Month: February 2024

Connecticut GOP Unveils Plan to Reduce Energy Costs

The Center Square
Stephen Harding

Connecticut Republicans have unveiled a slate of proposals aimed at addressing rising electricity costs in the state, which they say are putting the squeeze on energy consumers.

The package of proposed policy changes, calls for setting limits on Power Purchase Agreements by utilities so that no contract can be for more than 100% over the wholesale electric market price while providing relief to ratepayers by tapping into $190 million in unspent pandemic-related federal funds to pay down rate increases.

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Ohio Supreme Court Helped Coordinate Event Featuring ‘Gender Identity’ Training from Trans Activists

Admin

The Ohio Supreme Court coordinated a conference where an activist group held a training for judges that claimed children have a “stable sense” of their gender identity by the age of four.

The presentation, titled “The Judicial System & LGBTQ+ Families: A Cultural Humility Approach,” was given by a local activist group, Equality Ohio, during the Ohio Association of Magistrates (OAM) Fall 2023 conference. The presentation featured the “gender unicorn” — a graphic portraying gender identity and expression as spectrums — and encouraged “affirming” youth transgender identities by “respecting their pronouns and allowing them to change legal documents,” according to the slideshow obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation via a public records request.

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Hunters Up, Harvest Down for Pennsylvania Black Bears

The Center Square
Black Bears

The black bear harvest declined to a 10-year low, according to state data, despite a dramatic spike in interest among hunters during that same time.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission announced that 2,920 bears were killed in the 2023 seasons, an 8% drop from the 3,171 bears taken in 2022. The recent high came in 2019 when 4,650 bears were killed by hunters, but most of the last decade has seen 3,100-3,700 bears taken every year.

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Team Biden Reportedly ‘Freaking Out’ That President is Bleeding Key Support from Arab Voters in Michigan

Admin

The White House and Biden 2024 reelection campaign are concerned that President Joe Biden is hemorrhaging support from voters in Arab and Muslim communities in Michigan amid his support for Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, Politico reported Tuesday.

Biden has publicly backed Israel’s war effort against Hamas even as many of his supporters and voters demand he call for a ceasefire in favor of protecting the Palestinian population in Gaza. Multiple uncommitted voter campaigns have sprung up against Biden as he continues to lose support from Arab and Muslim communities threatening not to back him in the state’s Tuesday primaries, according to Politico.

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Genomics Expert Who Discovered DNA Contamination in mRNA Shots Accuses Regulators of Lying About Cancer Risks

Admin
Moderna COVID Vaccine

The scientist who first blew the whistle on the DNA contamination in the COVID mRNA injections last year, said Monday that regulators and fact checkers have been “continually wrong” about his alarming discovery, downplaying its significance and telling flat out lies about the potential dangers.

Last April, microbiologist Kevin McKernan, published a paper establishing that simian virus 40 (SV40), a virus found in monkeys and humans, is present in Pfizer and Moderna’s mRNA COVID-19 injections. The discovery was highly significant because SV40 has been linked to cancer in humans, and since the rollout of the mRNA products, the western world has seen a dramatic increase in cancers, especially in previously healthy working aged people.

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Commentary: For Electricity, Americans Deserve More Choices

RealClearWire
Electric Grid

Amid a polarizing presidential election, areas of common ground are rare, especially around energy. President Joe Biden has labeled climate change as “the only existential threat humanity faces,” and outlined an agenda to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Meanwhile, his would-be Republican challengers have pledged a different course, with the frontrunning campaign of former President Donald Trump pledging to “maximize fossil fuel production” and roll back funding for Biden’s landmark 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. 

A step back from the daily partisan back-and-forth reveals an idea with something for everyone to support: increasing choice when it comes to where consumers get their energy. A commitment to freedom and creating our own destinies is quintessentially American. Yet most of our citizens have zero control over their power provider and the cost of their energy, and very few politicians on either side of the aisle say anything about it. 

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Music Spotlight: Bettin’ On The Mule

Bethany Bowman
Bettin on the Mule

Anyone who follows my blog knows I like a good hometown rockin’ country band. When I first heard Bettin’ On the Mule (BOTM) from Rockmart, Georgia, I instantly loved their energy.

The “Hometown Rock” pioneers consist of Jacob Wilson on lead vocals, bass, and rhythm guitar, who also serves as the band’s lead songwriter, new member Phil Beavers on lead guitar and backing vocals, Rick Norris on drums and backing vocals, and Shannon “Beef” Wilson on bass and backing vocals for the band.

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Home Prices in America’s Top 10 Biggest Cities Rose in 2023

Admin
Home for Sale

Home prices for the 10 largest cities in the U.S. rose by 7.0% year-over-year in December, up from 6.3% in the previous month, according to Standard and Poor’s Case-Shiller home price index report.

