Pennsylvania may soon follow other states and adopt regulations for eco-friendly burial and cremation methods.
Republican senators recently introduced a bill to make water-based cremation legal. Meanwhile, Democratic representatives announced their intention to do the same, while adding a provision for natural organic reduction – also known as human composting.
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Oh, the insecurities of youth! “Will I be popular?” “Can I play basketball as well as the other boys?” “Will the others let me hang out with them?” “Will boys like me?” “Will girls like me?” “Am I as strong/smart/good-looking/funny as the cool kids?”
Most kids and teens endure these doubts about themselves. It’s a normal part of growing up. This coming-of-age emotional agony was described as early as 1774 in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. In this novel, young Werther’s sorrow over unrequited love eventually becomes so unbearable that he leaves his hometown. Next, he is greatly embarrassed when he encounters a gathering of aristocrats. They ask him to leave since he is not a nobleman. Rejected by a girl and now rejected by aristocrats—the exquisite agony! What’s a boy to do?
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The Florida Senate Education Committee approved a bill that will further expand education choice in the Sunshine State on Tuesday.
Education Committee Chairman Corey Simon, R-Tallahassee, introduced Senate Bill 202 which will give additional access and support to parents and students.
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Minnesota Democrats are pushing a bill that would require public schools to provide “climate justice instruction.”
The bill says this type of instruction “views the effects of climate change as interconnected with forms of oppression connecting climate change to social and economic justice issues.”
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After Michigan Republican senators blocked their Democrat counterparts’ plan to send state taxpayers $180 inflation-relief checks, Democrats stripped two lawmakers of their committee assignments.
Democrats relieved Sen. Joe Bellino, R-Monroe, of his leadership position, and removed Bellino and Sen. Dan Lauwers, R-Brockway Township, from their committee assignments for voting against House Bill 4001 and blocking the ability to issue the $180 checks.
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The Biden administration’s woke Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) policies are putting politics ahead of people and hurting retirees savings, a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday alleges.
The complaint, filed by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) on behalf of two Waukesha County residents, seeks a temporary restraining order prohibiting the U.S. Department of Labor from implementing its controversial ESG rule, pending the resolution of the lawsuit. Ultimately, the suit seems a declamatory judgment that the rule violates federal law on administrative powers.
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Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin is the latest governor to call for a review of a controversial Advanced Placement (AP) course that was recently revised to remove tenets of Critical Race Theory and queer studies, Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Youngkin asked the state education department to conduct a review of AP African American Studies to ensure the course, which was revised on Feb. 1, complies with state law prohibiting the use of “divisive concepts,” including CRT, in K-12 schools, according to WTOP News. College Board, which manages advanced placement courses, removed several concepts from the course after Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration rejected the framework, but maintains that it did so without political pressure.
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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., announced Monday the creation of her “Save America, Stop Socialism” PAC to encourage the government to stop giving money to Ukraine.
“I’m fed up with our American government and Biden supporting the war in Ukraine and doing absolutely NOTHING to protect America’s border,” Greene wrote on Twitter. “Help me fund a national ad campaign to STOP WWIII!”
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by Ben Whedon Virginia state Sen. Jennifer McClellan on Tuesday won election to Congress, becoming the state’s first black woman elected to the U.S. Congress from the state. McClellan defeated Republican Leon Benjamin in the race to fill the seat of late Democratic Rep. A. Donald McEachin, who represented the state’s Fourth Congressional District. The Associated Press called the race on Tuesday evening with McClellan claiming 67.5% of the vote to Benjamin’s 32.5%. – – – Ben Whedon is the night editor for the Just the News. He came to the company from Breitbart News and is a graduate of Washington and Lee University. Photo “Jennifer McClellan” by Jennifer McClellan. Photo “Leon Benjamin” by Leon Benjamin. Background Photo “U.S. Capitol” by José Matute. Reprinted with permission from Just the News
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Freshman Arizona State Representative Matt Gress (R-Phoenix) Announced his bill, House Bill (HB) 2800, passed through the House Committee on Appropriations meeting Monday, despite pushback from Democrat members.
