Posts on Thursday, October 10, 2019
President Trump held another massive rally in Minneapolis, Minnesota on Thursday night. During the rally President Trump invited the local police officers on stage at the rally. This was an amazing moment in tonight’s rally! (Video) Outside the rally wild-eyed Democrats and antifa terrorists attacked police.The leftists cursed police, threw bottles at police on horses.The violent leftists were attacking police horses. (Tweet)
As The Hill notes, Planned Parenthood is planning to make a major investment in the 2020 election. The abortion conglomerate’s super PAC announced that it would be spending upwards of $45 million to unseat Republican politicians and replace them with Democrats.
More from The Hill:
The investment will fund a “large-scale” grassroots organization and canvass, digital, television, radio and mail programs.
“The stakes are higher than ever, and we’re coming out more powerfully than ever with the largest investment we’ve ever made,” said Kelley Robinson, executive director of Planned Parenthood Votes, in an interview with The Hill. …
Sen. Kamala Harris on Thursday pledged to add a White House chief advocate for LGBTQ affairs and name gay people to Cabinet posts if she is elected president. Ms. Harris, California Democrat, said the moves aimed to reverse the “Trump Administration’s hate agenda” toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. “Every LGBTQ person in America should grow up knowing they can not only get married but also live, work, go to school, access affordable health care, and be supported, embraced, safe and celebrated,” she said. “When I’m president, change will start from the top. We will lift people through inclusion
NASCAR has an all-new car coming in 2021, but a bigger change may happen the following year. “Nothing is fully confirmed until it hits the race track. That said, hybrid tech could certainly be in our cars by 2022, if all plans stay on track,” NASCAR’s senior vice president for racing development, John Probst, told Tech Crunch this week. Probst said the plan is still very much in development, and that the powertrains would be focused more on improving performance than fuel efficiency. Even if they debut in 2022, hybrid powertrains may be used initially just on road courses and short
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded to criticism over an expensive trip to a beauty salon, saying conservatives are just jealous about how good she looks defending progressive policies. The New York Democrat said there’s more important issues to be uncovered in Washington, citing healthcare, poverty and “extreme inequality.” “40 million Americans live in poverty under today’s extreme inequality, yet the right-wing want you to blame Democratic socialism for their own moral failures. Our policies, like Medicare for All, advance prosperity for working people,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said on Twitter Thursday. “They’re just mad we look good doing it.” The response comes
Charleston, W.Va.—The mayor of West Virginia’s capital city on Thursday reversed a decision to change the name of the annual holiday parade after intense backlash from church leaders and conservatives. Mayor Amy Goodwin announced on Monday that she planned to rename the “Charleston Christmas Parade” the “Charleston Winter Parade” to demonstrate that Charleston is an inclusive city. Officials from several churches quickly criticized the decision and said they wouldn’t attend. State Senate President Mitch Carmichael, a Republican, issued a statement saying the renaming was the handiwork of “Charleston’s elite liberals.” “We are calling on Mayor Goodwin and her liberal allies
Six police officers in Mercer County have filed a whistleblower lawsuit against Lawrence Township and its police chief claiming they were ordered to write more tickets and impound as many cars as possible to meet an illegal quota. The suit, filed Monday in Mercer County Superior Court, claims Lawrence police administrators ordered officers to write tickets and impound cars “every time they are eligible and without discretion.” The reason was that revenue was down, according to the suit.(Snip) According to the suit, cars are impounded “regardless of the criminal or motor vehicle offense” and taken to a municipal lot.
Charges brought against two Montana men after a large pot bust on Interstate 94 northwest of Alexandria this spring have been dismissed.
Court documents confirm two controlled substance charges against both Jared Michael Desroches, 30, of Missoula, Montana, and Alexander Clifford Gordon, 25, of Helena, Montana, were dismissed Tuesday. (snip) When the trooper then searched the camper, he found 900 pounds of marijuana, 406 one-gram packages of THC concentrate, 112 glass jars of THC wax and $15,500 in cash.
The 2020 Democratic candidate with whom the CIA whistleblower had a "professional" tie is Joe Biden, according to intelligence officers and former White House officials.
Lawyers for the whistleblower said he had worked only "in the executive branch." The Washington Examiner has established that he is a career CIA analyst who was detailed to the National Security Council at the White House and has since left. On Sept. 26, the New York Times reported that he was a CIA officer. On Oct. 4, the newspaper added that he "was detailed to the National Security Council at one point."
DENVER - A former driver with the ride-sharing service Uber, who said he fatally shot a passenger in self-defense along a Denver highway ramp in 2018, was found not guilty on Thursday of murder, a court official said. Michael Andre Hancock, 31, was acquitted by a Denver jury of first-degree murder in the slaying of 45-year-old Hyun Kim following a nine-day trial, Rob McCallum, a spokesman for the Colorado Judicial Branch, said in a statement. (Snip) An autopsy showed Kim was struck six times and died of multiple gunshot wounds, including to his back and chest. Kim had a blood-alcohol level
The bar just got higher for deputies to make marijuana arrests in Pinellas County.
Pinellas Sheriff Bob Gualtieri and Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bernie McCabe on Wednesday issued a memo cautioning deputies about making pot arrests in light of a new law legalizing a type of cannabis called hemp.
While the memo only applies to the county’s 820 or so deputies, some Pinellas County police departments have also raised the standards for their officers to make marijuana arrests since the state law went into effect July 1. Wednesday’s memo marks the first time the county’s top prosecutor has issued an official stance on which marijuana cases his office is willing to pursue.
House Democrats have subpoenaed Energy Secretary Rick Perry to produce documents related to their impeachment inquiry of President Trump’s discussions with Ukraine.
"Recently, public reports have raised questions about any role you may have played in conveying or reinforcing the President’s stark message to the Ukrainian President," wrote the three Democratic House committee chairmen leading the impeachment inquiry.Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel, Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, and Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings sent the subpoena to Perry on Thursday.
