Day: July 1, 2018

State Senator Mark Green Endorses Diane Black for Governor

Tennessee Star Staff
Mark Green, Diane Black

CLARKSVILLE, Tennessee–State Senator Mark Green (R-Clarksville) endorsed Rep. Diane Black (R-TN-06) for governor at his Red, White, and Blues Barbecue event held at the Old Glory Distilling Company in Clarksville on Saturday night. Green told the enthusiastic crowd of 300 supporters in attendance that, while he is friends with all four of the candidates for governor in the Republican primary election for governor that will be held in just over four weeks on August 2, he believes that Black is the best person for the job. “Diane Black is a conservative fighter. She has a very conservative record,” Green began. “She helped President Trump write the tax cuts, just six months ago. She helped get that done,” he added. “We’ve got a great field of candidates for governor, and I consider every single one of them a friend,” the former Army doctor noted. “But the issues that are pressing our state and our nation, we need a conservative fighter, and clearly the best candidate for that job is Diane Black,” Green continued. “Cami and I have decided that we will be supporting and casting our vote for Diane Black for Governor,” Green concluded. Black took the stage briefly after receiving…

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OFF THE RECORD: Source Says Gov. Haslam Is Using His Position as Chairman of Republican Governors Association to ‘Rig’ Primary Election for Randy Boyd

Tennessee Star Staff
Paul Bennecke, Diane Black. Bill Haslam

A high ranking source who serves on the Republican Governors Association’s (RGA) select national finance committee told The Tennessee Star that current and former RGA staff appear to be actively trying to damage the gubernatorial campaigns of Rep. Diane Black (R-TN-06) and possibly Bill Lee, while promoting close Haslam ally Randy Boyd in the Republican primary. Specifically, the source said, Haslam and the RGA Executive Director Paul Bennecke (who Haslam personally hired to the RGA during his previous stint as chairman) were coordinating with at least one White House staff member in an attempt to disparage and downplay Black’s close working relationship with President Trump and with Vice President Mike Pence. Haslam was a vociferous “Never-Trumper” who just three  weeks before Trump won the 2016 election demanded Trump resign as the nominee and in so doing became the only Republican governor who said he would not be voting for Trump. The governor was particularly incensed when during his recent rally for Marsha Blackburn in Nashville, Trump took time to give Black special attention. During that rally, Trump did not mention any candidates other than Blackburn and Black, singling her out and saying “I want to recognize Diane Black, who is…

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State House District 56 Candidate Joseph Williams Gains Grassroots Support in GOP Primary

Laura Baigert
Joseph Williams

NASHVILLE, Tennessee – Republican candidate for Tennessee House of Representatives District 56, Joseph Williams, delivered comments and responses to numerous questions filled with conservative and constitutional “red meat” that was well received by a group of Nashville Heritage Action Sentinels and guests at their monthly meeting last Thursday. The Nashville Sentinel group, though fairly recently formed and continuing to expand, has had several meetings with Senator Bob Corker’s office and been active in a variety of recent issues affecting Nashville including “Resign Now! Megan Barry,” defeating the $9 billion transit plan and volunteering for the Carol Swain for Mayor campaign. Williams is running for the seat vacated by Beth Harwell who has held the seat for the last 30 years and has served as Speaker of the House since 2011. Harwell gave up the seat as she is instead pursuing the office of the state’s chief executive. Williams will face off against fellow Republican Brent Moody, a dermatologist, in the August 2, 2018, primary. In his opening comments to the group, Williams introduced his wife Palmer, who also attended the gathering, and talked about the most significant influence in his life being the older brother of a special needs younger…

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24 MS-13 Gang Members Facing Federal Indictment For Several Crimes And Conspiracies

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MS-13

by Neetu Chandak   Twenty-four alleged MS-13 gang members are facing federal indictment for several crimes, according to a press release by the Department of Justice on Friday. The gang members and their apprentices were allegedly involved with five murders, drug trafficking, kidnapping, extortion, and also allegedly planned to murder eight people between 2015 to 2017, according to a report by the Justice Department. Currently, 21 of the 24 members are known while the other six names, both members and associates, have not been revealed. The DOJ is heavily cracking down on MS-13, known as one of the “most notorious street gangs in the Western Hemisphere,” according to Insight Crime. The gang is primarily composed of El Savadorian immigrants that dominate Frederick, Anne Arundel, Prince George, and Montgomery counties in Maryland. The gang recruits kids to, “their murderous ranks, destroying families, and leaving behind countless victims,” said acting assistant Attorney General Cronan. The indictment was given on June 27 and opened on June 28. The members were scheduled to appear in the U.S. District Court of Baltimore starting on June 28. – – – Neetu Chandak is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation. Follow Neetu on Twitter.                  …

