Day: November 16, 2018

Tennessee Republican Assembly Calls for TN Legislators to Censure London Lamar

Chris Butler

Members of the Tennessee Republican Assembly (TNRA) on Thursday called upon state legislators to officially censure newly-elected State Rep. London Lamar (D-Memphis) for saying Tennessee is racist and its Republican voters are uneducated. As reported, Lamar livestreamed those controversial comments on her Facebook page last week. She removed the video a few days later, but only after The Tennessee Star broke the story last weekend. The story has since gone viral worldwide. A censure is a formal reprimand. In a press release, TNRA members said Lamar is guilty of “propagating racial divisiveness unbecoming any elected official.” TNRA President Sharon Ford told The Star she and other board members decided censure is appropriate. “We were all equally incensed that any elected official would portray a group of people in such a racist manner,” Ford said. Lamar did apologize, as reported, but Ford said it was “not effective.” “It was more like ‘Oh, I’m sorry you people got offended,’ Ford said. “People need to understand this has not gone viral in the traditional sense. It is on the British Daily Mail. It went right across the pond. This is not acceptable, and my concern is there won’t be due diligence done on it…

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JC Bowman Commentary: What I Didn’t Say About the Departure of TN Dept. of Education Commissioner Candice McQueen

JC Bowman

Tupac Shakur said, “Behind every sweet smile, there is a bitter sadness that no one can ever see and feel.” I spent time with Commissioner McQueen as more than a casual observer. Her heart and passion were always for the children and teachers in Tennessee.  She fought battles which nobody knew about and which, despite the lofty title in front of her name, she had little control. 

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Avenatti Arrested in LA on Domestic Violence Charge, Denies Allegations

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  Michael Avenatti, who skyrocketed to fame as a critic of President Donald Trump and the lawyer for porn actress Stormy Daniels, was arrested Wednesday and booked on a felony domestic violence charge, Los Angeles police said. The victim in the case had visible injuries, according to Officer TonyIm, a police spokesman. But Avenatti slammed the allegation as “completely bogus” in a statement released by his law firm. Avenatti, who has said he’s mulling a 2020 presidential run, was being held on $50,000 bail. He was arrested about 2 p.m. on the same block where he lives in a skyscraper apartment. Police declined to provide details about the victim, including the victim’s relationship to Avenatti. “I wish to thank the hard working men and woman of the LAPD for their professionalism, they were only doing their jobs in light of the completely bogus allegations against me,” Avenatti said in a statement released through his law firm. “I have never been physically abusive in my life nor was I last night.  Any accusations to the contrary are fabricated and meant to do harm to my reputation. I look forward to being fully exonerated.” Avenatti became famous as Daniels’ lawyer and pursued…

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Diane Black, Jim Tracy Rumored to Want Jobs With Bill Lee’s Administration

Jason M. Reynolds

Governor-elect Bill Lee may have a couple of high-profile applicants for his upcoming administration. U.S. Rep. Diane Black (R-TN-07) and former State Sen. Jim Tracy (R-TN-14) are seeking jobs with Lee, The Tennessean reported. The newspaper cited “three people familiar with the efforts of Black and Tracy.” Some may find it ironic that Black, of Gallatin, wants to work for Lee as she ran against him in the Republican gubernatorial primary. Black called Lee a “moderate.” (She said the same of fellow competitor Randy Boyd.) Her ad said, “Bill Lee’s a moderate too. He pushed for a liberal Nashville Mayor who tried to make Nashville a sanctuary city.” Another ad said, “Bill Lee is the kind of Republican who helps Democrats get elected,” noting Lee’s previous campaign contributions to former Nashville Mayor Megan Barry, The Tennessean said. The Lee Company sent a cease-and-desist letter to the gubernatorial campaign of Black in July, calling for the removal of information alleging the company wrongfully fired a veteran who once worked there, The Tennessee Star reported, citing a story in The Tennessee Journal’s On the Hill. Lee spokeswoman Laine Arnold said, the administration has received nearly 1,700 submissions for ideas and nearly 600 resumes. …

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Tennessee Star Report-Knoxville Edition: According to CNN, ‘Everyone Get’s a Pass’ as MSM Bands Together Claiming First Amendment Rights to White House Press Corp