Trump Campaign Rally in Minnesota the
Opening Salvo of ‘Full-On Major
Effort’ to Win State in 2020 replies
Opening Salvo of ‘Full-On Major
Effort’ to Win State in 2020 replies
The Trump campaign rally in Minneapolis on Thursday marks the beginning of the presidential re-election campaign’s intense efforts to win the state of Minnesota in 2020.
“It is a full-on major effort state campaign,” Trump campaign spokesperson Tim Murtaugh told the New York Times in a story published early Thursday morning.“And we will have the resources behind it to make it count,” Murtaugh added.President Trump narrowly lost the state’s ten electoral college votes by about 44,000 votes in 2016, the best Republican showing in Minnesota since President Richard Nixon won the state in the 1972 presidential election.The Times reported in its Thursday story:
President Trump is holding another massive campaign rally in Minnesota on Thursday night. Minnesota is a state President Trump lost by only 1.5 points to Crooked in 2016.(Photo) Democrats know they must hold onto Minnesota to have a chance to defeat Trump. In fact, according to The Hill, President Trump could lose Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania and STILL win the 2020 election if he takes Minnesota. And, as Rush Limbaugh reported, the Socialists in Minnesota are getting nervous.
A “potentially historic” fall snowstorm is set to wallop a large stretch of the country — evolving into an “all-out blizzard” as it passes over the Dakotas and sending an arctic blast into much of the northern US, forecasters predict.
Denver was downright balmy on Wednesday with a high in the lower 80s — but the temperature had already plummeted into the upper 20s by 1 a.m. as snow began to fall, according to Accuweather. From 1 to 3 inches of snow is expected to fall in the Mile High City on Thursday.
A similar drastic change happened in Rapid City, South Dakota, which reached a high of 80 degrees Tuesday
On Sunday night, an undrafted rookie from an FCS school may be playing quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Colin Kaepernick may be watching the game on TV. And, yes, something continues to be very wrong with that picture. The NFL continues to blackball Kaepernick, consistently and continuously ignoring his ongoing desire to return to the NFL.
Deutsche Bank doesn’t have Donald Trump’s long-sought tax returns, a federal appeals panel revealed Thursday.
The disclosure came amid an ongoing fight between Trump and Congress, as the president attempts to stay subpoenas served on the bank as part of an inquiry by the House Intelligence and Financial Services committees.
The committees seek financial documents, including tax returns, from Trump and his three eldest children — Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump.
Kurdish officials in Syria on Thursday accused the invading Turkish army of shelling the Chirkin prison, which is filled with captive Islamic State jihadis from 60 different countries. (Snip)
“These attacks on prisons holding ISIS terrorists will lead to a catastrophe the consequences of which the world may not be able to handle later on,” said a statement from Kurdish authorities, alluding to their warnings that Turkey’s invasion will leave them unable to properly garrison the prisons, resulting in mass Islamic State jailbreaks.
A spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) described Chirkin as “the place where the most dangerous jihadists are held.”
Americans are showing more animosity toward members of the opposing political party, with the majority of both Republicans and Democrats saying those on the other side of the aisle are too close-minded, the Pew Research Center reported Thursday.
In a survey of 9,895 adults between Sept. 3 and 15, researchers used a “feeling thermometer” metric to measure respondents’ reception toward members of the opposing party. Seventy-nine percent of Democratic respondents indicated “cold” or “very cold” feelings toward Republicans, which is also 7% increase from May. Reciprocally, 83% of Republican respondents felt “cold” or “very cold” feelings toward Democrats, which has also risen 7% since the spring.
We all know there's such a thing as a push poll. We also know that a heckuva lot of pollsters get their results wrong.
Nevertheless, here's an unwelcome Fox News poll result being reported as news and being flashed, at least at first, in red letters at the center of the page on the Drudge Report:
Just over half of voters want President Trump impeached and removed from office, according to a Fox News Poll released Wednesday.
A new high of 51 percent wants Trump impeached and removed from office, another 4 percent want him impeached but not removed, and 40 percent oppose impeachment altogether.
As the mainstream press falls all over itself to blare about a poll of dubious quality, claiming that most voters want President Trump out of office, center-left Axios of all places, has some warnings of toxic implications for Democrats if they push their impeachment dream as they're now doing, and they go well beyond the typical warning that Trump is likely to win:
It’s looking more likely by the day that President Trump will be impeached by the House for his dealings with Ukraine. But if he is acquitted by the Senate — and then goes on to win a second term — Democrats
Victoria’s Secret is laying off about 15 percent of the brand’s employees at its Columbus, Ohio, headquarters as the beleaguered lingerie chain struggles to reshape its image and the chief executive of its parent company remains under scrutiny for his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
The cuts, which took place on Wednesday and Thursday, involved about 50 people and range from senior leaders to junior staff, according to three people with knowledge of the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The timing of the layoffs was unusual in the retail industry just before the key holiday season —
President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence will be in Minneapolis on Thursday night for a jumbo campaign rally. They will be met by thousands of protesters, according to reports from local news organizations — plus multiple law enforcement agencies determined to keep the peace for one and all.
“Minneapolis is bracing for a chaotic scene, with President Trump set to speak Thursday in the heart of the city that overwhelmingly rejected him in 2016. Two dozen disparate groups plan to protest the visit, from civil rights advocates to labor unions and self-identifying antifa or anti-capitalists. Some estimate more than 10,000 people will flood downtown to oppose the president’s visit,”
Rep. Max Rose (D-NY) said people “hate the Democrats” for beating around the bush when it comes to the policies and positions they support.
Rose himself recently flip-flopped on opposing the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry after coming out against the investigation.
The New York Democrat lawmaker spoke about his party in an interview published Tuesday by Vanity Fair magazine.
Vanity Fair described the congressman, a former U.S. military veteran who served in Afghanistan, as a straight shooter who “lacks all pretense.”
American Thinker's scoop on Trump
getting Port of Long Beach out of
Chicom hands getting noticed replies
getting Port of Long Beach out of
Chicom hands getting noticed replies
Here's an impressive quiet accomplishment from the Trump administration, now noted by Judicial Watch:
Under a long-term deal sealed by the Obama administration, a Chinese Communist company was set to control the second-busiest container port in the United States. In an unreported Trump administration victory, the Communists are out after a drawn-out national security review forced a unit of China-based COSCO Shipping Holdings Co. (Orient Overseas Container Line—OOCL) to sell the cherished container terminal business, which handles among the largest freight of imports into the U.S.
