Day: October 4, 2018

Corker Predicts Kavanaugh Will Be Confirmed to SCOTUS

Jason M. Reynolds

U.S. Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) said he thinks Judge Brett Kavanaugh will be confirmed. The Hill reported on Corker’s statement Wednesday. Corker said on Tuesday evening that he is confident Senate Republicans will have enough votes to confirm Kavanaugh by “no later than Saturday.” Corker also accused Democrats of having “overplayed their hand” in leveling accusations of sexual misconduct and assault by several women and demanding an FBI investigation. The Senate had previously been scheduled to vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination but the Republican majority on Friday agreed to a demand from some members to delay the vote by one week to give the FBI more time to investigate the accusations. “Cloture may be filed tomorrow … it feels to me like the FBI reports could come in as early as tomorrow, maybe Thursday … my guess is we’re going to vote no later than Saturday,” Corker said in an interview. He said he had spoken to his colleagues about the matter. Corker is retiring from the Senate. Running for his seat are U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-TN-07) and Democratic former Governor Phil Bredesen. Blackburn has been criticizing her opponent for staying silent on whether he would support Kavanaugh. Blackburn said recently,…

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Commentary: A Vote Against Kavanaugh is a Vote for Mob Rule

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by Rick Manning   The Senate must not to cave into mob rule and instead must support confirming Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. If the Senate votes against Judge Kavanaugh it will be assenting to mob rule to take down President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, not because of veracity of the allegations made against him or whether they could ever be proven beyond a reasonable doubt but because of the politics of the moment. In the past, judges and justices were examined by the Senate on the basis of qualifications. Unfortunately the current process has become purely political, with a ratcheting up of the politics of personal destruction to defeat nominees as seen in the cases of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. Because of these unsubstantiated allegations, Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation has become one of the most divisive in our nation’s history as a fervent mob is demanding that we destroy Kavanaugh and his entire life without any proof, beyond a single person’s statement, to say he committed the actions he is accused of. It is alarming that Senate Democrats have not already rejected the mob rule that is at the heart of the Kavanaugh opposition,…

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Commentary: Republicans Must Nationalize The Election On Kavanaugh Confirmation

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by CHQ Staff   Prior to the middle of September, the Republican establishment was struggling to find a message that would motivate the Trump coalition to turn out for the November midterm election. However, the Democrats have now handed the GOP a national issue that has quickly proven it will motivate voters to shift to Republican Senate candidates: the confirmation of the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. In the key Senate match-up between incumbent Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp and challenger Republican congressman Kevin Cramer, Heitkamp is down 10 points in the latest NBC North Dakota News – Strategic Research Associates (SRA) poll. According to the poll, Cramer leads Heitkamp 51 percent to 41 percent. Eight percent have yet to make up their mind. According to NBC North Dakota News, sixty percent of voters in North Dakota support Kavanaugh with 27 percent expressing opposition. The poll was conducted during the recent disclosure that Kavanaugh may have engaged in sexual misconduct while in high school and college, but before the Sept. 27 testimony by Kavanaugh and one of his accusers before the Senate Judiciary Committee. According to the poll, an overwhelmingly 21 percent of North Dakota voters say…

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New GOP Ad Imagines Schumer, Hillary Clinton Giving Bredesen Instructions to Stay Silent on Kavanaugh Nomination

Jason M. Reynolds

The Tennessee Republican Party has launched a new digital ad to point out how Phil Bredesen is refusing to take a position on Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s SCOTUS nomination per instructions from Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton. The Tennessee GOP’s video ad is available here. It shows fantasized text messages in which Clinton and Schumer tell Bredesen to stay neutral in the nomination and give him encouragement. Bredesen, a Democratic former governor of Tennessee, is running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Senator Bob Corker (R-TN), who is retiring. His opponent is U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-TN-07). Blackburn has vocalized her support for the embattled Kavanaugh and has hit repeatedly at Bredesen for staying silent on whether he would vote for the judge’s confirmation. Blackburn said this week, “Tennesseans are very clear: they want their next senator to confirm good constitutionalist judges and justices, and they support Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Phil Bredesen, under Chuck Schumer’s direction, has stayed neutral as long as he can.” The Democratic former governor was booed by a mostly Democratic audience Monday in Chattanooga when he sidestepped the question about Kavanaugh. The Tennessee GOP says Bredesen’s lack of communication is in line with Senate Minority Leader…

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Congress Can Slash the Cost of Health Care Premiums by as Much as a Third

