Senate candidate, drew the ire of an army of critics on social media. Among them was MSNBC’s Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough, who likened the Alabama senator’s comments to the rhetoric of segregationist figures like George Wallace and Lester Maddox.
“It goes without saying that everyone is free to express disagreement with our decisions and to criticize our reasoning as they see fit,” Alito, who penned the decision reversing Roe v. Wade last term, told The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. “But saying or implying that the court is becoming an illegitimate institution or questioning our integrity crosses an important line,” he said.
Former President Donald Trump on Thursday defended hosting a Saudi-funded tournament at his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, by casting doubt on any connection between Saudi Arabia and the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Asked to respond to harsh criticism from families of Sept. 11 victims who are urging Americans to protest the Saudi-backed LIV Golf tournament, Trump suggested there was still uncertainty surrounding the attacks.
“Well, nobody’s gotten to the bottom of 9/11, unfortunately, and they should have,” Trump said.
"If you are that slacker barista who wasted seven years in college studying completely useless things, now has loans, and can't get a job, Joe Biden just gave you 20 grand," Cruz said on his Verdict podcast.
"Maybe you weren't gonna vote in November," he added, "and suddenly you just got 20 grand, and if you can get off the bong for a minute and head down to the voting station, or just send in your mail-in ballot that the Democrats have helpfully sent you, it could drive up turnout, particularly among young people."
[Belarus is allowing Russia transit its territory to attack Urkaine]
The official message to Ukraine was posted on the President of Belarus’ official website, stating:
“Congratulations to the people of Ukraine on Independence Day.”
“President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko has congratulated the people of Ukraine on Independence Day.”
“I am convinced that today’s contradictions will not be able to destroy the centuries-old foundation of sincere good-neighborly relations between the peoples of the two countries,” the message reads.
“Belarus will continue to stand up for the preservation of accord, development of friendly and mutually respectful contacts at all levels.”
“The Belarusian head of state wished Ukrainians peaceful skies, tolerance, courage, strength and success in restoring decent life.”
Biden’s student loan socialism is a slap in the face to every family who sacrificed to save for college, every graduate who paid their debt, & every American who chose a certain career path or volunteered to serve in our Armed Forces in order to avoid taking on debt.
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice scoffed Monday at a suggestion by Democratic lawmakers to let voters decide whether abortion should continue to be allowed in the state.
The Republican governor said the state's abortion law falls under the scrutiny of the Legislature and the attorney general.
During a legislative special session initiated by Justice last month, majority Republicans failed to pass legislation criminalizing abortion.
On Friday, top Democrats asked Justice and leading GOP lawmakers to bring the Legislature back to consider a resolution to allow voters to consider a constitutional amendment for "reproductive freedom."
Justice wanted no part of that.
"Unfortunately, this place is surrounded with constant grandstanding," the governor said at a news conference. "I think that's what the Democrats are doing."
Abortion had been banned after 20 weeks of pregnancy in West Virginia until the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion. After that ruling, Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said abortion was banned completely in the state because of an 1800s-era law that had been unenforceable while abortion was federally protected.
But a Charleston judge barred the state from enforcing the ban, ruling it had been superseded by a slew of conflicting modern laws, including the 20-week ban. Morrisey has appealed the ruling to the state Supreme Court, which is expected to take up the case this fall.
"Coming down from the U.S. Supreme Court, this is the responsibility of our Legislature and our attorney general," Justice said. "And absolutely I've said over and over and over, I don't want to impose anything, any ideas or anything."
"Now, if they bring me something that I cannot sign, I won't sign it. But actually, I don't think that'll happen. I think our Legislature is abound with good people and they should get through this and bring me something that I will absolutely welcome and sign. And I think that's exactly what will happen."
JAMESTOWN TOWNSHIP—What started as a fight over an LGBTQ-themed graphic novel may end with the closure of a west Michigan public library.
Voters in Jamestown Township, a politically conservative community in Ottawa County, rejected renewal Tuesday of a millage that would support the Patmos Library. That vote guts the library’s operating budget in 2023 — 84 percent of the library’s $245,000 budget comes from property taxes collected through a millage.
“I wasn’t expecting anything like this,” Walton told Bridge Michigan Tuesday. “The library is the center of the community. For individuals to be short sighted to close that down over opposing LGBTQ is very disappointing.”
