Tag: Wall Street Journal

Catholic Leaders Demand Answers from FBI on Bombshell Discovery Agency Probe into Traditional Catholics ‘Bigger than Believed’

Susan Berry, PhD

National Catholic leaders said the FBI’s probe of Catholics, as revealed by documents obtained by the House Judiciary Committee, went far beyond a so-called rogue agent in a single field office in Richmond, as was explained in testimony by agency Director Christopher Wray.

The leaders of Catholic civil rights groups reacted to a letter to Wray sent Wednesday by Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government Chairman Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), who informed the FBI director evidence obtained by the Judiciary Committee shows the agency’s “assessment of traditional Catholics as potential domestic terrorists” was developed through information obtained “from around the country,” rather than from an isolated source.

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Attorney General Skrmetti Warns Biden Administration to Follow the Law During Debt Ceiling Negotiations

Peter D'Abrosca

After President Joe Biden said he would invoke the 14th Amendment if Congress did not agree to raise the debt ceiling, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti led other state attorneys general from across the country in telling Biden that such an action would be unlawful.

“We, the undersigned chief legal officers of 19 states, write in response to your recent assertion that you have the authority to ignore federal law and raise the debt ceiling without congressional approval,” Skrmetti wrote in letter signed by 19 other state attorneys general. “You do not. Our constitutional system may be frustrating at times, but it is the fundamental guarantor of American liberty, and we must all abide by the oaths we swore to defend it.”

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GOP Presidential Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy Says President Joe Biden Should Pardon Former President Donald Trump

M.D. Kittle

Highly partisan Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is setting a “dangerous precedent” that will likely lead to more “politically targeted prosecutions,” GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy writes in a new op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal. 

If President Joe Biden wants to avoid this danger and truly unify the country, he will pardon his predecessor and potential challenger in 2024, Donald Trump. 

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Wisconsin Supreme Court Candidate Daniel Kelly Makes Statewide ‘Save the Court’ Tour in Closing Days of Campaign

M.D. Kittle

As he lags in campaign donations and — sources say — in internal polls, conservative Supreme Court candidate Daniel Kelly is making a final campaign blitz before Tuesday’s crucial election.

Kelly’s  four-day “Save the Court” statewide tour begins Friday in Watertown and wraps up Monday in Waukesha. In between, he’ll be making some two-dozen stops across the Badger State. 

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Wall Street Journal Rips Vaccine Makers: ‘Designed Studies to Get the Results They Wanted’

Susan Berry, PhD

Wall Street Journal (WSJ) editorial board member Allysia Finley took to task both the federal government and the pharmaceutical giants profiting from the sale of their COVID mRNA booster shots for a “deceptive advertising” push for Americans to continue taking boosters without proof of their safety or effectiveness.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and its health and regulatory agencies are engaged in a “deceptive advertising” campaign, wrote Finley Sunday, suggesting the pressure tactics “shouldn’t come as a surprise,” since the federal government “took the unprecedented step of ordering vaccine makers to produce them and recommending them without data supporting their safety or efficacy.”

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Stanford University Releases Guide Against ‘Harmful Language’ That Includes the Word ‘American’

Susan Berry, PhD

Stanford University published a language guide Monday that announced the exclusion of the word “American” from the school’s websites and other online properties, a word which, the guide says, is “harmful” because it suggests an insult to those people from the other Americas.

The language guide, which was published Monday, is the culmination of a project launched in May and titled, “Introducing the Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative Website” (EHLI).

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Sponsor of Tennessee Residency Bill: ‘Wall Street Journal’ Is ‘Typical Liberal Yankee Rag’

Aaron Gulbransen

Tennessee State Senator Frank Niceley (R-Strawberry Plains), the Senate sponsor of the new legislation that establishes a residency requirement for candidates to qualify to run for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, said The Wall Street Journal is a “typical liberal Yankee rag” for its criticisms of the new measure that passed the state’s General Assembly with broad bipartisan support.

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Biden Education Department ‘Declares War’ on Charter Schools as School Choice Becomes Overwhelmingly Popular in America

Susan Berry, PhD

As more families and teachers flee government schools, the Biden administration – bound to the teachers unions – has now “declared war” on charter schools, as Robert Maranto, editor of the Journal of School Choice, wrote at National Review Monday.

The Biden education department is now on a path to sabotage the federal grant program that funds charter schools, public schools that are privately managed, with its proposal of new rules that appear to actually deter applicants from seeking grants.

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Commentary: The Wall Street Journal’s Shabby Rebuttal of Trump Settles Nothing

Admin

President Trump’s October 28 letter to the Wall Street Journal detailing some of his complaints about the 2020 election and the Journal’s editorial comment on it the following day clearly reveal the shortcomings of both sides of this argument. But the important thing to note is that there are two sides to the argument over the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election result.

The prolonged and intensive effort in which the Wall Street Journal has eagerly participated, to suppress and throttle the merest suggestion of illegitimacy surrounding the 2020 election result, has failed. It has always been understandable why there would be a great body of opinion that would wish to suppress any consideration of the question. It is a sobering and demoralizing thing to imagine that the vastly important process of choosing the president of the United States could possibly be an erroneous or even a fraudulent process.

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Report: ‘They’re Not Oracles’: U.S. Intelligence Agencies Failed to Predict Fall of Kabul to Taliban

Admin
aerial view of Kabul

U.S. intelligence agencies failed to predict how quickly Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, would fall to the Taliban, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

Four agencies tracked the Taliban’s gains around Afghanistan starting in the spring of 2020 up until Taliban insurgents overthrew the U.S.-supported government in the capital city of Kabul, according to classified materials reviewed by the WSJ.

