Day: November 17, 2018

Registry of Election Finance Fines London Lamar $8,175 For Filing Two Campaign Reports Late

Jason M. Reynolds

New State Rep. London Lamar (D-TN-91) was hit with an $8,175 fine for filing two campaign reports late. Both Lamar and State Rep. Jesse Chism were fined by officials for issues related to their campaign finance disclosures, The Tennessean reported. Voters elected Chism and Lamar in this year’s Nov. 6 midterm election. Chism was fined $5,000 for filing a campaign finance report late. The Registry of Election Finance also levied two more fines, totaling $20,000 against Rep. Joe Towns Jr., D-Memphis, for not filing two reports. The list of delinquent report filers is online here. The Tennessee Registry of Election Finance was created by the General Assembly in 1989 as an independent entity of state government. Lamar earned international attention after The Tennessee Star reported the story of her Facebook video rant calling white Tennessee Republicans racist and uneducated. “Looking here at Tennessee, let’s just call a spade a spade,” Lamar said in the video. “Tennessee is racist, period. Period. And if you for one moment thought that white people in Tennessee were going to leave their own to jump over here and give us more access, they just told you last night it’s not happening,” Lamar said. As The Star reported, Lamar livestreamed her…

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Dr. Gina Loudon Commentary: I Am ‘Becky,’ and I’ll Vote How I Darn Well Please

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by Dr. Gina Loudon, Ph.D.   Bitter liberals have found a scapegoat for their mediocre performance in the midterm elections: her name is “Becky,” and they can’t stand her. While the Democrats did take the majority in the House, they fell short of running the tables on election night. Two years after a majority of white women voted for Donald Trump, liberals are furious that a constituency they once thought was firmly in their extremist camp would defy them yet again and deliver defeats for some of their favorite Democrats. For instance, they’re struggling to understand how these women could dare vote against heroes in the fight against “the patriarchy” such as Beto O’Rourke in Texas and warriors against “white privilege” like Stacey Abrams in Georgia. It’s simple, left-wing legal blogger Elie Mystal informs us: “White women gonna white.” The Daily Show’s Tavon Free — a black man — can’t bear that “White women did what white women do” by voting Republican in 2018. Self-described radical feminist Mona Eltahawy is sure it’s because white women are “foot soldiers of the patriarchy.” Rolling Stone’s Jamil Smith is upset that white women “again voted as if patriarchy would protect them.” “White women…

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Justin Jones Advisor Reportedly Says TN GOP Are Sinners

Chris Butler

The advisor for Justin Jones, the Vanderbilt Divinity School student who disrupted last month’s Marsha Blackburn rally, reportedly said Tennessee Republican Party officials acted in sin when they removed him from that venue. Jones’ advisor, Phillis Shepherd, made remarks about her student this week in an interview with The Tennessee Tribune. “When power — whether it’s governmental power, political power or the power that comes with position — is exploited and used to silence people, that really falls in the category of sin,” Shepherd said. Shepherd, on her Twitter page, described herself as an “awakening-womanist scholar activist psychoanalyst poet artist linking spirituality and justice.” Many of The Tennessee Star’s readers asked on our social media pages how it is that Jones, a man who professes to follow God so devoutly, could behave in such an abrasive and disrespectful manner. Authorities charged Jones with criminal trespassing and resisting arrest, as The Star reported. Tennessee GOP officials recognized Jones as an instigator from prior events. They asked Jones to leave the site of the rally, the Ray Stevens’ CabaRay Showroom in Nashville. This was a private event. Jones refused. Law enforcement officials removed him by force, but not without him resisting. Jones’ lawyer, Nick…

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Commentary: Put Family And Country First, Not Party

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by Robert Romano   A poll by Axios and SurveyMonkey found 61 percent of Democrats believe Republicans are racist, sexist and bigoted, and 31 percent of Republicans think the same thing about Democrats. 54 percent of Democrats find Republicans to be ignorant, 49 percent of Republicans believe the same about Democrats. 44 percent of Democrats find Republicans spiteful, 54 percent of Republicans feel that way about Democrats. 21 percent of Democrats and 23 percent of Republicans find each other to be evil, respectively. Have we lost the civil society? Only tiny percentages found the other party to be fair, kind or thoughtful, ranging from 2 to 4 percent. I personally would have been an exceptional person polled if they had called and asked about Democrats in my life who I found to be thoughtful, honest and caring. Then again, my entire immediate family are Democrats, who I speak to every day. Often politics come up but nobody hates each other at the end of the day. Family first, not party first. It’s something I’m reminded of with Thanksgiving right around he corner when I’ll be traveling up to New York with my family. In a similar vein, many people are…

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Greenpeace Fighting to Stop Drivers From Learning About Carbon Tax Costs

