United States Launches 59 Tomahawk Missiles at Syrian Chemical Weapons Base

  “The United States launched dozens of cruise missiles Thursday night at a Syrian airfield in response to what it believes was Syria’s use of banned chemical weapons that killed at least 100 people, U.S. military officials told NBC News,” the network reported late Thursday: Two U.S. warships in the Mediterranean Sea fired 59 Tomahawk missiles intended for a single target — Ash Sha’irat in Homs province in western Syria, the officials said. That’s the airfield from which the United States believes the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fired the banned weapons. There was no immediate word on casualties. U.S. officials told NBC News that people were not targeted and that aircraft and infrastructure at the site were hit, including the runway and gas fuel pumps. You can watch President Trump’s statement delivered moments ago about the attack here: Reaction from Congress was quick. “The U.S. and world community stood by as Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad brutally tortured and murdered more than 500,000 of his own people, and I applaud President Trump for taking decisive action following the latest chemical weapons attack,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) , the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, told CBS News. “It…

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Former Rutherford County Sheriff Robert Arnold To Be Sentenced May 4

Tennessee Star

  Former Rutherford County Sheriff Robert Arnold will be sentenced in May, three months earlier than previously scheduled, WKRN News 2 reports. Arnold, who will now be sentenced May 4, wanted his sentence date moved up, according to a previous WKRN report. Arnold was convicted in federal court of scheming to profit from the sale of electronic cigarettes at the Rutherford County Jail. He pleaded guilty to wire fraud, honest services fraud and extortion. Each carries a five- to 20-year sentence, as well as a $250,000 fine. Arnold has been jailed since last fall. He was moved from a county jail in Kentucky to a federal holding facility in West Tennessee. John Vanderveer, who also pleaded guilty in the case, will be sentenced in early September.    

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Speaker Harwell Says She Will Have a Road Funding Plan That Does Not Raise The Gas Tax

Tennessee Star

  Speaker Beth Harwell (R-Nashville) says that she and many other members of the Tennessee House of Representatives will introduce an alternative plan that will not increase gas taxes when the IMPROVE Act “Tax Cut Act of 2017” comes before the House Finance Ways and Means Committee on Monday for consideration. “When you buy a car in the state of Tennessee, whether used or new, you pay a sales tax on that.  We want to take that sales tax and put it to our roads program.  That brings in a tremendous amount of money and we think that’s an appropriate, new, dedicated source of funding for our roads, which then we would not have to raise the gas tax,” Harwell said in an interview with Ralph Bristol, host of  99.7 FM WWTN’s Nashville’s Morning News on Monday. Full details of the plan are being finalized, with input from other House members, Speaker Harwell said. But the plan will use existing revenues from the sales tax of new and used vehicle sales already collected by the state and dedicate those revenues to funding road projects, she added. Allocating the state portion of the vehicle sales tax revenues toward roads would result in…

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BREAKING: Corker and Alexander Deliver as Republicans Break Filibuster, Clearing Way for Majority Vote on SCOTUS Nomination of Judge Gorsuch

Tennessee Star

  Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Senator Bob Corker (R-TN), the two Republicans whose final votes on breaking the threatened Democratic filibuster of the confirmation vote on President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee were uncertain as late as this morning, delivered for the president and their party on Thursday afternoon. “Senate Republicans used the “constitutional option” to change longstanding cloture rules around 12:30 pm Thursday, clearing the way for Judge Neil Gorsuch to receive a vote of the full Senate on his confirmation to the Supreme Court,” Breitbart News reports: Republicans resorted to the party-line 52-48 vote after weeks of wrangling over Gorsuch’s nomination in which Senate Democrats threatened the first partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee in American history. After the Democrats assembled the forty-one votes needed to prevent the end of debate under current rules, the constitutional option allowing cloture on a simple majority became the only remaining path to placing Gorsuch on the Court. Vice-President Mike Pence, who would have been needed to break a tie should any two Republicans have voted to maintain the 60-vote cloture rule, was not present for the vote, indicating Republican confidence their entire caucus would agree to the change. As…

