NPR,
by
Brian Naylor
Original Article
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Dreadnought
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2/7/2022 9:14:43 PM
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The Internal Revenue Service is backing away from a proposed requirement that people submit selfies to access their information on the agency's website.
First of all, to be clear: The IRS was not requiring that every taxpayer filing a return submit a selfie. It was only to verify the identities of people seeking to set up an account with the IRS to see their past returns or get information about child tax credit payments.
Still, it's an overreach, says Emily Tucker, director of the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law.
Associated Press,
by
Staff
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Dreadnought
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2/7/2022 8:11:18 PM
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San Antonio — The U.S. Air Force must pay more than $230 million in damages to survivors and victims’ families of a 2017 Texas church massacre for failing to flag a conviction that might have kept the gunman from legally buying the weapon used in the shooting, a federal judge ruled Monday.
More than two dozen people were killed when Devin Patrick Kelley opened fire during a Sunday service at First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs. Kelley, who died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound after being shot and chased by two men who heard the gunfire at the church, had served in the Air Force before the attack.
Variety,
by
Todd Spangler
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Dreadnought
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2/7/2022 5:22:06 PM
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Tech venture capitalist and right-wing booster Peter Thiel, after 17 years on the board of Facebook — now Meta Platforms — will step down as director of the internet giant.
Thiel joined Meta’s board in April 2005, after he had invested $500,000 in the then-fledgling Facebook startup. He’ll continue to serve as a director until Meta’s annual meeting of stockholders.
Thiel is leaving Meta in order to “focus on influencing November’s midterm elections,” the New York Times reported, citing an anonymous source. “Mr. Thiel sees the midterms as crucial to changing the direction of the country,
City Journal,
by
John Tierney
Original Article
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Dreadnought
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2/7/2022 12:48:41 AM
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It’s obviously not easy to give up fear of Covid-19, to judge from a recent survey showing that the vaccinated are actually more frightened than the unvaccinated. Another survey found that most Democratic voters are so worried that they want to make it illegal for the unvaccinated to leave home. But before you don another mask or disinfect another surface, before you cheer on politicians and school officials enforcing mandates, consider your odds of a fatal Covid case once you’ve been vaccinated.
Those odds can be gauged from a study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health, published by the Centers for Disease Control. They tracked
PJ Media,
by
David Solway
Original Article
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Dreadnought
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2/6/2022 11:29:35 PM
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Hurricane Canada, a category 5 political storm, has made landfall on the country’s capital city in the form of a massive truckers’ strike protesting illegal COVID mandates and vaccine passports, a phenomenon that has galvanized the attention of the world and inspired similar demonstrations internationally. This has become common knowledge, and commentary pro and con has been proliferating with abandon.
What is most surprising in a tepid and unadventurous country like Canada that habitually votes left is the degree of popular support the truckers’ Freedom Convoy has garnered from ordinary citizens across the land. Convoys have assembled in several Canadian cities, the Alberta-Montana border has been blockaded
Red State,
by
Nick Arama
Original Article
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Dreadnought
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2/6/2022 11:27:08 PM
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There’s bad news for the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa Sunday.
The government has been trying to figure out how to do in the Freedom Convoy movement. They’ve tried to go after their support, by getting GoFundMe to pull their ability to raise money. While they headed off GoFundMe, which went along with the government’s tyrannical aims, the truckers were able to get another fundraiser started with a different site, GiveSendGo. Plus they’re receiving all kinds of donations from food to gas, personally, right on the front line in Ottawa.
Now, the police are trying to go after those donations of gas and propane
Power Line,
by
Steven Hayward
Original Article
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Dreadnought
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2/6/2022 11:23:48 PM
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One of my heterodox positions on climate change is that many of our scientific efforts to improve our grasp of the earth’s climate system since it became a hot topic (no pun intended) back in the 1970s have actually moved our knowledge backwards. That is, we actually understand it less well than we did 40 years ago.
This is especially true of the heart of the matter: the computer climate models we use to make predictions about future changes in the climate. But as our computer climate models are refined with more and more raw data and endless tweaks of the climate simulations, the uncertainties
Hot Air,
by
Ed Morrissey
Original Article
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Dreadnought
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2/5/2022 8:34:22 PM
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Will the definition of “fully vaccinated” have to change again? For the last several months, the CDC has urged all Americans to not just get the original vaccination regimen (two mRNA shots or one Johnson & Johnson inoculation) but also a booster shot in order to resist serious or severe acute infections of COVID-19. Now, however, a New York Times analysis of new CDC data shows that boosters may only make a difference in older and/or sicker Americans:
The figures confirm that booster doses are most beneficial to older adults, as the C.D.C. has previously reported. But the new numbers for younger Americans were less compelling.
Breitbart,
by
John Binder
Original Article
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Dreadnought
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2/5/2022 8:26:24 PM
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The “modern Republican” Party is scrapping its old-guard corporate ties and business special interests, an Axios report details, as Breitbart News and small-dollar donors to former President Trump steer the party’s future.
Fourteen of the top GOP consultants and operatives detail how the Republican Party has shifted away from the Chamber of Commerce, the Koch brothers’ network of donor class organizations, National Review, and economic libertarian groups toward Trump’s small-dollar donors, populist-nationalist outlets like Breitbart News, and Tucker Carlson.
These days, it is Trump’s voters, Breitbart News readers, and Carlson viewers that Republicans hope to win over in elections rather than seeking out corporate campaign contributions through endorsements from
PJ Media,
by
Matt Margolis
Original Article
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Dreadnought
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2/5/2022 8:21:17 PM
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Last week, Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) suffered a stroke and underwent brain surgery. He is currently hospitalized in Albuquerque. He is expected to return to the U.S. Senate in four to six weeks, assuming there are no further medical complications. However, during his absence, Democrats no longer have a majority in the Senate—Republicans have a 50-49 majority.
This means that until Luján returns, a united GOP can block the Democrats’ agenda and there’s nothing the Democrats could do about it.
This is actually a big deal. In addition to blocking the Democrats’ legislative agenda, Luján’s absence could potentially impact Joe Biden’s Supreme Court nomination.
Red State,
by
Bonchie
Original Article
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Dreadnought
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2/5/2022 8:17:52 PM
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As RedState reported Friday evening, GoFundMe has decided to shut down the fundraiser set up to provide money to the Freedom Convoy in Canada, a group of truckers, farmers, and others protesting draconian COVID-19 mitigation measures.
According to the crowd-funding site, they did so because of threats of violence and harassment, though, they provided no evidence of that claim. In fact, the only violence so far appears to have come from someone running over some of the Freedom Convoy participants in what is still a developing story we reported on earlier Saturday.
Worse, GoFundMe announced that it was only going to offer manual refunds, and that the unclaimed money
Power Line,
by
John Hinderaker
Original Article
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Dreadnought
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2/5/2022 8:13:31 PM
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While numbers have reportedly dropped somewhat since last weekend, Ottawa is still thronged with pro-freedom truckers and their supporters. The protest has primarily been directed against covid mandates, but it has morphed into a broader rebellion against the oppressive bureaucratic state. The Epoch Times reports:
The protest on Feb. 5 featured speakers, music, dancing, and a singing of the Canadian national anthem. There were also tables set up to serve free food and drinks to protesters.
The number of protesters dropped after last weekend, the first weekend of the Freedom Convoy demonstration, but many joined again this weekend.
Several other large protests were held on Feb. 5 in provincial capitals