A man upset over Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s COVID-19 policies plead guilty to one count of a kidnapping conspiracy and accepted a plea deal to serve six years and three months in prison.
Ty Garbin, 25, is the only known member of the Michigan militia group “Wolverine Watchmen” to plead guilty to the alleged plot.
Federal prosecutors suggested he serve a nine-year sentence, citing his cooperation with authorities and plans to testify against other alleged kidnappers.
Read More
Demagogues appeal to envy because they believe that promising to destroy the advantages enjoyed by others will win votes and inspire loyalty. Sometimes it does. As the envy-driven horrors of Rwanda and Nazi Germany demonstrate, pledging to disrupt the envied lives of a despised “other” can be a ticket to victory for a political candidate savvy enough to convince voters that he has their best interests at heart.
More than 25 years ago, Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, pronounced in his book The Politics of Envy: Statism as Theology that we “live in an age of envy.” Pointing out that “people don’t so much want more money for themselves as they want to take it away from those with more,” Bandow suggested that although “greed is bad enough, eating away at a person’s soul, envy is far worse because it destroys not only individuals, but also communities, poisoning relations.” A Christian libertarian, Bandow wrote that
those who are greedy may ruin their own lives, but those who are envious contaminate the larger community by letting their covetousness interfere with their relations with others.
One can satisfy greed in innocuous, even positive ways—by being brighter, working harder, seeing new opportunities, or meeting the demands of others, for instance.
Read More
Uzbekistan, a Middle Eastern nation that borders Afghanistan, warned the U.S. that refugees fleeing the Taliban wouldn’t be granted asylum, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The Uzbekistan government recently urged the U.S. to take action and transport the refugees to a third nation, according to the WSJ. The small Middle Eastern country reportedly doesn’t want t0 create tension with the incoming Taliban-controlled Afghan government by housing refugees including soldiers who fought alongside and were trained by American troops.
Read More
The Department of Education announced it would stop enforcing a Trump administration rule designed to protect those accused of sexual assault on college campuses.
A district court in Massachusetts upheld most of the Title IX 2020 amendments in a July ruling, maintaining new regulations related to public institutions managing allegations of harassment, assault, violence, and more. Although, the court struck down one procedural regulation related to what evidence a “Decision-Maker,” or the employee who is designated to adjudicate the case, may consider in making rulings.
Read More
Over 1 million Louisiana residents are without electricity Monday morning, after Hurricane Ida came ashore Sunday afternoon with 150 mph winds and relentless rain.
At least one person is reported dead, with winds having sheered off roofs and flooded roads having kept rescue teams from responding.
“Nobody should be expecting that, tonight, a first-responder is going to be able to answer a call for help,” said Gov. Jon Bel Edwards at a news conference Sunday afternoon.
Read More
On August 17, Hakeem Jefferson, a professor of political science at Stanford University, launched a series of tweets that claimed protestors of school mask mandates are doing so because of their “Whiteness”.
Hakeem’s tweets claim that the protests and opposition to mask-wearing are caused by “Whiteness” and that comprehensive discussions about these protests cannot be had without acknowledging that.
Read More
The Biden Administration’s hasty extraction of Afghan refugees to the United States has been so rushed and so sloppy that many are arriving into the country with no documentation to confirm who they even are, Breitbart reports.
Even CNN’s coverage of the debacle confirms the lack of preparation and failure to properly vet refugees. Sources from within the evacuation process told CNN that the goal of the Biden Administration has been to “get as many people on the plane as you can, and we’ll sort out the [paperwork] stuff later.” The same sources added that “some people have landed with no documents whatsoever, creating a very challenging work environment for the officers.”
Read More
A former minister in Afghanistan’s government is working as a pizza delivery guy in Germany, local media reported.
Images show Syed Ahmad Shah Sadat, former minister of communications and information technology in Afghanistan, delivering pizzas and other food by bicycle in Leipzig, Germany, Newsweek reported.
Read More
With national attention riveted over the weekend on two major stories — the frantic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan amid its fall to the Taliban and category 4 Hurricane Ida slamming into the Louisiana coast — Big Tech and woke finance dramatically extended the reach of cancel culture with brazen moves to silence and harass three high-profile voices of political and scientific dissent: independent journalist Alex Berenson, popular conservative news and opinion website The Gateway Pundit, and Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
On Saturday, Twitter permanently banned Alex Berenson, who has built a large social media following challenging public health establishment orthodoxy on COVID issues ranging from lockdown to vaccine mandates.