There have been protests at other Michigan public libraries and at school board meetings about books with LGBTQ themes. But Tuesday may be the first time a community voted, in effect, to close its library rather than have it remain open with books some consider to be “indoctrinating” children.
Voters on Tuesday rejected the millage renewal by a 25-point margin — 62 percent to 37 percent — on the same day voters approved millages for road improvements and the fire department.
Ten years earlier, a library millage at a slightly lower rate was approved by 37 percentage points.
For the average home with a market value of $250,000, the new millage, if approved, would have increased taxes about $24.
In an interview with Newsroom (conducted via email at Boreham’s request to avoid “any semantic traps”), the former Wellingtonian says he views the label as “a badge of honour”.
“I’m extremely proud to be a voice for China, because I wholeheartedly believe China is being given an extremely unfair rap by the west. Literally every single article I read about China is riddled with lies and conjecture and boosts the view the average westerner already has about this huge, complicated country”…
…Boreham argues that view is based on the “western idea” of press freedom, with the media acting as a check on government and bringing abuses of power to light, rather than the Chinese model, which he categorises as “promoting important news, stability and unity”.
“Yes, China’s media is in theory controlled by the government, yes there are certain areas of censorship – certain taboo subjects that should just be left alone – but apart from that it is really quite free. The only difference is the rules are made by the government, and not by editors and commercial interests.”
Now comes Richmond-area historian Ann McLean, [Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin’s] appointee to the Virginia Board of Historic Resources and an apparent magna cum laude graduate of the Jubal Early School of Lost Cause Revisionism.
Our moment of racial reckoning, teetering on the brink, does not need a Confederate apologist. But here comes McLean, who likened Abraham Lincoln’s attempt to preserve the Union to “Russia invading Ukraine” during a July 18 interview on John Reid’s talk show on WRVA radio. She also claimed that "slavery would have been outlawed in the South within five or 10 years, but they wanted to do it on their own time."
I can only assume that “they” were not considering the desired timetable of the enslaved.
Seven months earlier, on the same show, McLean defended Confederate monuments with a heaping helping of Lost Cause pablum.
“Fake news or false narratives are not new,” she said. “And this whole tragedy is that these statues were built to tell the true story of the American South to people 500 years from now.”
“But we have forces right here 150 years later that want to destroy the evidence of that story,” she said, framing the Civil War as a “fight for sovereignty of each state and constitutional law.”
GOP Sen. James Lankford (Okla.) on Thursday blocked a Democratic request to unanimously pass a bill seeking to protect interstate travel for abortion.
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), joined by a string of Democratic senators, had sought consent to pass a bill that would prevent states from punishing women who travel to other states where abortion is legal to get the procedure.
Does that child in the womb have the right to travel in their future?” Lankford said in objecting. “Do they get to live?”
“There’s a child in this conversation as well,” he added.
"Look at Robert 'Bobby' Crimo, would you sell a gun to that guy, does he seem like a nut case? Of course, he does," Carlson said. "So why didn't anyone raise an alarm? Maybe it is because he didn't stand out. Maybe it is because there are a lot of young men in America who suddenly look and act like this guy. That is not an attack, it is just true."
He added: "Like Crimo, they inhabit that solitary fantasy world of social media, porn and video games."
Carlson then went on to claim these same men may be high on drugs and angry because they believe their lives will be worse than their parents'.
"They are high on government-endorsed weed, 'smoke some more, it is good for you.' They are numbed by the endless psychotropic drugs that are handed out in every school in the country by crackpots posing as counselors. Of course, they are angry, they know that their lives will not be better than their parents', they will be worse. That is all but guaranteed, they know that. They are not that stupid." he said.
"And yet the authorities in their lives, mostly women, never stop lecturing them about their so-called privilege. 'You are male, you are privileged.' Imagine that, try and imagine an unhealthier, unhappier life than that. So a lot of young men in America are going nuts," Carlson continued.
"Are you surprised? By the way, a shockingly large number of them have been prescribed psychotropic drugs by their doctors, SSRIs or anti-depressants. That would include quite a few mass shooters."
"You've got a whole lot of people sitting on the sidelines because, frankly, they're flush for the moment," the Kentucky Republican said. "What we've got to hope is once they run out of money, they'll start concluding it's better to work than not to work."