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by Jason Hopkins   Greenpeace is suing to stop the placement of stickers on gas stations that notify drivers of higher fuel prices due to the implementation of a carbon tax. Ontario Premier Doug Ford — who has embarked on a pro-energy agenda in his province since entering office — will execute a number of measures to fight back against Canada’s nationwide carbon tax. Besides challenging the carbon tax initiative in court, the conservative politician is looking to include lie item breakdowns on gas receipts and heating bills, informing customers of how much the carbon fee is costing them. The Ontario government is also looking to include stickers at gas pumps across the province, informing customers of the fee. “Today, I want to confirm that in Ontario the carbon tax’s days are numbered,” Ford told the media back in June. “In fact, upon the swearing in of my new cabinet, at the top of our agenda the very first item will be to pass an order to cancel the Liberal cap-and-trade carbon tax.” However, Ford’s sticker program is already running into opposition. Greenpeace — an international environmentalistorganization — announced it’s intention to mount a challenge. The group is arguing that the stickers are deceptive because…

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Facebook CEO Details Company Battle with Hate Speech

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by Michelle Quinn   Facebook says it is getting better at proactively removing hate speech and changing the incentives that result in the most sensational and provocative content becoming the most popular on the site. The company has done so, it says, by ramping up its operations so that computers can review and make quick decisions on large amounts of content with thousands of reviewers making more nuanced decisions. In the future, if a person disagrees with Facebook’s decision, he or she will be able to appeal to an independent review board. Facebook “shouldn’t be making so many important decisions about free expression and safety on our own,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a call with reporters Thursday. But as Zuckerberg detailed what the company has accomplished in recent months to crack down on spam, hate speech and violent content, he also acknowledged that Facebook has far to go. “There are issues you never fix,” he said. “There’s going to be ongoing content issues.” Company’s actions In the call, Zuckerberg addressed a recent story in The New York Times that detailed how the company fought back during some of its biggest controversies over the past two years, such as…

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Dr. Ming Wang: Diversity Good for Tennessee Conservatives and Economy

Chris Butler

NASHVILLE, Tennessee — The organizers for a Nashville-based group stressed at a meeting Thursday there’s strength in diversity, not just in business but also when it comes to conservative politics. The organization, the Tennessee Immigrant and Minority Business Group, held their Winter 2018 Quarterly Forum at Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville. TIMBG Co-Founder Dr. Ming Wang told The Tennessee Star that Latin-Americans, Asian-Americans, and African-Americans are still majority Democrats — but they could change their minds on that, if persuaded. “Groups like this cannot be ignored, though,” Wang said. “Family values, freedom, and less government matter to these groups of people too.” The point of the organization, Wang said, is to bring together immigrants and minority business groups. And as it pertains to the business world, America is changing and turning more diverse, Wang said. Added together, African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and Asian-Americans make up 44 percent of the U.S. population. In 10 to 15 years this group will become the majority in the United States, Wang said. “One in every three business owners in Middle Tennessee today are either immigrants or minorities,” Wang said. “They represent the fastest-growing sector of our business community.” John Mickner, the TIMBG’s chief operations officer, said…

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House GOP Urged to Use Lame-Duck Session to Fund Border Wall, Make Good on Other Promises

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by Rachel del Guidice   Conservative Republicans are calling for a busy lame-duck session of Congress between now and Jan. 3, when Democrats will retake the majority in—and control of—the House. “Republicans still have an opportunity to do what we said,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, former chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, said in a statement provided to The Daily Signal. “We should fund the border security wall, pass a farm bill that requires able-bodied adults to work if they receive welfare, and keep working to hold the FBI and [Justice Department] accountable for their misconduct during and after the 2016 election,” Jordan said. Funding for the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies runs out Dec. 7, and Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., told The Daily Signal in a phone interview Thursday that he would like to see the Republican Congress do what it can to balance the budget before Democrats take over the House in the 116th Congress after the first of the year. “I would like to see my conference actually pass my resolution to balance the budget,” Biggs said. “We’ve got seven portions of the budget, seven bills you are going to see wrapped into one,” which…

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US Government Reportedly Preparing Charges Against Julian Assange

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by Chuck Ross   The Department of Justice (DOJ) is preparing charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, The Wall Street Journal is reporting. Prosecutors believe they will be able to try Assange in an American courtroom, sources told TheWSJ. The 47-year-old Australian national is living under asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy in London. The Trump DOJ has considered charging Assange with crimes related to Wikileaks’ disclosures of classified cables stolen by ex-Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning. Assange could also face charges related to the release of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. Wikileaks published the pilfered documents before the 2016 presidential election. Special counsel Robert Mueller charged 12 Russian intelligence agents with hacking the documents and releasing them through Wikileaks. Assange has refused to disclose his source for the stolen emails, but has denied receiving them from Russians. Assange has lived in the Ecuadorean embassy since 2012, but relations between the two sides have reportedly soured following the election of Lenin Moreno as president of the South American nation. Moreno has referred to Assange as a “hacker” and an “inherited problem.” It is unclear from TheWSJ report whether charges will be prepared for any American nationals.…

