Day: October 28, 2018

Federal Taxpayers Reportedly Lost $700,000 on Reelfoot Lake State Park Project

Chris Butler

The officials who oversee the Reelfoot Lake State Park in Lake County reportedly made a major mistake, and federal taxpayers lost $700,000 because of it. According to The Dyersburg State Gazette this week, the feds gave the state of Tennessee $1.5 million to build a visitors’ center at the park. Construction began. Then, after half the money was spent, the powers that be put construction on hold after Tennessee Comptrollers discovered government officials “failed to properly bid out the job and awarded the project to an architect firm from Memphis with a direct conflict of interest,” according to the paper. “Following the decision by state officials to tear down the building that was to house the Reelfoot Lake interactive visitor center, crews began the demolition earlier this week,” the paper reported. “The building’s fate was revealed in July 2018, after the structure failed to meet seismic code.” Lake County Mayor Denny Johnson told the paper the visitor center had to have 60 foot pilings because of that area’s history of seismic activity. The building, however, was constructed with 20-foot-deep pilings. Johnson told the paper the remaining $800,000 in funds will get used to build a new facility. Johnson did not…

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Commentary: The Left Goes Full Open Borders

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by Jarrett Stepman   It wasn’t long ago that both sides of the aisle believed America’s border laws should be enforced. As President Donald Trump pointed out on Twitter, even former President Barack Obama, at least rhetorically, said that illegal immigrants couldn’t be let into the country en masse and without restrictions. (He said that as a senator.) I agree with President Obama 100%! pic.twitter.com/PI3aW1Zh5Q — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 23, 2018 “We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently, and lawfully to become immigrants into this country,” Obama said. This dynamic has dramatically shifted, as the American left now increasingly sees any level of border enforcement as beyond the pale. The Honduran migrant caravans heading north to the U.S. border are testing just how far the left will go in embracing this new narrative. The position Obama held just over a decade ago is now considered offensive in some circles. Some are even demanding that the U.S. let the caravan into the United States. “Every one of these people are coming from a real fear. These are refugees,” Cambridge, Massachusetts Mayor…

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Obama Says Politicians Lying is Something We Have Not Seen Before. Here Are Three of His Biggest Whoppers

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by Tim Pearce   Former President Barack Obama lamented the state of political rhetoric in the U.S. at a rally in Wisconsin on Friday, saying politicians are “just blatantly, repeatedly, baldly, shamelessly lying.” Obama traveled to Wisconsin to campaign for Democratic candidates including Sen. Tammy Baldwin, gubernatorial candidate Tony Evers and others. Obama accused Republicans of lying about healthcare, namely that GOP politicians would protect coverage of pre-existing conditions. “Listen throughout human history, certainly throughout American history, politicians have exaggerated. They make promises that they may try to fulfill, but then it turns out to be harder than they expected,” Obama told the crowd assembled in Milwaukee. “They pump up the things that they did that are good.” “They downplay the things that they did that aren’t so good. They try to put a positive spin on things,” Obama continued. “But what we have not seen before, in our recent public life, at least, is politicians just blatantly, repeatedly, baldly, shamelessly lying.” Obama spun news, evaded questions, contradicted himself and made false statements a number of times while he was in office. In 2011, Obama claimed he signed into law the biggest middle-class tax cut in history, referring to the Making…

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Obama, Nevada Democrats Silent After Ex-Wife Said Gubernatorial Candidate Bruised Her During Divorce

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by Andrew Kerr   Former President Barack Obama and other Democrats won’t comment on allegations levied against gubernatorial candidate Steve Sisolak by his ex-wife, including one that the Nevada Democrat bruised his former spouse. Lori “Dallas” Garland told The Daily Caller News Foundation that she felt like a total prisoner throughout her 13-year marriage with Sisolak, and said the single-father backstory he has leveraged throughout his gubernatorial campaign is bull. Garland also said Sisolak bruised her neck in an August 2000 incident. The DCNF reviewed pictures of Garland’s bruised neck and a contemporaneous diary entry detailing the incident. The Sisolak campaign provided sworn statements from the candidate’s daughters, who say the saw the event when they were children, denying that he assaulted Garland. Obama appeared alongside Sisolak at a campaign rally in Las Vegas on Monday, along with senatorial candidate Jacky Rosen, congressional candidate Susie Lee, and lieutenant governor candidate Kate Marshall. None of the Democrats returned repeated request for comment regarding the allegations. The DCNF first reported Garland’s allegations against Sisolak the Friday before the rally. Rosen issued a blanket statement on Twitter in September to “Believe women. Believe women. — Jacky Rosen (@RosenforNevada) September 28, 2018 Sisolak stands to be…

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After Papadopoulos Interview, GOP Lawmakers Question Premise of FBI’s Collusion Probe

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by Chuck Ross   Republican lawmakers who interviewed George Papadopoulos on Thursday came away from the hearing questioning the FBI’s basis for opening its collusion investigation based on information about the former Trump campaign aide. “What we’re finding without talking about specifics of what’s going on is that the whole reason that this investigation was opened up was certainly not one built on a solid foundation,” North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows told Politico after Papadopoulos wrapped up his testimony. “It’s hard to understand why the FBI opened the highest profile investigation in recent times into potential collusion by the Trump campaign with the Russian government that centers on a campaign policy adviser who been on the job a month at the time the Trump-Russia investigation was launched,” Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe told Fox News. https://twitter.com/RepRatcliffe/status/1055556596267450371?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Meadows and Ratcliffe, who are Republicans, joined Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat, in the closed-door interview of Papadopoulos. The three lawmakers are part of a task force made up of House Judiciary and House Oversight Committee members investigating the FBI’s handling of its investigations during the 2016 campaign. Thursday’s hearing was Papadopoulos’s first appearance on Capitol Hill to answer questions about his activities on the Trump campaign.…

