Day: September 18, 2023

FBI Received Evidence from Second Informant in Biden Case but Shut Him Down, Ex-Agent Testifies

Just the News

A retired FBI supervisor has revealed to Congress that the bureau’s Washington field office had a second “politically connected” informant providing information relevant to the Biden family investigation, but was asked to shut down the source in the fall of 2020 shortly before Joe Biden was elected president, Just the News has learned.

Retired Special Agent Timothy Thibault, the former No. 2 supervisor in the FBI’s Washington field office, told the House Judiciary Committee last week in a transcribed interview he was somewhat taken aback when he received the request from the lead agent in the Hunter Biden tax case in October 2020 to shut down the confidential human source (CHS).

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Mark Levin’s ‘The Democrat Party Hates America’ Tops Amazon’s Best-Seller List

Admin

Television host Mark Levin’s new book has topped the Amazon best-seller list, according to the website on Saturday.

Levin is an attorney and the host of “The Mark Levin Show,” a syndicated radio show, “Life, Liberty, and Levin” on Fox News as well as editor-in-chief of The Conservative Review. His book “The Democrat Party Party Hates America” (Threshold Editions, $30) has topped the Amazon list of Best Sellers in Books, according to the website’s rankings Saturday.

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Trump’s Lawyers Argue Judge’s Failure to Recuse Will Cause ‘Irreparable Damage’ to Judicial System for ‘Generations’

Admin

Former president Donald Trump’s lawyers doubled down on their call for the judge hearing his 2020 election case to recuse in a Sunday court filing, arguing that her failure to do so would cause “irreparable damage” to the judicial system for “generations to come.”

Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office made a fiery defense of U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee, in a Friday filing, where they slammed Trump’s recusal request as having “no valid basis” and accused him of cherry-picking statements that don’t actually show “improper bias.” Trump based the initial call last week for Chutkan to recuse on remarks she made during sentencing hearings for two Jan. 6 defendants that allegedly suggested Trump should be prosecuted and imprisoned.

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Hunter Biden’s IRS Lawsuit Appears to Misquote Whistleblower, Altering Facts About FBI

Admin

Just the News Hunter Biden’s lawsuit filed against the IRS on Monday appears to misquote IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley, altering the facts regarding testimony from an FBI official about the Hunter Biden investigation. During an interview that aired Aug. 1, 2023, on Fox News, “Mr. Shapley alleged that FBI General Counsel, Jason Jones ‘was given a letter the Sunday before [his July 17 deposition before the House Oversight Committee] from DOJ basically telling him not to talk,’” the lawsuit states. The entire quote from Shapley on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom“ is: “For example, the FBI SSA that testified for the House Ways and Means Committee, he was given a letter the Sunday before from DOJ basically telling him not to talk. And I know that he could have confirmed additional material facts on this investigation.” READ THE FULL STORY

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EXCLUSIVE: Matt Gaetz Says Vivek Ramaswamy’s Plan to Slash Federal Employment by 50 Percent Will Survive Legal Challenges

Michael Patrick Leahy

Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL-01) told The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network at an event in Nashville on Saturday that Republican Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s bold plan to reduce the number of non-military federal employees by 50 percent in one year–a net reduction of 1 million employees from the current level of 2 million – is legally sound and will survive the expected legal challenges.

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House Republicans Balk at Temporary Spending Bill

Admin

Numerous House Republicans have voiced opposition to the continuing resolution (CR) brokered by the House Freedom Caucus (HFC) and the Main Street Caucus on Sunday evening to avoid a government shutdown.

Members of the conservative HFC and moderate Main Street Caucus agreed to fund the government for another month, and the bill also includes the Secure The Border Act minus e-verify, a near 8 percent cut of non-defense discretionary spending and other provisions. Several conservative members, including Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, took to Twitter following the announcement to say they won’t support the CR.

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Appeals Court Rules Firearm Bans for Non-Violent Felons Are Constitutional

Admin

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that federal bans on convicted felons owning firearms are still constitutional despite a recent Supreme Court decision.

Melynda Vincent, who brought the case to court, is currently banned from possessing a gun because she was charged with fraud after writing a fake check at a grocery store in 2008, according to the ruling. The 10th Circuit Court ruled that although the Supreme Court had released a new decision on gun rights, Vincent still does not have the legal right to own a gun.

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Vanderbilt Professor: Climate Change Stories ‘Cater to the White Consciousness’

Admin

A professor of English at Vanderbilt University recently gave a talk about how the genre of climate fiction, or “cli-fi,” has a problem with “its intersection [of] race and genre.”

Teresa Goddu (pictured above), whose advocacy led to the creation of Vanderbilt’s Environmental and Sustainability Studies minor, told an audience at the Novel Seminar Series that climate fiction in the United States “depicts the climate crisis as a whiteness crisis,” The Hustler reports.

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‘Grade Grubbing’ Takes Root as Educators Capitulate to Students’ Pleas for Better Scores

Admin

More students are asking for better grades than earned — and a vast majority of educators questioned in a recent survey admit they’ve given in to those demands in a trend now dubbed “grade grubbing.”