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Senator Lamar Alexander Responds to Threatened Democrat Filibuster of SCOTUS Nominee Gorsuch: ‘One Way Or the Other I’ll Vote for Him’

  “The Democrats have once again gone into a room and convinced themselves to do something that’s never been done before in the 230 year history of the Senate and that is to require more than 51 votes to confirm a Supreme Court nominee,” Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) tells The Tennessee Star in an emailed statement received late Wednesday. “I have spoken on the Senate floor twice in recent weeks to try to convince Democrats not to filibuster Judge Gorsuch’s nomination because it will be damaging to the Senate and to the country,” Alexander adds. “When I was in the minority, I opposed President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, but I did not support a filibuster of her nomination – I believed she was entitled to a majority vote – and Judge Gorsuch is also entitled to a majority vote,” the Volunteer State’s senior senator notes. “I also wanted to point to a statement that the senator told a reporter this week,” a spokesperson for Alexander adds in that same email to The Star: “One way or the other I’ll vote for him.” “Finally, here is the senator’s floor speech, from where he talked about how filibustering to death the Gorsuch…

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In-State College Tuition for Illegal Immigrant Students No Guarantee for Future Employment

  Rep. Mark White’s bill, HB863 that would allow illegal immigrant students to pay in-state college tuition in Tennessee, scheduled for a vote this week, was rolled to next week. The companion bill, SB1014 passed by the Senate Education committee will be put on the calendar in Senate Finance, Ways & Means. During discussion of the bill in the Senate Education committee, Sen. Gardenhire, the bill sponsor in the Senate, confirmed that any criteria that would have restricted the beneficiaries of the 2017 bill to grantees of the Obama Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, had been removed. Criminal histories aside, individuals who entered the U.S. illegally and were “born after June 15, 1981 is within—and shall remain within—DACA’s age requirements” are eligible to apply. If approved, DACA grantees receive a two-year temporary deportation deferment and work authorization which then enables applying for a social security number and a driver’s license. Grantees can apply to renew their DACA status at the two year expiration. Importantly, being granted DACA status does not change the individual’s illegal immigration status. Broadening the scope of the revised 2017 bill as compared to the 2015 version that failed to pass on the House floor, means that…

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Publisher Dismisses Traditional Ideas About Gender with Materials Warning School Kids About ‘Transphobia’

Tennessee Star

  A Canadian publisher that markets in the U.S. has come out with a new book and teacher resource guide on “transphobia” that target children as young as nine. The materials reflect the intensity of the efforts on the part of radical progressives to overturn traditional and biblical ideas about gender and relationships. Published by Lorimer and titled Transphobia: Deal with it and be a gender transcender is one in a series of books carrying the phrase Deal with it. The books address resolving conflict related to a range of issues, including image, anxiety, bullying and cliques. The series is designed for children ages nine through 12, according to the Transphobia teacher resource guide. There also is a book in the series called Homophobia: Deal with it and turn prejudice into pride. Transphobia is authored by J. Wallace Skelton, who works for the Toronto District School Board’s Gender Based Violence Prevention Office. On his Twitter page, he identifies himself as a “queer trans.” In an email sent by Lorimer to potential customers, Skelton is described as “an educator, activist and writer.” “For more than a decade he has worked in schools to make them safer and more celebratory places for people of all sexual orientations and gender…

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Commentary: The Susan Rice — Clinton Connection: Democrat Claims On Trump Spying Don’t Add Up

