Day: January 23, 2019

President Trump to Pelosi on SOTU: ‘I Will Be Honoring Your Invitation, and Fulfilling My Constitutional Duty’

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President Trump sent a letter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi late Wednesday morning confirming his original acceptance of her invitation to deliver the annual State of the Union address from the U.S. House of Representatives chambers on Jan 29. “Thank you for you letter of January 3, 2019, sent to me long after the Shutdown began, inviting me to address the Nation on January 29th as to the State of the Union,” the letter begins. President Trump goes on to summarize the series of communiques between his office and Speaker Pelosi leading up to his official response to her: Therefore, I will be honoring your invitation, and fulfilling my Constitutional duty, to deliver important information to the people and Congress of the United States of America regarding the State of our Union. I look forward to seeing you on the evening on January 29th in the Chamber of the House of Representatives. It would be so very sad for our Country if the State of the Union were not delivered on time, on schedule, and very importantly, on location! White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders tweeted a copy of the letter: President Trump’s letter to Speaker Pelosi on…

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The Tennessean Stirs Up Biased Criticism of Williamson County Republican Party Newsletter Meme

Steve Gill

While the national news media outlets are engaged in a frenetic attempt to distance themselves from recent reporting debacles that have crippled their credibility, The Tennessean has produced a story attacking the Williamson County Republican Party for a meme included in a recent newsletter that mocked the intellect of the increasingly controversial new member of Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  The meme has a picture of Ocasio-Cortez being asked about her opinion on Roe v. Wade (the Supreme Court decision that essentially legalized abortion on demand). It portrays her responding in support of it since those are the “only two ways Mexicans can cross the river.” The Tennessean claims the meme is racist. National media outlets have been quick to jump in as well. Williamson County GOP Chair Debbie Deaver noted that The Tennessean is engaging in the same sort of contrived controversy that we are seeing from other liberal news outlets. “As a political figure, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is going to be the subject of political satire and depending on your political view you may find it offensive others while others will find it humorous,” Deaver said. “When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggested her progressive agenda was analogous to gang rape (running train) the…

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Attorney: Ilhan Omar ‘Will Be Sued Next Week’ If She Doesn’t Retract Comments About Covington Catholic Incident

Anthony Gockowski

An attorney representing the Covington Catholic High School kids told The Minnesota Sun that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN-05) will “be sued next week” if she doesn’t retract the libelous statements she made about the viral incident. In response to a tweet from President Donald Trump Tuesday night, Omar claimed that the boys at the center of the encounter “were taunting [five] black men before they surrounded Phillips and led racist chants.” She also criticized the Catholic children for hiring “a right wing PR firm” to help represent them. Her comments prompted widespread backlash on social media, since her claims run counter to what the nearly two-hours of video shows. The “[five] black men” mentioned by Omar were identified as members of the Black Hebrew Israelites, described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a group that is “growing increasingly militant.” The video shows the Black Hebrew Israelites taunting students at the March for Life, calling them “dirty ass crackers,” “dirty animals,” “racists,” “bigots,” “faggots,” “incest kids,” “white crackers,” and more. At one point, they tell an African American student that his white peers will “harvest his organs,” seemingly a reference to the movie “Get Out.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQyBHTTqb38 Attorney Robert Barnes, who…

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Rep. Mark Green Receives Committee Assignments

Chris Butler

The House Steering Committee announced that U.S. Republican Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee is recommended to serve on the House Committee on Homeland Security and the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. This, according to a press release this week. The House is expected to vote and ratify Rep. Green’s assignments this week, the press release went on to say. Green represents Tennessee’s Seventh U.S. Congressional District. “A graduate of West Point, Rep. Green is a former Special Operations flight surgeon with three combat tours in the War on Terror. Green was part of the mission to capture Saddam Hussein and interviewed the former dictator for 6 hours on the night of his capture,” according to the press release. Rep. Green is also a former state legislator and successful businessman. The healthcare company Dr. Green founded garnered $200 million in annual revenue. He served in the Tennessee State Senate for six years, where he distinguished himself as a conservative leader fighting for freedom and smaller government. His chief legislative accomplishment was repealing the Hall Income Tax, the second time in U.S. history a state repealed an income tax, the press release said. “It has been an honor to serve our…