Julie Carr

On Wednesday’s Tennessee Star Report: Knoxville Edition – broadcast on WETR 92.3 FM in Knoxville – Tennessee Star Political Editor Steve Gill talked about Megyn Kelly’s inability to create a base and keep it, CNN’s lawsuit against the White House, and how the usual ‘liberal’ suspects are joining the MSM band wagon in support of CNN’s ‘friend of the court brief’ claiming it’s a First Amendment right. A couple of quick items for you.  The Today Show has apparently seen a ratings increase after they fired Megyn Kelly.  That’s right, ratings for the 9am hour of the Today Show increased after they let Megyn Kelly go.  Now this was after they let her go because she had apologized for comments where she was accused of defending ‘black face’ for purposes of Halloween costumes. The problem that Megyn Kelly has had, and she’s beautiful, she’s bright, she’s articulate, she’s an excellent news caster it’s just she doesn’t understand how to create a base and keep it. I mean when she was at Fox, she seemed to go out of her way to make it clear that she wasn’t a Conservative.  And then when she went to NBC she couldn’t overcome the fact that…

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Commentary: Trump Leads the Way on Conservative Criminal Justice Reform

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by John G. Malcom   This past May, the Trump administration’s leadership on meaningful, conservative criminal justice reform helped the House to pass the Formerly Incarcerated Reenter Society Transformed Safely Transitioning Every Person (or First Step) Act by a vote of 360 to 59. On Wednesday, President Donald Trump announced his support for the Senate’s amended version of the First Step Act, including some modest yet much-needed sentencing reforms. Now is the time for the full Senate to debate whether it will approve this bill, return it to the House for a vote, and send it on to the president—who said he “will be waiting with a pen” for Congress to get this done, because “it is the right thing to do.” Conservative states have led the way on similar criminal justice reforms, adopting changes that successfully increase public safety, reduce prison spending, strengthen families and communities, and offer more Americans a second chance to lead a safe and prosperous life. Federal prisons, like any other function of the federal government, should also be judged by outcomes, not intentions—by data, not rhetoric. [ RELATED: Why It’s Not ‘Soft On Crime’ to Support Criminal Justice Reform ] Since 1980, the federal prison population…

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Caravan Migrants Scale Border Fence Near San Diego

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by Will Racke   As the initial wave of Central American migrants traveling in a caravan streamed into Tijuana on Tuesday, many of them broke from the group and scaled the border fence just south of San Diego’s International Friendship Park. Video taken by the San Diego Union-Tribune shows dozens of migrants climbing to the top of the barrier, where they waved and whistled at Border Patrol agents standing guard a few hundred feet away. In a statement released Tuesday, the Border Patrol said it believes some of the people who climbed onto the fences are from the caravan of about 4,000 migrants that has been making its way north through Mexico for the past several weeks, FOX5 San Diego reported. Tuesday’s scene near Friendship Park was reminiscent of what happened when a similar caravan of migrants arrived in Tijuana in April. In that instance, caravan migrants scrambled to the top of the border fence and waved the national flag of Honduras, the country many had fled just weeks before. The latest caravan has been the impetus for the Trump administration’s multi-pronged crackdown on illegal immigration in recent weeks. Characterizing the group as a potential “invasion” of U.S. territory, President…

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Commentary: The Democrats’ Goal is Election Chaos

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  Conservative observers of the post-Election Day chaos in Florida, Georgia, and elsewhere must understand that the mess is not due to incompetence. It is part of a larger, long term plan that has been executed by Democrats to move as many elections as possible into what our friend election lawyer J. Christian Adams calls “the margin of litigation.” Once inside the margin of litigation, election laws and the rules and deadlines, with which honest Republican candidates complied pre-election, are thrown out the window by activist Leftist judges and highly partisan Democrat supervisors of elections to the advantage of Democratic candidates and committees who knew in advance that ballots that were illegal on their face would have a good chance of being counted. Thus, we see in Georgia that a judge ordered three heavily Democratic precincts to stay open late, introducing thousands of provisional ballots into the election. Richard Barron, Fulton County, Georgia’s director of registration and elections, said the issue at Booker T. Washington and Archer Hall precincts was college students. Many were registered to vote elsewhere but insisted on filling out provisional ballots where they were. Barron said there were so many people filling out provisional ballots at…