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Florida Counties Ditch Recount as Results Favor Republicans

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by Molly Prince   Two counties in Florida did not submit the results of the election recount in the required time frame, which would have otherwise increased the Republican candidates’ leads over their Democrat challengers. Both Broward and Hillsborough Counties failed to meet Thursday’s deadline to submit the tallies from the machine recounts and instead ended up submitting the unofficial vote count reported on Saturday, according to The Tampa Bay Times. The recount would have ultimately increased the margin for both Republican Gov. Rick Scott and Rep. Ron DeSantis’s races by a couple hundred votes. The reasoning for the untimely tally in Broward County is unknown, however, Hillsborough County purposefully missed the deadline since the recount yielded fewer total votes than those recorded on Election Day. “The fact that the percentages between the candidates remains the same gives us full confidence in our voting process and systems. Even though we achieved 99.84 percent success in our recount effort, we are not willing to accept that votes go unreported,” said Craig Latimer, the Hillsborough County Supervisor. “For that reason, the Canvassing Board has decided that the first unofficial results will stand as our second unofficial.” Broward, on the other hand, missed the…

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Colorado: Uber Driver Arrested for Allegedly Kidnapping and Making Unwanted Advances on Teen Passenger

Anna Marie Bolton

Ahmed Muse was arrested in Jefferson County last Sunday morning after an incident involving a teenage passenger the night before. The sheriff’s office moved quickly and as of Monday night the 29-year-old Muse was still behind bars facing charges that included second degree kidnapping, false imprisonment, and harassment. On Tuesday, he was assigned a public defender and bond was set at $50,000. According to several news accounts and an interview by Fox affiliate KDVR-TV with the teenager identified as Brianna Allen and her mother Shamara Ludwig, Muse broke Uber’s rules on ride sharing, but that was just the beginning. As stated in the company’s uberPOOL policy, several riders can share a ride, but no matter in what order the passengers entered the vehicle, the one whose destination is closest must be dropped off first. Allen lives only 10 miles from the part-time job she was leaving around 10 p.m. Saturday. The ride that should have taken 15 minutes took an hour and a half as she describes how Muse first drove another passenger to their destination before returning to Allen’s neighborhood where the driver allegedly locked the doors and began forceably kissing Allen. She claims he kissed her on the…

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Commentary: Fight the Denigration of American History

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by Michael Finch   American history is everywhere under attack. The recent skirmishes started with the campaign to remove Confederate statues, but it surely won’t end there. As our betters in America’s universities want us to know, the whole of American history is suspect. In our media, in the popular culture, and in our schools, we’re subject to an unending drumbeat of how America was founded to promote imperialism, colonialism, racism, sexism, and genocide—unimpeachable facts, we’re told, for which all Americans must forever share the burden of collective guilt and shame. For America to atone for her sins, her history must be denounced and then purged. This assault on America’s past is hardly news to the Right; the Left has been waging war against American history for well over a half a century. But given this ongoing and unceasing hostility, the response of so many conservatives to recent events is terribly disturbing. While it is perhaps it is to be expected given our predilection to fight amongst ourselves (e.g., the Trump debate on the Right), it is extremely ill-advised and destructive to the things we still share in common. One thing we should have learned is that the Left never…

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Rep. Jim Cooper Says No to Pelosi as Speaker of the House

Jason M. Reynolds

U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN-05) says he will vote against Nancy Pelosi as the Democratic leader of the House of Representatives, The Tennessean said. Cooper, recently elected to a ninth term, is among 17 House Democrats who signed a letter this week vowing they won’t support Pelosi’s bid for speaker. Other Democrats are also plotting to vote against Pelosi, according to reports. Cooper voted against Pelosi in 2011, 2013, twice in 2015 and 2017, each time after Democrats lost the House in 2010. “Now, with one of the largest, most diverse groups of new Democratic members ever elected, is the time to welcome a new generation of leaders to Congress, not just on the back benches, but in leadership,” Cooper said in a statement to The Tennessean. Cooper has previously voted for former Secretary of State Colin Powell as speaker since the leader does not have to come from the House. Despite the calls for a new House Speaker – nearly 60 Democratic candidates in 2018 called for new leadership – it is not likely a new party head will emerge in the chamber, The Tennessee Star recently reported, citing Fred Lucas of The Daily Signal. “I think there is a…

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