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Commentary: University of North Carolina’s Leadership Crisis Exposes Academia’s Feckless Mindset

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Carol Folt’s tenure as chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill came to an abrupt end last week, thanks to her failure to grasp political realities and her defiant support of the school’s radical social justice crowd. She challenged the system’s governing body, the Board of Governors, by having the pedestal of the Civil War memorial known as “Silent Sam” removed. In response, the Governors gave her a couple of weeks to clean out her desk instead of letting her finish the spring semester as she intended. It should hardly surprise anybody that Folt ran afoul of the university system’s ultimate authority to promote the social justice agenda. After all, she has always sided with the radical diversity agenda against more prudent interests; there is ample evidence from her days as provost and interim president at Dartmouth College as well as her time at UNC. Once the Confederate statue known as Silent Sam was pulled down by a howling mob of protesters in August 2018, Folt’s end was inevitable. It was obvious that the mob’s action had official imprimatur, with police from the campus and the city of Chapel Hill “standing down” while the bolts connecting the…

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Trump Vows ‘No Cave In’ on Border Wall Demand

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U.S. President Donald Trump vowed Tuesday to not cave in on his demand for a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border as the longest-ever partial government shutdown extended into a second month. Senate Republicans began efforts to try to end the shutdown and approve Trump’s wall as part of a package of measures proposed by the U.S. leader that for three years would protect hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the U.S. from deportation back to their homelands. Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court dealt the Trump administration a defeat, saying it would not immediately act on its request to end the program started by former President Barack Obama to protect nearly 700,000 people brought to the country as children from deportation, allowing them to stay in the country indefinitely. A Senate vote could come Thursday, but there so far is no indication that enough opposition Democrats would support the legislation to ensure its passage. Day 32 of shutdown The shutdown has furloughed 800,000 government civil servants, with 420,000 forced to continue working without pay and the remainder sent home, some of whom have been forced to look for temporary work elsewhere to help pay their household bills. All are set to…

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DC Think Tank Calls on NBC to Stop Blacking Out Climate Skeptics

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by Chris White   A Washington-based think tank published an ad Tuesday pressing NBC News to stop blacklisting climate skeptics from debating aspects of global warming on the channel’s broadcasts. The Competitive Enterprise Institute created an ad campaign pushing NBC’s Meet the Press to include climate skeptics in future broadcasts discussing aspects of global warming. NBC refused to run a televised version of the 30-second ad on its Jan. 20 episode, according to a CEI press statement. “NBC has made it perfectly clear they have no interest in hosting an open debate on climate change or policy alternatives for the environment, as evidenced by their decision to reject both guests on-air and paid ads during the program to give expert views shared by millions of Americans,” CEI President Kent Lassman noted in a press statement Tuesday morning. The ads, which will run in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, push back against Meet the Press host Chuck Todd’s decision to exclude so-called climate alarmists and calls for what CEI says is a real and open debate about the impacts of climate alarmism. Todd kicked off a Dec. 30 program with a promise to the audience: The show will…

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Covington Students Speak Out Against Media Smear Campaign, Detail Death Threats and Doxxing