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Bernie Sanders: Trump is a Racist, Sexist, Bigot

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by Molly Prince   Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders heated up his rhetoric against President Donald Trump on Wednesday while speaking at the National Action Network’s annual legislative and policy conference in Washington, D.C. “We must be honest and straightforward and say that we have a president who is a racist, a president who is a sexist, a president who is a homophobe, a president who is a xenophobe and a president who is a religious bigot,” Sanders told the crowd, according to The Hill. The Vermont senator’s comments drew a round of applause. “It gives me no joy to tell you that,” Sanders continued. “But that is the simple truth and we’ve got to confront that truth.” The National Action Network is a nonprofit organization founded by Rev. Al Sharpton. The group refers to itself as a “civil rights organization” and has been credited with drawing national attention to issues such as police brutality and racial profiling. “I don’t have to tell anybody in this room, least of all in this room, the history of discrimination that this country has experienced going way, way back before slavery,” said the progressive senator. “When the settlers came and did terrible things to the…

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Trump Ally McCarthy to Lead House Republicans

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Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy easily won an internal party election Wednesday to take over the shrunken House GOP caucus, handing the seven-term Californian a familiar role of building the party back to a majority as well as protecting President Donald Trump’s agenda. With current speaker Paul Ryan retiring and the House majority gone, the race for minority leader was McCarthy’s to lose. But rarely has a leader of a party that suffered a major defeat — Democrats wiped out Republicans in GOP-held suburban districts from New York to McCarthy’s own backyard — been so handily rewarded. After pushing past a longshot challenge from Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the co-founder of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, McCarthy will be tested by Republicans on and off Capitol Hill who remain angry and divided after their midterm losses and split over how best to move forward. “We’ll be back,” McCarthy promised, claiming a unified front for the Republican leadership team. He won by 159-43 among House Republicans. McCarthy, who has been majority leader under Ryan, acknowledged Republicans “took a beating” in the suburbs in last week’s national elections, especially as the ranks of GOP female lawmakers plummeted from 23 to 13. The GOP…

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UN Committee Wants to Make Abortion and Assisted Suicide a Universal Human Right

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by Grace Carr   The United Nations Human Rights Committee drafted a memo saying that abortion and physician-assisted suicide should be universal human rights. The memo, or “general comment” on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, calls for abortion to be decriminalized everywhere. Nations and states should “not introduce new barriers and should remove existing barriers to abortion … including barriers caused as a result of the exercise of conscientious objection by individual medical providers,” it said, Crux Now reported Thursday. The committee that put forward the draft is headed by former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, according to Crux. Aborting an unborn baby was illegal in Chile until August 2017 when the nation’s lawmakers ruled to decriminalize abortion in the cases of rape, fatal fetal abnormalities and when the mother’s life is in danger. [ RELATED: 40,000 Chileans Take To The Streets To Demand Expansion Of Abortion Access ] Young people should have access to contraception as well as guaranteed access to post-abortion health care “in all circumstances, and on a confidential basis,” the draft also said, Crux reported. Stigma against abortion should also be discouraged, the draft noted. The U.N. Human Rights Committee successfully ordered the Irish government to pay Siobhan Whelan…

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Education Commissioner McQueen Taking Job With National Teaching Institute

Jason M. Reynolds

Tennessee Education Commissioner Dr. Candice McQueen will leave her post in January for the top position at a national nonprofit that addresses teaching, The Tennessean said. McQueen’s departure to become CEO of the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching, focused on aiding in training, attracting and supporting teachers, means she will not stay on with Gov.-elect Bill Lee. McQueen became Tennessee’s education commissioner in January 2015 after leading Lipscomb University’s College of Education. She replaced Kevin Huffman, who served for four years under Gov. Bill Haslam. In a Department of Education blog post, McQueen pointed to some of hers and the department’s accomplishments: This year, our students again set record highs: new high ACT score (20.2) coupled with a new high participation rate (97%); more students took AP exams and more students earned a 3 or higher – giving them credit for college; and high school graduates maintained our record graduation rate (89.1%). For the first time in years, we saw growth in students’ literacy skills in the early grades – pointing to some initial successes with our Read to be Ready work – and again students enrolled in our Read to be Ready summer camps showed statistically significant growth.” She also…

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