The top 20 cities had a slightly less pronounced increase, with prices rising 6.1% year-over-year as of December, up from 5.4% in November, according to the index. The increase in costs is coupled with a rise in the average for a 30-year mortgage rate, which ticked up to 6.90% the week of Feb. 22 after declining slightly from the recent peak of 7.80% that was seen in October, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

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D.C. Court of Appeals Panel Gives Trump’s Former DOJ Official Jeffrey Clark a Unanimous Victory on Subpoena Violating His Fifth Amendment Rights

Rachel Alexander

A panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled unanimously on Monday that the D.C. Bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel (ODC) unconstitutionally subpoenaed documents from former President Donald Trump’s former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark in violation of his Fifth Amendment rights.

In addition to facing ODC disciplinary charges for his role in assisting Trump in handling the 2020 presidential election irregularities, Clark was indicted along with Trump and others in Georgia and is an unnamed co-conspirator in another case. The court issued its decision immediately after a hearing on Friday.

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Commentary: Starship Troopers is Not a Satire

Admin
Starship Troopers / Sony Pictures

The militaristic, quasi-authoritarian society portrayed in the 1997 science fiction film Starship Troopers is obviously superior to our contemporary gay liberal “democracy.” For this reason, the film fails as satire. The film’s supposed attempt to lampoon the audience’s instinctual gravitation towards strength, beauty, and nobility backfires.

Two and a half decades later, Starship Troopers continues to reveal how moralistic, stupid, and tasteless the modern left really is. Liberals cannot make good liberal art. In fact, such a thing does not exist. All liberal art, at its core, is ham-handed propaganda. When leftists do make good art, it is in spite of their ideological commitments, not because of them.

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Immigration Expert: ‘There Is Mass Immigration Asylum Fraud Underway Here’

Kaitlin Housler
Illegal Immigrants

Senior National Security Fellow Todd Bensman with the Center for Immigration Studies warned there is “mass immigration asylum fraud” taking place in the U.S.

Bensman, who has interviewed thousands of migrants over the years, explained on Thursday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy how migrants, specifically from Venezuela and Haiti, often live in other more stable countries – including Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador – for years before making their way to the United States to work and live a prosperous life.

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Free Speech Expert: 2020 Election and COVID-19 Pandemic Most Censored Events in Human History

Peter D'Abrosca
Mike Benz Tucker Carlson

An expert in online free speech told Tucker Carlson in a wide-ranging interview that he believes the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 election were the two most censored events in human history.

“The two most censored events in human history, I would argue to date, are the 2020 election and the COVID-19 pandemic, and I’ll explained how I arrived there,” Mike Benz, founder and executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO) told Carlson.

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Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti Details Consumer Protection Lawsuit Against BlackRock’s ESG Investing

Kaitlin Housler
TN AG Courtroom

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said his consumer protection lawsuit against BlackRock’s Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) investing will force the company to disclose if it is mixing ESG factors when making investment decisions instead of focusing on financial factors relative to the rate of return.

Skrmetti filed his lawsuit against BlackRock in December 2023, alleging that the hedge fund has misled consumers in Tennessee about the scale and impacts of its ESG initiatives for several years.

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Immigration Experts Outline Steps Congress Could Immediately Take to Ease Border Crisis

Kaitlin Housler
Illegal Immigrants

Executive Director Mark Krikorian, Senior National Security Fellow Todd Bensman, and Director of Policy Studies Jessica Vaughan with the Center for Immigration Studies said Republican lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives could immediately use their slim-margin majority to help correct the nation’s border crisis by cutting funding for programs and entities that fuel illegal immigration.

One idea the trio discussed during Thursday’s episode of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – other than impeaching and convicting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas – was lawmakers’ ability to cut funding for the United Nations (UN), which has been providing illegal immigrants with cash cards as they make their journey to North America.

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State Representative Jason Zachary Says Gavin Newsom Should ‘Mind His Own Business’ After Attacking Tennessee with Super-Pac Ad

Matthew Giffin
State Rep Jason Zachary

Tennessee State Representative Jason Zachary (R-Knoxville) said California Governor Gavin Newsom should pay more attention to his state’s problems after Newsom’s super PAC released an advertisement attacking Tennessee for proposing a parental rights bill.

Zachary made his comments in a phone interview on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Monday.

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A Nation Enriched by Legal Immigrants Now Buckles from Weight of Illegal Border Crossers and their Crimes

Just the News

A nursing student bludgeoned to death near a tranquil Georgia college campus. A developmentally disabled person raped in Boston. A mother and son killed in a head-on crash in Colorado. New York’s finest assaulted in the heralded Times Square.