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by Joshua Gill   Students from Covington Catholic High School spoke out against the media smear campaign against them, saying they’ve endured death threats and have been doxxed multiple times. Two Covington students identified as Sam and Grant spoke out in a video posted to social media by high school junior C.J. Pearson, denouncing the media’s portrayal of their peers as racist aggressors and claiming “several media outlets blatantly lied” about their confrontation with American Indian activist Nathan Phillips. The students said they and their Kentucky school received multiple threats, including threats of shooting, arson and bombs, and that people exposed the personal information of Covington students online. “There have been many threats against our lives, against our parents,” Sam said. “Some of these threats include that we should be locked in the school and it should be burned to the ground, the school being bombed, school shooting threats.” “It’s really scary. I know that a lot of people are scared to go to school tomorrow and won’t be attending because of what could happen. There have been cops there ever since the incident and I think there will be a lot more tomorrow,” he added. Grant claimed people on…

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Commentary: Financial Markets Depend on Trump Holding Firm

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by CHQ Staff   Strategic tax and wealth protection guru attorney Denis Kleinfeld recently posted a column on NewsMax that is worth parsing and passing along as an interesting counterpoint to the conventional wisdom of Big Media. Kleinfeld wrote that, of the many risks to the investment markets, none is greater than the risk of errant government policy. This is certainly true and as we see it, before the Obama era it was accepted wisdom, especially among Republicans, that government interference in the economy was bad and something to be avoided except in the direst of circumstances. However, says Kleinfeld, free-market capitalism is under attack by the political-social-intellectual-elitist who deeply believe in the democratic socialist ideology—and hostile to any dissent from the party line. This ideology is effectively a secular religion based on the illusionary belief that a hybrid of collectivist economic elements and capitalism imposed and enforced by a strong central government can create a utopian society. This attack Mr. Kleinfeld warns against is particularly dangerous now because, since the beginning of the Obama era, the Democratic political establishment, and Republican political establishment, both accepted as normal the country’s economic stagnation, wealth redistribution, submission to international governance, and loss…

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Former Iowa School Official on Probation After Embezzling $217K

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by Neetu Chandak   A former school official was sentenced to three years of probation at a Friday hearing after embezzling $217,000 from a school district near Des Moines, Iowa. Melissa Lantz, 35, stole the money over the course of several years from Woodward-Granger Community School District. She was given a 10-year suspended prison sentence along with paying back the money and doing community service, The Associated Press reported Monday. Former school official who took nearly $217K gets probation https://t.co/RzybpuCTRC pic.twitter.com/XC2qilqL6l — KCCI News (@KCCINews) January 22, 2019 District officials felt Lantz was getting off too easy, according to KCCI. ” … personally, sick to my stomach — I mean, just knowing where [the money] came from at that particular point — disheartening,” Superintendent Brad Anderson said, KCCI reported. Lantz was hired to work with the school district in 2012. She worked her way up to becoming a business manager after handling payroll assignments. A state audit found Lantz issued 101 unauthorized checks to herself, the AP reported in August 2018. Lantz used the money to pay the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Granger Motors and Homemaker’s Furniture, KCCI reported. She has children attending school in the district, so Lantz will…

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US Pacific Northwest Sees Measles Outbreak

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Officials in the Pacific Northwest state of Washington have declared a measles outbreak after at least 22 people, including 20 children, have become infected with the disease since Jan. 1. “It’s an outbreak because generally, the way we define an outbreak is when you have more observed cases than expected cases. And generally with measles, the expected number is zero,” Dr. Alan Melnick with Clark County Public Health told KOIN6 TV in Portland, Oregon, last week. “You know, we have a very effective vaccine for measles. Two shots are 97 percent effective. We really shouldn’t be seeing measles.” The outbreak comes on the heels of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) releasing data for 2018 earlier this month. The CDC said the 349 reported cases in 26 states and the District of Columbia made 2018 the second worse year for measles since 2000, when the disease was eliminated in the U.S. It said 2014 was the worst year, with a reported 667 cases. The report said some of the cases were related to unvaccinated people in Orthodox Jewish communities, as well as travelers who became infected after visiting Israel, Italy, France and Britain, where major outbreaks are occurring.…

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Democrats Lurch Left on Top Policies as 2020 Primary Begins