THE LIV GOLF Invitational Series has attempted to clarify CEO Greg Norman's comments that referred to the Saudi Arabian monarchy's alleged involvement in the death of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi as a "mistake," a remark that drew widespread criticism, including from Khashoggi's fiancée.
On Wednesday, during a news conference in London to promote LIV Golf's first event at Centurion Club, June 9-11, Norman was asked about Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's alleged complicity in the 2018 killing of Khashoggi, an American citizen. LIV Golf is being financed by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, which is controlled by bin Salman.
"From what I heard and what you guys reported, just take ownership of what it is," Norman told reporters. "Take ownership no matter what it is. Look, we've all made mistakes, and you just want to learn from those mistakes and how you can correct them going forward."
Khashoggi was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. The Saudi crown prince has denied involvement in the killing.
On January 6 of 2021, you had tens of thousands of people peacefully protesting, and yet the corporate media and Democrats slander them with the made-up term 'insurrectionist,'" he told host Sean Hannity. "And yet in this instance, they are not willing to call off their goons [abortion protestors] even now as this has the potential to escalate and escalate further."
[Pro Choice activists intend to protest at Catholic Churches]
Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida also entered the fray, tweeting, "Deranged leftists are urging followers to disrupt church services across America this Sunday … I hope President Biden & democratic leaders will condemn this attempt to incite domestic terror."
Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah ripped into the White House on Wednesday for considering widespread student loan forgiveness. He argued it could amount to a slippery slope for other types of debt forgiveness.
"Desperate polls call for desperate measures: Dems consider forgiving trillions in student loans" the Utah Republican wrote on Twitter. "Other bribe suggestions: Forgive auto loans? Forgive credit card debt? Forgive mortgages? And put a wealth tax on the super-rich to pay for it all. What could possibly go wrong?"
“If Stacey Abrams is elected governor of Georgia, I just want to be honest, that will be a cold war between Florida and Georgia,” he said. “I can’t have [former Cuban communist leader Raul] Castro to my south and Abrams to my north, that would be a disaster. So I hope you guys take care of that and we’ll end up in good shape.”
[Full sermon on Russian here: http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/5914188.html?fbclid=IwAR37VW4l-JKWsxj16MhepsDlU2K0kIRX__18KQNoA9IJRoJ78Ja8PjlkFP8]
But then, about halfway through, the sermon took a turn for the shocking and dangerous. It was at about the point that he acknowledged where he stood: in a cathedral built not so much for the glory of God as for the glory of Russian military might. Here the Patriarch said he had come to address the leaders of their Russian forces, and through them, their troops. He reminded the assembled congregation of Vladimir Putin’s favorite propaganda point in this war: that Russia was fighting fascism in Ukraine just as it had in the Second World War.
And then the Patriarch, whose office was just a few centuries ago (a blink of the eye in the memory of the Christian East) located not in Moscow, but Kyiv, offered up a version of history that simply erases Ukraine from the map. Kirill blames “various forces” (i.e. outsiders, including—one would imagine—the West) that emerged in the Middle Ages for what he regards as a false division between Russia and Ukraine. In fact, he doesn’t even acknowledge there are such people as Ukrainians, referring to all involved parties (including, perhaps, one could speculate, Belarusians) as “Holy Russians.”
Disregarding for a moment how simply, factually wrong Patriarch Kirill’s history is, this sermon does mark a dangerous escalation in the rhetoric coming from the Moscow Patriarchate—and, we can assume, by extension the Russian state. This rhetorical advance is made all the more dangerous by the fact that most in the West won’t even know the sermon happened, let alone be aware of its pernicious implications.
LINCOLN, Neb. (Nebraska Examiner) — Officials with the Seward and Adams Central school districts on Monday labeled as “ridiculous” and “an ugly rumor” talk that students have dressed up as cats and dogs and have requested litter boxes to handle their bathroom needs.
A spokeswoman with the Millard Public Schools also said she was unaware of anything of that nature happening in that Omaha area district.
The districts were contacted by the Nebraska Examiner after State Sen. Bruce Bostelman of Brainard spoke on the floor of the State Legislature on Monday, saying he was “shocked” that schoolchildren have been allowed by school officials to dress up as “furries,” interacting with teachers using meows and barks, and requesting litter boxes.
“How is that sanitary?” Bostelman asked. “How can schools allow this to happen?”