“The account you referenced has been permanently suspended for repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation rules,” a Twitter spokesperson responded to an inquiry from Fox News.
Read More
Nine members of a family of Afghan allies, including six children, were killed in a US drone strike targeting ISIS terrorists in a residential neighborhood of Kabul, Sunday, according to multiple reports.
The drone strike was reportedly targeting suicide bombers who were planning an attack on Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA).
Read More
Despite calls for increased regulation of the tech industry, Congress has yet to pass any major legislation, leaving it up to the states to take action curbing tech companies’ power and influence.
Meanwhile, state legislatures have introduced and enacted legislation on data privacy, antitrust, and content moderation, while state attorneys general have issued a number of legal challenges alleging anticompetitive business practices.
Read More
German publishing company Axel Springer announced Thursday it intends to acquire the digital news outlet Politico which could reportedly cost up to $1 billion.
The acquisition of Politico will add to Axel Springer’s portfolio of news outlets which include Morning Brew and Insider, according to a press release from Axel Springer.
Read More
Two prominent Democrats have come out against the ballot effort to defund the Minneapolis Police Department, saying police reform, not defunding, is needed.
Gov. Tim Walz revealed in an interview at the Minnesota State Fair last week that he thinks the ballot question does not provide enough detail and will leave residents “confused” on what they’re voting for or against, Fox 9 reported.
“It’s been distilled down to this: defund police or fund police? I know it’s more complex than that, but I think that poses problems,” Walz said.
Read More
Wisconsin’s state superintendent is taking a swipe at parents who don’t want their kids to be forced to mask-up this school year.
Superintendent of Public Instruction Jill Underly on Wednesday wrote an op-ed that dismisses parents who are protesting mask mandates at their local schools.
Read More
Stephen K. Bannon welcomed Michael Patrick Leahy on Monday’s War Room: Pandemic to discuss the 43,000 absentee ballots that violated the chain of custody rule in Georgia and questioned the Secretary of States’ position on the certification of the election.
Read More
An informal meeting of the Genesee County, Michigan Board of Commissioners on Monday saw residents turn out heavily against a school-mask mandate for students in grades K-6.
County Medical Health Officer Pamela Hackert told attendees she imposed the requirement only on those lower grades because she wanted to provide protection to students who do not yet have the option of receiving a COVID-19 vaccine.
Read More
43,907 of the 61,731 absentee ballots deposited in drop boxes in the November 2020 presidential election in DeKalb County, Georgia–72 percent–were counted in official tallies certified by the county and the state, despite violating chain of custody requirements set forward in Georgia Emergency Rule 183-1-14-1.8-.14 promulgated by the Georgia State Election Board at its July 1, 2020, meeting.
That rule states absentee ballots placed in drop boxes, “shall be immediately transported to the county registrar” by the two person collection team, which is required to sign a ballot transfer form indicating the number of ballots picked up, the time the ballots were picked up, and the location of the drop box, and that, “The county registrar or a designee thereof shall sign the ballot transfer form upon receipt of the ballots from the collection team.”
Read More
An analysis by The Georgia Star News of DeKalb County’s absentee ballot drop box transfer forms from the November 2020 election identified a number of problems that puts the documents out of compliance with the Georgia Board of Election Emergency Rule 183-1-14-1.8-.14.
The Star News reviewed 725 absentee ballot drop box transfer forms, obtained from the DeKalb County law department in response to an open records request, that were used by DeKalb County during the November 2020 election to document the chain of custody of the 61,731 absentee ballots deposited in drop boxes .
Read More
The Wayne County Public Health Department issued a new order mandating school districts and daycare providers require students, faculty, staff, and visitors to wear a face mask while in school and during school-sponsored indoor events.
The order takes effect immediately directing public, private, and parochial schools and daycare providers to:
Require indoor wearing of face masks for all pre-kindergarten through grade 12 students, regardless of their vaccine status; and,
Require face masks to be worn indoors by all teachers, administrative staff, other employees, parent and guardians, attendees, and volunteers.
The order remains in effect until the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention categorize COVID-19 community transmission for Wayne County as “moderate” for at least 14 consecutive days or further notice by Wayne County officials.
Read More
The ACLU on Tuesday announced it is bringing a lawsuit against South Carolina over its mask policy.