The roll-call of victims violated by Joe Biden’s border policies is rising as fast as the hotel and welfare tabs for sanctuary cities, thrusting an American society that long revered its immigrant heritage into a crisis of epic proportions driven by more than 8 million illegal border crossers since the 46th president took office.

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Gays Against Groomers Endorse Candidates Who Pledge to Ban ‘Sexualization, Indoctrination, and Medicalization’ of Children

Just the News
Gay Against Groomers activist

Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist pioneered the “pledge” for politicians seeking an advocacy group’s election endorsement, in his case, to “oppose any and all tax increases.” Violate the pledge, and face the wrath of voters.

Now a contrarian gay advocacy group is jumping into election endorsements with its own pledge: protect children from “sexualization, indoctrination, and medicalization under the guise of LGBTQ+.”

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Security State Sees Internet Free Speech as ‘Massive Crisis’

Peter D'Abrosca

An internet free speech expert said in a recent interview that freedom of speech online combined with massive audiences for independent journalists and news sources created a “massive crisis” for America’s security state. 

“So initially, even these dissident voices within the U.S., even though they may have been loud in moments, they never reached 30 million followers,” Founder and Executive Director of the Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO) Mike Benz told Tucker Carlson in an interview. “They never reached the one billion impressions per year type thing. As an uncensored mature ecosystem allowed citizen journalists and independent voices to be able to outcompete legacy news media, this induced a massive crisis both in our military and in our State Department and intelligence services.” 

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Cochise County Supervisors Fight AG Kris Mayes’ Prosecution Over Delaying Vote Certification; File Motions to Dismiss, Request New Grand Jury

Rachel Alexander
Cochise County Supervisors Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd

Cochise County Supervisors Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd are fighting back against Attorney General Kris Mayes’ prosecution of them for voting to delay certification of the 2022 election by three days. The pair filed motions last week requesting that the case be dismissed and challenging the grand jury’s finding of probable cause against them. 

In Crosby’s Motion to Dismiss, which Judd joined later, Crosby’s attorney Dennis Wilenchik said, “The criminal statute involved is vague and ambiguous and overbroad, and unconstitutional as applied here to a member of a Board of Supervisors of a County voting in his official capacity. The case was brought purely for political purposes by the Attorney General and is an egregious abuse of her powers.”

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Tennessee AG Skrmetti Joins 24-State Amicus Brief Supporting Texas, Warns Federal Immigration Showdown Threatens State Sovereignty

Tom Pappert

Tennessee Attorney General Jonthan Skrmetti was among the 22 attorneys general who joined the amicus brief filed by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach on Friday in support of Texas and Governor Greg Abbott in their in its legal fight with the federal government over the governor’s decision to protect the southern border.

The amicus brief argues that individual states “have a constitutional right to defend themselves that federal law cannot override absent” a declaration from U.S. Congress, and Skrmetti told The Tennessee Star the question ultimately relates to the sovereignty of states.

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LockBit Hackers Who Attacked Fulton County Resurface After FBI Action, Claim to Hold Data from Georgia Trump Trial

Tom Pappert
LockBit Hackers

The LockBit hacker group that seized control and temporarily stopped many Fulton County government services resurfaced just four days after an international intelligence operation seized many of the group’s servers in a bid to disrupt its activities.

A rambling message by the group’s pseudonymous leader upon the launch of LockBit’s new website claims that Operation Cronos, the international police action against the hackers, was launched due to documents the organized crime outfit obtained about the Fulton County trial of former President Donald Trump.

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Democrats in Virginia Senate Pass Assisted Suicide Bill Along Partisan Lines

Tom Pappert
Virginia State Senator Ghazala Hashmi

The Virginia Senate narrowly passed a bill on Friday that would legalize assisted suicide in the commonwealth, with one Republican joining the chamber’s Democrats to pass the legislation in a narrow victory.

SB 280, introduced by Senator Ghazala Hashmi (D-Richmond), would allow any Virginia citizen who is diagnosed with a terminal disease to “request” a doctor to “prescribe a self-administered controlled substance for the purpose of ending the patient’s life,” according to a summary of the bill.

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Phoenix Approves Over $1 Million for Homeless Shelter amid Concern ‘The Zone’ Could Reemerge

Tom Pappert

The City of Phoenix last Wednesday approved just over $1 million to Central Arizona Shelter Services (CASS), which operates the city’s largest homeless shelter.

Phoenix made the payment using leftover federal funds originally earmarked for COVID-19 recovery, but CASS warned the organization still has a shortfall of around $500,000 that could threaten its ability to provide shelter services, explaining that it filed three state grant requests that were denied by Arizona.

