Day: November 24, 2018

Franklin Graham Group Helps with Disaster Relief in Florida

Chris Butler

Volunteers for a Franklin Graham affiliated group came to Florida’s panhandle to help with disaster relief in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael, but it’s about so much more than that, they said. Volunteers with the group Samaritan’s Purse told The Tennessee Star the devastation in that region is still widespread, and a lot of the locals have lost almost everything. Some volunteers came to help homeowners with the next stage of rebuilding. Some came to help remove trees off people’s homes. And then, as volunteer Kristy Kulberg told The Star this week, they also came to offer emotional and spiritual support. “One of our homeowners had bad roof and tree damage. Their son has battled with some addictions and his walk with Christ. The storm pushed him a lot farther away,” Kulberg said. Volunteers, Kulberg went on to say, helped him and his elderly father, and they helped make the home more livable and tolerable. They also brought the wayward man closer to God. That man soon rededicated his life to Christ, Kulberg said. “That was a big victory for us that we were able to help that family in so many different ways. When we got there, it was…

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Commentary: Enlightenment Thinkers Understood the Need for Religion

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by Jeff Minick   In January I resolved to read Will and Ariel Durant’s magnum opus The Story Of Civilization before the end of the year. It is now early November, and I have finished Volume X of this series, Rousseau and Revolution, meaning I should fulfill my self-imposed obligation under deadline. The Durants devoted the last three of these eleven volumes to the period 1715-1815. A casual observer of The Story Of Civilization might wonder why these chroniclers of world civilization spent so much ink and energy on so limited a spectrum of time and place. Were they simply enamored with the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the age of Napoleon? Not at all. At the end of Rousseau and Revolution, the Durants remark, “So we end our survey, in these last two volumes, of the century whose conflicts and achievements are still active in the life of mankind today.” (Despite this farewell, the Durants added a final volume, The Age of Napoleon.) The Durants examined the political, philosophical, and scientific whirl of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution and understood the grip of that age on our present-day politics and culture. Its philosophers, statesmen, and scientists—Catherine the Great,…

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Edgar Torres-Rangel Has Prior Arrest in Kentucky

Chris Butler

Edgar Torres-Rangel, an alleged illegal immigrant on the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s Top 10 Most Wanted list and charged with killing a Bedford County woman, has had at least one other documented run-in with the law. That arrest happened five years ago in Barren County, KY, according to online records from that county’s detention center. Officers with the Glasgow Police Department arrested Torres-Rangel in August 2013 and charged him with operating a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol or drugs – first offense. They also charged him with not having a moped operator’s license. According to drive.ky.gov, the local circuit court clerk’s office issues moped licenses. Torres was released from custody later that day. No other information was available about the arrest or what happened afterward. An unidentified officer with the Barren County Sheriff’s Office told The Tennessee Star Friday that any other officials who could shed light on that arrest, including employees of the county courthouse, were unavailable. This was one day after the Thanksgiving holiday. TBI officials used Torres-Rangel’s mugshot from this arrest and released it to the media after they put him on their Top 10 Most Wanted list. According to the TBI’s Facebook page, members…

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Tijuana Declares Humanitarian Crisis as Caravan Migrants Overwhelm City Shelter Capacity

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by Will Racke   Officials in Tijuana have declared a humanitarian crisis in response to thousands of mostly Central American migrants who have arrived in recent weeks and overwhelmed temporary shelters in the Mexican border city. As of Thursday night, at least 5,000 recent arrivals were camped in Tijuana, which is serving as a staging ground for the migrants to apply for asylum in the U.S. City officials estimate as many as 1,200 migrants arrived from the nearby city of Mexicali in less than 24 hours between Tuesday night and Wednesday afternoon, straining temporary shelters that were already operating at capacity. At least 2,000 more migrants are traveling in a second caravan currently moving north through the central Mexican states of Jalisco and Queretaro — most are expected to end up in Tijuana in the coming weeks. In response to the influx, Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum declared an international humanitarian crisis and blasted the federal government for allowing the migrants to concentrate in the city. “They have categorically omitted and not complied with their legal obligations,” Gastelum said Thursday at a news conference, according to the Arizona Republic. “So we’re now asking them and international humanitarian aid groups to bring in and carry…

