Day: January 20, 2019

Five Chattanooga Women’s March Protesters Arrested for Blocking Traffic Without Permit

Jason M. Reynolds

Chattanooga police arrested five Women’s March protesters after they blocked streets without a permit and would not move. The Chattanooga Times Free Press reported the arrests Saturday. Marchers walked across John Ross Bridge where several police officers ordered them to move, another vehicle charged at them, and organizers chanted and cursed through megaphones before being taken into police custody. The group did not have a city permit because they did not want to pay the required cost for police to come to the event, according to an event organizer. Jean-Marie Lawrence, the march’s chairperson, told News Channel 9 that the group planning the march was unable to get funding so the march part of the event would be legal, so it was changed to a rally. The costs were about $5,000, including charges for police pay but not including barriers. Lawrence uses a wheelchair and respirator so was unable to attend due to the rain. Lawrence says the organization told participants that marching would not be authorized, but if they did march to obey traffic laws, News Channel 9 said. Those arrested were released, she told the TV station. According to the Chattanooga event’s Facebook page, “The theme for the 2019…

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Rep. Green, Senators Blackburn, Alexander Back Trump Immigration Compromise Offer Which Pelosi Has Dismissed

Jason M. Reynolds

At least three members of Tennessee’s Congressional delegation came out in support of President Donald Trump’s offer Saturday to end the government shutdown with a compromise on immigration. U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander and U.S. Rep. Dr. Mark Green issued statements of support for Trump’s proposed compromise. Blackburn said: The president has once again shown he is willing to work with Democrats to end this shutdown and find a compromise that will secure our border,” said Senator Blackburn. “This proposal that has bipartisan support would provide the much-needed $5.7 billion for a border barrier. “The border patrol agents have repeatedly asked for three items: a physical barrier, more technology, and more agents and officers. As members of Congress we must deliver for them.” Green said: “The president has made yet another effort to engage Democrats on the crisis at the border, something I’ve called an arterial bleed. It’s time to stop the hemorrhage. Will Speaker Pelosi come to the table and negotiate? Do Democrats care about the American lives being devastated by crime and the drug trade? Do they care about our hard working govt. employees? Speaker Pelosi?” Alexander said in a statement: “The President has proposed…

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Commentary: Why the Citizenship Question Matters

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by Jesse Merriam   The Judicial Resistance has struck again. As I have explained here and here, the historic 2016 election revealed how our federal courts have harnessed their power to stifle any change on the cardinal issue of the day and the signal issue defining the division between the American Left and Right: illegal immigration. The Judicial Resistance made its first strike two years ago, invalidating the so-called “travel ban” on multiple occasions, forcing President Trump to narrow the ban to a near-nullity. It struck again in blocking President Trump’s efforts to withdraw federal funding from states that refuse to enforce federal immigration law. And it struck yet again, just last month, when a district court issued a nationwide injunction mandating that the Trump Administration must permit the Central American caravaners to stay in the United States for as long as it takes to process their asylum claims. Now, in a 277-page opinion issued Tuesday, Judge Jesse M. Furman of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan held that the Trump administration’s decision to place a citizenship question on the 2020 census was illegal. Judge Furman rested his opinion on two principal reasons. One, Judge Furman claimed that the administration’s…

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Grand Jury Indicts Metro Nashville Police Officer Delke on First-Degree Murder Charge in Hambrick Shooting

Jason M. Reynolds

A grand jury indicted Metro Nashville Police Department Officer Andrew Delke on a charge of first-degree murder in the shooting of Daniel Hambrick. District Attorney Glenn Funk’s office announced the decision Friday, Nashville Public Radio (WPLN) said. The case will be tried in the Criminal Court of Davidson County, NewsChannel 5 said. Delke, who is out on bond, will plead not guilty. Judge Melissa Blackburn decided at the preliminary hearing two weeks ago there was probable cause to bound the case over to the grand jury. This is the first time an on-duty Nashville police officer has been indicted for a fatal shooting, WPLN said, quoting a police spokesperson. NewsChannel 5 said Delke has been decommissioned but remains on administrative assignment. Arraignment is expected in seven to 10 days. The shooting has been fraught with racial undertones. WTN radio’s Dan Mandis tried to hold a reasoned debate last August with Joy Kimbrough, the attorney representing the Hambrick family, The Tennessee Star reported at the time. The audio of Mandis’ intervew on Super Talk 99.7 is available here. Video of the shooting is available here on the Nashville Scene. Kimbrough used what Mandis called “inflammatory language” repeatedly even as he said…