George Rasley, ConservativeHQ Editor Our friend, Fred Fleitz, a former CIA analyst and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence staffer, who has actually handled “unmasking” requests for a policymaker, has a great piece on Fox explaining why the claims of Obama’s former National Security Adviser Susan Rice that the Obama administration did not spy on Mr. Trump or his staff for political purposes don’t add up. Fleitz points out that the names of U.S. citizens “incidentally” mentioned in NSA reports are masked to preserve their identities because America’s intelligence agencies are barred from spying on American citizens Susan Rice Andrea Mitchell except in extraordinary circumstances with court approval. Rice said in an interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that policymakers sometimes request to know the identities of Americans from NSA reports to understand these reports in certain circumstances, which is correct says Fleitz. She also tried to dismiss this controversy by claiming NSA demasking requests are routine. This is false said Fleitz; they are not actually routine and are taken very seriously by NSA. Rice also told Andrea Mitchell there is an Intelligence Community process to review whether to approve demasking requests. This, claims Fleitz, seemed to be an attempt by…

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Alex Joyner, Living Proof of Existence of College Republicans, Helped With Trump’s Visit To Nashville

Tennessee Star

  Republicans on college campuses might be an endangered species, but there is evidence that they do in fact exist. Alex Joyner, a junior political science major at the University of Tennessee-Martin, jumped at the chance to help out with President Trump’s visit to Nashville on March 15, according to an article in the student newspaper The Pacer. Joyner, who is president of the UT Martin College Republicans and serves as state chairman for the Tennessee College Republicans, was contacted by someone with the Trump administration to see if he would like to volunteer as a driver in the presidential motorcade. After clearing a background check, he was assigned to escorting Tennessee’s U.S. Senators Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander to The Hermitage, where the president made a visit before his rally downtown. As they passed a pancake place, Joyner joked, “Y’all hungry, you want to stop?” to which Corker said in an aside to Alexander, “Well, senator, I see we have one with a personality!” Joyner said his respect for the president grew by seeing the thousands of people who turned out for a chance to hear Trump at his rally at the Municipal Auditorium. Not everyone was able to get…

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ACLJ Asking People to Sign Petition to Confirm Neil Gorsuch to Supreme Court

Tennessee Star

  The conservative American Center for Law and Justice is asking people to sign a petition in support of confirming Judge Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court. President Trump’s nominee is facing a Democratic filibuster and Republicans in the Senate are talking about using the so-called “nuclear option” to stop it. That would involve changing Senate rules so that a nominee can be confirmed with a majority vote instead of meeting a 60-vote threshold. This is the first time in history that a nominee to the Supreme Court has faced a partisan filibuster. “We must replace Justice Scalia with a staunch conservative,” the ACLJ says on its website. “The next Supreme Court justice will likely be the determinative vote on the most monumental issues of our time: abortion, religious liberty, national security, and free speech.” The left has launched “a scorched-earth campaign to defeat him,” according to the ACLJ. “They don’t want a proven conservative on the court.” Meanwhile, former President Obama’s group Organizing for Action is asking supporters to sign a petition to stop Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell from changing the Senate rules to confirm Gorsuch. “This is a reckless tactic that could ruin the checks and balances…

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Americans For Prosperity To Hold ‘A Gas Tax Day Of Action’ In Speaker Harwell’s District

Tennessee Star

  Americans For Prosperity-Tennessee (AFP) announced ‘A Day of Action’ in the fight against the gas tax hike in the home district of Speaker Beth Harwell (R-Nashville), in order to encourage her to oppose the unpopular measure. Volunteers will be door-knocking all day Saturday, April 8 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the Belle Meade, Forest Hills and Oak Hill areas of Nashville. Full details are available on AFP’s Facebook page. The gas tax increase is the more common term applied to Governor Haslam’s IMPROVE Act – recently renamed the “Tax Cut Act of 2017” – which, in its current form, includes a 6 cent per gallon gas tax increase and a 10 ten cent per gallon diesel tax increase. The tax hikes are slated to be phased in over a three-year period to fund the Tennessee Department of Transportation’s (TDOT) list of 962 projects that currently carry a $10.5 billion price tag. Speaker Harwell has played a key role this session in the advancement of the gas tax through the Tennessee House of Representaives. At the outset of the current 110th Tennessee General Assembly, she assigned the members and picked the chairmen of the House Committees and Subcommittees including the critical…

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