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Commentary: ‘Russia Forever’ Is an Anatomy of a Left-Wing Obsession

Admin

The more candidate Trump in 2016 trolled the Clinton campaign (e.g., “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press”), the more the irate left bought into hysterical conspiracy theories.

Finally, the left became completely unhinged after the 2016 victory. An Obama-era Pentagon lawyer published an essay exploring the chance for a military coup. Retired lieutenant colonels called for a Pentagon intervention. Retired four-stars could not decide whether he was Hitler-like, Mussolini, or the architect of Auschwitz. Celebrities competed to find the most savage image of eliminating Trump—whether by combustion, incineration, decapitation, lethal shooting, or stabbing.

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Commentary: President Trump, NATO, and ‘Swamp Talk’

Admin
Donald Trump in South Carolina

The hysteria in response to President Trump’s comment about NATO offers a great insight into Swamp Talk™. It’s how swamp creatures use their media dominance to gaslight Americans into voting for Democrats in spite of always disastrous results. They frighten voters into opposing candidates like President Trump, who want to make America stronger, safer, more prosperous, and free.

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Feds Fund Training Program to Help Teachers with Gay and ‘Queer’ History Lessons

Admin

A federally-funded training program set to take place in July will teach middle school teachers about LGBTQ+ history and provide them with strategies to further integrate “queer” content into their classrooms.

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is funding a two-week summer program titled “LGBTQ+ histories in the U.S.” that will instruct 30 middle and high school teachers on “expanding historical narratives” and “identifying pedagogical strategies” in their classrooms to better incorporate LGBTQ+ content. The July session is the second iteration of the NEH-funded program, the first having occurred in 2022, with the two activities collectively costing taxpayers nearly $400,000, according to federal grant listings.

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Commentary: The Cancelled Black Harvard Professor Who Found No Racial Bias in Police Shootings

Admin
Roland Fryer Junior

Unless you have lived under a rock for the last four years, you will be very familiar with the claim that black Americans are disproportionately victims of police shootings compared with their white counterparts.

But a nearly eight-year-old study challenging this narrative is enjoying renewed attention thanks to a recent high-profile interview of the study’s author, African American economist Roland Fryer, by journalist Bari Weiss of The Free Press.

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Exclusive: Biden Admin Planted Operative Jeff DiSantis in Fani Willis’ Office to Target Trump, Sources Say

Admin

Breitbart News The Biden administration planted a Democrat operative inside a Fulton County office to target former President Donald Trump, multiple sources familiar with the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office exclusively told Breitbart News. If the Biden administration planted the operative, as the sources say, it would present a strong argument that the administration interfered in the 2024 presidential election. Breitbart News granted the sources anonymity to discuss the attorney’s office for fear of retribution. The sources have direct knowledge of the environment at the District Attorney’s Office, which they characterized as “corrupt.” READ THE FULL STORY

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Bannon Rallies CPAC for ‘Crusade of Righteousness’ to Elect ‘Dissident’ Trump in ‘Greatest Political Comeback in American History’

Tom Pappert
Stephen K. Bannon at CPAC 2024

War Room host Steve Bannon rallied Republicans at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Saturday to vote for former President Donald Trump in November to accomplish what the former member of the Trump administration predicted will be the “greatest political comeback in American history.”

In just under 10 minutes, Bannon argued Trump’s “fate and destiny” are “intertwined” with the United States, lambasted President Joe Biden as an “illegitimate regime head” in the process of being cast out, and urged Americans to join a “crusade of righteousness” by voting for Trump on November 5.

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State Rep. Jason Zachary Challenges Newsom to Debate After California Governor Targets Tennessee with Super PAC

Tom Pappert
California Gov. Gavin Newsom

State Representative Jason Zachary (R-Knoxville) challenged California Governor Gavin Newsom to a debate after the Democrat targeted Tennessee for its pro-life legislation to protect unborn children using funds from a Super PAC that some speculate could lay the foundations of a campaign to oust President Joe Biden.

In a Sunday post to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, the California governor falsely claimed Tennessee’s pro-life legislation offers no exceptions, including for rape or incest, and asserted that “Republicans in Tennessee are trying to punish young women” who travel to abort their children. 

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Commercial Foreclosures Increase 97 Percent from Last Year to Near Decade-High

Just the News
Commercial Shopping Space for Lease

Commercial real estate foreclosures increased 97 percent in January 2024 compared to last year, reaching a high that has not been seen in nearly a decade, according to new data.

With 635 commercial foreclosures in January 2024, foreclosures increased 17 percent from December 2023 and 97 percent from January 2023, according to a report last week from property data analyst ATTOM.

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