Day: May 17, 2017

Police Chief Steve Anderson Rebukes District Attorney’s Office For ‘Misstatements’ About Handling Of Officer Shooting

Wendy Wilson

Police Chief Steve Anderson has slammed the Nashville district attorney’s office for criticizing the police department’s handling of the Feb. 10 fatal shooting of an armed black man by a white officer acting in self-defense. In a report and at a press conference last week, officials with the district attorney’s office criticized the language the Metro Nashville Police Department used in a report and for supposedly concluding only several hours after the incident that the shooting was justifiable and saying the investigation was complete. While District Attorney Glenn Funk concluded that Officer Josh Lippert did act in self-defense in shooting Jocques Scott Clemmons, the report released by his office said the police department contributed to an appearance of bias in the case, which provoked a strong reaction in the community and raised questions of fairness. WKRN News 2 reported that in a letter Monday to Deputy District Attorney Amy Hunter, who spoke at the May 11 press conference, Anderson said his department had provided the district attorney’s office in advance with an explanation of the language used in the police report, adding that police follow guidelines from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. Anderson said Hunter’s statement at the press conference, taken…

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Tennessee Human Rights Commission Compliance Director Charged With Child Sex Crimes

Wendy Wilson

A compliance director for the Tennessee Human Rights Commission has been charged with sexual exploitation of minors. Christopher Matthew Stephenson, 42, is accused of accessing child pornography on the social networking website Tumblr using an IP address registered to his Antioch address, according to a Metro Nashville Police Department news release. Police obtained a search warrant and seized his electronic devices. Sexual images of minors were found on the equipment, the news release said. Police were acting on a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Stephenson surrendered for booking Tuesday on a sealed grand jury indictment charging him with two counts of sexual exploitation of minors and one count of aggravated sexual exploitation of minors. The two sexual exploitation counts allege that Stephenson possessed sexual images of children.  The aggravated sexual exploitation count alleges that he electronically distributed the material.  He is not accused of producing child pornography. Stephenson is being held on a $500,000 bond.  He will be soon be arraigned in criminal court. The Tennessee Human Rights Commission is an independent state agency created in 1963 to encourage, promote and advise the public of their human rights, according to its website. The commission became an enforcement…

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DiGenova: What Comey Memo Claims Trump Said in Meeting ‘Is Not an Obstruction’

Tennessee Star Staff

Former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova said President Donald Trump’s conversation with former FBI Director James Comey about the investigation into former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn doesn’t “rise to the level” of the “obstruction of justice,” during an interview Wednesday on “The Laura Ingraham Show.” DiGenova, a former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia in…

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Jeff Hartline Commentary: Constitutional Carry Seems To Be On NRA Priority List Everywhere But Tennessee

Tennessee Star Staff

  For the past 146 years, the National Rifle Association has touted itself as the defender of the 2nd Amendment in America. Their efforts in education, mentoring and lobbying have produced good results nationwide. Their celebrity supporters have given credence to the mission to advance firearms ownership and to peel back laws that restrict the ability of law-abiding citizens to “keep and bear arms”. For their efforts and successes, we commend them. But we are curious about their efforts in the area of pushing states to adopt “permitless” legislation, also known as Constitutional Carry (CC). Constitutional Carry, also known in the past as “Vermont Carry” after the state that has allowed its citizens to keep and bear arms without a State “permit” since 1796, is a policy that essentially claims the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is a law-abiding citizen’s “permit”. This significant statement incorporated into our Constitution recognizes the God-given right of citizens to defend themselves against potential citizen threats but, most specifically, against a tyrannical government. In the past three decades, many states have acted on their own to reclaim this right for their citizens through the adoption of laws that allowed law-abiding citizens to arm themselves…

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Trump Tax Plan Eyes Cut to Deduction for High-Tax States That Subsidizes California and New York, Penalizes Tennessee

Tennessee Star Staff
Tennessee Star

President Donald Trump’s tax plan, a broad and general plan that would make supply-siders such as Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp very happy, could be held up by a number of details that are making some Republicans nervous. One is the elimination of an income-tax deduction for high-tax states such as New York and California. “We’re…

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Commentary: Turkey’s Erdogan Is No Ally Of America

Tennessee Star Staff

  by George Rasley, ConservativeHQ.com Editor Yesterday, President Trump met with Turkey’s Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. You will hear a lot in the establishment media, and maybe even some from the White House, talk about what an important “ally” Turkey is to the United States. Don’t believe it. It is true that Turkey is part of NATO and was once part of our bulwark against the old communist Soviet Union, but those days are long past. Today, Turkey’s government is part of the Islamist assault on the West and President Erdogan is one of the Muslim world’s leading advocates of cultural jihad and hijra – Muslim invasion by immigration. On April 2, 2016, a gigantic Ottoman style of mosque was opened in Lanham, Maryland by President Erdogan. The mosque, according to Turkish officials, is “one of the largest Turkish mosques built outside Turkey.” Funds to build it, as reported by the Turkish pro-government newspaper, Sabah, came from Turkey’s state-run Presidency of Religious Affairs, known as the Diyanet, as well as Turkish-American non-profit organizations. The mosque is actually part of a larger complex, commonly referred to as “Maryland kulliye.” A kulliye, as such Islamic compounds were called in Ottoman times,…

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Pentecostal Church in North Carolina Town Converted to a Mosque

Wendy Wilson

  A former Pentecostal church in the small North Carolina town of Smithfield became a mosque on Saturday. Mosque organizer Ali Mohammad told the Raleigh News & Observer that there are plans for a worship and community center and a school. Smithfield is located in a rural county in the center of the state that is predominantly Christian. 1950s American film star Ava Gardner was born near Smithfield, which is now the location of the Ava Gardner Museum. Local Christian leaders were invited to a ceremony at the new Islamic Center of Smithfield on Saturday, where mosque organizers planned to give them crosses removed from the building’s steeple and facade. “We want to be friendly with all our neighbors and let them know we’re there,” said Mohammad, describing Islam as a “peaceful” religion that “teaches us to love our neighbor and be friendly with everyone.” As in most mainstream news stories featuring similar claims about the nature of Islam, Mohammad’s description was left unchallenged by the News & Observer despite continuing acts of violence around the world committed in the name of Islam and the persecution of Christian communities in the Middle East to the point of near extinction. Pastor Jim Melnyk…

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