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by Doug Badger   A proposal to repeal Obamacare entitlements and replace them with grants to states would reduce premiums for individual coverage by as much as 32 percent, according to an analysis by the Center for Health and Economy. The Health Care Choices Proposal also would modestly reduce the deficit, increase the number of people with private health insurance, and cut Medicaid spending, according to Center for Health and Economy. The proposal, the product of national and state think tanks, policy analysts, and others in the conservative community, embarks on a new path to empower consumers and return authority to the states to provide people with better and more affordable health coverage options. The Center for Health and Economy developed the study, at the commissioning of The Heritage Foundation, by applying its independent model to the published Health Care Choices Proposal. Unlike previous Obamacare replacement proposals, which the Congressional Budget Office forecasts would increase the number of uninsured by 20 million or more, coverage would dip by less than 1 million under the proposal in 2028, and enrollment would hold steady earlier. The proposal’s consumer-centered policies also would induce changes in consumer behavior that would reduce health care consumption and lead to greater medical productivity,…

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Mark Meadows: ‘Strong Suggestion’ that Undercover FBI Sources Taped Trump Campaign

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Mark Meadows

by Chuck Ross   North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows said Wednesday that there is a “strong suggestion” that undercover FBI sources secretly taped members of the Trump campaign. “Now whether that was a confidential human source taping an individual, that’s what I believe it is, but it’s important that we look at this because the whole narrative of ‘Spygate’ and tapping and all of that have been narratives that are out there but unproven,” Meadows, the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, told Hill.TV. “There’s a strong suggestion that confidential human sources actually taped members within the Trump campaign,” the Republican continued. “There is strong suggestions in that some of the text messages, emails, and so forth who was involved, that extraordinary measures were used to surveil.” Meadows, a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, did not specify what information he has seen. But the Department of Justice has recently provided documents about the FBI’s investigation to several House committees, including Oversight and the House Judiciary Committee. Republicans on both committees have formed a task force of sorts aimed at investigating possible FBI abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The FBI obtained four FISA warrants against…

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REVEALED: The Man Accusing Blasey Ford of Lying About Polygraphs

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by Kevin Daley and Andrew Kerr   The Daily Caller News Foundation has identified Brian Merrick as the author of a letter alleging that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford did not provide accurate testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee about her experience with polygraph tests. Though a witness Merrick names has denied his accusation, Senate Republicans have requested additional information from Blasey Ford in view of the letter. Blasey Ford has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her in the early 1980s while the two were teenagers. Merrick met Blasey Ford in either 1989 or 1990, and the pair dated from 1992 to 1998, according to a letter he submitted to the Judiciary Committee. The letter also indicates that they lived together for a portion of their relationship. The couple met when they were students at Pepperdine University in California. TheDCNF has independently confirmed that Merrick and Blasey Ford were associated with the same address in southern California while they were dating in the late 1990s. The Wall Street Journal identified Merrick as an ex-boyfriend of Blasey Ford in a pre-hearingarticle. Though Merrick wrote that he finds Blasey Ford truthful, he disputed several portions of her testimony before the Senate…

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Senator Lamar Alexander Commentary: Key Education Decisions Should Be Made in States, Schools and Homes – Not Washington

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Lamar Alexander

by Senator Lamar Alexander   When I wrote the law fixing No Child Left Behind, I was thinking about Tennessee teachers like Candace Hines, who teaches kindergarten in Memphis. Earlier this year, Candace wrote that the new law “empowers Tennessee with the responsibility to decide how to close achievement gaps, improve schools and make sure that all our children succeed.” No Child Left Behind let Washington make decisions about Tennessee’s classrooms— and it created a national school board. My goal was to return decisions about how best to educate our children to the people closest to our students—to Tennessee teachers like Candace, our local school boards, and our state—and to end the national school board. When I was running for Senate in 2014, Tennesseans all across the state would tell me that Congress needed to end the Common Core mandate, and a year later I passed a law to do exactly that.  If you’re wondering why parents and teachers don’t worry about Washington meddling with state standards anymore, it’s because the new law explicitly prohibits Washington from mandating or even incentivizing Common Core or any other specific state standards. It is up to states to decide their academic standards. Another…

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Trump Trade Deals with Canada, Mexico, South Korea and Japan: His ‘Keep America First’ Promise, Isolates China

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by Natalia Castro   Everyone knew the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was a bad deal. President Obama knew. Hillary Clinton knew. President Trump knew. But only President Trump was willing to use our leverage to push our neighbors to the negotiating table and work out a strong, better deal for the U.S. While previous presidents pandered to other nations in the name of globalization, Trump is pursuing bilateral trade relations which are more likely to put American first and get our workers back on the job. NAFTA resulted in significant job loss as manufacturing sectors moved to Mexico, wages in the U.S. stagnated while working conditions in Mexico deteriorated as well. While many American political leaders seemed to agree the deal was bad, former President Barack Obama never followed through on his campaign promise to renegotiate the deal — a promise he made repeatedly in Aug. 2007, Nov. 2007, Dec. 2007, Jan. 2008, and Feb. 2008. Similarly, in July 2016 Hillary Clinton denounced the deal saying it “had not lived up to its promises” and promised to rework it. Instead, Obama pursued the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) — a deal that included Canada, Mexico, Singapore, Brunei, New Zealand, Chile, Australia, Peru, Vietnam, Malaysia and Japan…