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Trump Praises Mueller for Knocking Down ‘Phony’ BuzzFeed Story

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by Chuck Ross   President Donald Trump offered rare praise Saturday for the special counsel’s office, which issued a statement Friday night knocking down a BuzzFeed story alleging Trump instructed his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress about Russia. “I appreciate the special counsel coming out with a statement last night. I think it was very appropriate that they did so. I very much appreciate that,” Trump told reporters outside the White House. “I think that the BuzzFeed piece was a disgrace to our country. It was a disgrace to journalism,” Trump said, referring to BuzzFeed’s report as a “totally phony story.” “I think it’s going to take a long time for the mainstream media to recover its credibility,” added Trump, who has regularly in the past criticized Mueller for leading what he calls a “witch hunt” in the Russia probe. BuzzFeed reported Thursday night that Cohen told the special counsel Trump instructed him to lie to Congress in 2017 about his efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow during the 2016 campaign. The report, which relied on two anonymous law enforcement officials, also asserted emails and witness testimony would corroborate Cohen’s account. Cohen pleaded guilty in…

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Commentary: The Left Moves From Pluralism to ‘Breaking Things’

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by Carson Holloway   The recent debate over a Congress member’s obscenity reveals something interesting and troubling not only about the style of our public discourse but also the substance of our politics: the contemporary American Left’s growing disenchantment with the traditional American politics of pluralism. The obscenity was provided by freshman House Democrat Rashida Tlaib, who made news by using a colorful 12-letter word to call for the impeachment of President Donald Trump. Although many of Tlaib’s colleagues were quick to condemn her choice of words, the Washington Post’s Molly Roberts came to her defense. Asked Roberts, “What’s so wrong with motherf—er?” Roberts was willing to defend Tlaib’s use of obscenity because she thinks it manifests the fighting spirit that will be required for “the left half of the left” to “push broader boundaries” and thus to achieve its grand political objectives. “The liberal vanguard Tlaib belongs to seeks massive change, from Medicare for all to a grand climate bargain,” she wrote. “ They see no hope for compromise now, so they look to a future of Democratic control, when ramming transformation through will require breaking things.” Roberts’s approval of this kind of politics is surely shared by many…

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Trump Offers Limited DACA Protections in Exchange for the Wall

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U.S. President Donald Trump said Saturday that “urgent action” was required to respond to a humanitarian crisis on the southern U.S. border, as he offered a plan to reopen the government and gain the funding he wants for a border wall. Trump, speaking from the White House, said, “Our immigration has been badly broken for a very long time.” “We are now living with the consequences,” which are tragic, he added. Trump said his plan to offer temporary protections to young people in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program would also include $5.7 billion for a “see-through barrier,” which he said would quickly reduce the problems of crime and illegal immigration. Before the speech, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi released a statement, saying, “Democrats were hopeful that the president was finally willing to reopen the government and proceed with a much-needed discussion to protect the border.” Passage ‘unlikely’ “Unfortunately, initial reports make clear that his proposal is a compilation of several previously rejected initiatives, each of which is unacceptable and in total do not represent a good-faith effort to restore certainty to people’s lives. It is unlikely that any one of these provisions alone would pass the House, and…

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Justice Department Is Hiring Lawyers to Take on Property Seizures for Trump Border Wall