Later, on Monday afternoon, the senator said he and Fremont Sen. Lynn Walz, the head of the Legislature’s Education Committee, had contacted several schools and found the talk to be untrue.
“We wanted to put an end to it,” Bostelman said, after his earlier speech was widely shared.
Earlier Monday, Bostelman had said he had even heard from some Millard-area parents that a student, dressed as a cat, had asked for a litter box, and when that request was denied, had defecated on a floor.
When asked what schools he was referencing, Bostelman said Omaha and Seward, adding that he had talked to some parents from Millard at a meeting over the weekend who related the story about the furry cat. Hastings Sen. Steve Halloran said he has also heard it was a problem at Adams Central schools in his district.
Braun then disapprovingly pointed to the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion nationwide. Pressed by a reporter on if he similarly disapproved of the decision to federally legalize interracial marriage, Braun said he did.
"If you're not wanting the Supreme Court to weigh in on issues like that, you're not going to be able to have your cake and eat it too," Braun said. "I think that's hypocritical."
"You can list a whole host of issues," Braun said. "When it comes down to whatever they are, I'm going to say they're not going to all make you happy within a given state. But we're better off having states manifest their points of view, rather than homogenizing it across the country as Roe v. Wade did."
BUT SOME REPUBLICANS AREN’T HAVING IT: Sen. JOHN KENNEDY (R-La.), who sits on the Judiciary Committee, didn’t exactly tamp down his rhetoric. “No. 1, I want a nominee who knows a law book from a J. Crew catalog,” he said upon exiting the lunch. “No. 2, I want a nominee who’s not going to try to rewrite the Constitution every other Thursday to try to advance a ‘woke agenda.’”
The first Black woman nominated to the US Supreme Court by President Joe Biden will be a "beneficiary" of affirmative action, Republican Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi said Friday.
"The irony is that the Supreme Court is at the very same time hearing cases about this sort of affirmative racial discrimination while adding someone who is the beneficiary of this sort of quota," he said Friday in an interview with local radio network SuperTalk Mississippi, referring to the high court's recent decision to reconsider challenges to race-based affirmative action in college admissions.
"The majority of the court may be saying writ large it's unconstitutional. We'll see how that irony works out," he added.
The mother of Ashli Babbitt, the woman fatally shot during the Jan. 6 riot, stood on the Capitol steps Thursday and claimed her daughter was exercising a legitimate right to protest when she was killed by a US Capitol police officer one year ago.
“My daughter was an amazing, energetic, independent, powerful woman. I miss her every day,” Micki Witthoeft said through tears as members of Congress gathered inside to remember the first anniversary of the attacks.
“I’m here because Americans do have the right to protest, it’s your right as an American citizen to protest,” she continued.
Babbitt, a 36-year-old Air Force veteran, was shot by US Capitol Police officer Lt. Michael Byrd as she tried to crawl through a broken window to enter the Speaker’s Lobby on Jan. 6, 2021 as a mob of Trump supporters were storming the Capitol in an effort to disrupt the results of the 2020 presidential election.
“My daughter was a proud American patriot,” Witthoeft said. “She served this country her whole adult life. She loved God, America and loved her family.”
Witthoeft then claimed her daughter was “murdered by a careless, reckless” Capitol Police officer.
“She came to DC to hear Donald Trump speak about a stolen election, and little did we know that would be the last time she heard anybody speak,” the grieving mom said.
"What brazen politicization of January 6 by President Biden," tweeted Graham. "I wonder if the Taliban who now rule Afghanistan with al-Qaeda elements present, contrary to President Biden's beliefs, are allowing this speech to be carried?"
Biden, who is destroying our Nation with insane policies of open Borders, corrupt Elections, disastrous energy policies, unconstitutional mandates, and devastating school closures, used my name today to try to further divide America. This political theater is all just a distraction for the fact Biden has completely and totally failed. Our Country no longer has Borders, has totally and completely lost control of Covid (record numbers!), is no longer Energy Independent, Inflation is rampant, our Military is in chaos, and our exit, or surrender, from Afghanistan was perhaps the most embarrassing day in the long and distinguished history of the United States—and so much more. Why is it that the Unselect Committee of totally partisan political hacks, whose judgment has long ago been made, not discussing the rigged Presidential Election of 2020? It’s because they don’t have the answers or justifications for what happened. They got away with something, and it is leading to our Country’s destruction. They want all conversation concerning the Election “Canceled.” Just look at the numbers, they speak for themselves. They are not justifiable, so the complicit media just calls it the Big Lie, when in actuality the Big Lie was the Election itself.
