It is through wonder that men now begin and originally began to philosophize; wondering in the first place at obvious perplexities, and then by gradual progression raising questions about the greater matters too, e.g. about the changes of the moon and of the sun, about the stars and about the origin of the universe.
Read the full story
As Republicans lead state efforts to prevent minors from accessing pornography, the porn industry is fighting a renewed legal battle against the federal government after the Biden administration halted a rule ensuring “fair access to banking services.”
The battle is starting what critics call “Operation Choke Point 2.0,” using its authority over the banking sector.
Read the full story
Daily Mail A group of current and former employees of Gannet is suing the media giant, saying they were fired or lost out on promotions to make room for less-qualified women and minorities. The five staffers say they suffered from the firm’s diversity hiring policy, which was introduced in 2020 to get newsrooms looking more like the communities they served within five years. It’s the latest in a series of lawsuits and actions to take aim at ‘reverse racism’ in corporate America. READ THE FULL STORY
Read the full story
The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) announced that the state’s Free Hunting Day this year will be today- coinciding with the opening day of squirrel season.
The Volunteer State’s Free Hunting Day is a yearly event by the TWRA with the goal of increasing interest in hunting and “for people to experience the enjoyment of the sport.”
Read the full story
On Thursday, the Biden Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against SpaceX, accusing the company of discrimination for preferring American citizens over asylum seekers and refugees in its hiring practices.
In its 13-page complaint, the Justice Dept. alleges that SpaceX “routinely discouraged asylees and refugees from applying and refused to hire or consider them, because of their citizenship status, in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).” The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division seeks to force SpaceX to give “fair compensation” to non-citizens that were not hired.
Read the full story
A proposal in a Stanford University journal for “news source trustworthiness ratings” would, if it advances, be like a digital reboot of the CIA’s psychedelic mind-control experiments from the Cold War era, says a former State Department cyber official who now leads a online free speech watchdog group.
Read the full story
A new artificial intelligence program that finds voter registration errors can be used for voter roll maintenance, possibly being a replacement for the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC).
Since last year, nine GOP-led states have left ERIC, a multistate voter data-sharing organization that facilitates voter registration and maintenance of voter rolls, amid such concerns as partisan influence, increasing costs and a failure to address voter fraud.
Read the full story
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell raised the possibility of more interest rate hikes in prepared remarks Friday as inflation remains above the Fed’s target rate.
Powell hinted that the Fed will raise interest rates in the future if factors like high inflation, a hot labor market and sustained economic growth persist, according to a speech given by Powell at the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium. Interest rates have been raised 11 times since March 2022 in an effort to fight inflation, bringing the federal funds rate within a range of 5.25% and 5.50%, the highest rate since January 2001.
Read the full story
The American Family Association (AFA) issued an alert Wednesday urging Americans to sign its petition that demands the American Medical Association (AMA) “do no harm” by ending its support for taxpayer-funded “unnatural and irreversible gender-modifying procedures,” such as uterus transplants from dead women for biological men in order to improve their “mental health.”
The petition, which, at the time of publication had collected over 25,000 signers, cites a paper, published in June, in AMA’s Journal of Ethics, that AFA asserts is “driven with political and social activism.”
Read the full story
As the state looks to evaluate and possibly overhaul its tax system, one state public policy group says officials should improve the tax credit system’s transparency.
“The state has taken a vital step toward creating a fairer tax system by convening this panel and by implementing specific legislative provisions like the one in 2021’s SB 6 that provided for the analyses of tax benefits,” Georgia Budget and Policy Institute President and CEO Staci Fox said in a statement. “While these measures are commendable, past evaluations of tax credits have run into resource and information limitations that hindered meaningful findings and the identification of actionable next steps.
Read the full story
The Ohio Ballot Board on Thursday rejected using the full text of a proposed amendment for the November ballot that would enshrine abortion into the state Constitution, instead adopting a condensed version of the text written by the Ohio Secretary of State’s Office.
The board approved the condensed language, now titled Issue 1 for the November general election, in a 3-2 split decision. The board can decide to use the full text of the proposed amendment or use a condensed version of the text for the ballot language.
Read the full story
There will be no shortage of task forces in Wisconsin this year.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos on Thursday ordered the creation of four new task forces on artificial intelligence, childhood obesity, truancy and human trafficking.
Read the full story
The Florida Public Service Commission held the first of a series of hearings Thursday into how much utilities can potentially charge their customers to repair storm-damaged electrical infrastructure.