“I will continue fighting for Arizona teachers. Arizonans want us to work together, finding solutions and common ground. Last night, my Democratic colleagues put partisan politics FIRST, and doing the right thing for AZ teachers and schools LAST,” Gress tweeted.
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Gail Golec, who unsuccessfully ran for Maricopa County Supervisor last year, and 10 other Arizonans filed a complaint with Arizona Secretary of State (AZSOS) Adrian Fontes last month alleging violations of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) during last year’s midterm election, but the office rejected it. The complaint followed the procedures laid out in federal statutes, however the AZSOS responded and said the complaint didn’t establish any violations to investigate under HAVA.
Golec told The Arizona Sun Times that her team drafted the complaint based on the language in HAVA, so it didn’t make any sense that the AZSOS claimed the election discrepancies weren’t covered by HAVA. She said the problem is fundamentally how the AZSOS is viewing elections, which she believes is dismissive of real complaints. “It’s not ‘fair and equal’ elections, it’s ‘free and equal’ per Article II Section 1 of the Constitution,” she said. “We’re going to turn the lights on to stop the gaslighting and take this country back.”
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The Delafield-based Institute for Reforming Government (IRG) on Tuesday issued a report listing ways the free-market research group believes Wisconsin’s state government can become leaner and more responsive.
Titled “Reimagining Wisconsin Government for the 21st Century,” the document is the product of a year and half of research. It proposes the kind of decentralization that Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has suggested for the federal government by moving some of the public workforce out of Washington, D.C. so it can more closely work with local communities.
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The Arizona-based Goldwater Institute (GI) announced Tuesday it had sent letters to the cities of Phoenix and Tempe, demanding the governmental bodies to change allegedly unconstitutional labor union practices that keep employees trapped paying dues.
“We think it is critically important for government employers to respect public employees’ constitutional rights. Under the U.S. and Arizona constitutions, no one can be forced to remain a member of—or make payments to—any private organization, particularly if it engages in speech or political activity the person disagrees with. Unions are no exception, and cities should not be making deals to trap public employees into being union members or paying union dues,” said GI Staff Attorney Parker Jackson in a statement emailed to The Arizona Sun Times.
“We think it is critically important for government employers to respect public employees’ constitutional rights. Under the U.S. and Arizona constitutions, no one can be forced to remain a member of—or make payments to—any private organization, particularly if it engages in speech or political activity the person disagrees with. Unions are no exception, and cities should not be making deals to trap public employees into being union members or paying union dues,” said GI Staff Attorney Parker Jackson in a statement emailed to The Arizona Sun Times.
State Senator Michael Rulli (R-OH-Salem) this week castigated President Joe Biden for failing to visit East Palestine, Ohio in the aftermath of the train derailment and controlled toxic chemical burn.
Speaking on the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton radio show, Rulli described the president’s failure to visit communities surrounding the site where a 53-car train crashed on February 3. Rail company Norfolk Southern subsequently conducted a controlled vent and burn of five of the rail cars containing vinyl chloride. Biden did however visit Ukraine and Poland early this week to express his ongoing support for Ukraine’s military struggle against Russian encroachment — a trip that didn’t escape the state lawmaker’s notice.
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The House Education and Workforce Committee convened a hearing last week entitled “American Education in Crisis.” The perennial left–right debate between promoting parents’ rights and protecting public schools was on full display.
Committee Chair Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina, used her opening statement to argue for extending “education freedom” and to defend parents’ prerogative to take their children and the public funding that goes with them to private, charter, or home schools. Representative Suzanne Bonamici, a Democrat from Oregon, countered by expressing her “strong opposition” to plans that would “funnel taxpayer dollars to unaccountable private schools and for-profit charter schools,” saying that such an approach would “undermine the effectiveness of public education.”