The Democrats want to own this day of January 6th so they can stoke fears and divide America. I say, let them have it because America sees through theirs lies and polarizations.”
In a radio interview Republican Ron Johnson suggested unvaccinated people were being demonized.
"That across the world, those who exercise their autonomy and don't get vaccinated are being put quote: 'into internment camps,'" said Greg Borowski with Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
PolitiFact Wisconsin asked Senator Johnson's office for clarification - they pointed to a policy in one country, Australia that requires residents returning from international travel to spend time in quarantine facilities.
"They're earmarked for residents who travel outside the country and come back," said Borowski, "And by the protocols in Australia, have had to wait 14 days in a quarantine facility.
“Fauci did the exact same thing with AIDS. He overhyped it,” Johnson told “Fox and Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade.
“He created all kinds of fear, saying it could affect the entire population when it couldn’t. And he’s doing, he’s using the exact same playbook with COVID, ignoring therapy, pushing a vaccine,” the senator said, receiving no pushback from the host.
More than 700,000 people in the United States have died from illness related to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, since it first began spreading. Contrary to the senator’s claim, any person can develop AIDS if they contract HIV through certain bodily fluids of an infected person and leave it untreated. (HIV cannot be transmitted through kissing or sharing food.)
Government officials, including Fauci, were criticized by LGBTQ activists at the time for failing to take the threat of AIDS seriously, and failing to act swiftly to prevent its spread. Eventually, though, Fauci became instrumental in American research efforts to treat HIV, which was particularly detrimental to LGBTQ communities in the 1980s and 1990s.
"Now I do have some colleagues on the Hill who have, just like me, offered Kyle Rittenhouse an internship in their office," she told Newsmax host Sebastian Gorka, a former aide to Donald Trump, during a Tuesday interview. "And Madison Cawthorn, he said that he would arm wrestle me for this Kyle Rittenhouse internship. But Madison Cawthorn has some pretty big guns, and so I would like to challenge him to a sprint instead."
"Let's make this fair," she said of a race against Cawthorn, who uses a wheelchair.
Ignoring these facts, Thomas seemed to buy into Texas’ highly suspect version of events. He asked Seth Kretzer, Ramirez’s attorney: “If we think that Mr. Ramirez has changed his request a number of times and has filed last-minute complaints, and if we assume that that’s some indication of gaming the system, what should we do with that with respect to assessing the sincerity of his beliefs?”
Kretzer pointed Thomas toward Ramirez’s multiple handwritten pleas “repeatedly requesting the same thing,” but Thomas sounded doubtful. “Can one’s repeated filing of complaints, particularly at the last minute, not only be seen as evidence of gaming of the system but also of the sincerity of religious beliefs?” he asked. Kretzer responded: “I can only speak as Mr. Ramirez’s attorney. I do not play games. There’s no dilatory tactics in this case.”
It wasn’t good enough for Alito, who groused to Kretzer that “what you have said so far suggests to me that we can look forward to an unending stream of variations.” As if to tease out the many ways people could “game the system” to delay their executions, Alito asked: “What’s going to happen when the next prisoner says that I have a religious belief that [my faith adviser] should touch my knee? He should hold my hand? He should put his hand over my heart? He should be able to put his hand on my head? We’re going to have to go through the whole human anatomy with a series of cases.”
Kavanaugh picked up on Thomas’ thread, too. “People are moving the goal posts on their claims in order to delay executions,” he lectured Kretzer. “At least, that’s the state’s concern.” Later, Kavanaugh added: “This is a potential huge area of future litigation across a lot of areas—sincerity of religious claims. How do we question those? Some things people have talked about are the incentives someone might have to be insincere, behavioral inconsistencies … the religious tradition of the practice. What do we look at to check sincerity? Because that’s a very awkward thing for a judge to do, to say: ’I want to look into the sincerity of your claim.’ But our case law says we must do that.”
[Hugo Boss made uniforms for the Nazi Party and utilized forced labor to make their uniforms]
The Chinese subsidiary of Hugo Boss appears to have gone against the German fashion brand’s corporate position on buying from Xinjiang, saying on Thursday it would continue to purchase cotton from the region.
