Day: December 16, 2022

Newest ‘Twitter Files’ Release Reveals Platform’s ‘Constant and Pervasive’ Dealings with FBI

Just the News

The latest “Twitter Files” release, on Friday evening, details the social media platform’s relationship with the FBI and outlined communications between the federal agency seeking takedowns of select posts.

The most recent release is from independent journalist Matt Taibbi, one of several individuals to whom new Twitter CEO Elon Musk has granted access to the company’s internal communications in a bid to highlight the prior management’s efforts to stifle posts that didn’t agree with their world view.

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Pete Buttigieg Vacationed in Europe amid Rail Strike Crisis

Michigan Star Staff

While the country was facing a possible supply chain crisis due to the looming threat of a massive rail strike earlier this year, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg was vacationing in Portugal.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, Buttigieg was in Porto, Portugal in September, a tourist destination over 3,500 miles away from Washington, D.C., that is best known for its wineries. He began his vacation on August 29th, just one week before Amtrak started canceling long-distance trips ahead of a likely strike due to failed attempts to negotiate a deal that satisfied the rail workers’ unions.

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House Republicans Launch Investigation into COVID-19 Origins, Demand Answers from 40 Officials

Michigan Star Staff

The soon-to-be chairmen of the House Oversight and Reform and Judiciary committees announced on Wednesday that they are launching an investigation into the origins of  COVID-19, and will be requesting transcribed interviews with 40 individuals.

Oversight and Reform Ranking Member James Comer (R-Ky.) and Judiciary Ranking Member Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said they will be pressing senior Biden administration officials; Dr. Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance; and several virologists for information pertinent to their investigation.

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Zuckerbucks-Backed Group Back in Wisconsin

Michigan Star Staff

The liberal voting activist group that dumped $350 million of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s money on local election offices during the 2020 presidential election is back again with another $80 million to give over the next five years.

And Wisconsin once again will be front and center in the Center for Tech and Civic Life’s “generosity.”

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Three Men Sentenced to Prison for Gov. Whitmer Kidnapping Plot

Just the News

Three people, including a man and his son-in-law, were sentenced to prison Thursday for assisting the leader of a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020. 

Pete Musico received a minimum sentence of 12 years in prison while his son-in-law Joe Morrison was sentenced to 10 years, The Associated Press reported. A third person, Paul Bellar, received seven years behind bars during the sentencing hearing for all three men in Jackson County, Michigan.

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Commentary: Changing the Language of Immigration Matters

Michigan Star Staff

In the last few years, federal, state, and local governments have labored to remove the term “illegal alien” from official documents and replace it with “undocumented noncitizen.” At a time of great instability in our nation, this may seem to rational people like fiddling while Rome burns. It is actually a strategic move to further diminish our border security and bring even more chaos to America.

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Commentary: All State GOPs Should Call for Ronna McDaniel to Withdraw

Michigan Star Staff

The accounts I have read about the race for Republican National Committee chair make it sound as if Ronna McDaniel is sure to win another term as leader of the GOP. These articles imply that her flunkies at the RNC will round up the votes necessary to guarantee her victory. I have no reason to question that assumption. But I wonder if state GOPs across the country, following the lead of their brethren in Arizona and Texas, could force McDaniel out of the race before that vote. After all, can she really lead the party if Republicans across the country have repudiated her leadership?

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Twitter Changes Rule on Location Sharing After Musk Says Car Carrying His Child Was Followed

Just the News

Twitter CEO Elon Musk changed the social media platform’s rules on live location tracking after what he described as a “crazy stalker” followed a car carrying his child and “climbed” onto the vehicle.

In making the change, Musk also said Wednesday that “legal action is being taken” against Jack Sweeney, the man behind the account using publicly available data to track the location of the Tesla CEO’s private jet, following the attack on his 2-year-old child, X Æ A-Xii Musk.

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Commentary: ESG and the Clash of Values

RealClearWire
New York Stock Exchange

In the third of his four part review of Terrence Keeley’s Sustainable, Rupert Darwall writes that ESG rests on a vision of the free-market economy that says capitalism needs to be led by people with the right values, which raises the question: Whose values? This makes ESG inherently divisive, explaining the pushback ESG is now generating in red states. Keeley proposes a solution in keeping with the pluralism and diversity of modern America.

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Commentary: ESG and the Perpetually Just-Over the Horizon Climate Apocalypse

RealClearWire

Concern about catastrophic climate change has been the biggest factor driving ESG, yet the likelihood of climate change being catastrophic and the attainment of net zero are not open to debate or challenge by participants in financial markets. In the last of his four part review of Terrence Keeley’s Sustainable, Rupert Darwall argues that this undermines the function of financial markets as efficient, unsentimental allocators of people’s savings in a way that maximizes growth and economic well-being.

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CDC Quietly Scrubbed Key Firearm Stats After Pressure from Gun Control Activists, Emails Show

Michigan Star Staff

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) quietly removed a range of gun statistics from its website after gun control advocates complained that the statistics made gun control laws harder to pass, according to emails between CDC officials and gun control activists.

Over a three-month period, gun control advocates met with CDC officials about its estimate of defensive gun uses per year, which ranged from 60,000 to 2.5 million based on a review of various studies, according to the emails. The advocates argued that the 2.5 million statistic, found in a study by criminologist Gary Kleck, was misleading, incorrect and made it harder to pass gun control laws, spurring the CDC’s decision to remove the statistics from its website.

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