Let me see if I understand the Democratic position on impeachment: They have begun an impeachment inquiry because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says so. The House of Representatives has not authorized it.
Hearings are being held in secret and transcripts of interviews are not being released. The minority party cannot ask questions, request evidence or subpoena witnesses, and witnesses have no due process.
Trump administration officials cannot have department attorneys with them. And if the Trump administration does not surrender to their demands, they will consider the president guilty of obstruction.
Are they serious?
The prospect of President Trump being impeached by the House of Representatives should not be surprising to people. Counter to conventional wisdom, this impeachment does not expose a corrupt president. Instead, it reveals the rot at the core of an establishment willing to abuse the system to overturn an election.
Ergo, impeachment was inevitable if we were correct in our support for Donald Trump in 2016.
If the system was as corrupt and malevolent as we had intuited through the decline of the country under Democratic rule, then of course their reaction would be to implement corrupt and malevolent mechanisms to reverse Trump’s election.
The phony Russian dossier,
South Park escalated its criticism of the Chinese communist regime on Wednesday, with lead character Randy Marsh at one point saying “f**k the Chinese government.”
In the episode Shots, which was coincidentally the show’s 300th episode, Stan Marsh’s father Randy is running a weed business selling product to China.
When confronted about the country’s human rights abuses by his former business partner Towelie, he agrees to stop selling to China over ethical concerns. In an effort to convince Towelie that he is sincere, Randy begins shouting: “F**k the Chinese government.” The episode comes days after the show’s creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, issued a fake apology the communist regime
Many of the stories about the gods and heroes of Greek mythology were compiled during Greek Dark Ages. Impoverished tribes passed down oral traditions that originated after the fall of the lost palatial civilizations of the Mycenaean Greeks.
Dark Age Greeks tried to make sense of the massive ruins of their forgotten forebears’ monumental palaces that were still standing around. As illiterates, they were curious about occasional clay tablets they plowed up in their fields with incomprehensible ancient Linear B inscriptions.
We of the 21st century are beginning to look back at our own lost epic times and wonder about these now-nameless giants
Fact-checkers gonna fact-check and Politifact is no different. The industry of pretending to be unbiased while operating as total hacks is apparently good for the bottom line.
The most recent example comes courtesy of a claim about DACA and Barack Obama, namely whether he ever admitted he didn’t have the authority to enact such an order. This all came in a snarky reply to, who else, Donald Trump. The President had tweeted out this. (Snip) Anyone that’s been around for more than five minutes knows that’s objectively true. Barack Obama said multiple times, publicly, that he did not have the authority to enact DACA
Joe Biden’s presidential campaign sent a scathing letter to New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet for running an op-ed by author and Breitbart senior contributor Peter Schweizer, which laid out the former vice president’s pattern of corruption and calling for the federal government to investigate his dealings in both China and Ukraine.
The Biden campaign sent its letter to Baquet Wednesday, expressing outrage for printing “a baseless conspiracy theory” and calling Schweizer, author of the book Secret Empires, a “right wing polemicist.” While half of Schweizer’s op-ed in the Times addressed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao’s China ties,
Because he has no good answers for why his ne’er-do-well son Hunter was paid a sweet $50,000 a month — a month! — by a Ukrainian energy company, former-tough guy Joe Biden is going the full-crybaby to kill the story.
So, uhm, what happened to the badass who took on Corn Pop? What happened to the tough guy who was going to beat President Trump like a drum? What happened to the sunglasses and swagger?
I’ll tell you what happened…
Joe Biden got old. And I don’t mean number-wise. While Clint Eastwood is still knocking them out of the park at age 89, Joe Biden’s eye is exploding, his dentures are falling out,
A Chick-fil-A employee in Stafford, Virginia, climbed down a storm drain to retrieve a phone that a customer had accidentally dropped in the sewer. “This is Seth,” said the customer, “He is also now my hero and favorite Chick-fil-A employee.”
Chick-fil-A employees are known for transcending typical customer service exceptions, and earlier this month, one woman experienced this first-hand when an employee climbed down a storm drain to retrieve her iPhone, which she had accidentally dropped in a sewer while getting out of her van, according to a report by ABC 13 News.
A woman was recently flagged by a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent for transporting Flamin’ Hot Cheetos through airport security.
Social media star Emily Mei posted video footage of the incident to her Twitter account on Friday that shows the agent removing each of the 20 bags of chips from her Louis Vuitton duffel bag and swabbing them to test for chemicals.
“Will never forget the day TSA stopped me cuz they thought i was hiding s - - t inside my bag cuz all i had was like 20 bags of Hot Cheetos,” tweeted Mei, who goes by the name Emily Ghoul on Twitter
My needs for iPhones are modest: the ability to take and receive calls, including video calls; a good quality camera; access to a very small number of apps; and enough memory to make it all work. That’s it. My iPhone 6 does the job. I don’t need 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 or any of their variants. In fact, my iPhone 5 was adequate. I have 6 only because one of my brothers gifted it to me. Shortly after an automatic software update, my iPhone 6 could receive calls and texts only on my home network or other local wi-fi spots.
Can we keep our Republic?
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When asked the type of government the Constitutional Convention had created, Benjamin Franklin famously replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” Franklin and the Founders understood that given a flawed human nature and its passion for power, no form of political order can survive if it is not continually maintained and defended against attempts to dismantle it in order to empower one faction at the expense of others, thus diminishing their freedom.
Since the election of Donald Trump, we have been watching one of the most serious assaults on the Constitutional Republic in our history. With the current efforts of the
Many of the stories about the gods and heroes of Greek mythology were compiled during Greek Dark Ages. (Snip) We of the 21st century are beginning to look back at our own lost epic times and wonder about these now-nameless giants who left behind monuments that we cannot replicate, but instead merely use or even mock.
