Day: August 11, 2020

Joe Biden Taps Senator Kamala Harris as Running Mate

The Associated Press

Joe Biden named California Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate on Tuesday, making history by selecting the first Black woman to compete on a major party’s presidential ticket and acknowledging the vital role Black voters will play in his bid to defeat President Donald Trump.

“I have the great honor to announce that I’ve picked @KamalaHarris — a fearless fighter for the little guy, and one of the country’s finest public servants — as my running mate,” Biden tweeted. In a text message to supporters, Biden said, “Together, with you, we’re going to beat Trump”

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The First Day of Special Session Reveals Legislation That Will be Considered Regarding COVID-19 Liability, Telemedicine and Protesting

Laura Baigert

The first day of the Tennessee General Assembly’s special session Monday called by Governor Bill Lee, revealed the legislation related to COVID-19 liability, telemedicine expansion and protesting that will be considered.

Only legislation related to the topics specifically contained in the governor’s proclamation can be considered during the special session, which began at 4 p.m. on Monday with both the House and Senate going into a floor session.

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Commentary: Biden Is Speaking Out of Both Sides of His Mouth

Admin

Former Vice President Joe Biden seems to think he can coast to victory by posing as a moderate while adopting the most extreme policy platform of any major-party candidate in American history. The thing is, the American people just aren’t that stupid — we know a huckster when we see one.

Anxious to boost the dismally-low enthusiasm for his candidacy among his party’s base — one member of which recently compared voting for Biden to eating “half a bowl of s—” — Biden has taken the unprecedented step of shifting his agenda significantly to the left since locking up the nomination, rather than moving toward the political center. After appointing far-left firebrands such as Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke and radical Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to spearhead his policy agenda, Biden unveiled a so-called “unity platform” that directly copied numerous proposals championed by democratic-socialist Senator Bernie Sanders.

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Trump: Convention Speech Locale is White House or Gettysburg

The Associated Press

President Donald Trump said Monday that his acceptance speech for the Republican presidential nomination will be held at either the White House or the Gettysburg battlefield.

The president’s initial hopes for the event to be a four-day promotion for his reelection bid have been steadily constrained by the coronavirus pandemic, culminating in his decision last month to cancel nearly all of the in-person proceedings. In recent weeks, President Trump and his aides have looked for alternatives that would allow him to recreate at least some of the pomp of the event.

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Commentary: The Age of COVID-19 May Be the Perfect Time to Re-Think the Legal Monopoly Known as the Bar

Admin

COVID-19 has delivered an occasional silver lining in the economic clouds troubling America. The most obvious is to highlight stupid regulations imposed to benefit special interests and their political enablers. Including members of the legal monopoly.

Professional regulation is supposed to protect the public. However, even doctors and lawyers, among many others, have used controls to limit competition for their services. They are even more insistent that other experienced and well-trained professionals — such as nurses and paralegals — be prevented from competing than that the occasional genuine incompetent be ferreted out.

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Memphis Barber Wins Lawsuit Against Tennessee Officials who Kept Him from Working

Chris Butler
Elias Zarate

A Memphis man has won a lawsuit against the Tennessee Board of Cosmetology and Barber Examiners for denying him the right to work.

As The Tennessee Star reported in 2018, state officials denied that man, Elias Zarate, a barber’s license because he did not have a high school diploma.

A press release that the Nashville-based Beacon Center of Tennessee emailed Monday updated Zarate’s case. Beacon, a right-of-center think tank, represented him.

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Sen. Ron Johnson Subpoenas FBI Director Christopher Wray for All Crossfire Hurricane Documents

Admin

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, subpoenaed FBI Director Christopher Wray last week for all documents related to Crossfire Hurricane, the investigation of the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia.

The subpoena, issued on Aug. 6, calls for Wray to produce all of the documents related to the probe by Aug. 20.

Johnson is also demanding that Wray hand over all records that the FBI provided the Justice Department’s office of the inspector general for its scathing report on Crossfire Hurricane.

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This Week’s Special Legislative Session Could Cost Tennessee Taxpayers More Than $100,000

Laura Baigert

The special session of Tennessee lawmakers scheduled for the week of August 10 will likely cost Tennessee taxpayers more than $100,000.

Legislators were called to the special session by Governor Bill Lee through an August 3 proclamation to address three issues, the first two which could have been addressed during the previous legislative session.

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With Less Than a Week to Go, Biden and the Democrats Are Still Juggling Virtual Convention Details

The Associated Press

Joe Biden’s presidential nominating convention will highlight the U.S. political spectrum from the left flank of New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to the Republican old guard of former Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

But that doesn’t mean there’s room for every prominent Democrat who would get a share of the spotlight at what would have been a traditional convention in Milwaukee before the COVID-19 pandemic made that impossible. Instead, Biden’s campaign and other convention planners are continuing negotiations with various power players over how to produce a truncated virtual convention with just eight hours of programming over four nights from Aug. 17-20.