Around two dozen of the reports the WSJ reviewed predicted the Afghan government would collapse after U.S. forces withdrew, though none of them thought the government would fall as quickly as it did or with American troops still deployed in the region.

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Wall Street Journal Editorial Board: Democratic Proposal Will Let the IRS Snoop on Your Bank Account

Admin
Woman holding credit card, laptop open in front of her

The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board said that a Democratic effort to crack down on tax cheating would give the Treasury Department access to almost every American’s bank account.

The Thursday op-ed focused on a proposal that would require financial institutions to report individual accounts containing at least $10,000 to the IRS. That effort, the board wrote, would affect the vast majority of Americans who did not exclusively use cash to make purchases and pay bills.

“The details are murky, but most Americans could still get ensnared in this dragnet unless they pay bills and buy goods in cash,” the editorial board wrote. “Democrats say banks will only have to report total annual inflows and outflows, not discrete transactions. But nearly all Americans spend more than $10,000 a year.”

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Biden Admin Told Refugee Organizations to Prepare for Arrival of up to 50,000 Afghans Without Visas

Admin

The Biden administration told refugee organizations to prepare for the arrival of up to 50,000 Afghans without visas, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

Nine State Department-contracted nonprofits that resettle refugees in the U.S. are trying to recruit more staff and volunteers to help process arriving Afghans, according to the WSJ. Some of the organizations said they haven’t been told how many refugees to expect or when they might arrive.

“We’re going to make it work, no matter how difficult, but I’d be lying to you if I said we aren’t concerned,” HIAS nonprofit President Mark Hetfield told the WSJ.

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Jobless Claims Increase to 719,000 as Recovery Continues

Admin
Unemployment sign

The number of Americans filing new unemployment claims increased to 719,000 last week, even as the economy continues to slowly recover from the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Department of Labor.

The Bureau of Labor and Statistics figure released Thursday represented an increase in the number of new jobless claims compared to the week ending March 20, when 658,000 new jobless claims were reported. That number was revised down from the 684,000 jobless claims initially reported last week.

Roughly 18.2 million Americans continue to collect unemployment benefits, according to the report.

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Report Highlights the Crazy Lengths Hackers Took to Hack US Utilities

Admin

by Chris White   Russian hackers went to shocking and elaborate lengths to wriggle their way into the United States’ electrical grid, according to a Wall Street Journal report Friday that detailed a slew of hacking techniques. Hackers targeted government contractors connected to a public utility company in Oregon to access the country’s electric grid, the report notes. Some of the contractors were unaware they were victimized due to the exotic tactics hackers used to disguise their intentions. The scheme’s success is owed mostly to how it exploited trusted business relationships using impersonation and trickery. Hackers planted malware on sites utility engineers frequently visit and sent phony résumés with tainted attachments. After getting credentials, they then slipped through portals and gained access to computer systems that monitor and control electricity flows. WSJ’s report identified government contractors such as Commercial Contractors in Washington, and Carlson Testing in Oregon, among other big-name public utilities who were targeted in 2017. One of the cite’s contractors visited cleaned-out malicious malware from its domains in 2016 only to see hackers return and infect the system again. Hackers seized on unsuspecting visitors and other trade websites, hoping to lure engineers and penetrate the companies where they…

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Cyberattack Deals a Crippling Blow to Legacy News Giant Tribune Publishing Company

Admin

Reuters   A cyberattack caused major printing and delivery disruptions Saturday at the Los Angeles Times and other major U.S. newspapers, including those owned by Tribune Publishing Co., such as the Chicago Tribune and Baltimore Sun. The cyberattack appeared to originate outside the United States, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing a source with knowledge of the situation. The attack led to distribution delays in the Saturday edition of The Times, Tribune, Sun and other newspapers that share a production platform in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times reported. Tribune Publishing, whose newspapers also include the New York Daily News and Orlando Sentinel, said it first detected the malware Friday. Malware The West Coast editions of the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times were affected as well because they are also printed on the shared production platform, the Los Angeles Times said. Tribune Publishing spokeswoman Marisa Kollias said the virus hurt back-office systems used to publish and produce “newspapers across our properties.” “There is no evidence that customer credit card information or personally identifiable information has been compromised,” Kollias said in a statement. The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Most San Diego Union-Tribune subscribers were without a newspaper Saturday as the virus infected the company’s business systems and hobbled its ability to publish,…

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Nashville Becoming ‘Chic Urban Playground for the Wealthy,’ Vanderbilt Professor Tells Wall Street Journal

Jason M. Reynolds
Nashville City at night

The Wall Street Journal has taken notice of how Nashville is becoming gentrified and is in danger of becoming a “chic urban playground for the wealthy.” James Fraser, an urban studies professor at Vanderbilt University, told The Wall Street Journal the city needs 30,000 more units of affordable housing and should spend $1 billion to meet the demand. Working people are being pushed to outer suburbs and rely on buses to reach their jobs, while wealthier people are moving into inner neighborhoods, he said. Affordable housing has long been a benefit of living in the South, said Laurel Graefe, deputy regional executive of the Nashville branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. While corporate incentives and low taxation are still attractive, housing demand has outstripped supply, raising prices. From 2008 to 2018, housing values, based on a weighted measure of all transactions in the housing market, rose 75 percent in Nashville, compared with 33 percent in Charlotte, according to the Brookings Institution. The Wall Street Journal story discussed the trend of tearing down older homes and building “tall skinnies”—multistory homes geared toward wealthier home buyers. Much of the issue is from rapid economic growth, the story says. The Nashville…

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