Does anyone believe that contemporary Americans could build another transcontinental railroad in six years?
Californians tried to build a high-speed rail line. But after more than a decade of government incompetence, lawsuits, cost overruns and
It all started with a business deal gone bad. In 1963, Henry Ford II, "the Deuce," decided he wanted Ford Motor Company to go racing. The only problem: Ford didn't have a sports car in its portfolio.
The quickest way to acquire a sports car, the Deuce thought, was to buy Ferrari, then a race car company that only sold street-legal machines to fund its track exploits.
Ford sent an envoy to Modena, Italy, to hash out a deal with Enzo Ferrari. The Americans offered $10 million, but as the negotiations neared their conclusion, Ferrari balked at a clause in the contract that said Ford would control the budget
In advance of President Trump’s rally at Target Center in Minneapolis tonight, Esme Murphy invited MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell to appear on her Sunday morning WCCO TV show and talk about his support of President Trump. Esme is a pillar of the liberal Minnesota media establishment. You can’t mistake where Murphy is coming from, but Lindell is able to make his case in this terrific segment.
Lindell prefaces the tale of his meeting 2016 meeting with Trump: “I didn’t know anything about politics. I was an ex-crack addict. I came out of a 25-year culture coma. I didn’t know a Republican from a Democrat, a liberal from a conservative.”
An Oklahoma sheriff’s department defied ICE and released an accused rapist from jail this week—and within hours he was back at the door of his alleged victim, the agency said Thursday, saying the county’s sanctuary policy put the woman at risk. Antonio Ulises Perez was charged with first-degree rape on Sept. 30, and made bond early Wednesday morning. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had asked that he be transferred to the custody of deportation officers, but the sheriff’s department refused, and released him instead.(Snip) ICE says the county adopted its sanctuary policy in the last few months, ending
In a promotional video, Amazon[dot]com Inc. says its Cloud Cam home security camera provides “everything you need to monitor your home, day or night.” In fact, the artificially intelligent device requires help from a squad of invisible employees. Dozens of Amazon workers based in India and Romania review select clips captured by Cloud Cam, according to five people who have worked on the program or have direct knowledge of it.(Snip) An Amazon team also transcribes and annotates commands recorded in customers’ homes by the company’s Alexa digital assistant, Bloomberg reported in April. AI has made it possible to
More fetal remains have been found in Illinois in a vehicle formerly owned by late Dr. Ulrich Klopfer, the physician who performed abortions at clinics in Fort Wayne, Gary and South Bend, according to a release from Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill. Hill released a statement Wednesday saying the latest remains were found as family members continued to sort through the late doctor’s belongings in Will County, Ill. In a revised statement released later Wednesday afternoon, members of the Will County Sheriff’s Office reportedly found the remains while searching several vehicles owned by Klopfer that were parked at a business property
LARGO — Clearwater parking lot shooter Michael Drejka was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the shooting death of Markeis McGlockton.
The hefty sentence came during an emotional hearing Thursday morning before Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Joseph Bulone, who heard impassioned pleas from McGlockton’s parents and girlfriend for the maximum sentence of 30 years.
“Markeis was loved by so many and because of you, Michael Drejka, my son is now a memory," said his mother, Monica Moore-Robinson. "
“I don’t hate you, but I will never forgive you.” There were no Drejka supporters in the courtroom, but one of his defense attorneys submitted two letters requesting more leniency,
The Washington, D.C. city council held an emergency session this week to address a growing problem plaguing our nation's capital. No, the council did not address the increasing number of rats, homeless people, and shootings, but a more pressing issue 500 years in the making. The council voted to abolish Columbus Day and replace it with Indigenous People's Day. Townhall reached out to the Heritage Foundation's Jarrett Stepman, the author of The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America's Past, for his opinion on the "emergency" legislation. Stepman told Townhall that this bill is nothing more than the left's latest attempt to demonize America and its
Earlier this week, Biden campaign spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield attempted to defend the Biden family's shady business dealings in Ukraine while Joe was vice president, and ended up implicating Barack Obama instead.While his father was vice president and handling U.S. relations with Ukraine, Hunter Biden got a lucrative position on the board of Burisma Holdings. Despite having no experience in the field, Hunter Biden was making as much a $166,000 a month, sparking allegations that he was selling access to the White House."Every single independent outlet that’s looked into this
This past weekend, I spoke for the second time at the second annual Black Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C., hosted by Turning Point USA. Turning Point was founded in 2012 by then-18-year-old Charlie Kirk. Its website describes its goal as seeking “to identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of freedom, free markets, and limited government.”In addition to the Black Leadership Summit, Turning Points holds other annual gatherings, including the Young Women’s Leadership Summit, the Young Latino Leadership Summit and the Student Action Summit. Turning Point, according to Kirk, has established chapters at over 1,000 college campuses across the country. In a short time,
Former Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign complained to The New York Times after it published an op-ed about Biden and his son by conservative author Peter Schweizer Wednesday. Schweizer, a senior contributor at Breitbart, wrote a 2018 book titled “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends.” President Donald Trump has cited Schweizer in allegations about Biden.“This leaves us with a critical question: are you truly blind to what you got wrong in 2016, or are you deliberately continuing policies that distort reality for the sake of controversy and the clicks that accompany it?”
Trump Attorney Rudy Giuliani joined Sean Hannity on Wednesdy night to discuss the ongoing coup attempt by the Democrat Party to remove President Trump from office.Rudy told Sean, “I never in my life wanted to appear in a Salem witch trial that would actually be fairer than this. It’s a process without any due process. And the fact is it’s been enabled by a corrupt press corps.” Rudy then warned the deep state on their plans to smear his name, “What I want to tell them is every time you come after me another piece of evidence is going to come out.
What goes around comes around — right? But if there’s a phrase that rarely applies in a media world that fawns over far leftists and liberals, that would be it. Seriously, Democrats get a lot of free media passes. (Snip) Schweizer went on to write “We Need a Washington Corrupt Practices Act to stop political families from self-dealing.” And then he tweeted the piece, writing above the link — and above a photograph that included Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden, “Congress can and should conduct an inquiry to determine whether anything illegal occurred.”