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NASHVILLE, Tennessee- Since the neo-traditional country artist, Craig Campbell launched his Grindstone Recordings label in 2020, he has released music and banking even more cuts over the last few years. Answering the call of his fans, he released The Lost Files: Exhibit A album on February 17.
He stated, “We had a hard time finding some of these songs because the hard drives got misplaced. Then with some, you had the hard drive, but they wouldn’t open. They were literally lost files.”
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I recently had the opportunity to travel to the Texas Tech University School of Law to debate the merits of capitalism versus socialism with Ben Burgis, a columnist for Jacobin and philosophy instructor at Georgia State University Perimeter College.
It was a riveting discussion, and I hope students left with not just a better understanding of the horrors of socialism but with the inherent morality of capitalism, a system that relies on voluntary action instead of force and state coercion.
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The suspected killer of Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop David O’Connell reportedly worked for the deceased prelate prior to allegedly killing him, police said this week.
Authorities arrested Carlos Medina reportedly after viewing surveillance footage indicating the suspect’s SUV in O’Connell’s driveway at the time of the killing.
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Former President Trump says if reelected he will end President Biden’s policies on gender-affirming care and sign an executive order instructing federal agencies to end all programs promoting gender transitions.
“I will revoke Joe Biden’s cruel policies on so-called ‘gender-affirming care.’ Gender affirming? A process that results in the physical mutilation of minor children,” Trump said Monday in Palm Beach, Florida, at an event for Club 45 USA, which bills itself as the nation’s largest club of Trump supporters.
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Vivek Ramaswamy just went from “strongly considering” to a headlong plunge into the race for the White House.
The 37-year-old biotech entrepreneur and crusader against corporate wokeism on Tuesday filed paperwork for a presidential run — the latest Republican to join former President Donald Trump in what’s expected to be a crowded 2024 GOP nomination chase.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Tennessee’s commissioner of transportation, Butch Eley in studio to discuss how the state researched the option to create choice lanes and where it’s been proven successful.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the official guest host of The Tennessee Star Report, Aaron Gulbransen in studio to comment on James O’Keefe’s recent departure from successful Project Veritas.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the official guest host of The Tennessee Star Report, Aaron Gulbransen in the studio to reminisce about past CPAC events.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed cyber tech guru and singer-songwriter Katie Linendoll to the newsmaker line to talk about her background and new song Your Hands.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Tennessee Commissioner of Transportation, Butch Eley in studio to discuss the public-private legislation needed to implement choice lanes in the state.
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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday announced that it would be seizing oversight of the ongoing Ohio train derailment disaster, ordering the company behind the incident to submit to an EPA-approved cleanup plan as part of its management of the crisis.
The EPA said in a press release that it would “approve a workplan outlining all steps necessary to clean up the environmental damage caused by the derailment.”
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Joe Biden issued an executive order Thursday that grants Domestic Policy Advisor Susan Rice power to transform all agencies of the executive branch into a radical “woke DEI cult,” warns America First Legal (AFL). With scant establishment media coverage, Biden issued his executive order that intends to completely make over all domestic federal agencies to an entirely Marxist worldview – without congressional approval.
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Last week, Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn was in Washington D.C. to help the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) launch the Alliance for Learning Innovation (ALI), a bipartisan initiative co-led with Lewis-Burke Associates, LLC, to increase education research and development investments across the federal government. As expressed by a press release, this new venture aims to dramatically grow federal investment in education:
“The alliance brings together a group of education nonprofits, practitioners, philanthropy, and the private sector to advocate for research-based innovations in education. As a coalition, ALI focuses on innovative solutions that build education R&D infrastructure, center students and practitioners, advance equitable outcomes for students, improve talent pathways, and expand the workforce needed in a globally competitive world. To that end, the alliance has developed a comprehensive multi-part agenda including the goal of dramatically increasing the federal investment in education R&D.”
