Delegate Mark Levine Announces Run for Lieutenant Governor in 2021

Virginia State Delegate Mark Levine (D-Arlington) announced last Monday that he was officially running for lieutenant governor and joining the crowded contest.

Levine, 54, is the 12th contender to enter into the race so far and, if elected, he would become Virginia’s first openly gay statewide elected official. 

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Commentary: Donald Trump is The Essential Man

Once upon a time, there was a president called Ronald Reagan – a model of decency and probity, at once great and self-effacing, who, above all, was truly in love with America and saw it as his sacred mission to preserve and strengthen American freedom. During his eight-year tenure, he revitalized the U.S. economy, snapped us out of what his disastrous predecessor had referred to as “our malaise,” and helped bring down the Soviet Union.

Then he walked off into the sunset. And for the next seven presidential terms, we had to make do with mediocrity and self-dealing. Both parties were dominated by crime families – sorry, I mean political dynasties. The Bushes were uninspiring. The Clintons were pure slime.

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Nashville Police Announce Death of Anthony Warner in Christmas Bombing

Just hours after confirming that 63-year-old Anthony Quinn Warner was under investigation for an explosion that rocked downtown Nashville on Christmas, the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (MNPD) confirmed that Warner died in that explosion. 

“BREAKING: Law enforcement is now announcing that Anthony Warner, 63, of Bakertown Rd, is the man believed responsible for Friday’s explosion He perished in the blast. No one else is presently believed to have been involved. Thank you to our federal & state partners,” MNPD said in a statement. 

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Four California Small Business Owners Share Their Struggles to Survive Under Lockdowns

California small businesses are crumbling under the weight of a new stay-at-home order and a lack of meaningful financial assistance. 

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a new region-based lockdown order for California on Dec. 3, forcing more California businesses to close their doors or severely limit operations. 

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Minimum Wage Hikes Set for 2021 Imperil Businesses Struggling Amid COVID Shutdowns

More than 80 states and local municipalities are slated to see minimum wage hikes in 2021, even as business owners continue to struggle during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Employment Policies Institute, a non-profit based in Washington, D.C., that studies how public policy impacts employment growth, released a comprehensive list of the minimum wage increases that will go into effect next year and in subsequent years.

“Minimum wage increases are demonstrated to cause job losses even in times of economic health,” said Michael Saltsman, EPI’s managing director. “These states and local areas are increasing the cost of labor as businesses are dealing with forced closures or a drastic drop in revenue. Employers and employees will pay the price for these misguided good intentions.”

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MIT Continues to Pay Prof Who Took Jeffrey Epstein Donations, Even After Severe COVID-19 Cuts

Massachusetts Institute of Technology physics professor Seth Lloyd — who accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — will continue to receive compensation from the university, and will eventually return to his teaching job.

As Campus Reform previously reported, Lloyd was fully aware of $850,000 donated to MIT over a period of 15 years. He was the direct recipient of $225,000 in research donations received after Epstein’s conviction.

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Joe Biden’s About to Floor It to a Green Future – Straight into State Speed Traps

Joe Biden needs to put the pedal to the metal as he races toward his goal of ridding America’s energy sources of carbon emissions by 2035. But the president-elect’s headlong rush toward a green future may be slowed by a snarl of political speed limits in the states.

One of Biden’s most ambitious aims is to completely clean up the electrical grid, today powered mostly by fossil fuels, in only 15 years. Many energy executives consider that goal quixotic because it would require a breathtakingly fast transformation of the massive power industry — from replacing hundreds of dirty power plants to upgrading thousands of miles transmission lines.

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Jake Tapper on White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany: She ‘Lies the Way that Most People Breathe’

CNN anchor Jake Tapper said Sunday that he wouldn’t put White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on air because she “lies the way that most people breathe.”

Tapper told CNN’s Brian Stelter that throughout President Donald Trump’s term, “you had to steel yourself for interviews with people that might misrepresent the facts.” The CNN anchor said that “once somebody proved themselves to be a liar, I just stopped booking them.”

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Analysis: Republican’s 2020 Wins in State Capitals Sets the Stage for Lasting Victories Through the Next Decade

Carrie Delrosso, a Republican, won her campaign in Pennsylvania’s 33rd House District by defeating House Minority Leader Frank Dermody, a Democrat, to capture the seat. 

In Ohio’s 75th House District, Gail Pavliga won her election, flipping the seat to the GOP after running a campaign on solving the opioid crisis in the district. 

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Commentary: The North Face’s Absurd, Hypocritical Virtue-Signaling

Virtue-signaling, and the hypocrisies that inevitably accrue to it, are nothing new. Neither is it new that those who virtue-signal while engaging in or benefiting from those things that they decry are deeply self-deluded about their hypocrisy.

In the middle of a pandemic, we’re seeing more than our fair share, from the mayor of Austin lecturing his citizens on the virtues of staying home while he himself was on vacation in Mexico, to the newly inaugurated mayor of Baltimore locking down businesses across his city and then finding himself caught shopping outside his city where the rules are more “relaxed,” to Dr. Deborah Birx, one of the architects of America’s “You Should Stay Home” policy, traveling to see family over the holidays.

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Virginia AG Herring to Court: Ban ‘Ghost Guns’

Attorney General Mark Herring has joined 19 other attorneys general asking the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to force regulation of so-called “ghost guns” – partially assembled firearms kits that can be completed by consumers without the serial numbers law enforcement uses to track the weapons. Herring and the other attorneys general signed an amicus brief as third parties to Syracuse v. ATF, a lawsuit that says the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) was too lenient in its 2015 interpretation of the Gun Control Act (GCA) of 1968.

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