Team Biden wasn’t happy.
Republican senators are pressing the Justice Department to pursue criminal charges against women who made false rape accusations against Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing last year.
Nine of the 12 Republican members on the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Attorney General William Barr and FBI Director Christopher Wray asking for an update to the committee’s four referrals for criminal investigation.
“We are grateful to citizens who come forward with relevant information in good faith, even if they are not entirely sure about the accuracy of that information. But, when individuals intentionally mislead the committee, they divert important committee resources during time-sensitive investigations
Freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., is an "absentee landlord" in her home state and residents aren't happy, Minneapolis police officer and congressional candidate Chris Kelley said Thursday.
Appearing on "Fox & Friends: First" with hosts Rob Schmitt and Jillian Mele, Kelley said that from Omar's own Somali community to "just everybody else I come in contact with patrolling the streets every day," Minnesotans have not been satisfied with the job she's done to represent the state since she was elected in 2018.
"She's traveling the world. She's fighting the president on Twitter. She's not doing anything in the district.
Socialism, including greenie socialism, is always about blaming Those Greedy Capitalists for whatever hideous policies the government cooks up, which inevitably prompts an unintended consequence.
California's Gov. Gavin Newsom is right there with the best of them, blaming the wreckers and hoarders for California's massive power outages, taking northern California back to a state of nature and, in the full greenie spirit, telling us it's needed, necessary, all for our own good.
Get a load of it, from the Sacramento Bee, emphasis mine:
The Turkish Offensive
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Turkey's border offensive against the Kurds, far from being a blitzkrieg, is limited by the resources available Ankara's forces. According to DW its goal is to bring a 15,360 sq km swath under its control. "Turkey wants to create a 32-kilometer-deep, 480-kilometer-long corridor (20 miles deep, 300 miles long) inside Syria along the border to protect its security ... it plans to resettle nearly 1 million of its 3.6 million Syrian refugees who hail from other parts of Syria inside the 'safe zone.'" But it must do so by installment and on a shoestring.
Regular Turkish army will provide armor, artillery and air support
Matt Lauer's ex-wife spoke out after new allegations of sexual assault were brought up against the now-disgraced TV anchor.
Annette Roque's statement comes in response to bombshell allegations of rape detailed in Ronan Farrow’s new book, “Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and Conspiracy to Protect Predators."
“In response to your inquiry, our client has asked us to tell you that now that the parties are officially divorced, her priority and only concern is for their wonderful children,” Roque’s lawyer John M. Teitler told People. “Our client will make no further statements.”
Washington - Two men associated with U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani have been arrested over violations of campaign finance laws, a spokesman for the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office said on Thursday.
The two Florida businessmen, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, are expected to appear in a federal court in Virginia later on Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
Giuliani and John Dowd, the lawyer for the two men, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
President Donald Trump is headed to the liberal stronghold of Minneapolis for his first re-election rally since impeachment talk heated up.
Trump is expected to draw an overflow crowd of fans Thursday at Target Center, the city's basketball arena.
The president is embracing the impeachment conflict, trading insults with the city's Democratic mayor this week and briefly threatening a lawsuit over disputed security costs around the event.
Notes of Rudolph Giuliani's interviews with two former Ukrainian prosecutors include one's allegation that then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko warned him against investigating energy firm Burisma Holdings “as it was not in the interest of Joe and/or Hunter Biden.”
The prosecutor was later fired, under what President Trump says was pressure from Vice President Biden. His son Hunter had a lucrative role on the Burisma board.The notes were published by a Ukrainian news site, and their authenticity was confirmed by Giuliani, President Trump's personal lawyer, and by a second source who has seen the originals and who declined to be identified.
Washington - Millions of retirees will get a modest 1.6% cost-of-living increase from Social Security in 2020, an uptick with potential political consequences in an election year when Democrats are pushing more generous inflation protection.
The increase amounts to $24 a month for the average retired worker, according to estimates released Thursday by the Social Security Administration. Following a significant boost this year, the cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, for 2020 reverts to its pattern of moderate gains.
But seniors and advocates complain that the inflation yardstick used to determine the annual adjustment doesn’t adequately reflect their costs, mainly for health care.
We have several developments regarding Pelosi’s star chamber impeachment polka: first off, the feckless Trey Gowdy has joined the president’s legal team. This is not confidence-inspiring. Trump should have hired Lionel Hutz or Unfrozen Cave Man Lawyer rather than Gowdy. We all remember what a bang up job Gowdy did on Benghazi. He’s one of those pod people in congress who gets on camera and talks a lot of smack and sabre-rattles but in practice there’s a complete failure to launch.
The uproar over President Trump’s plan to drawdown our forces in northeast Syria certainly takes me back — to Vietnam. The howls of protest from Democratic politicians and the liberal foghorns in the press over how terrible it would be to leave brave American allies in the lurch, it’s almost like a time machine, complete with assertions that the evil Mr. Trump is ruining America’s hard-earned reputation for loyalty and trustworthiness.
Flash back to the mid-1970s and these, or their parents, were the same people cheering as we abandoned Southeast Asia’s millions of wonderful people to a generations-long nightmare of life under communism.
John Durham, the U.S. attorney tasked with investigating the origins of the counterintelligence investigation into Russia and the Trump campaign in 2016, is expanding his probe to include “a post-election timeline,” Fox News reported on Tuesday. Durham—who has a reputation for being a “hard-charging, bulldog” prosecutor— has also added agents and resources to the case, multiple senior administration officials told Fox.
Previously, it was understood that Durham was only reviewing U.S. intelligence activities during the 2016 election up to the inauguration.
Now, based on his findings, Durham has reportedly expanded his investigation to include a time period that runs through “the spring of 2017, up to when Robert Mueller was
Washington - Each state in America has an official state bird, usually an iconic species that helps define the landscape. Minnesota chose the common loon, whose haunting wails echo across the state’s northern lakes each summer. Georgia picked the brown thrasher, a fiercely territorial bird with a repertoire of more than 1,000 song types.