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by Jason Hopkins   In a strong indication the Trump administration is preparing for the next phase of the immigration battle, the Department of Justice is now hiring lawyers to handle border wall litigation in South Texas. The two attorney positions — which are advertised to pay between $53,062 and $138,790 — are to be based in the southern Texas towns of Brownsville and McAllen. Preferred candidates are to have “at least four (4) years of civil litigation experience in litigation of land condemnation cases, oil and gas disputes, and real estate matters,” according to the posting on USAJobs, adding that knowledge of the Spanish language “is helpful, but not required.” The jobs were first posted in December, with the deadline for applications closing on March 5. The attorneys will likely be tasked with eminent domain and other property seizure legalities — issues that will undoubtedly arise if President Donald Trump is able to move forward with construction of a wall on the southern border. The federal government is on the 28th day of a partial shutdown — the longest in U.S. history. Trump is demanding Congress send him a budget that includes $5.7 billion in funding for 200-plus miles…

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March for Life Promotes Atmosphere of Joy, Not Hate

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by Rachel del Guidice   Tens of thousands of pro-life activists from across the country gathered Friday in Washington to speak out against abortion by participating in the 46th annual March for Life. A massive crowd–made up of many high school and college students but also families, older Americans, and clergy—gathered on the National Mall for the rally that preceded the event before making their way along Constitution Avenue to the Supreme Court. Notable conservative leaders and influencers who addressed attendees included Ben Shapiro, host of “The Ben Shapiro Show” and editor-in-chief of The Daily Wire. Vice President Mike Pence and second lady Karen Pence put in a surprise appearance. I checked out the event for The Daily Signal, observing and talking with participants during my 13th year attending the march. Here are seven things I noticed: 1. A Thankfulness for Lives Spared Kate Meldrum from Greenville, Indiana, said she attended the march this year because she could have lost her sister to abortion. “I am here today to march for the unborn,” Meldrum said. “And when I was younger, my little sister Iris was born, and she had some birth defects, and they told my parents it would be…

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Second Trump-Kim Summit Planned for Late February

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U.S. President Donald Trump said Saturday that he had an “incredible” meeting with North Korean nuclear envoy Kim Yong Chol and the two sides had made “a lot of progress” on denuclearization. The White House announced after talks between Trump and Kim on Friday that the U.S. president would hold a second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in late February, but would maintain economic sanctions on Pyongyang. “That was an incredible meeting,” Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House, said of the talks.”We’ve agreed to meet sometime, probably the end of February. We’ve picked a country but we’ll be announcing it in the future. Kim Jong Un is looking very forward to it and so am I. “We have made a lot of progress as far as denuclearization is concerned and we are talking about a lot of different things. Things are going very well with North Korea.” Trump and the White House have given no details of the talks, and despite his upbeat comments there has been no indication of any narrowing of differences over U.S. demands that North Korea abandon a nuclear weapons program that threatens the United States and Pyongyang’s demands for a…

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New Info About Opioid-Profiteering Family Pushes Largest Museum in US to Rethink Gift Acceptance Policies

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by Evie Fordham   The Metropolitan Museum of Art is reviewing its gift acceptance policies after information that members of a prominent donor family headed a deceit campaign to push the highly addictive prescription opioid OxyContin, The Met told The Daily Caller News Foundation. Other New York City art museums that have taken money from the Sackler family, which owns Purdue Pharma, refused to comment on the Tuesday court filing with documents showing members of the Sackler family covered up information about the dangers of OxyContin. “The Sackler family has been connected with The Met for more than a half century. The family is a large extended group and their support of The Met began decades before the opioid crisis. The Met is currently engaging in a further review of our detailed gift acceptance policies, and we will have more to report in due course,” Daniel H. Weiss, president and CEO of The Met, told TheDCNF in a statement Thursday. An employee at The Met told TheDCNF news about the Sackler family is what prompted the institution to review its policy, although the employee would not detail any review timeline. Sackler family members gave a whopping $20 million to the…

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Democrats Worry Doug Jones’ Opposition to Trump’s Wall Will Sink His Re-Election Bid