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Democratic presidential contender Julian Castro launched his campaign by pledging support for “Medicare for All,” free universal preschool, a large public investment in renewable energy and two years of free college for all Americans. That wasn’t enough for some of his party’s most liberal members. Critics on social media quickly knocked Castro’s plan to provide only two years of free higher education— instead of four— as “half measures,” “scraps” and “corporate Dem doublespeak.” Aware of the backlash, the former Obama administration Cabinet member clarified his position in an interview days later. “At least the first two years of college or university or apprenticeship program should be tuition free— and preferably four years,” Castro told The Associated Press. “We’re going to work toward that.” Welcome to the 2020 presidential primary. Almost no policy is too liberal for Democrats fighting to win over their party’s base, which is demanding a presidential nominee dedicated to pursuing bold action on America’s most pressing challenges. Among two dozen possible candidates, virtually all have embraced universal health care in one form or another. Some have rallied behind free college, job guarantee programs, a $15 minimum hourly wage and abolishing— or at least reconstituting — the federal…

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Supreme Court Upholds Trump Transgender Military Policy – for Now

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by Fred Lucas   The Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration in a limited ruling Tuesday on the issue of transgender people serving in the military. The narrow issue the high court decided on in the broader case of Trump v. Karnoski was whether to uphold a lower court’s injunction preventing the military from implementing the Defense Department’s 2018 policy. The policy, put in place by then-Defense Secretary James Mattis, allowed active duty transgender people to continue serve in the military, but largely did not allow new people with a medical condition known as gender dysphoria to join the military. Gender dysphoria is defined as a psychological condition marked by significant emotional distress caused by a conflict of gender identity and biological sex. “It’s refreshing to see the U.S. Supreme Court rein in lower court judges who are bent on telling the commander-in-chief how to run the military,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council and a Marine veteran. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called the ruling was “deeply concerning” in a tweet. .@realDonaldTrump’s ban on trans Americans serving in our nation’s military was purpose-built to humiliate brave men & women seeking to serve their country. Deeply…

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North Carolina Misses Federal Subpoena Deadline to Turn Over Voter Information

A.P. Dillon

North Carolina state officials have missed the deadline to turn over voter information requested by the federal office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The two federal grand jury subpoenas were issued in September 2018 and requested five years worth of voter and ballot data from 44 counties. In addition, the subpoenas also requested eight years of data for voters statewide and eight years of data from the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). The DMV criteria are lengthy but include anyone registering to vote who indicated that they were born outside of the United States, dealt with immigration services, used foreign documents to try to register, or had their applications rejected. The subpoenas can be accessed below: ICE DMV Subpoena ICE Elections Records Subpoena In a letter to the North Carolina State Board of Elections Attorney Joshua Lawson dated September 6, 2018, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sebastian Kielmanovich agreed to postpone fulfillment of the subpoenas until January 2019 due to the upcoming election. The letter also states that the postponement is agreeable only if North Carolina preserves the records being requested. The subpoenas were originally sent on August 31, 2018 to the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE),…

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Iowa Judge Strikes Down State’s Pro-Life Heartbeat Bill on Anniversary of Roe v. Wade

Anthony Gockowski

A state judge ruled Tuesday, the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, that Iowa’s “heartbeat bill” banning abortions after the detection of a fetal heartbeat is unconstitutional. The bill was signed into law by Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-IA) in May 2018, but was placed on hold after Planned Parenthood of the Heartland and Emma Goldman Clinic sued the state. On Tuesday, Polk County District Judge Michael Huppert ruled against the state and declared the heartbeat bill to be “unconstitutional and therefore void.” “In summary, it is undisputed that the threshold for the restriction upon a woman’s fundamental right to terminate a pregnancy (the detection of a fetal heartbeat) contained within Iowa Code chapter 146C constitutes a prohibition of previability abortions,” Huppert stated in his ruling. “As such, it is violative of both due process and equal protection provisions of the Iowa Constitution as not being narrowly tailored to serve the compelling state interest of promoting potential life.” Huppert borrowed language from the Iowa Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling against imposing a 72-hour waiting period on abortions, which he frequently cites throughout his decision. Like Huppert, the Iowa Supreme Court declared in its 2018 decision that “a woman’s right to decide whether to…