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A California school district enlisted its Black Lives Matter Task Force to help teach 7th graders about their implicit bias during Black History Month, according to the curriculum obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
In an effort to address “issues related to racial justice,” Anaheim Union High School District (AUHSD) requires 7th through 12th grade teachers to use a curriculum created by the schools’ Black Lives Matter Task Force, a coalition dedicated to creating equity for African American students and staff within the district, according to screenshots of the curriculum obtained by the DCNF. The curriculum teaches students about the “daily effects of white privilege” and “implicit bias.”
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SOMERS, Connecticut – Stanford University School of Medicine Professor Jay Bhattacharya, M.D. said in an interview with The Star News Network Friday that Americans “should be asking” whether diagnostic code data now being utilized to identify patients who were either never vaccinated or not fully vaccinated against COVID-19 will be used “illegitimately.”
Bhattacharya responded to a question about the recent implementation in the United States of new International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) diagnostic codes that requires doctors at clinics and hospitals to ask patients about their COVID mRNA vaccination status.
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Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey joined 24 other attorneys general in suing President Biden’s administration for implementing a rule outlawing pistol braces.
The regulation will “result in the destruction or forfeiture of over 750,000 firearms and will cost the private sector somewhere between $2 and $5 billion,” according to the filing.
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Over the weekend, Ohio Senators JD Vance (R-OH) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) worked together in sending a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) – both at the federal and state level – requesting that the agencies provide their plans to monitor East Palestine and surrounding areas for dioxins following the February 3rd derailment of a Norfolk Southern train.
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Missouri Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey and 19 other attorneys general joined Catholic Bishops protesting religious profiling in a leaked Federal Bureau of Investigation memo.
Joining Bailey were AGs from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia.
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Virginia state Sen. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, will face Republican challenger Leon Benjamin in a special election Tuesday to fill the 4th Congressional District seat left vacant by the death of Democratic Rep. Donald McEachin.
The 4th congressional district, which stretches from Richmond to the North Carolina border, has had a Democratic representative since 2016 when McEachin was first elected to Congress. Leading up to the November election in 2022 when McEachin won reelection just weeks before his death, Cook Political Report designated the seat “solid Democrat.”
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Georgia officials plan to dole out an additional $15 million to expand broadband in unserved and underserved areas of the state.
Gov. Brian Kemp announced a second round of Capital Projects Fund grants funded by American Rescue Plan Act dollars to expand high-speed internet service. The Office of Planning and Budget will administer the funding through a competitive grant process.
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Arizona State Sen. Jake Hoffman’s (R-Queen Creek) sponsored bill, Senate Bill (SB) 1695, passed through the Senate Government Committee Thursday. The bill aims to prevent any possible voter disenfranchisement in future Arizona elections by allowing counties to redo an election.
“We will never stand, as Republicans here in the state of Arizona, for voter disenfranchisement,” said Hoffman during the committee. “I stand on the side of voters, not Republican voters. I stand on the side of all voters, whether they’re an Independent, whether they’re a Democrat, whether they’re a Green Party, a Libertarian, or a Republican. I stand on the side of every single voter. You should not ever be disenfranchised because election officials broke the law.”
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Joe Biden ran on “unity,” which is critical in a multiracial America. He vowed to heal the divisions supposedly sown by Donald Trump. Instead, he is proving to be the most polarizing president in modern memory. Often his racialist rhetoric and condescension have proven demeaning to both blacks and whites. In a volatile multiracial democracy that demands tolerance and restraint, a highly unpopular Biden, for cheap political advantage, continually proves incendiary and reckless.
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Ohio Governor Mike DeWine responded on Friday to a viral video tweeted by U.S. Senator JD Vance (R-OH) that showed a “chemical rainbow” in a creek near the location of a railway crash two weeks ago that released harmful chemicals into the environment in East Palestine, Ohio.
“I know that there’s been some video played on TV circulating of visible contamination in one of the local waterways. A section of Sulfur Run that is very near the crash site remains severely contaminated. We knew this. We know this. It’s going to take a while to remediate this,” DeWine said at a press conference where he gave an update on local environmental testing and cleanup operations.
