Day: August 26, 2018

‘Mass Shooting’ Reported In Jacksonville, Florida

Tennessee Star Staff

by Vandana Rambaran Police are asking that the public steer clear of the Jacksonville Landing area in Florida after a shooting Sunday reportedly killed several and injured others. Mass shooting at the Jacksonville Landing. Stay far away from the area. The area is not safe at this time. STAY AWAY #TheLandingMassShooting — Jax Sheriff’s Office (@JSOPIO) August 26, 2018 The shooting left “multiple fatalities,” according to police, reported CNN. A gunman allegedly opened fire at the Madden 19 Tournament at the GLHF Game Bar, according to the Twitter of CompLexity Gaming, a professional gaming team that had a player at the event whose hand was grazed in the shooting. At least 11 people were shot, according to News 4 in Jacksonville. In a video from the event, gunshots can be heard as the participants discussed the video games. CAUGHT ON VIDEO https://t.co/VQsIZbzlgI — DRUDGE REPORT (@DRUDGE_REPORT) August 26, 2018 This is a developing story and will be updated. – – – Vandana Rambaran is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation. Follow Vandana on Twitter @vandanarambaran.                       Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any…

Read the full story

Police Arrest Seven for Toppling Confederate Soldier Statue at North Carolina Protest

Tennessee Star Staff
Silent Sam

by Vandana Rambaran   Seven people were arrested Saturday after protests broke out in North Carolina as the statue of a Confederate soldier was toppled earlier this week. A “violent mob” of about 300 protesters used ropes on Monday to pull down Silent Sam, a century-old statue at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that commemorates Confederate soldiers, according to a video statement on Thursday by UNC board member Thom Goolsby. Over 100 people gathered near the statue on Saturday, some brandishing Confederate flags and promoting the historical significance of the statute, while others waved signs urging to “Destroy White Supremacy,” according to Reuters. School officials are urging that the statue be resurrected within the 90 days as required by state law, but off campus to avoid violent protests at the university, UNC Chancellor Carol Folt said in a press conference Saturday. “We all have to recognize that the Confederate monument is a flashpoint for demonstrations and interruptions on campus and we believe it will continue to be a lightning rod,” Folt said. Some protesters who were arrested face charges of assault, while three who helped pull down the statue face misdemeanor charges of riot and defacing a…

Read the full story

NASCAR Driver Loses Sponsorship Over Father’s Racial Slur – 35 Years Ago

Tennessee Star Staff
David and Coner Daley

by Molly Prince   A sponsor announced on Friday that it has ended its partnership with NASCAR driver Conor Daly after it was reported that his father used racially insensitive language during an interview in the early 1980s. Lilly Diabetes pulled its sponsorship from Conor’s No. 6 car in Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity race, citing his father’s alleged use of the N-word 35 years ago, reported Fox News. Derek Daly, a retired Indy 500 and Formula One driver, was fired days earlier from his role as WISH-TV’s Racing Analyst due to the controversy. In a statement, the elder Daly admitted to using the word, but denied its connotation. “I was a foreign driver now in America, driving for an American team, with an American crew, and with an American sponsor – and that if things did not go well, the only ‘”n” in the wood pile’ would be me,” Derek Daly wrote, saying that the expression was common in his native Ireland and didn’t carry the same racist connotation. He added that he was “mortified” after he was informed of the derogatory nature of the word and has not used the word since. “Unfortunately, the comments that surfaced this week by…

Read the full story

One Nation Airs Ad Urging Alexander and Blackburn to Make the Trump Tax Cuts Permanent

Tennessee Star Staff
One Nation Ad

One Nation, a 501 (c) (4) public policy organization, has launched a $1.2 million ad buy in Tennessee focused on tax reform. The ads are currently running statewide on a combination of broadcast and cable television, radio and digital. The ad, entitled “Tax Cuts,” discusses the positive impact that the recently passed tax reform legislation is having on small businesses and Tennessee’s unemployment rate. It highlights U.S. Rep Marsha Blackburn and Senator Lamar Alexander’s initial vote to cut taxes and urges them to make the tax cuts permanent. “Tennessee is experiencing record low unemployment thanks to Marsha Blackburn and Lamar Alexander’s vote in favor of tax reform,” said One Nation President and CEO Steven Law. “We encourage Blackburn and Alexander to keep fighting for Tennessee taxpayers by voting to make the tax cuts permanent.” Law is former Chief of Staff for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). Transcript of ad “Tax Cuts”: ANNOUNCER: “Small business, the backbone of America’s economy. Nobody knows that better than Representative Marsha Blackburn and Senator Lamar Alexander. Blackburn and Alexander cut taxes for small businesses. Now Tennessee’s unemployment rate is at a record low. BLACKBURN: “The economic growth that you are seeing in Tennessee is…

Read the full story

A Federal Judge Stopped President Trump’s Efforts To Get Control Of The Federal Workforce

Tennessee Star Staff
Ketanji Brown Jackson

by Kevin Daley   A federal judge in Washington, D.C., struck down core provisions of three executive orders President Donald Trump issued to curb union power in the federal workforce late Friday. U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, an Obama appointee, found that the orders violate the First Amendment, the separation of powers and the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Act (FSLMRS) in a sprawling, 122-page decision. Trump issued the trio of orders on May 25. Among other provisions, the directives restrict the amount of time federal workers may spend on official union duties, reduce performance-improvement periods for ineffective employees and narrow the range of issues that agencies and unions negotiate over when setting contracts. “These executive orders make it easier for agencies to remove poor-performing employees and ensure that taxpayer dollars are more efficiently used,” White House Domestic Policy Council Director Andrew Bremberg said. A coalition of labor unions challenged 20 different provisions in the directives, arguing that they violated the Constitution and the FSLMRS, a 1978 law securing collective bargaining rights for federal employees. Jackson concluded that the president’s orders exceeded his authority as they effectively “eviscerate the right to bargain collectively as envisioned in the FSLMRS.” The judge…