The Palmetto State is one of seven states—along with Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Arizona, Utah, and Florida— that have policies in place banning schools from having mask policies. Thirteen states, meanwhile, have laws that mandate masks in schools. The majority of states (30) allow school districts to determine their own mask policies.
Read More
In the wake of the deadly terrorist attack in Kabul that killed 13 American service members and at least 170 Afghans, Rep Mike Waltz (R- Fla.) and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) have called on Joe Biden to formally recognize former officials in Afghanistan as legitimate government representatives, and to designate the Taliban as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
The pair released the following statement on Friday after speaking with a number of Afghan government officials, including the former vice-president, who say they have established a safe zone for Americans and our afghan allies left behind in the now Taliban-controlled country.
Read More
As I’ve watched the events of the past few weeks – and thought about the nature of Joe Biden’s young presidency – I began to ask myself: How much more of this can we take?
In just seven months, President Biden has overseen a remarkable number of complete blunders. To make sense of them all and consider how to overcome them, I decided to make a list of them. Of course, it would take months of time and writing to list all the errors Biden has made in his 48 years in politics, so I decided to start at his inauguration in January. These are roughly in chronological order. It seemed impossible to rank them as so many of them could have lasting, unforeseeable consequences.
1 – Bipartisan Baloney
As I write in my upcoming book, Beyond Biden, which will be released on Nov. 2, the first major mistake Biden made was immediately failing to live up to the pledges he made in his inaugural address. In his inaugural address, Biden said: “Today, on this January day, my whole soul is in this: Bringing America together. Uniting our people. And uniting our nation.”
Read More
An “element” of the U.S. intelligence community believes COVID-19 entered the human population due to a lab accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, according to a declassified summary of its 90-day review of the pandemic’s origins released Friday.
Overall, however, the 17 agencies that make up the intelligence community were unable to come to a conclusive assessment on the origins of COVID-19 as a result of the review, which was ordered by President Joe Biden in May. Some in the intelligence community believe COVID-19 came from nature, while others pin blame on the Wuhan lab, which prior to the pandemic was conducting risky experiments on bat-based coronaviruses to make them even more contagious.
Read More
The New School’s mascot, a Narwhal named Gnarls, got a gender-neutral redesign for the Fall 2021 semester, the university reports.
Gnarls backstory includes an “unconventional” upbringing due to “distressing levels of ice loss” that forced the Narwhal’s family out of its Antarctica home.
Read More
Authorities on Thursday announced they plan to shut down a federal jail in New York City where alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein died in 2019.
Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in lower Manhattan, apparently due to suicide, The New York Times reported. The prison guards were later accused of sleeping and surfing the internet while on duty.
Read More
Seven Capitol Police officers filed a lawsuit on Thursday against President Donald Trump, claiming with no evidence that the president conspired with right-wing activists to organize the peaceful protests that took place at the Capitol on January 6th, according to Politico.
The lawsuit was filed with the U.S. District Court in Washington D.C., by the group Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; the suit claims that President Trump’s rhetoric leading up to January 6th, in which he called out widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election that may have ultimately swung the election results away from him and in favor of Joe Biden, violated the Ku Klux Klan Act.
Read More
Roughly one-third of the U.S. population had been infected by the coronavirus by the end of 2020, according to a new study that appears to show how widespread but underreported the virus was.
The study was conducted by Columbia University researchers and published Thursday in the science journal Nature.
Read More
The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) has informed active duty and retired service members that they cannot “disrespect” President Joe Biden or other senior government leadership, even during the chaotic and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The warning came in an email, according to The Daily Wire, from the ONI’s chief of staff, reminding service members, current and retired, that they are “prohibited from disrespecting senior government leadership (e.g. the President, Vice President, Congress, Secretary of Defense, Service Secretaries, etc.).”
Read More
Texas’ controversial elections bill cleared the state House Friday afternoon, clearing its way to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk after a months-long battle that drove Democrats to flee the state in an attempt to block its passage.
Senate Bill 1 was lauded by Republicans as a means to better secure future elections, but was chastised by Democrats as an effort to restrict voting access following former President Donald Trump’s discredited claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent. It passed on an 80-41 vote that fell largely along party lines.