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Puerto Ricans Demand Answers Over Primary Ballot Shortage and Election Delay

The Associated Press

The future of Puerto Rico’s botched primaries rested in the hands of the island’s Supreme Court as answers trickled out Monday on why voting centers lacked ballots and forced officials to reschedule part of the primaries in a blow to the U.S. territory’s democracy.

A plan to hold another primary on Aug. 16 for centers that could not open on Sunday could change depending on the ruling of a lawsuit filed by Pedro Pierluisi, who is running against Gov. Wanda Vázquez to become the potential nominee of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party. Joining the lawsuit was Puerto Rico Sen. Eduardo Bhatia, of the main opposition Popular Democratic Party.

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REVIEW: ‘Apocalypse Never’ Takes Direct Aim at ‘Consensus’ of Climate Alarmism

Admin

An important new book by Michael Shellenberger, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, attempts to counter the common belief that climate change poses an imminent and existential threat to humanity and the planet. At 285 pages, this is a relatively short and very readable book, but it covers a lot of ground. And with an additional 125 pages containing over 1,000 footnotes, Shellenberger’s arguments are well documented.

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Players Unite in Push to Save College Season, Create Union

The Associated Press

Michigan defensive back Hunter Reynolds saw the tweets from Trevor Lawrence and other college football players pushing for the opportunity to play this season despite the pandemic.

Reynolds, one of the organizers behind a players’ rights movement in the Big Ten, didn’t like the way some on social media seemed to be pitting Lawrence’s message against the efforts of #BigTenUnited and #WeAreUnited.

“There was a lot of division,” Reynolds told AP early Monday morning.

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Pentagon Offers Military Airwaves for 5G Wireless Networks

The Associated Press

The Pentagon plans to free up a big chunk of its military airwaves in the U.S. for high-speed internet service, part of a broader push to get ahead of China in the deployment of 5G wireless technology.

The Trump administration announced Monday that it has identified radio spectrum used for radar defense systems that can be shared with commercial telecommunications providers without compromising national security.

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Minnesota Nonprofit Used Donations Intended for Jailed Protesters to Bail Violent Offenders

Corinne Murdock

The Minnesota Freedom Fund (MFF), a bail-issuing nonprofit trending since George Floyd’s death, recently used donations intended for protestors to bail violent offenders. 
Donors intended for their MFF contributions to bail out jailed Black Lives Matter protestors. Instead, Fox News shared that MFF recently paid near half a million in cash to bail out two individuals whose charges are entirely unrelated to Floyd protests.

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Commentary: As a Singularity Draws Near, Can We Step Back from the Brink?

Admin

It’s obvious to all, at this point, that factional division is reaching a breaking point in America. Like a pair of locked-together tectonic plates pulling slowly in opposite directions, the strain has been increasing for a long time now – and when seismic ruptures finally occur, they happen suddenly, and release enormously destructive energies.

Some years back, John Derbyshire referred to this pent-up tension as a “cold civil war,” and here in 2020 more and more of us are getting the feeling that the term is apt. Is it? (The question has also been the subject of an ongoing weekly discussion between the radio host John Batchelor and historian Michael Vlahos.)

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Whitmer Lashes Out at President Trump for ‘Cutting’ Unemployment Benefits

Jordyn Pair

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer lashed out at President Trump in a statement on Sunday after the president cut the enhanced federal unemployment benefit from $600 a week to $400 a week after Democrats in the House failed to make a deal with the Republican-controlled Senate on the matter.

Trump signed four executive orders on Saturday, one of which lowers the enhanced unemployment benefit by a third through the end of the year, with states being required to contribute $100, according to MLive. Unemployed Americans originally received $600 per week through the CARES Act, which expired July 31.

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Ohio Accepts Plan for $300 in Federal Unemployment Aid

The Associated Press

Ohio unemployment claimants would receive $300 in federal weekly unemployment assistance under an option provided by the White House that doesn’t require extra state spending, the administration of Gov. Mike DeWine said.

The plan agreed to late Sunday by DeWine means less money for the unemployed under another option, that would provide $400 a week, with $100 coming from the state.

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Madison County Judge Sets Back Efforts to Recall School Board Members in Tennessee

Chris Butler

One group’s mission to give all Tennessee voters the power to recall school board members has withered away because of a chancery court judge in Madison County.

As The Tennessee Star reported last month, members of the Tennessee General Assembly proposed a law that would have given voters statewide the power to recall school board members. But legislators later watered down the bill so that it would apply only to Madison County, and they later passed it into law.

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