“We have always respected the one-China principle and resolutely defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the unit said in Chinese on Weibo, the country’s Twitter-like platform.
“Xinjiang long cotton is one of the best in the world, we believe quality raw materials would show its value. We will continue to buy and support Xinjiang cotton.” The post, however, seems to contradict a statement on Hugo Boss’s main website, which says the company does not buy any goods directly from Xinjiang.
A member of the communications team at its Metzingen headquarters was unable to explain the discrepancy.
One justice took umbrage with that invocation of racism: Justice Samuel Alito. His dissent was the latest in a string of opinions bristling at the idea that racism still shapes many policymakers’ decisions today, and that the legacy of past racism still affects people of color. In the most noteworthy of those opinions, 2018’s Abbott v. Perez, Alito convinced a majority of his colleagues to write such a strong presumption of white racial innocence into the law governing racial voter discrimination that it is now virtually impossible for voting rights plaintiffs to prove that state lawmakers acted with racist intent.
Alito does not appear driven by broad skepticism of racial issues. While he has repeatedly lashed out at the mere suggestion that white policymakers may have been motivated by racism, he took a drastically different tone in Ricci v. DeStefano (2009). In that case, Alito wrote a lengthy concurring opinion suggesting that a cohort of mostly white firefighters were denied promotions due to a conspiracy between New Haven Mayor John DeStefano and a local black preacher.
Both articles by the Times andProPublica quoted students or professors who suggested that social-distancing guidelines, designed to prevent the spread of the highly transmissible virus, were not being adequately practiced on campus.
Falwell cast his decision to seek a case against the journalists as a move to protect his students, asserting that the journalists had probably come from coronavirus hot spots such as Washington, D.C., or New York, and that by being on campus they had put remaining Liberty students at risk. He also complained that Liberty was being singled out because of its status as a religious school.
He contended that there were witnesses for both cases of alleged trespassing, telling Starnes that there were no-trespassing signs posted at “every entrance” barring everyone from the campus except students, faculty and staff, or those with official university business.
Richard Tofel, president of ProPublica, said he’d not seen or heard anything of the warrant aside from having been pointed to it on Starnes’ website.
David McCraw, in-house counsel for the Times, said in a statement, “Julia was engaged in the most routine form of news gathering: taking an outdoors picture of a person who was interviewed for a news story.” McCraw said Rendleman had been invited to campus by one of the students interviewed for the article.
“We are disappointed that Liberty University would decide to make that into a criminal case and go after a freelance journalist because its officials were unhappy with press coverage of the university’s decision to convene classes in the midst of the pandemic,” he added.
There is no warrant for the author of the Times article, Elizabeth Williamson, because the magistrate judge did not find enough physical evidence to charge her, Falwell said. But he threatened civil defamation lawsuits against Williamson and another unidentified media outlet if the Times didn’t make a “clear apologetic correction” to its report.
Antônio’s pastor also sought to “free” young men from Afro-Brazilian faiths such as Candomblé and Umbanda. Their spirits, he said, were manifestations of the Enemy. The pastor was far from alone in his denunciation. The decline of Afro-Brazilian faiths is not just the result of changing preferences. Some gang members yearn to express their devotion to God but are so accustomed to the language of force that they hear this talk of an Enemy as a declaration of holy war. In recent years, the so-called narcopentecostais have mounted escalating attacks on Afro-Brazilian temples, sometimes posting videos as warnings to others. One shows a man in a T-shirt printed with Jesus’ face, ripping apart sacred necklaces, while another tells the temple’s priest, “Don’t you know that the boss doesn’t want your superstition here? I belong to the honor and glory of Jesus.” He waves a baseball bat that reads dialogo in front of the camera. “It’s just a dialogue I’m having with you,” he says. “If I catch you again or you try to rebuild this shit, I’ll kill you.”
The victims of such attacks were afraid to speak to me, even though I promised not to print their names. While I was in Rio, an Afro-Brazilian priest named Leandro Souza de Jesus was murdered inside his temple. But one Candomblé priestess, a mãe de santo I’ll call Xica, agreed to receive me in a sitting room decorated with statues of Jesus, the Wise Men, and Oyá, a spirit from the Niger River. She told me some of her disciples lived in Cidade Alta, a favela recently taken over by the TCP. Men in suits went door-to-door to deliver letters announcing that it was now forbidden to practice macumba—a derogatory term for Afro-Brazilian faiths—or even to wear all white, as required for their rituals. “Jesus has ordained that the community of Cidade Alta be freed from this evil,” the letter said.