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by Chris White   Democratic Sen. Doug Jones’ opposition to President Donald Trump’s wall is threatening to torpedo the Alabama lawmaker’s re-election bid in 2020, and Democrats in the state say he’s a “dead man walking.” Jones, who barely defeated Republican Roy Moore during a bruising special election in 2017, finds himself in an unenviable position: opposing the president’s demands for wall-funding while representing a red state chalked with federal workers who support Trump’s immigration policies. The moderate Democrat is testing the limits of his party’s pull in Alabama, a heavily conservative state with one of the largest groups of federal workers in the country. Voters are criticizing Jones for not only opposing Trump’s demands for wall funding, but also for putting their jobs at risk. “I voted for Jones, I did,” Ann Lynch, a retired schoolteacher who lives near Huntsville, Alabama, where more than half of the local economy is tied to federal spending, told The New York Times. “But he doesn’t support the wall. I don’t like that, of course. I think we need it. Trump knows we need it.” Jones is the only Senate Democrat from a red state up for re-election in 2020. He’s standing pat.…

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Judson Phillips Commentary: Bill Lee and the Death of a Dream

Zachery Schmidt

by Judson Phillips   Bill Lee is now the Governor of Tennessee. I did not support Bill Lee in the primary. That does not matter, as Lee beat Congressman Diane Black, Randy Boyd and then Tennessee House Speaker Beth Harwell. Lee also crushed Karl Dean in the General Election. Conservatives were elated. Conservatives had mostly rallied around Bill Lee early in the campaign. Lee’s campaign focused much on his Christian faith and the tragedy surrounding the death of his first wife. His campaign was long on story and short on specifics. His “Ten for Tennessee” was a mostly aspirational platform, lacking almost totally in specifics. For Tennessee conservatives, Bill Lee was a dream come true. Conservatives were tired and disheartened after eight years of a very liberal Bill Haslam administration. After watching a conservative agenda die for eight years and watching government grow at the same rate that Democrats would have grown government, conservatives were excited about Bill Lee. He was a handsome, charismatic candidate who was one of them. For many conservatives, election night was the highwater mark. Lee drubbed Dean and that election was never in doubt. But then, things changed. Soon after the election, “Ten for Tennessee,”…

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Iowa Employee Fired for Signing Emails ‘In Christ’ Loses Court Battle

Anthony Gockowski

An Iowa state employee who sued his former employer after being fired for signing his emails “In Christ” lost his court battle Wednesday. According to the Sioux City Journal, a federal jury found Wednesday that Michael Mial, a former employee of the Cherokee Mental Health Institute’s Civil Commitment Unit for Sexual Offenders, failed to demonstrate that his employer didn’t accommodate his religious practices. The ruling puts an end to Mial’s two-year court battle, which started in January 2017 when he filed a religious discrimination suit against his former supervisors. Mial claims that he was told his “deeply held religious beliefs are great for helping” patients, but was then asked to keep his beliefs out of his work, and was later fired. The lawsuit argued that his use of “In Christ” in the signature line of his emails was protected by the First Amendment, and did not violate a state endorsement of religion, but was rather a “minuscule accommodation on behalf of the Plaintiff and his protected beliefs.” “By firing Mial and by limiting their employment to persons whom agree with the organization’s religious beliefs, or lack thereof, and the stifling of the expression of religious viewpoints, Defendants have violated and…

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Ilhan Omar Only Minnesota Politician to Address Women’s March Despite Group’s Struggles With Anti-Semitism

Anthony Gockowski

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN-05) was the only elected official to speak at this year’s Women’s March Minnesota, and was invited to speak despite the organization’s recent condemnation of “those who have engaged in anti-Semitic, anti-woman, and anti-LGBTQ hate speech.” The national Women’s March has been roiled by controversies surrounding anti-Semitic comments made by its leaders, one of whom attended an event hosted by Louis Farrakhan as recently as last year. In response, Women’s March Minnesota issued a January 10 press release “reevaluating its ties to Women’s March, Inc.” “Women’s March Minnesota does not and will not tolerate the language or practice of hate,” the group said. “We will not tolerate anti-Semitism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia and we condemn these expressions of hatred in all forms.” The group went on to claim that it was “charting a new course into what 2019 looks like for Women’s March Minnesota.” But during its annual march Saturday, the only elected official to address attendees was Omar, who has been dealing with charges of anti-Semitism of her own, as The Minnesota Sun reported. “We fight because we recognize that women’s rights are civil rights. This June will mark a century since the 19th Amendment was…