Thursday’s hearing was an organizational one to set the stage for the main hearings Sept. 14-17. Each utility and the commission’s staff can call witnesses and offer testimony during the hearings.
Read the full story
Virginia’s Attorney General Jason Miyares issued an opinion this week, arguing that the governor’s model policies comply with federal and state nondiscrimination laws and that “local school boards are required to adopt policies that are consistent with them.”
The opinion comes at the request of Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who has been advocating since the release of the latest version of the Virginia Department of Education’s “Model Policies on Ensuring Privacy, Dignity, and Respect for All Students and Parents in Virginia’s Public Schools” for their adoption — to strong resistance from some districts in the commonwealth.
Read the full story
Many people believe that one of the best defenses to an armed attack on any location, including a school, is an immediate armed response. Certainly, the actions already taken this year to put “school resource officers” in public schools with taxpayer funding evidences at least some in government and many in the public see the life saving necessity of an immediate armed response to a potential mass killing or assault.
Read the full story
A new lawsuit says Michiganders should get a permanent income tax break instead of one for just one year.
Lawmakers, including two plaintiffs, passed legislation in 2015 enacting an income tax reduction trigger that lowers the current rate when the state’s revenue outpaces inflation by a set amount. Last year’s state revenue triggered a rollback of the rate from 4.25% to 4.05%.
Read the full story
A third party seeking to bridge the political divide and offer more choices for voters has added two local Republicans to its roster.
One official, a longtime Democrat – although defeated in the primary election – won enough write-in votes to secure the GOP nomination. He will again be facing his opponent in November, but from the other side of the fence.
Read the full story
Connecticut’s top law enforcement office is being faulted for poor accounting practices that have cost the state millions of dollars in unretrievable debt and allowing unauthorized overtime that tripled during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The report by the state Auditors of Public Accounts, released Wednesday, found that an estimated $10 million owed to the AG’s office and other state agencies from court settlements and other receivables is “unrecoverable” and cited decades of lax accounting practices for the loss of revenue to state coffers.
Read the full story
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hasn’t declared a winner in this week’s GOP presidential debate, but he does know who the loser is: The American people.
The Kennedy family scion and Democrat challenger to President Joe Biden for the Democratic Party presidential nomination blasted the eight Republican candidates who took the stage in Milwaukee as out of touch with the average American.
Read the full story
Gov. Tim Walz announced the appointment of one of his administration’s top attorneys to the Minnesota Supreme Court on Wednesday.
Karl Procaccini, 40, has spent the last 4.5 years as general counsel and deputy chief of staff in the governor’s office. Depending on who you ask, the Connecticut native and Harvard Law grad has been regarded as either a prudent or overreaching legal advisor to Walz during the Covid-19 pandemic and riots in 2020 and 2021.
Read the full story
Arizona State senator and registered nurse Janae Shamp (R-Suprise) reminded Arizonans this week of safeguards put in place by Republicans at the legislature to protect against any effort by the federal government to reinstate COVID-19 mask mandates.
This follows movie studio Lionsgate in Santa Monica, Rutgers University in New Jersey, Georgetown University in Washington DC, and Morris Brown College in Atlanta announcing they are reinstating mask mandates due to reported COVID-19 cases.
Read the full story
Rather than simply try to defeat Donald J. Trump, Democrats want him to die in prison. Neo-totalitarian Democrat campaign operatives masquerading as local, county, and federal prosecutors have deployed four criminal cases against the former president. The New York Post calculates that if he is convicted on all 91 charges he faces, Trump would spend 712 years behind bars. The surprisingly spry 77-year-old could enrage his critics even further, live until at least 2735 A.D., and regain his freedom at age 789.
Read the full story
A growing cohort of Hispanics find themselves political orphans. Many of them have yet to fully align with the Republican Party, but they increasingly turn away from the economic mismanagement and leftist social extremism of the 2020’s Democrats.
As such, Biden finds a new and worsening problem headed into election year: hemorrhaging support among Hispanics, and especially among working-class Latino voters.
Read the full story
When I received information about Tyler Reese Tritt, I knew she belonged to someone famous (Travis Tritt is her dad). But what mattered to me was whether she could sing.
The answer is a resounding “yes.” Tyler Reese Tritt sings as naturally as many of us breathe. She said that her dad got her the Disney Princess videos when she was a tot, and her mother added that she would run around the house in her diaper singing “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid.
Read the full story