One of Xica’s disciples, herself a mãe de santo, shut down her temple and moved away, but another decided to continue practicing in secret. Someone alerted the gang, and she was ordered to stop, but she didn’t. Early one morning, in the middle of a ceremony, a convoy of motorcycles showed up. Four men broke in, shooting into the air to scare off worshippers. They threw the elderly woman to the ground, beat her, and smashed her altars to pieces.
See, the 43-year-old rap icon and Dipset veteran revealed to the long-running hip-hop podcast that he isn't sold on the whole dinosaur thing. He tells hosts Jeff and Eric Rosenthal, seemingly unprompted, "I have fights with people about dinosaurs and their existence all the time.”
Asked to elaborate, he continues: “I’m not believing nor disbelieving. It’s like, there’s no proof. Because they throw these big bones, pause, up in a museum, and then be like, ‘Yo, these are the people that were here before us…’” After getting pushback from the hosts that yes, the bones themselves are quite literally proof that dinosaurs existed, Killa Cam was still unfazed. He explains, "I'm not necessarily going for that one. If we get more proof on it, cool, but I’m not going off museum facts. I been to every museum when I was young, I’m like, ‘Word, so they just found all these bones and glued them together.'"
Interviews this absurd don't happen very often. When asked about whether or not he believes the Earth is flat, Cam'ron responds with a simple "Nah" which further confounds the podcast hosts. The chat is the perfect amount of lively and hilarious but with an ample dose of grating pseudoscience to keep it balanced.
Cam'ron, who later mistakes paleontology for archeology, says, "I wish I could be an archaeologist and be like, ‘I found some shit.’ I’d be at the beach every day like, ‘Yo, look what I discovered,’ and just make some shit up." Even though his grasp of science is way off, it's 100% worth a watch.
The Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, is due to release his long-awaited findings in a week, but behind the scenes at the Justice Department, disagreement has surfaced about one of Horowitz’s central conclusions on the origins of the Russia investigation. The discord could be the prelude to a major fissure within federal law enforcement on the controversial question of investigating a presidential campaign.
Barr has not been swayed by Horowitz’s rationale for concluding that the FBI had sufficient basis to open an investigation on July 31, 2016, these people said.
It’s not yet clear how Barr plans to make his objection to Horowitz’s conclusion known. The inspector general report, currently in draft form, is being finalized after input from various witnesses and offices that were scrutinized by the inspector general. Barr or a senior Justice Department official could submit a formal letter as part of that process, which would then be included in the final report. It is standard practice for every inspector general report to include a written response from the department. Barr could forgo a written rebuttal on that specific point and just publicly state his concerns.
Spokespeople for the inspector general and the FBI declined to comment.
Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said in a statement that the inspector general investigation “is a credit to the Department of Justice. His excellent work has uncovered significant information that the American people will soon be able to read for themselves. Rather than speculating, people should read the report for themselves next week, watch the Inspector General’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and draw their own conclusions about these important matters.”
The Russia investigation was opened after the FBI was told of statements made by a then Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, that the Russians possessed hacked Hillary Clinton emails. Papadopoulos’s alleged comments were key because they were made well before any public allegation that Russian intelligence operatives had hacked the Democratic National Committee.
The attorney general has privately contended that Horowitz does not have enough information to reach the conclusion the FBI had enough details in hand at the time to justify opening such a probe. He argues that other U.S. agencies, such as the CIA, may hold significant information that could alter Horowitz’s conclusion on that point, according to the people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Barr has also praised the inspector general’s overall work on the matter, according to one person familiar with the matter. The inspector general operates independently of Justice Department leadership, so Barr cannot order Horowitz to change his findings.
But the prospect of the nation’s top law enforcement official suggesting the FBI may have wrongly opened an investigation into a presidential campaign, even after the inspector general announces the agency was justified in doing so, will probably generate more partisan battles over how the Justice Department and the FBI operate.
It is not unusual for an attorney general or the Justice Department to disagree with some of an inspector general’s findings. However, typically those disagreements occur because senior leaders at the department believe the inspector general has been too critical. In this case, Barr has conveyed to others his belief that Horowitz has not been critical enough, or is at least reaching a conclusion prematurely.