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Commentary: Why Thomas Merton Renounced Communism and 6 Lessons We Can Learn Today

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by Barry Brownstein   Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk and one of the most important Catholic writers of the 20th century. He was the author of over 60 books; the best known being The Seven Storey Mountain which is an autobiographical account of his search for faith. Published in 1948, The Seven Storey Mountain is a modern classic, finding a place on The Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s 50 Best Books of the 20th Century list, as well as The 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of the Century list published by National Review. The Seven Storey Mountain documents Merton’s spiritual conversion, but with a bonus: Merton explains why he turned away from his communist youth. In an age where individuals are increasingly falling for socialist nostrums, Merton provides timeless lessons about why people choose bankrupt ideologies such as communism. Lesson 1: When people do not understand the conditions under which human beings flourish, there is a smorgasbord of bankrupt ideologies ready to exploit their ignorance. Why was Merton susceptible to bankrupt ideologies? In The Seven Storey Mountain, Merton points to ignorance: “I had begun to get the idea that I was a Communist, although I wasn’t quite sure what Communism was. There are a…

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Where Will The Migrants in the Caravan Stay if They Seek Asylum in the US?

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Illegal Alien Detention center

by Evie Fordham   Several thousand migrants from Central American countries are headed to the U.S. in a caravan. Those who reach the border are expected to petition for asylum, but there are multiple options for where individuals will stay as they wait for their cases to make it through the immigration court backlog. Migrants can claim asylum once they reach the U.S., and many make it over the first hurdle of proving they have credible fear of returning to their home country. A person is granted asylum if they can prove they fled their home country because of persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. But that first hurdle is not a guarantee of asylum. Immigration court backlog can also slow down the asylum process. The non-detained docket has a backlog of over 700,000 migrant family cases. Where individuals are detained (or not) depends on many factors, such as if the migrant is an unaccompanied minor or traveling in a family unit. ICE oversees detention in both publicly and privately run facilities, which are located in all 50 states but most concentrated in California and Texas. Here are some…

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Make Halloween Spooky Again with a Visit to These Real-Life Haunts

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As we come to the end of summer and begin the season of winter, one hundred and seventy-nine million Americans will celebrate the season with urban legends, scary bonfire stories, and armies of children carrying candy up and down the streets of in what was once referred to as Samhain, All Hallows Eve and All Saints Day in the early Middle Ages and marks itself as a “cross-quarter” day acknowledging the end of the harvesting season and the beginning of winter. Early civilizations were big observers of the sky.  A cross-quarter day is a day more or less a midway marker between an equinox (when the sun sets due west) and a solstice (when the sun sets at its most northern or southern point on the horizon). October thirty-first is an approximately middle point between the autumn equinox and winter solstice, for those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere. The United States is home to many haunted farms, abandoned insane asylums, historic mansions now turned museums, and old spirit infested bridges.  We’ve found a few that may very well be hidden in your own backyard. Whether you believe in ghosts, goblins, demonic possessions and or spirits, one thing is for…

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg Calls Congress the Culprit in Polarizing Judicial Confirmation Process

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by Tristan Justice   Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg points the finger at an increasingly partisan Congress for polarizing the judicial confirmation process. Speaking at the federal courthouse in Washington on Wednesday, Ginsburg said a lack of collegiality and bipartisanship among lawmakers was to blame for polarizing the confirmation process for federal judges, The Washington Post reported. Ginsburg alluded to the heated confirmation hearings for  Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, without mentioning the high court’s newest justice by name. She reflected on past Supreme Court confirmation processes and pointed to Justice Antonin Scalia’s unanimous confirmation vote in the Senate, as well as the 96-3 vote for her, the Post reported.”What a difference in time that was from what we are witnessing today,” Ginsburg said in an apparent reference to the bitter confirmation battle over Kavanaugh and the resulting 50-48 vote to confirm him. Only one Democrat voted for Kavanaugh.”To me, the obvious culprit is Congress,” Ginsburg said. Ginsburg praised Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who retired in 2005, as a model of someone who put “country above party and self-interest” and who “worked collaboratively to solve problems,” the Post reported. Ginsburg’s comments came a day after O’Connor, the first female…

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New Ad Shows President Trump Saying Bredesen Opposes Border Wall, Wants to Raise Taxes, Supports Schumer and Pelosi

Jason M. Reynolds

The Senate Leadership Fund PAC on Saturday launched a new advertising campaign highlighting President Donald Trump’s opposition to Phil Bredesen and his support of U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-TN-07) in the U.S. Senate race. The $1.8 million buy will run statewide on a combination of broadcast and cable television, radio and digital. The video is available to watch here. The ad starts out with the president saying, “A vote for Bredesen is a vote for Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi. Phil Bredesen wants to raise your taxes. He opposes the border wall totally. Bredesen will not defend your Second Amendment rights.” The video continues with the president supporting Blackburn: “A vote for Marsha is really a vote for me and everything that we stand for. It’s a vote for Make America Great Again.” Senate Leadership Fund Spokesman Chris Pack said, “Phil Bredesen’s liberal agenda is completely wrong for Tennessee and that is why President Trump is supporting Marsha Blackburn. Try as he may, Bredesen can’t hide that he’s a vote for higher taxes, weak immigration, and against our Second Amendment rights.” Bredesen has taken hits throughout the campaign for the points the president raised. The National Rifle Association has been critical of…

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