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Conservative Talker Steve Gill Discusses Who’s Up, Who’s Down, and the State of the ‘Blue Wave’ Come November

Julie Carr
Steve Gill

On Friday’s Gill Report, broadcast live on WETR 92.3 FM in Knoxville, conservative pundit and Tennessee Star Political Editor Steve Gill reflected on the players and issues influencing Tennessee’s candidates running for high office, and the important role the Volunteer State has to play on the national stage heading into November. “Bob Corker is not popular in Tennessee,” he said with a chuckle, as he described the political ‘field of play’ less than thirty days from primary election day. He continued: Donald Trump is very popular. President Trump announced today that he is going to be narrowing his list of 5 potential supreme court justices to about 5 choices. He may interview a couple of the next few days, but he plans to name his pick by July 9th, so we won’t have to wait long for the real war over that Supreme Court confirmation process to move ahead. Again, you have Marsha Blackburn making it clear that she will back a conservative, constitutionalist Supreme Court pick that Donal Trump nominates. And you’ve got Phil Bredensen, trying to kind of marginalize on the edges pretending that he might actually support a conservative that Donald Trump would pick, but nobody seriously…

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Commentary: How Do You Spell Game Change in 2018? S U P R E M E C O U R T

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Supreme Court Justices

by Jeffery Rendall   Another Kennedy leaving Washington has Republicans giddy, though this particular one has no relation to the famous (infamous?) clan from Massachusetts Bay. It’s old news by now but Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy announced he’s stepping down from the Supreme Court on Wednesday, sending the nation’s capital into a tizzy and wiping virtually everything else – including the phony illegal immigrant family separation “crisis” – off the news wires. There’s nothing quite like an impending Court vacancy to wrest the political chatterers’ attention from their all-complain-all-the-time stupors and get them focused on something really imperative. Yes, Kennedy’s deciding to hang up the long black robe after three full decades is a big deal, not only for the future direction of the Supreme Court but also for Americans’ liberties in general. Needless to say, this year’s crucial midterm campaigns just received a shot of new energy and enthusiasm, especially for Republicans in red states challenging increasingly vulnerable Democrat senate incumbents. It’s often said fortunes can turn on a dime and it may actually come true for Republicans — and conversely, Democrats — this year. While conservatives received Kennedy’s news with happiness and anticipation, the anti-Trump resistance was angry, defiant…

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NSA Deletion of Call Records Raising Questions

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The National Security Agency is deleting more than 685 million call records the government obtained since 2015 from telecommunication companies in connection with investigations, raising questions about the viability of the program. The NSA’s bulk collection of call records was initially curtailed by Congress after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents revealing extensive government surveillance. The law, enacted in June 2015, said that going forward, the data would be retained by telecommunications companies, not the NSA, but that the intelligence agency could query the massive database. Now the NSA is deleting all the information it collected from the queries. The agency released a statement late Thursday saying it started deleting the records in May after NSA analysts noted “technical irregularities in some data received from telecommunication service providers.” It also said the irregularities resulted in the NSA obtaining some call details it was not authorized to receive. That points to a failure of the program, according to David Kris, a former top national security official at the Justice Department. “They said they have to purge three years’ worth of data going back to 2015, and that the data they did collect during that time — which they are now…

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Eric Bolling Is Back: An Exclusive First Look at His New Show ‘AMericA’

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Eric Bolling

by Ginny Montalbano   CRTV’s Eric Bolling gave The Daily Signal an exclusive first look at the set of his new show “AMericA.” Formerly with the Fox News Channel, Bolling is back, and now he’s pursuing the type of show he’s wanted to do for years: a casual, engaging show, taped at the Washington Court Hotel’s lobby bar. He will interview government officials from the Trump administration, as well as other policymakers and influential political figures, then take the conversation to people watching in the hotel to get their opinions on the policy discussions occurring in America.   AMericA🇺🇸 a political talk show taped live from an actual working Capitol Hill Hotel Lobby Bar w/ host Eric Bolling that gives viewers outside the Beltway a better understanding of what’s REALLY going on inside the DC Swamp and its impact close to homehttps://t.co/GUpW1E3tCu — 🇺🇸 ERIC BOLLING 🇺🇸 (@ericbolling) June 26, 2018 [ The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more  ]   Bolling’s work on the opioid crisis, prompted by the death of his son, Eric Chase Bolling, took him to Washington, D.C., on multiple occasions…