The Texas House considered dozens of amendments during a marathon session Thursday, and the bill now heads to the Senate for the provisions adopted to be approved before heading to the governor’s desk. Abbott, a Republican who has championed the issue, has vowed to sign it.
Read More
Twitter has permanently banned Alex Berenson, a former New York Times journalist who has become a major critic of Big Tech censorship and coronavirus lockdowns and mandates.
Responding to an inquiry from Fox News, where Berenson has been a frequent guest during the pandemic, a spokesperson for Twitter replied that “The account you referenced has been permanently suspended for repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation rules.”
Berenson responded on his Substack page, where he posted a message titled “Goodbye Twitter.”
Read More
The North Carolina Senate has approved legislation that prohibits K-12 schools from promoting more than a dozen concepts about racism and discrimination.
The legislation bans school districts from pushing critical race theory, which is centered around the idea that race is a social construct used to oppress people of color. The theory, developed by legal scholars in the late 1970s and 1980s, concludes racism in America is systemic.
Read More
This week’s Golden Horseshoe is awarded to the Department of Labor for a $10 million grant to promote “gender equity” in the workplace in Mexico.
In its grant notice, the DOL’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) announces that the goal of the project is to “improve gender equity in the Mexican workplace by supporting actions to increase the number of women in union leadership, strengthen protections, address harassment at work and augment wages for women.”
Read More
A little more than a week ago, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill announced that Susan King, dean of the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media, would be resigning from her position.
King, who took over the dean position in 2012, announced she would be keeping the position until a replacement is named.
Read More
A Marine commander was relieved of his duties after he demanded accountability from top military brass in a video posted on social media after the deadly terrorist attack in Kabul Afghanistan. On Thursday, a suicide bomber detonated at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, killing 170 Afghans, and 13 American service members, most of whom were Marines.
Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller, an advanced Infantry Training Battalion commander at Camp LeJeune in Jacksonville, N.C., announced that he had been let go on his LinkedIn page.
Read More
What is the deal with today’s K-12 teachers? They’re all over the place when it comes to Critical Race Theory, or CRT. On the one hand they vehemently deny even teaching it; on the other they defend its use in curricula.
Many of those in the latter group claim they just want to teach a “real” and “inclusive” history. They also assert that in these “real” and “inclusive” lessons, white people aren’t shamed and demonized.
Read More
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham drives a car with an average fuel economy of less than 13 mpg, according to records obtained by Power the Future and first reported by The Federalist.
At the same time, Lujan Grisham committed the state in 2019 to new energy efficiency standards that included requiring new cars sold in the state beginning this year to reach an average 52 mpg, a goal that hasn’t been achieved.
Read More
Rep. Ilhan Omar has joined a group of Democrats in urging President Joe Biden to increase the refugee admissions cap to 200,000 for the next fiscal year to meet the “massive humanitarian need” in Afghanistan.
With the Taliban now in control of the country, the U.S. Department of Defense could house as many as 30,000 Afghan refugees at military bases across America, including Fort McCoy in Wisconsin. That figure alone is nearly three times the number of refugees who were admitted to the U.S. last year under President Donald Trump.
President Biden revised the annual refugee admissions cap in May to 62,500 for the 2021 fiscal year, up from the “historically low number” of 15,000 set by the Trump administration. Biden said his goal is to increase that figure again to 125,000 for the next fiscal year.
Read More
Arne Duncan, the Secretary of Education under former President Barack Obama, compared individuals who choose not to wear a mask to the deadly terrorists who killed 13 American service members earlier this week.
In a tweet, Duncan claimed that people who do not wear a mask have a “strikingly similar” mindset to the terrorists who killed and injured dozens of American and Afghan citizens.
Read More
Republican lawmakers are talking about suing the University of Wisconsin over mask mandates and test requirements for those who haven’t received a coronavirus vaccine.
State Senator Steve Nass (R-WI) said he will ask permission to begin legal proceedings if the UW System doesn’t change its mind about coronavirus restrictions by next week.
Read More
Hurricane Ida made landfall Sunday afternoon near Port Fourchon in Louisiana. The hurricane had intensified overnight and went from a Category 2 to a Category 4 storm with sustained winds of 150 mph.
The National Hurricane Center said “to expect ‘extremely life-threatening’ storm surge inundation imminently within the area between Burns Point, Louisiana, to Ocean Springs, Mississippi.”
Read More
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned 55,000 e-cigarette products on Thursday for their failure to prove they didn’t pose a threat to public health.