But as the planet warms and birds across the country relocate to escape the heat, at least eight states could see their state birds largely or entirely disappear from within their borders during the summer, according to a new study.
Farewell, Tomahawk Chop!
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The Daily Caller reports on the latest victory for political correctness: “Braves Axe ‘Tomahawk Chop’ During Game Five After Complaint From Cardinal With Cherokee Heritage.”
"The Atlanta Braves made a major concession Wednesday before beginning game five of the National League Division Series against the St. Louis Cardinals — they agreed to abandon their normal “Tomahawk Chop” rallying cry. (Snip) Axing the tomahawk didn’t do the Braves much good tonight, as they lost to the St. Louis Cardinals 13-1.
I don’t care much about this and have never been a fan of the Atlanta Braves, although I liked the ’50s Milwaukee version, featuring Hank Aaron, Eddie Mathews,
President Donald Trump revealed on Wednesday that the hardest part of his job is having to write letters to the parents of soldiers that have been killed and having to see the pain and suffering from the parents as they see their child returned to the United States in a coffin draped in a U.S. flag. Trump’s remarks inside the White House come as the U.S. decided to pull its forces back from an area in Syria, which has allowed Turkish forces to invade the area where they are reportedly attacking the Kurds. “The hardest thing I have to do, by far, much harder than the witch hunt,
A high-profile U.S. Senator with professional and personal ties to China — including once employing one of its spies — is backing former Vice President Joe Biden amid mounting questions over his son’s business dealings with the communist regime.Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), a former chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, announced her endorsement of the former vice president on Tuesday, claiming to have witnessed Biden’s “fortitude” and leadership during their overlapping tenures in Congress.Feinstein said in a statement: I’ve worked closely with Vice President Biden and I’ve seen firsthand his legislative ability, his statesmanship, and most importantly his moral fortitud.
Like a reluctant bride mumbling vows written by her eager but unwelcome groom, Nancy Pelosi read the words House intelligence committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D.-Calif.) probably wrote to further aggrandize his shiny new Ukraine hoax. “We do place ourselves in a time of urgency and the threat to the Constitution, a system of checks and balances, that is being made.” Although Speaker Pelosi didn’t specifically identify the provision of the Constitution currently being threatened, it’s not hard to see what really has Washington so upset. Donald Trump has threatened the 28th Amendment to the Constitution.
(Snip) it might read, “Thou shalt not mess with another swamp creature’s side-hustle.”
With its spouting geysers, majestic mountains, awe-inspiring waterfalls, and panoramic views, Yellowstone National Park has the undeniable power to uplift.
But it also has an unparalleled potential to destroy.
Concealed beneath the park rests the Yellowstone Caldera, the largest supervolcano in North America. Each year, millions of visitors trek over a massive magma chamber that, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), stretches from 5 km to 17 km beneath the surface and is about 90 km long and about 40 km wide. A little deeper rests another chamber that's 4.5 times larger.
The Yellowstone supervolcano has unleashed three cataclysmic eruptions in the past 2.1 million years;
The mass media continue to fail to investigate serious abuses of power alleged against former President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, whilst devoting their substantial resources to pursuing President Trump for the same alleged offence.
Readers and viewers are being hoodwinked whilst the mass media’s own reputation and credibility to hold politicians of all political persuasions answerable for their decisions—without fear or favor—has been compromised.
Political nepotism and bias have become the standard bearers for the mass media – replacing their long tradition for being fair and balanced.
Three alleged serious abuses of power involving Obama and Biden cry out for
One perfect meme, currently doing rounds over the Internet, bottom lines the entire Ukraine Joe and Hunter Biden scandal.
You can quit with the endless yada, yada, talking heads—including all of those recently being promoted by Fox News and the Drudge report.
“When the Democrats Investigate Trump For Over 2 Years; And The Only Thing They Can Uncover Is Their Own Crimes” is exactly what’s happening—proving it is the leaders of the Desperado Democrats who should be impeached.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday there was no blackmail involved during a telephone call with President Donald Trump that has since set in motion an impeachment inquiry. Zelensky has come under pressure to shed light on a phone call with Trump in July in which the U.S. president appeared to ask Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a potential Democratic rival in the 2020 presidential race, and his son Hunter Biden who served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company Burisma. Trump repeatedly tells Zelensky that the U.S. has been “very, very good” to Ukraine, a
In order to remove the U.S. president, the vice president, federal judges, and other federal officials from office, Article I, Section II of the U.S. Constitution gives the U.S. House of Representatives "the sole Power of Impeachment." Article I, Section III gives the U.S. Senate "the sole Power to try all Impeachments." In the history of the United States, the U.S. House has initiated impeachment proceedings dozens of times; however, only 19 individuals have faced actual Articles of Impeachment.
Most of these 19 were judges, and most were acquitted or resigned from office before facing trial in the Senate. All, save two
The latest Census Bureau Current Population Survey data now show that middle-class incomes, after adjusting for inflation, have surged by $5,003 since Donald Trump became president in January 2017. Median household income has now reached $65,976 – an all-time high and up more than 8 percent in 2019 dollars under the Trump presidency.
This data was compiled by the statisticians at Sentier Research, an economic research group whose founders have more than 30 years of experience at the Census Bureau in analyzing the monthly income numbers.
I reported last week in the Wall Street Journal that real median family income had soared by $4,146 under Trump through July 2019
Attacks on the electoral college are nothing new, but there’s no question that it’s been under heavier fire than usual lately. Presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg and Beto O’Rourke have all said they want to scrap it. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has repeatedly tweeted against it as well.
“Every vote should be = in America, no matter who you are and where you come from,” she said. Ocasio-Cortez went on to argue that the electoral college allows smaller, rural states outsized influence over the presidential election process, claiming it is akin to “electoral affirmative action.”
But how much does the electoral college really advantage smaller states?
A Day of Prayer and Fasting
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Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee has proclaimed today a day of prayer, humility, and fasting. There are, by my count, approximately 49 other governors who would do well to follow his example. A president, too.