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Ranchers and Native Americans Battle at Supreme Court Over Hunting Rights

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by Tim Pearce   A coalition of agricultural interests is backing the state of Wyoming in a Supreme Court Case over the hunting rights of Crow tribal members from a 150-year-old treaty. Eight agricultural groups filed a motion in support of Wyoming on Tuesday for arresting a tribal member, Clayvin Herrera, after he and several other Native Americans killed elk in Wyoming’s Bighorn National Forest in 2014. Herrera sued the state, claiming a right to hunt on “unoccupied” federal land secured in a 19th century treaty between the U.S. and the tribe. “We are not seeking to overturn the hunting rights the Crow Tribe reserved in their treaty with the United States,” Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF) attorney Cody Wisniewski said in a statement. “Quite the contrary, we are just asking the Court to treat the right as the both the tribe and United States understood it in 1868.” MSLF is representing the agricultural groups Wyoming Stock Growers Association, Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation, Wyoming Wool Growers Association, Montana Farm Bureau Federation, Idaho Farm Bureau Federation, Utah Farm Bureau Federation, Colorado Farm Bureau Federation and South Dakota Cattlemen’s Association. Herrera’s case against Wyoming rests on the meaning of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty that set up the…

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Amazon’s New Move Will Gentrify Neighborhoods

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by Alexandra Staub     When large companies move into an area, politicians often proclaim how the new business will create jobs, increase tax revenues, and thus lead to economic growth. This is one reason local governments offer tax incentives to businesses willing to move in. Amazon’s decision to locate offices in Long Island City across the East River from Manhattan, and in Crystal City on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., follows this pattern. The New York location borders the largest low-income housing area in the United States, with mostly African-American and Hispanic residents whose median household income is well below the federal poverty level. These people, local politicians claim, will benefit from Amazon’s move to the neighborhood. However, when large companies with an upscale and specialized workforce move into an area, the result is more often gentrification. As economic development takes place and prices of real estate go up, the poorer residents of the neighborhood are forced out and replaced by wealthier ones. Is such a market-driven approach that accepts displacement ethically justifiable? And how do we even measure its costs? Can gentrification ever be ethical? Although politicians don’t typically frame gentrification as a question of ethics, in accepting…

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House Dem Who Signed Pelosi Opposition Letter Reverses His Course

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by Hanna Bogorowski   A House Democrat who was among 16 legislators to sign a letter opposing Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the House changed his mind Wednesday and will support Pelosi for the position. New York Rep. Brian Higgins told The Buffalo News he made an agreement with Pelosi on two of his key legislative issues: infrastructure and health care. In return, Pelosi can count on his vote. “I have an agreement in principle with the Democratic leader that those are going to be two priorities, and that I will be the lead person on the Medicare buy-in,” Higgins said in the interview. Higgins’s reversal comes just a few months after he referred to her as “aloof, frenetic and misguided” and called for her replacement. “Some will ask why I have changed my position,” the representative said in a statement. “The answer is simple: I took a principled stand on issues of vital importance not only to my constituents in Western New York but also to more than 300 million Americans whose lives can be improved by progress in these areas.” “A principled stand, however, often requires a pragmatic outlook in order to meet with success,” Higgins added. Pelosi welcomed Higgins’s offer…

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Trump Divides Nation, Hurts Foreign Relations, Corker Says

Jason M. Reynolds

Surprise, surprise. Retiring U.S. Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) used some of his final moments in office to criticize President Donald Trump. The former Chattanooga mayor, who is leaving the U.S. Senate in January, delivered his latest missive against the president in the Chattanooga Times Free Press. The story is available here. Corker, who served as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, told the newspaper that the president’s governing model “is based upon division, anger and resentment, and in some cases, even hate.” “He is able to keep his base together by his approach and instead of appealing to our better angels and trying to unite us like most people would try to do, the president tries to divide us,” Corker said. “There’s just no reason for it, and it doesn’t take us to a better place to squander the well-earned good will that we have around the world at a time when our leadership is more important than ever.” The Tennessee Star has reported on Corker’s past attacks against Trump, including criticism in August over the president’s removal of former CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance as “kind of a banana republic kind of thing.” In July, Corker criticized Trump’s…

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