The FDA announced that thousands of products from three vape companies, JD Nova Group LLC, Great American Vapes, and Vapor Salon, didn’t prove the benefit to adult smokers negated the “well-documented, alarming levels of youth use of such products.”
Read More
The Michigan Democratic Party deleted a tweet pointing out Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) “declined” to issue a statewide school mask mandate.
As coronavirus cases rise, Whitmer has refused to exercise the powers she used months ago, despite repeatedly claiming she is “following the science,” leaving some to speculate she is now following polling and “political science.”
Read More
Harvard University has selected a man who does not believe in God to be the school’s chief chaplain.
Chief Chaplain Greg Epstein is the author of “Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe.” He also serves as Harvard’s Humanist Chaplain, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) humanist chaplain, and as Convener for Ethical Life at the MIT Office of Religious, Spiritual, and Ethical Life.
Read More
Among last year’s other lessons, none may be more important than this: Our taxpayer-funded education establishment cares more about adults than children.
Consider the evidence: public school union bosses pressured officials to close schools and keep them shuttered beyond what medical authorities recommended. In spite of the obvious harm to children of school closures, unions throughout the country lobbed threats and issued demands. In Chicago, the union went so far as to sue the Mayor to keep schools closed; in San Francisco, the city had to sue its school board.
A public education system that failed to do right by our children has kept union bosses empowered and politicians cowed. Thankfully, our country offers an alternative—one that proved its mettle this past year. In a recent survey of public school and Christian school parents, the Herzog Foundation found that parents of children who attended a Christian school were vastly more satisfied with their school experience.
Read More
MCALLEN, Texas — Customs and Border Protection agents are so overwhelmed with the number of migrants arriving at the southern border they’re having a hard time verifying whether some illegal migrants are minors or adults, agents told the Daily Caller News Foundation on Tuesday.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials are supposed to conduct extensive interviews with migrants they suspect of lying about their age, a senior agent told the DCNF. The agents spoke to the DCNF on the condition of anonymity since they were not authorized to speak on the matter.
“In the past, our intelligence would interview these subjects until eventually getting them to admit they had falsely claimed to be minors. But now with the sheer volume of people coming in and people that we have to process and move, that part of the equation is just a hindrance and would create a bottleneck,” the senior CBP agent told the DCNF. “In other words, our processing machine has now switched gears to quantity over quality. Sad.”
Read More
Having met a number of global traveler-types, I was surprised some years ago when I heard American citizenship described in very unromantic, mercantile terms. The most common expression was, “It’s a good passport to have.”
For blood and soil Americans, citizenship is something entirely different. After all, two-thirds of Americans do not even have a passport. Rather, this nation is who we are. It is mom, apple pie, Main Street, the English language, our ancestors, our only political loyalty, and our destiny. Unlike globe-trotting “citizens of the world,” we are not just passing through.
Read More
The House committee probing the Jan. 6 riots is demanding over a dozen social media companies hand over extensive records related to the events at the Capitol.
The Select Committee investigating the Capitol riot sent letters dated Aug. 26 to Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube and Reddit, along with Parler, TikTok, 4chan and seven other social media platforms asking them to provide all documents, data and other information related to the Capitol riot since April 2020.
Read More
A Marine who was killed in Thursday’s terrorist attacks in Kabul has been identified as a 20-year-old man from St. Louis, his father told local affiliate KMOX.
Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz is one of 13 marines who lost their lives in Thursday’s ISIS-K terror attacks at Kabul airport, his father Mark confirmed to St. Louis’ KMOX Friday. Schmitz was notified early Friday morning that his son had died.
Read More
Wisconsin lost track of more than 82,000 mail-in ballots cast in the state in the November 2020 elections—more than four times the margin of difference separating the two presidential candidates in the state, according to a report by the nonprofit Public Interest Legal Foundation.
The legal foundation, an election integrity watchdog group, released a research brief Friday looking at one of the most closely contested states in the 2020 presidential election.
However, the Wisconsin Elections Commission disputes those findings, as the commission spokesman said the report “mischaracterizes election systems and cherry-picks data,” adding, it is “unreliable and frankly, it’s sloppy work.”
Read More
Thales Academy officials have announced they will open a private and low cost K-12 school in Greenville, South Carolina at an unspecified time. Thales Academy is an independent and private school.
Read More