And 327.2 million Americans.
The proclamation reads, in part: “We seek forgiveness from our transgressions; from acts of discrimination, oppression, and injustice; and inaction caused by greed, pride, and indifference; for these and many more we ask forgiveness. . . . The people of Tennessee acknowledge our rich blessings, our deep transgressions, and our complex challenges, and further acknowledge the need to give thanks to God Almighty, to turn from our transgressions and ask for
While the Supreme Court heard arguments on Tuesday about whether sex discrimination, as codified in the 1964 Civil Rights Act, also applies to sexually fluid people – intersex, transgender -- activists protested outside the court proclaiming that sex is not based on biology.
LGBT activists yelled, “trans women are women” and had several speakers lecture on gender diversity. On the other side, the conservative group Concerned Women of America pressed that changing the meaning of “sex” in the Civil Rights Act “would greatly undermine the women's movement.” They held signs that read, "Sex is not Gender."
Trump Issues Executive Orders
Designed To Deconstruct The Deep State
While Dems Focus On Impeachment replies
Designed To Deconstruct The Deep State
While Dems Focus On Impeachment replies
President Donald Trump signed executive orders Wednesday afternoon that are designed to take much of the sting out of what conservatives believe is an out-of-control administrative state.
The orders will limit the use of a tool the Trump administration believes short-circuits the rule-making process. They take aim at federal guidance, which agencies can use to explain how they intend to implement policy. The Wall Street Journal reported on the orders Tuesday.
The orders are expected to dramatically reduce the impact a key element of the country’s regulatory infrastructure has on businesses and Americans, according to White House spokesman Judd Deere.
It’s nice to know we have Chelsea Clinton to advise us on the state of America today. And since Chelsea Clinton reliably channels the conventional wisdom of the establishment Left in America, it is useful to wonder what sort of country her children would grow up in, if she could wave a wand and let the Left win every battle for the next 20 years.
Not that much magic is needed. The miraculous arrival of Donald Trump may just be a speed bump on the road to Chelsea’s utopia. So let’s get busy―how would Chelsea’s dream unfold? It would begin with President Trump losing the 2020 election
Progressing toward Extinction
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I was born at the tail end of the baby boom. I remember going to schools from which children poured out like an enthusiastic tide. It was an oddity for a couple not to have children then – and even a minor source of embarrassment. It was also an oddity for people not to marry at a fairly young age. Of course, by this time a kind of stigma was already creeping in at the other end of the spectrum. Families of six or seven, not uncommon in my grandparents’ day, were more and more being seen as socially irresponsible – a throwback to a now distant time in which
Democrats are turning California into a third-world hellhole without electricity, water, and freedom.
Due to Democrats' love for trees, at least 800,000 Californians will be without power for several days. Instead of properly managing California forests to reduce the chances of big fires, Democrats are saying Californians have to go without lights, refrigerators, and air-conditioning. Democrats could also avoid this by not making the power company financially liable for all forest fire damages, but since PG&E is a company, not an illegal alien, the Democrats couldn't care less about doing what's best for California.
While they try to blame climate change and the infrastructure,
On Wednesday’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “The Daily Briefing,” Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA), the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, said the way House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and House Intelligence chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) are running the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump was “un-American.”
Collins said, “The Clinton investigation in the late ’90s, the Nixon impeachment series, there was always a fairness issue, and the American people are beginning to see that Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff like going behind closed doors where no one can examine what they are doing.
President Trump’s administration deported more than 2,500 illegal aliens in the last two months who had arrived at the United States-Mexico border and claimed to be part of a family unit.
Federal data obtained by Breitbart News reveals that since August, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has deported more than 2,500 illegal aliens who arrived as a family unit at the southern border and have final orders for removal.
Over these two months, ICE agents arrested another 275 illegal aliens who arrived as family units at the border. All of these illegal aliens arrested have final orders for removal, meaning they have gone through the asylum and immigration courts
The New York Times reported that, along with the intelligence officer “whistleblower” being a registered Democrat and having a “professional relationship” with a 2020 Democrat, there remains a third redacted reason critics could accuse him of “potential bias” when submitting his complaint to the Intelligence Community inspector general.
The Washington Examiner’s Byron York reported Tuesday that the intelligence officer “whistleblower” had a “professional relationship” with a 2020 Democrat presidential candidate and was a registered Democrat, which critics could use to accuse the “whistleblower” of bias against President Donald Trump and his administration.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Wednesday demanded that House Democrat leaders release the full transcript of the testimony provided by the impeachment inquiry’s first witness, former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker.
Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, threatened to call Volker to testify before his panel if Democrats did not meet his demand.
Volker is at the center of the impeachment investigation. He resigned as the special envoy to Ukraine at the end of last month as the inquiry began to heat up.
Sen. Graham described the House Democrats’ refusal to make the full transcript of Volker’s deposition last Thursday public as “an abuse of power.”
Dismaying Dumbed-down Discourse
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Who knew there were so many ignorant people in the world? In 2006, I watched a comedy called Idiocracy about our country becoming so dumb thanks to cultural influences that a man with average intelligence is regarded as a genius after awakening from an induced hibernation for 5 centuries. This past month looking at the worldwide Children Climate Crusade protests, I fear that film is coming into reality. All around the world, thousands of indoctrinated and misguided children of the corn skipped school to carry signs warning about the danger of weather,
Amidst a battle between the President of the United States and the Intelligence Community that has sparked formal impeachment proceedings against the president by Democrats in Congress, federal law enforcement officials have formally charged one intelligence community official with leaking highly classified information to the media.This comes in the wake of a top-ranking congressional intelligence committee staffer facing similar charges of leaking last year and sets the stage for a larger fight between Trump and intelligence community leakers. The nature of these intelligence community leakers’ deeply personal relationships with the reporters to whom they were leaking
The Bluffpeachment
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The current situation in Washington is, in the language of poker, a bluff. The Democrats are bluffing; they have only weak cards in their hand. They actually have nothing against Trump. That's all they have ever had. As it is known, impeachment is simply a vote of no confidence. A vote of no confidence exists in many countries where there is a political separation of powers. In some countries, for example, the president has the right to dissolve parliament and call new parliamentary elections, and as a political counterbalance, the parliament can declare a vote of no confidence against the president.