Read the full story

Commentary: Media’s Outright Lies and Distortions Cloak True Portrait of Trump

Tennessee Star Staff
Donald Trump

by Jeffrey A. Rendall   Have you ever been shown an image and told it portrays something you just don’t see? I’m not referring to a Rorschach test (a psychological test in which subjects’ perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analyzed using psychological interpretation, complex algorithms, or both); no, I’m talking about a regular run-of-the-mill photo you see in the newspaper or displayed on TV. If that’s the case then you know how half of America now feels about the ongoing jumbled witch hunt the Robert Mueller investigation has devolved into. This week supposedly marked a huge turning point in the liberals’ crusade to bring down the presidency of Donald Trump, with former campaign manager Paul Manafort being convicted in federal court (of non-campaign-related crimes) and sleazy former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen pleading guilty to Mueller’s charges. Through all of it the media’s painted a portrait of Trump that’s more than a little hazy – it’s downright indistinct. The figures are unclear and the actions are open to wide interpretation. One thing’s for sure – it’s a presented piece of evidence that wouldn’t hold up in court. For his part Trump initially took the legal troubles of his former…

Read the full story

Carol Swain Commentary: The Destruction of Silent Sam

Tennessee Star Staff

by Carol M. Swain   American philosopher George Santayana once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Those words are worth remembering. As a 1989 alumna of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I am appalled how, on August 20, 2018, law-enforcement officers stood down while anarchists, euphemistically referred to as more noble-sounding “protesters,” destroyed the statue of “Silent Sam.” Silent Sam was a bronze statue of a Confederate soldier commissioned by the Daughters of the Confederacy and gifted to the University in 1913.  Three people arrested following the heinous act of vandalism were charged with misdemeanors. Officials made a serious mistake in judgment when they failed to preserve Silent Sam and the part of our nation’s heritage he represented. By not enforcing laws against vandalism, police were complicit in the destruction of public property. But behind all this stands a rather common culprit – the ubiquitous Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). In 2016, the SPLC released a report titled “Whose Heritage?”. The report “cataloged 1,503 monuments, place names, state holidays, and other symbols of the Confederacy in public spaces across the South and Nation.” TheSPLC updated its numbers in June 2018, to 1,728 such symbols. By publishing the locations of the…

Read the full story

REPORT: Trump Admitting Fewer Than Half Of Refugees Allowed Because Of Enhanced Vetting

Tennessee Star Staff

by Will Racke   The U.S. is on track to admitting fewer than half the number of refugees allowed under the current annual cap, as the Trump administration’s enhanced screening procedures have slowed the refugee resettlement process. With just over a month remaining in fiscal year 2018, the U.S. is on pace to resettle about 20,000 to 21,000 refugees, which would be the smallest number since the current refugee program was established in 1980. President Donald Trump set the FY2018 refugee cap at 45,000 in 2017 — itself the lowest annual ceiling during the same time period. One reason for the historically low number of refugee admissions is that it now takes the FBI much longer to conduct background checks than it did before the administration put new security vetting in place, NBC reported Friday. The FBI, one of several government agencies involved in the refugee screening process, often reviews just a “handful” of cases in a single day, according to the NBC report, which cited two former Trump administration officials and humanitarian workers. Influential officials within the administration, particularly White House policy adviser Stephen Miller, have long called for stronger vetting of refugee applicants. They have also sought to…

Read the full story

Prosecuting Political Opponents Hits Local Prosecutor Race in Florida

Tennessee Star Staff

by Robert Romano   Chris Crowley is a candidate for the State Attorney’s office in the 20th Judicial Circuit in Florida and when he ran a 50/50 raffle to raise money for the campaign, he found himself being jailed after his opponent’s boss, current State Attorney Steve Russell filed a criminal complaint, to the benefit of his protégé, Amira Fox, Crowley’s opponent. Both candidates are Republicans. By then, the money — a negligible $670 — had already been returned, but that was not enough to satisfy Crowley’s opponents, who had the case turned over the 10th Judicial Circuit, which then had him arrested on gambling and campaign finance violations after Crowley turned himself in. Crowley also alleged that prior to the arrest the 10th Circuit’s Jerry Hill even urged him to quit the race or else face charges over the raffle. All over something that could have probably been handled by a phone call. Now, Crowley is pressing on with the race, and stated to this author that he is considering filing a bar complaint against Hill for threatening prosecution to achieve a political outcome. Which is the most alarming aspect of this episode. Even leaving aside the alleged threat…

Read the full story

Ben Carson’s HUD Revisits Obama Policies of Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Regulation

Tennessee Star Staff
Ben Carson

By Robert Romano   “I would incentivize people who really would like to get a nice juicy government grant [to look at their zoning codes].” That was Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson in an Aug. 13 interview with the Wall Street Journal, announcing changes to the way the Trump administration would interpret the Obama era Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing regulation. There’s only one problem. This year, under Division L, Title II of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018, Section 234, Congress passed a provision that states, “None of the funds made available by this Act may be used by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to direct a grantee to undertake specific changes to existing zoning laws as part of carrying out the final rule entitled ‘Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing’ … or the notice entitled ‘Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Assessment Tool’ …” A similar provision passed the Senate 87 to 9 in 2016. This overturned part of the regulation that conditions receipt of $3 billion of annual community development block grants to more than 1,200 cities and counties to rezone neighborhoods along income and racial criteria. The regulation said, “This final rule, and Assessment Tools and…

Read the full story