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Minnesota Democrat Urges Colleagues to ‘Give Trump the Money’

Anthony Gockowski

Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN-07), who says he’s “the only one left in the middle,” urged Democrats to “give Trump the money” for the border wall during a recent interview. Peterson sat down with Joel Heitkamp Tuesday for his KFGO News & Views program to discuss the ongoing government shutdown and how to get out of it, though Peterson didn’t exactly have an optimistic outlook. “I don’t see how we get out of this either, and they’re not reaching out to us—maybe me. I’m kind of the only one left in the middle. There’s a way out of this, but I mean both sides have taken these ridiculous positions. Our side—we’ve wasted money on things worse than the wall. I’m not against the wall. There’s places where it’s needed. We don’t need a wall coast to coast, but there’s places where a wall makes sense,” Peterson said. The Democrat from rural Minnesota said he’s been “talking to some ranchers down there” who have people “crawling over their fences and there’s no border patrol agents.” “One guy told me he had some people crawl over and he called the border patrol, and he said it’d be five hours before we can get…

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East Boys, Maplewood Girls Top Weekly Tennessee Star Teams

Scott Wallace

  The East Nashville Magnet Eagle Boys (17-3 overall, 7-0 D10AA) and the Maplewood Lady Panthers (13-3, 7-0 D10AA) top this week’s Tennessee Star Metro Basketball poll. The Eagles, riding a 14 game winning streak, are facing their toughest challenge so far this week facing ninth-ranked Pearl-Cohn (11-7, 5-2 D10AA) at home on Tuesday and seventh-ranked Martin Luther King Academy (10-7, 3-3 D10AA) on the road on Friday. “Every game is tough for us especially in our district,” said East head coach Jim Fey. “You can’t take anyone for granted. Every team wants to beat us and seem to play their best against us. Just another tough couple of games if you ask me.” The Lady Panthers are riding high after going into East Nashville and defeating the Lady Eagles 60-58 for the second year in a row. This week the Lady Panthers will take on 17th ranked Stratford (2-11, 1-5 D10AA). Games This Week: Tuesday, January 22 (All girls’ games start at 6 pm. Boys at 7:30) Hume-Fogg @ Whites Creek Martin Luther King Jr. @ Stratford Pearl-Cohn @ East Nashville Hunters Lane @ Cane Ridge Glencliff @ Hllsboro McGavock @ Hillwood Antioch @ Overton Stem Academy @ RePublic…

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Washington Post Issues Correction: Activist Who Instigated Confrontation With Covington Catholic Kids Not a Vietnam Veteran

Chris Butler

Left-wing agitator Nathan Phillips, the 64-year-old Native American man who confronted several Kentucky high school students from Covington Catholic this past weekend in Washington, D.C., is not a Vietnam veteran, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday, correcting an earlier report in which the iconic liberal newspaper, now owned by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, said he was, in fact, a Vietnam veteran. The Post made its stunning correction on Tuesday at the bottom of an article about Phillips’ interactions with the Catholic high school students, where it admitted its error. “Earlier versions of this story incorrectly said that Native American activist Nathan Phillips fought in the Vietnam War. Phillips said he served in the U.S. Marines but was never deployed to Vietnam,” The Post story read. Phillips had a well-publicized encounter last weekend with a group of teens from Covington Catholic wearing “Make America Great Again” hats in Washington, D.C. Phillips’ military credentials matter a lot, according to National Review writer and Columbia, Tenn. resident David French. “Much of the continued progressive hatred for the Covington Kids depends on taking Nathan Phillips at his word,” French wrote on his Twitter page. “No one should.” Several other publications have incorrectly reported previously that…

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