Intelligent.com surveyed nearly 300 educators in late August, including high school teachers and professors who work with both undergrads and grad students.

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Commentary: The Migrant Surge is Coming to the Classroom

Admin

Democratic politicians and the liberal media made the first day of school all about welcoming migrant children. That’s sheer propaganda. Parents deserve the truth. The migrant surge is a disaster for their kids.

The surge will worsen our education system’s twin failures: plunging math and reading scores, and the failure to ensure newly arriving kids learn English so they can succeed, too.

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Virginia Joins State Attorneys General to Challenge Financial Service Providers ESG Alliance

The Center Square

Twenty-three attorneys general, most recently including Virginia’s Jason Miyares, have banded together to challenge the Net Zero Financial Service Providers Alliance’s (NZFSPA) commitment to a net-zero future by 2050, saying that the alliance may violate state and federal antitrust and consumer protection laws. 

The alliance is a global group of 21 heavy-hitting financial services corporations, including BDO, Bloomberg, the Big Four and S&P Global, that have jointly committed to operating by the terms of the Paris Agreement and achieving its goals. 

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Georgia’s Infant Mortality Rate Remains Among the Nation’s Worst

The Center Square

Georgia’s infant mortality rate may be improving, but it remains among the worst.

“The infant mortality rate in Georgia is not good,” Seema Csukas, vice president & chief medical officer at CareSource Georgia, told The Center Square. “We’re typically in the bottom quartile of states in terms of the infant mortality rate. We’ve made a little progress over the past decade, but not really. We’ve gotten a little better, then gotten a little worse — so not that much change.

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Ohio Lawmakers Introduce Bipartisan Legislation to Freeze Property Taxes for Seniors

Hannah Poling

A bipartisan group of Ohio lawmakers introduced a bill to the Ohio House of Representatives to freeze property taxes for eligible seniors.

The legislation, known as the 70 Under 70 Plan, sponsored by State Representatives Thomas Hall (R-Madison Township) and Dani Isaacsohn (D-Cincinnati), would freeze property taxes for Ohioans 70 years or older who make less than $70,000 a year and have owned their home for 10 years or more.

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Rep. Bob Good Warns If McCarthy Uses House Democrats Again His Speakership ‘Unsustainable’

Neil W. McCabe

The Memorial Day Weekend debt deal Speaker Kevin O. McCarthy negotiated with President Joseph R. Biden Jr. may turn out to be his political Katrina, as House Freedom Caucus member and Virginia Republican congressman told radio host John Fredericks McCarthy had driven House conservatives to begin preparations for forcing a vote on the California Republican’s job security.

“The next two weeks, the next three weeks will be more intense,” Rep. Bob Good said. “More challenging, I believe, than the speaker battle. The stakes are extremely high; the pressure’s going to be tremendous.”

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TSMC Reportedly Delays Equipment Deliveries to Arizona Semiconductor Factory

Tom Pappert

The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is reportedly asking vendors to delay deliveries of major equipment to its facility in Arizona. This comes after TSMC delayed the opening of its Arizona chip facility until 2025, and amid reports the company will not manufacture complete semiconductors in the United States.

TSMC is asking manufacturers of high-end semiconductor equipment to hold off on deliveries to its Arizona facility, according to a report released Friday by Reuters. The Taiwanese semiconductor giant is reportedly concerned about decreasing costs, and is “increasingly concerned” about cooling consumer demand, though the company referred to the report as a “market rumor” in a statement to Reuters.

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Commentary: Will a Three-Way Race in Arizona Deliver the U.S. Senate to Republicans?

Admin

Of all the low-hanging senatorial fruit in 2024 — see red states with blue senators in West Virginia, Montana, and Ohio, to name three — if not the ripest for conservative pickup, then at least the juiciest might be the three-way contest that is liable to heat up in the Arizona desert.

There, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat-turned-independent incumbent, if she decides to defend her seat, will face an extreme progressive challenger on the left and, possibly, one of the Trumpiest of Trumpists on the right, Kari Lake, who may find herself in a primary battle with a slightly lesser Trumpist in Blake Masters, who lost the other Senate seat in 2022 to Mark Kelly.

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Lithium Mine Reopening on Strength of $239.7 Million in Federal Grants

The Center Square
Mineral mining

A Kings Mountain lithium mine shuttered since 1988, estimated capable of supporting the production of 1.2 million electric vehicles annually for 30 years, will reopen.

Charlotte-based Albemarle, the world’s largest producer of lithium, received a $90 million grant from the Department of Defense this week to expand domestic production of the raw mineral used to manufacture electric vehicle batteries. The grant follows a $149.7 million grant Albemarle received from the Biden administration last year for a North Carolina processing facility.

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Commentary: 20 Historical Hobbies for $20 or Less

Admin

New hobbies can seem intimidating and—worse—expensive. The internet offers complicated lists and costly supplies for even the most basic of skills. We might feel that we can’t invest too much into a hobby—who knows if we’ll be good at it anyway?

In reality, many hobbies—particularly those that rely more on building a skill than on collecting items—begin with very few supplies. In fact, there’s a wealth of historical skills we can practice for entertainment, self-improvement, and practicality!

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