Day: December 9, 2018

Leiper’s Fork to Welcome Kid Rock in Dec. 15 Christmas Parade

Jason M. Reynolds

Colorful entertainer Kid Rock will be welcomed in the Christmas parade in Leiper’s Fork. Parade goers at the Leiper’s Fork Christmas Parade on Saturday, Dec. 15, will be joined by special guest Kid Rock, who will walk in the parade. The parade, previously scheduled for Saturday, Dec. 8, was postponed until Dec. 15 at 2 p.m. due to inclement weather, the Williamson Herald said. Kid Rock was disinvited as the grand marshal of the Dec. 1 Nashville Christmas Parade after he called Joy Behar of ultra-liberal show “The View” a word that starts with “b,” The Tennessee Star reported. The colorful singer appeared on “Fox & Friends” Dec. 30, live from Nashville, and made the remark about Behar. Parade organizers instead invited James Shaw Jr., the hero who wrestled a gun away from the Waffle House shooter in April. Nashville Mayor David Briley and Councilman Freddie O’Connell had threatened to boycott the parade over Kid Rock, according to Fox 17 News. In the “Fox & Friends” interview, Kid Rock also bemoaned political correctness, Townhall said. Rock said everyone deserves love, minus one person in particular – Behar. He then used the derogative term. “No, no, no, no,” host Steve Doocy…

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Tennessee Star Report: Senior Correspondent Laura Baigert Discusses the Proposed Red Flag Bill and the Possibility of it Passing

Julie Carr

On Friday’s Tennessee Star Report with Steve Gill and Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 am to 8:00 am – Leahy spoke to Senior Correspondent and Tennessee General Assembly expert, Laura Baigert regarding the current “Red Flag” bill proposed by Senator Steve Dickerson, a Republican from Nashville and defined its inconsistencies along with the reality of whether or not the bill has the possibility to be passed. Leahy: And we are joined now by our top or senior correspondent covering the capital hill here in Tennessee General Assembly and the Governor, Laura Baigert who has our lead story about are flag bill being introduced by state Senator Steve Dickerson.  Welcome, Laura! Baigert: Good morning, how are you, Michael? Leahy: So our lead story today is about state Senator Steve Dickerson, a Republican from Nashville who has promised to introduce a, what’s called a Red Flag bill.  But that bill is being criticized by local gun right groups like the Tennessee Fire Arms Association as well as national gun right groups.  Tell us what a Red Flag bill is Laura. Baigert: Well, the Red Flag is kind of what you think…

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Walter Williams Commentary: Our Ignorance Of Socialism is Dangerous

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by Walter E. Williams   A recent Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation survey found that 51 percent of American millennials would rather live in a socialist or communist country than in a capitalist country. Only 42 percent prefer the latter. Twenty-five percent of millennials who know who Vladimir Lenin was view him favorably. Lenin was the first premier of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Half of millennials have never heard of communist Mao Zedong, who ruled China from 1949 to 1959 and was responsible for the deaths of 45 million Chinese people. The number of people who died at the hands of Josef Stalin may be as high as 62 million. However, almost one-third of millennials think former President George W. Bush is responsible for more killings than Stalin. By the way, Adolf Hitler, head of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, was responsible for the deaths of about 20 million people. The Nazis come in as a poor third in terms of history’s most prolific mass murderers. According to professor Rudolph Rummel’s research, the 20th century, mankind’s most brutal century, saw 262 million people’s lives destroyed at the hands of their own governments. Young people who weren’t alive…

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Wall Street Bankers Following Pence’s Lead in #MeToo Era

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by John Elliott   If a young, female executive wants to find an experienced male colleague on Wall Street to mentor her, she can stop looking now. In the wake of #Metoo and the Brett Kavanaugh affair, male bankers and lawyers are quite literally fleeing to their man caves. Bloomberg reporters Gillian Tan and Katia Porzecanski have discovered that the ripple effects of the #Metoo campaign have hit Wall Street like a tsunami: For obvious reasons, few will talk openly about the issue. Privately, though, many of the men interviewed acknowledged they’re channeling Pence, saying how uneasy they are about being alone with female colleagues, particularly youthful or attractive ones, fearful of the rumor mill or of, as one put it, the potential liability. A manager in infrastructure investing said he won’t meet with female employees in rooms without windows anymore; he also keeps his distance in elevators. A late-40-something in private equity said he has a new rule, established on the advice of his wife, an attorney: no business dinner with a woman 35 or younger. The changes can be subtle but insidious, with a woman, say, excluded from casual after-work drinks, leaving male colleagues to bond, or having what should be a private meeting with a boss…

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Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Blocks Trump Effort to Deny Asylum for Illegal Aliens

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by Kevin Daley   The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a temporary restraining order against a Trump administration policy that denies asylum to illegal aliens. The 2-1 decision is the latest setback the 9th Circuit has rendered to President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda. “Just as we may not, as we are often reminded, ‘legislate from the bench,’ neither may the executive legislate from the oval office,” Judge Jay Bybee wrote for the majority. Former President George W. Bush appointed Bybee to the bench, and the judge has a conservative reputation. Read the 9th Circuit’s full decision here. U.S. District Court Judge Jon Tigar entered an injunction against President Donald Trump’s new asylum rules on Nov. 19. In effect, the reforms withhold asylum from illegal aliens, though foreign nationals who present for inspection at designated ports of entry remain eligible for legal status. Bybee sympathetically notes the rules were meant to address “a staggering increase in asylum applications” between 2008 and 2018. Trump issued the new guidelines as several thousand caravan migrants congregated near the U.S. border in Tijuana, Mexico. The 9th Circuit panel largely agreed with Tigar’s earlier decision, concluding that Trump’s policy violates the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which Congress…