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The candidates in the election to decide idealogical control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court are set, as liberal Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz and former Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly, a conservative, advanced in Tuesday’s primary election.
With all but 14 percent of Wisconsin precincts reporting, Protasiewicz had tallied 46.4 percent of the vote, while Kelly claimed 24.4 percent
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Liberal Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz, one of four candidates vying for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, has taken in nearly $2.2 million in campaign donations — much of it from big money, left-wing interests, according to a review of campaign finance statements.
Wisconsin voters head to the polls today in a primary election to winnow down to two the field of four — two liberals, two conservatives — for an ultimate showdown in April.
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Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Tennessee State Representative (R-TN-69) Jody Barrett in studio to explain the details of his proposed bill, HB 405 which would create closed primary elections for Tennesseeans.
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Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley brought her freshly minted campaign for president to Iowa Monday evening, telling a town hall crowd in suburban Des Moines that she’s the candidate who’s got the experience and the energy — and the competency — to lead.
The Republican and former ambassador to the United Nations under President Donald Trump didn’t spare her old boss in her headline-grabbing call for a competency test for elected officeholders over the age of 75.
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More than two years after the alleged plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was foiled, criminal cases against alleged perpetrators are still working their way through the court system.
The Antrim County County Circuit Court has approved two motions from the state in the trial of five alleged co-conspirators charged with providing material support in the plot to kidnap Whitmer. Judge Kevin A. Elsenheimer approved the motions on Wednesday, which asked that the cases be joined for trial and that the court allow the admission of co-conspirator statements.
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Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (D) is distancing himself further from Norfolk Southern Corp. on decision-making following the February 3 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, one quarter-mile west of Beaver County in Pennsylvania.
The governor last week sent a letter to Norfolk Southern President and Chief Executive Officer Alan Shaw last Tuesday underscoring the concerns of many residents and officials from affected areas after a controlled vent and burn of toxic chemicals the train was carrying. Shapiro followed up that letter with an announcement that Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection would conduct water testing in the region, independent of monitoring by the federal government, to determine if environmental safety has worsened.
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The 1619 Project wraps itself in Old Glory — literally; actors in the Hulu version of the project often appear cloaked in the flag. But don’t let that fool you: the project is yet another attempt to brainwash you into believing your country is racist, evil, and needs revolutionary transformation.
The project’s founder, Nikole Hannah-Jones, deserves credit for chutzpah. She distorts the truth to forward this nefarious goal, but she’s gotten very far.
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Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has filed lawsuits against three companies in Columbus, alleging bad business practices.
Yost’s office accused two Columbus contractors of doing subpar driveway resurfacing work, and two used car shops of resetting odometers and selling ruined cars in a statement released on Friday.
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As toxins from the East Palestine railway crash travel downstream, the city of Cincinnati stated on Friday that it will temporarily suspend sourcing water from the Ohio River.
However, according to Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, testing has shown the plume of contaminates has “completely dissipated” by now and that the water is once again “safe to drink.”
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Pennsylvania’s stalled special session gets a second chance on Tuesday when House lawmakers return to the chamber floor after a month-long break.
In an email sent Friday afternoon, House leadership canceled three regular session days scheduled for Monday through Wednesday and substituted four special session days in their place, lasting Tuesday through Friday.
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Ohio got back on a record track with new business filings in January.
After struggling through the latter half of last year, the state set a record with 17,006 new business filings last month, Secretary of State Frank LaRose said.
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The State House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure passed a measure Friday aimed at constricting what the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) can display on dynamic message signs along Arizona’s highways.
“So, they [ADOT] do put on things, sometimes, that are not related to transportation, and that would be, I think, inappropriate,” said State Rep. Neal Carter (R-Casa Grande), the bill’s sponsor, to the committee. “What we’re worried about is the government effectively using it [the signs] as a kind of advertisement for other things.”
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