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Lee and Dean Offer Differing Views in Memphis Gubernatorial Debate

Chris Butler

Republican Bill Lee and Democrat Karl Dean offered differing views on the issues in a gubernatorial debate in Memphis on Tuesday. Lee used the debate to make the case that he is the candidate who thinks outside the box when it comes to tackling the state’s crime and education woes. Dean offered answers many career politicians have given before. Panelists asked the two men what role the state government has in reducing gun-related violence and crimes involving firearms. Lee, the Williamson County businessman and GOP nominee, spoke of how he has worked in a nonprofit re-entry program for prisoners for 15 years and mentored a man released from prison. Lee said he’s also worked with other incarcerated men. “We have to develop a system that is tough on crime and smart on crime at the same time,” Lee said. “That means we need to address those most egregious criminals in a profoundly serious way and yet at the same time look hard at the way we intake and re-enter folks if we really want to reduce the crime rate.” When it was his turn to talk about how best to fight crime, Dean shared his views on the Second Amendment.…

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Tennessee Spends Government Money on Colorblind Viewfinders

Chris Butler

Tennessee officials spent $24,000 to install 12 viewfinders at parks around the state. The viewfinders are specifically tailored to help colorblind people, according to various media reports. But there are less expensive options for colorblind consumers to purchase with their own money, specifically custom-made glasses. According to a Google search, those glasses range in cost from $90 to $350. Tennessee Department of Tourist Development officials say the goal is to help park visitors take in the different parks’ lush scenery. According to the Jackson-based WBBJTV, the new colorblind viewfinders have lenses designed to alleviate red-green color blindness. State officials installed the first viewfinder in October of last year at the Great Smoky Mountains. They recently installed another viewfinder at Chickasaw State Park in Chester County. The Houston-based KHOU, meanwhile, reports other color-blind viewfinders are available at Ober Gatlinburg, in Gatlinburg, Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area near Oneida, and at the Westbound Interstate 26 overlook near Erwin in Unicoi County. Southern Living covered this story as well. “State officials believe their viewfinders are the first time the innovation has been used in a viewfinder,” according to Southern Living. All About Vision reports color blind glasses will not cure…

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Steve Cohen ‘Condescending’ and ‘Despicable’ to Conservative Female Columnist

Chris Butler

Only days after he scolded Republicans for supposedly mistreating women, U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Memphis, insulted a conservative female Boston Herald columnist at a subcommittee hearing in Washington, D.C. That columnist, Adriana Cohen, apparently of no relation to the Tennessee congressman, came to discuss how social media censors conservatives, including her popular column. In a new article, Adriana Cohen described Steve Cohen as putting on “a condescending, despicable display” as she testified. “Cohen kicked off his opening statement trashing the president, saying the hearing was a huge waste of time, while accusing conservatives of ‘making a fetish out their own supposed victimhood,’” Adriana Cohen wrote. No one in Steve Cohen’s office returned a request for comment Tuesday. “Voters know full well that if any Democratic-favored special interest group was being wrongfully discriminated against by an American company, liberal lawmakers would be screaming from the rooftops,” Adriana Cohen wrote. “But since social media censorship is squarely impacting Trump supporters, Democrat lawmakers — many who receive hefty donations from Silicon Valley — don’t give a hoot. Why would they bite the hand that feeds them?” Powerful tech companies, she went on to say, meddle in elections by allowing Democrats to connect with…

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Billionaire Gun Control Advocate Bloomberg to Host High Dollar Manhattan Fundraiser for Bredesen

Jason M. Reynolds

Former New York Mayor and gun control advocate Mike Bloomberg will host a fundraiser at his Manhattan home next Tuesday for Tennessee Democratic Senate candidate Phil Bredesen, CNBC reported. The involvement by billionaire Bloomberg is likely to increase scrutiny on one of the tightest races in the midterm elections, as Bredesen, a former Tennessee governor, is trying to flip the seat being vacated by Senator Bob Corker (R-TN), who is retiring. The event is being billed to financiers as an opportunity to “join Mike Bloomberg for an evening in support of Governor Phil Bredesen,” according to the invitation. The Tennessee Republican Party said, “When President Trump said Phil Bredesen wouldn’t protect the Second Amendment during his speech in Johnson City, he was more right than he could have known. Today we found out that anti-Second Amendment zealot Mike Bloomberg is holding a fundraiser for Bredesen in New York.” Bloomberg said in 2014, “And if you want to have a gun in your house, I think you’re pretty stupid – particularly if you have kids – but I guess you have a right to do that. Someday, there is going to be a suit against parents who smoke in their houses or…

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