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Pelosi Faces Pressure From GOP for Appointing ‘Anti-Semitic’ Ilhan Omar to Foreign Affairs Committee

Anthony Gockowski

Republican House leaders are calling on Speaker Nancy Pelosi to denounce Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN-05) support for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement after she was appointed to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “I finally have committee assignments and I am excited. 1st choice—House Foreign Affairs Committee: The Foreign Affairs Committee oversees all foreign assistance, national security affecting the country’s foreign policy, treaties, peacekeeping and war powers,” Omar tweeted Thursday. In a series of tweets, Omar claimed that she plans to use the “committee’s human rights jurisdiction to hold the president accountable for deaths in detention centers on his watch.” “As someone who has seen firsthand the havoc wreaked by war, I am proud to serve on the committee that is responsible for overseeing our country’s—and this president’s—actions abroad,” she added. I finally have committee assignments and I am excited 🤗 1st choice- House Foreign Affairs Committee: The Foreign Affairs Committee oversees all foreign assistance, national security affecting the country’s foreign policy, treaties, peacekeeping and war powers. — Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) January 17, 2019 The Minnesota Sun has covered Omar’s past anti-Semitic comments extensively, most recently reporting on her opposition to a bill that would allow state and local…

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Ohio Department of Health Confirms Investigation of Doctor Who Prescribed Lethal Opioid Doses to 27 Patients

Andrew Shirley

In most major surgeries, a doctor will prescribe, at most, 20 micrograms of fentanyl, a powerful opioid pain killer. At most, as an “adjunct to general anesthesia,” 20-50 micrograms are used. Doctor William Husel of Columbus was administering, in some cases, 1,000 micrograms. After prescribing these lethal doses to at least 27 patients, justice may finally be coming for him. The Ohio Department of Department of Health confirmed Friday that it was launching an investigation into the shocking revelations regarding Dr. Husel. The investigation came after a Monday report that the critical care physician had prescribed these unprecedented doses of fentanyl to 27 patients. The earliest death, as discovered, appears to have taken place in March 2015. Jan Thomas, a near-death patient, was prescribed 800 micrograms of the opioid. Thirty-one minutes after the lethal prescription was administered, she was declared dead. As of reporting, the doctor faces at least four lawsuits, representing more than a dozen of the affected families. While the prescribing doctor is at fault in every one of these instances, the nature in which the deaths occurred raises additional and serious questions. Whenever a doctor requests a large amount of a controlled substance, like fentanyl, there is an extensive process of approval that…

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Governor Bill Lee Delivers Inspiring Inaugural Address Short on Specifics

Chris Butler

NASHVILLE, Tennessee — Republican Bill Lee took the oath as governor on Saturday and then delivered a broadly inspiring, almost pastoral, inaugural address in a 15-minute speech that did not provide much in the way of the specifics of his agenda. The inauguration was held indoors at War Memorial Auditorium due to rain. Lee began his address with a compelling historical note that traced his own family’s history in Tennessee. “In 1796 a man and his young family made their homestead on the banks of the Cumberland River just up the way from here. That was the year that the great state of Tennessee was founded. And 223 years later and 50 governors later, we stand here on the banks of the Cumberland River, celebrating our history and anticipating our future,” the new governor said. A few minutes later, Lee identified the man. “The man that I spoke of was Charles Blaxton Lee, and he was my seventh great-grandfather.” Lee said we in Tennessee “stand here today beneficiaries not of great governments of the past but of the lives of the great men and women who have come before us. Men and women who forged difficult lives on the frontier who formed…

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