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Three Common Ways Governments Misuse Statistics and What You Can Do About It

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US Capitol at night

by Andrew Berryhill   Government agencies and researchers produce endless reams of statistics. While statistics can be valuable, they can be easily misrepresented. A 2017 study on the use of statistics in news characterized the problem as such: “The constant supply of data produced by think tanks, government agencies, independent researchers, academics and others is a significant and a potentially healthy democratic resource. But the time constraints that characterize modern news production put considerable pressure on journalists, who have to interpret the sometimes highly complex methods and meanings behind statistics, reporting data even-handedly and with clarity.” Without critical and educated evaluation of statistics, the public could be misled by information that’s misused, incomplete, or manipulated. Unfortunately, it seems that manipulation of statistics to further an agenda is becoming more common throughout society. Bad information propagated by government agencies especially is affecting policy decisions and harming the public when news outlets report it with insufficient examination. Here are three common ways governments and modern society in general misuse statistics. 1. “Predicting” the Long-Term Effects of Complicated Legislation: Obamacare When the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) tried to predict the effects of the Affordable Care Act (commonly known as “Obamacare”), it was utterly wrong on numerous points. The CBO released…

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Can Political Freedom Exist Without Virtue? America’s Founders Didn’t Think So

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Founding Fathers

by Becky Akers   America’s Founding Fathers were a contentious lot, disagreeing about everything from the need for a Bill of Rights to the merits of skinny-dipping “near the Bridge … whilst …Ladies of the first fashion in the neighbourhood, are passing over it…” But they spoke unanimously on one topic: the requirement for a moral citizenry if the country were to remain politically free. Once a people abandons virtue, the Founders insisted, it plummets into tyranny. Charles Carroll, who among other feats signed the Declaration of Independence, warned, “Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime & pure, … are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments.” Another signer, Richard Henry Lee, concurred: “It is certainly true that a popular government cannot flourish without virtue in the people.” And that Founder of Founders, George Washington, advised, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. … The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government.” Does it? Why? What so inextricably binds…

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Attorney General Sessions Announces Charges For 601 People In Largest Health Care Fraud Bust In History

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by Steve Birr   Federal officials are charging 601 people, including more than 100 medical workers, for fueling opioid addiction in the largest bust of health care fraud in U.S. history. The Department of Justice revealed the charges Thursday, which were brought as part of an annual effort to dismantle schemes across the country involved in scamming health care programs. The takedown included the arrest of 76 doctors, 23 pharmacists, 19 nurses and several hundred others involved in prescribing and distributing massive quantities of opioid medications, resulting in more than $2 billion in fraudulent costs to federal health care programs and insurers, reports NBC News. In one example, the owner of a Texas-based pharmacy chain and two co-conspirators filled scripts for more than 1 million oxycodone and hydrocodone pills, which were subsequently transferred to couriers for sale on the street. “Much of this fraud is related to our ongoing opioid crisis—which is the deadliest drug epidemic in American history,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. “Some of our most trusted medical professionals look at their patients—vulnerable people suffering from addiction—and they see dollar signs.” The Department of Justice under Sessions is making progress in the fight against both smugglers and medical providers taking…

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Gas Tax Increases Another 1 Cent Per Gallon Today Thanks to Gov. Haslam, Democrats, and ‘Moderate’ Republicans

Tennessee Star Staff
Gas up

The state gas tax increased another 1 cent per gallon today, thanks to the IMPROVE Act passed by Democrats and “moderate” Republicans in the Tennessee General Assembly and signed into law by Gov. Bill Haslam in May 2017. The controversial law raised state gas taxes by 6 cents per gallon and diesel taxes by 10 cents per gallon. The gas tax increases were phased in over three years. The first 4 cents per gallon increase went into effect on July 1, 2017. An additional 1 cent per gallon gas tax increase goes into effect today, and the final 1 cent per gallon gas tax increase goes into effect July 1, 2018. The law was deemed necessary to fund road construction by Haslam and his allies despite the fact the state of Tennessee had a $2 billion surplus at the time it was passed and signed into law. One under reported element of the law at the time was a provision that allowed the twelve largest counties in the state to hold local referendums to increase local taxes to fund transportation projects. It was this provision upon which former Nashville Mayor Megan Barry relied when she introduced her $9 billion transit…

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