While many of the headlines from Ronan Farrow’s bombshell book relate to the shocking allegation of rape against Matt Lauer, the NBC News division is in chaos with its leadership Andy Lack and Noah Oppenheim “quivering in their suits,” according to multiple insiders.
The book “Catch and Kill” details how NBC decided to kill the Harvey Weinstein exposé after the movie mogul effectively “laid siege” to NBC News chairman Lack and NBC News president Oppenheim during Farrow’s investigation. Farrow reports that in a September 2017 phone call, Lack told Weinstein’s attorney, “We’ve told Harvey we are not doing a story.”
Last week House Democrats called in fired US Ambassador Marie Yovanovich to testify in their sham impeachment proceedings.
Ambassador Yovanovich is a noted Trump-hater who blocked Ukrainian officials from traveling to the United States to hand over evidence of Obama misconduct during the 2016 election to President Trump.Yovanovich was US ambassador to Ukraine during the 2016 election when the Ukrainian government was colluding with the DNC and Hillary Campaign to undermine the US presidential election.Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenkoko told journalist
Not just a fake Indian!
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When it suited her purposes in the world of academia, Elizabeth Warren absurdly presented herself as an American Indian, and it suited the purposes of academia to buy it. Running for the Democratic presidential nomination, Warren now poses as a former victim of benighted authorities who fired her from her first teaching job in 1971 because she was pregnant. She somehow overcame to become a Harvard law professor, though we suspect that the fake Indian thing propelled her to Harvard.
The Washington Free Beacon assigned a reporter to check out Warren’s story. When he checked Warren’s story against the documentary evidence, Collin Anderson found “County Records Contradict
The United Nations is complaining that it has a $230 million budget shortfall. The problem, the organization says, is that countries aren't paying their dues. One of the nations that has not delivered all of its expected dues is the United States.
Good.
America has the right to see the U.N. reform itself before we hand over 22% of its budget. U.N. Secretary General António Guterres says his budget shortfall is a disaster, but it's more of an opportunity. The U.N. remains deeply inefficient, wasteful, corrupt, and subservient to malevolent interests. That will not change without leverage.
The U.S. has outsized influence here. And as the leader of the free world,
Some estimate more than 10,000 people will flood downtown to oppose the president's visit, with two dozen disparate groups planning to protest. They'll be met by counterdemonstrators supporting the president. Minneapolis is bracing for a chaotic scene, with President Donald Trump set to speak Thursday in the heart of the city that overwhelmingly rejected him in 2016.
The term “constitutional crisis” has been tossed around so often since President Trump took office that it now has little meaning in our public discourse. But regardless of what we call the current impasse between the executive branch and the House of Representatives pursuant to the “impeachment inquiry” launched by the latter, our government now faces a genuine crisis whose magnitude the nation hasn’t seen for more than 150 years. Americans have long celebrated the orderly transfer of power that is unique to our form of government. The Democrats, however, have abandoned that tradition by refusing to accept the outcome of the 2016 election.
Having pursued a policy of transparency
The power is out in Northern California. More than 1 million Californians are now without electricity, one of modern life’s essentials that is frequently taken for granted. The blackout was done on purpose—to prevent sparks from powerlines that could ignite deadly wildfires.
Before planned blackouts are through in two or three days, as many as 3 million Californians may go without power. On the surface, the blackout and its causes are simple to understand. But the deeper causes are complicated, span decades of public policy, and dozens of overlapping unintended—and intended—consequences of decisions, both related and unrelated.
The wind in Northern California is blowing in from dry Nevada,
House Democrats gave themselves political wiggle room when they launched their impeachment inquiry without holding a floor vote, but that procedural strategy also left room for the White House and a federal judge to question the legitimacy of the push.
The White House, in a letter Tuesday criticized as advancing a legally flimsy argument, told the House it would not participate in an impeachment inquiry that hasn’t been authorized by the full House — which they argue means it isn’t “a valid impeachment proceeding.”
Was then-FBI chief Jim Comey spying on his boss, Attorney General Loretta Lynch? He apparently had a “highly placed informant” in her office reporting on her doings as of May 2016, which is pretty darn close to “spying” in most books.
We know: Comey famously considers it an “investigation,” not “spying,” when it’s official FBI business — but it’s hard to see how secretly monitoring the AG’s office could be official work for the Bureau.
And secretly monitoring Lynch is exactly what the new book from Pulitzer-winning reporter James B. Stewart indicates Comey was doing.
It was the peak of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, and Comey
Nairobi, Kenya- He says he doesn't feel guilty for the lie that got him into America.
Like other families who arrived as Somali refugees, he says they first depended on food stamps to get by. But the family of seven successfully navigated their new life, and his siblings grew up to become nurses and teachers.
"We took the opportunity that was in front of us and we didn't take it for granted," he says, speaking in a broad American accent. "We have followed the American dream, as they call it. We have all gone to school and we have all graduated."
But his family members weren't refugees,
Hotels in California will have to stop giving guests small plastic shampoo bottles under a new law.
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday he had signed a law banning hotels from giving guests plastic bottles filled with shampoo, conditioner or soap.
The law takes effect in 2023 for hotels with more than 50 rooms and 2024 for hotels with less than 50 rooms.
Violators could be fined $500 for a first offense and $2,000 for subsequent violations.
The law follows similar actions by some of the world's largest hotel chains.
Mark Zaid and Andrew Bakaj, the attorneys representing the whistleblower at the center of Democrats' impeachment inquiry, acknowledged in a statement on Wednesday that their client "has come into contact with presidential candidates from both parties" -- but insisted that the contact involved the politicians' roles as "elected officials – not as candidates."
The lawyers' abrupt disclosure came shortly after The Washington Examiner reported that Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson told lawmakers the whistleblower worked “or had some type of professional relationship” with one of the Democratic presidential candidates, citing three sources familiar with Atkinson’s interview with lawmakers on Friday.