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Commentary: Only Two Weeks Left for Republicans to Get It

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by Rachel Bovard   There’s only one area where bipartisanship still reigns in Washington: avoidance. Republican and Democrat leaders this week held hands and used the funeral events for President George H. W. Bush as an excuse to move their funding deadline—which previously expired on December 7—two weeks forward, to December 21, four days before Christmas. In doing this, Congress isn’t getting festive. Rather, backing up a government funding deadline dangerously close to the Christmas holiday is an old political tactic, designed to assure passage of bloated and controversial spending bills. In the old days, the carrots in this equation were earmarks—funding pet projects of lawmakers was the way to grease the skids on controversial bills. But now that earmarks have been banned (in theory, anyway), the only option left is a stick: threatening lawmakers with chaos, missed Christmas holidays and a government shutdown, unless they instantly (and many times, without reading) pass whatever bill their leaders cook up. This is a vexing development for conservatives, particularly when it comes to the big will-they-won’t-they question circulating around Washington: the fate of Trump’s border wall. If GOP leaders are already willing to waste critical weeks in the waning days of their majority, what…

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Chuck Schumer Demands Climate Concessions From Trump on Infrastructure Spending

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by Michael Bastach   Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told President Donald Trump that Democrats won’t cut a deal with him on infrastructure spending unless it includes a slew of policies aimed at fighting global warming. Schumer, the Senate’s top Democrat, called for, among other things, making green energy and electric vehicle tax credits permanent, more research funding into green technology and funding to harden infrastructure against extreme weather. “The impacts will continue to worsen if we do not take decisive and immediate action to transition to a 100-percent clean energy economy,” Schumer wrote in a letter to Trump sent Thursday. Both Trump and Democrats proposed $1 trillion infrastructure packages, but Democrats also want to make an infrastructure build-up about fighting global warming. “A single infrastructure bill will not solve our climate problem in its entirety, but it is an important first step,” Schumer wrote to Trump, also giving a list of demands for any infrastructure plan. Schumer’s letter, and accompanying Washington Post op-ed, come as Democrats push for global warming to become a central focus of 2019. A small, but growing, cadre of Democrats led by Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York want “Green New Deal” legislation to rapidly force the U.S. to use…

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California’s Background Check Law Had No Impact on Gun Deaths, Johns Hopkins Study Finds

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by John Miltimore   A new academic study has found that, once again, gun laws are not having their desired effect. A joint study conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the University of California at Davis Violence Prevention Research Program found that California’s much-touted mandated background checks had no impact on gun deaths, and researchers are puzzled as to why. California Gun Laws Are a Failure In 1991, California simultaneously imposed comprehensive background checks for firearm sales and prohibited gun sales (and gun possession) to people convicted of misdemeanor violent crimes. The legislation mandated that all gun sales, including private transactions, would have to go through a California-licensed Federal Firearms License (FFL) dealer. Shotguns and rifles, like handguns, became subject to a 15-day waiting period to make certain all gun purchasers had undergone a thorough background check. It was the most expansive state gun control legislation in America, affecting an estimated one million gun buyers in the first year alone. Though costly and cumbersome, politicians and law enforcement agreed the law was worth it. The legislation would “keep more guns out of the hands of the people who shouldn’t have them,” said then-Republican…

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Mueller and Manafort Have a Lot Riding on a Supreme Court Double Jeopardy Case

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by Kevin Daley   The Supreme Court appeared skeptical Thursday of overturning an exception to the Constitution’s double jeopardy prohibition, which allows state and federal prosecutors to bring successive prosecutions for the same offense. The case is carefully followed in Washington because of its potential ramifications for special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. “The notion that the federal government would step in and prosecute a defendant after a state jury acquitted him of the same offense would have shocked the founding generation,” one of the briefs at the high court reads. Thursday’s case arose in Alabama, when Terence Gamble was arrested during a 2015 traffic stop after police recovered two baggies of marijuana and a 9mm handgun from his car. State prosecutors charged Gamble, a convicted felon, for illegal possession of a firearm. A federal charge for the same crime followed. The so-called separate-sovereigns doctrine allows state and federal courts to prosecute individuals for the same offense, double jeopardy notwithstanding. The question in Thursday’s case was whether that rule should be overturned. That move could hinder the Mueller probe, should President Donald Trump choose to pardon aides and associates who the special counsel has since indicted. Since the president can only issue…

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Rep. Steve Cohen Says President Donald Trump is a ‘Criminal Enterprise’

Jason M. Reynolds

U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN-09), the same man who said he wants U.S. Sen.-elect Marsha Blackburn to jump off a bridge, has concluded that President Donald Trump is a “criminal enterprise.” On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Last Word,” Steve Cohen spoke about the sentencing memos on former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. He said, “Donald Trump is a criminal enterprise.” Host Lawrence O’Donnell said, “Only three presidents of the United States have been accused of federal crimes by … a prosecutor, a federal prosecutor of any kind while in office, and Donald Trump is now one of them.” O’Donnell pointed out that any impeachment proceedings would start in the House Judiciary Committee, where Cohen is a member. Steve Cohen said, “I think that what we’ve learned today is what we — many of us have known for at least two years, and some for maybe 10 or 15, that Donald Trump is a criminal enterprise. The Trump family is a criminal enterprise, and that most of the people he’s involved with, like Michael Cohen and Manafort, are shady folks.” The representative said many committees would investigate “Trump activities” but they would not start out with impeachment. Steve Cohen added, “proof…

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