People familiar with the draft language of Horowitz’s report said that while it is critical of some FBI employees, and found some systemic problems in surveillance procedures, it overall does not agree with Trump’s charge that the investigation was a “witch hunt” or a politically motivated attack on him first as a candidate and then as president.
Instead, the draft report found that the investigation was opened on a solid legal and factual footing, these people said.
Part of Barr’s reluctance to accept that finding is related to another investigation, one being conducted by the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, John Durham, into how intelligence agencies pursued allegations of Russian election tampering in 2016. Barr has traveled abroad to personally ask foreign officials to assist Durham in that work. Even as the inspector general’s review is ending, Durham’s investigation continues.
Barr’s disagreement with Horowitz will probably spark further criticism from Democrats, who have already accused Barr of using his position to protect the president and undermine federal law enforcement.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) charged in September that Barr had “gone rogue.”
In recent weeks, Democrats have charged that Barr’s Justice Department was too quick to decide not to investigate Trump over his efforts to persuade Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to announce an investigation of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. The Ukraine controversy has led to an impeachment inquiry.
Criticism of Barr previously centered on his handling of the Russia investigation. The case that began in 2016 was taken over in May 2017 by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. After a nearly two-year investigation, Mueller filed a lengthy report of his findings to Barr, by which point he had charged 34 people with crimes, including 26 Russian nationals. Those charged and convicted included Trump’s former campaign chairman, former personal attorney, former deputy campaign chairman and former national security adviser.
After receiving the Mueller report, Barr released a short letter summing up its main points, including that there was insufficient evidence to accuse any Trump associates of conspiring with the Russians. Barr also said Mueller had made no determination about whether Trump had sought to obstruct the investigation, but Barr and his then deputy concluded he had not.
When the full report was released, Democrats protested that Barr had improperly skewed the findings to be more favorable to Trump.
Barr has dismissed such criticism, and charged it is Democrats who are abusing legal procedures and standards in their quest to drive Trump out of the White House.
“In waging a scorched-earth, no-holds-barred war against this administration, it is the left that is engaged in shredding norms and undermining the rule of law,” Barr said in a speech last month.
In his first months on the job this year, Barr made clear he had serious concerns about how the FBI had conducted the investigation into possible collusion between Trump associates and Russia.
The attorney general declared in April that the Trump campaign was spied on, though aides later said he used that term not in a pejorative sense but in the more general meaning of surveillance.
“I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” Barr told lawmakers. “I think spying did occur, but the question is whether it was adequately predicated and I’m not suggesting it wasn’t adequately predicated, but I need to explore that.” He also criticized former leaders of the FBI, saying, “I think there was probably a failure among a group of leaders there in the upper echelon.”
Current and former law enforcement officials have said that, when presented with information about a possible plot to undermine the U.S. election, they had a duty to investigate, and that it would have been wrong not to have launched an investigation.
In the months since, Barr, through Durham, has pursued information related to a onetime associate of Papadopoulos, a European academic named Joseph Mifsud.
Mifsud was publicly linked to Russian interference efforts in late 2017, when Mueller revealed Papadopoulos had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about the details of his interactions with Mifsud.
Shortly after his name surfaced publicly, Mifsud told Italian media he did not work for Russia. “I never got any money from the Russians: my conscience is clear,” Mifsud told La Repubblica. “I am not a secret agent.”
Since then, the professor has disappeared from public life, leading to a host of theories about him and his whereabouts. While court papers filed in Mueller’s investigation suggested Mifsud operated in Russia’s interests, Papadopoulos, conservatives and conspiracy theorists have suggested he was working for Western intelligence agencies.
Speaking on The Ingraham Angle yesterday, the host said: "The road to Democrat dominance in the commonwealth was paved long before Trump took the presidency. The undeniable fact is demographic changes throughout the state, but especially in northern Virginia, have altered what was once a moderate to right-of-centre state.
"It made it really a petri dish for radical, left wing ideas. Virginia's foreign-born population nearly doubled from 2000 to 2017, and these immigrants are mostly concentrated in northern Virginia."
After referring to a Washington Post editorial reporting that a third of Fairfax County's population was foreign-born, Ingraham said: "Since immigrants are more likely to vote Democrat, well this of course has dragged the electorate to the left. It's just a fact of life."