Day: March 6, 2021

Virginia House of Delegates Kills Senator Kiggans’ Bill Requiring Weekly List of Decedents Sent to Department of Elections

Eric Burk

Senator Jen Kiggans’ (R-Virginia Beach) election reform bill passed the Senate with broad bipartisan support 34 to five. But when the bill was sent to the House of Delegates, the Privileges and Elections Committee voted to table the bill, effectively killing it. Kiggans’ bill SB 1422 would have required the State Registrar of Vital Records to provide a weekly list of deceased people to the Department of Elections, a process that currently is required to happen monthly.

Read More

Commentary: The Theory That the Trump Era Is over Is Wrong

Virginia Star Staff

The effect of President Trump’s address to the Conservative Political Action Committee on Sunday has become clearer this week. The key sentence was, “A Republican president will be returning to the White House.” Since the only other living Republican president, George W. Bush, is term-limited, Trump was speaking of himself.

The speech was not only the best and most interesting political speech delivered in the United States since President Reagan’s successful reelection campaign in 1984, it also broke new ground in three important respects.

Read More

Dreaded QAnon March 4 Uprising Fails to Materialize in the Capitol

Virginia Star Staff

A right-wing plot to storm the Capitol and remove lawmakers did not materialize on Thursday, after the FBI, DHS, and Capitol Police issued bulletins warning that they had intelligence identifying “credible threats” to that effect.
In dozens of reports, the corporate media hyped the “potential threat” of a QAnon uprising in our nation’s Capitol.

In response, the House of Representatives suspended its Thursday session and Capitol Police and National Guard troops went on “high alert.”

Read More

California Gubernatorial Recall Petition Reaches 1.9 Million Signatures

Virginia Star Staff

The statewide effort to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) has reached yet another milestone as of Wednesday, with the formal petition reaching 1.9 million signatures, according to Fox News.

One of the petition’s organizers, Orrin Heatlie, released a statement on behalf of the recall campaign saying that the group has “reached another milestone, and now we are entering the final stretch of this part of the official campaign to remove California Governor Gavin Newsom from power and office.”

Read More

Commentary: Why Is the Gut So ‘Emotional’?

RealClearWire

You don’t get a ‘sinking’ feeling in your feet, nor butterflies in your fingers, nor elation in your shoulders. You feel these sensations in your stomach. But why?

As RCS originally reported nine years ago, the gut is home to at least 100 million neurons, and perhaps as many as 500 million, by far the most outside of the brain. Concentrated in the lining of the gastrointestinal system, embedded in the esophagus and even the anus, these neurons constitute what scientists have dubbed the “enteric nervous system.” Through the vagus nerve, this ‘second brain’ has a direct line to the primary one in your skull, and as you’ve undoubtedly noticed, it likes to talk.

Read More

Pentagon Reportedly Reviewing Request for National Guard to Remain at U.S. Capitol for 60 Additional Days

Virginia Star Staff

The Pentagon is reviewing a Capitol Police request for the National Guard to remain stationed at the US Capitol for an additional two months, citing concerns about security and potential violence, defense officials told the Associated Press.

The National Guard was stationed at the Capitol following the violent breach Jan. 6 where five people died, the AP reported. Law enforcement has remained on high alert at the Capitol since Thursday after intelligence operatives uncovered a “potential plot” by far-right militia groups to storm the building.

Read More

FBI Confirms No Firearms Were Found During January 6 Capitol Protests

Virginia Star Staff

A leading counterterrorism official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed on Wednesday that, despite frequent and baseless claims that the protests at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th was supposedly an “armed insurrection,” no firearms were recovered in the aftermath of the protests, as reported by the Epoch Times.

Jill Sanborn, the FBI’s counterrorism chief, confirmed this significant detail during sworn testimony before the Senate. When asked by Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) how many firearms were confiscated from the protesters who were arrested, Sanborn said “to my knowledge, none.” Sanborn then went on to claim, without evidence, that “we knew they would be armed, we had intelligence that they would be coming to D.C., but we did not have intelligence that they would be breaching the Capitol.”

Read More

U.S. Added 379,000 Jobs in February, Unemployment Rate Fell to 6.2 Percent

Virginia Star Staff

The U.S. economy reported an increase of 379,000 jobs in February while the unemployment rate fell to 6.2%, according to Department of Labor data released Friday.

Total non-farm payroll employment increased by 379,000 in February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report, and the number of unemployed persons fell slightly to 10 million. Economists projected 210,000 Americans to be added to payrolls and the unemployment rate to increase to hold at 6.3% prior to Friday’s report, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Read More

Interior Nominee Discloses Belated Tax Filing, Provides Fourth Account of Her 2018 Income

Virginia Star Staff

Congresswoman Deb Haaland, President Biden’s pick for Interior Secretary, belatedly filed a tax return last December for calendar year 2018 without getting an extension and has now given senators reviewing her nomination a fourth different account of how much money she earned that year, Just the News has learned.

Haaland, in line to become the first Native Americans to become a Cabinet secretary, recently disclosed details about her belated tax filing in supplemental answers to her required nominee’s questionnaire submitted to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Read More

Chief of World-Renowned Medical Journal Has Repeatedly Bashed U.S., Praised China for Coronavirus Response

Virginia Star Staff

One of China Global Television Network’s most recent ads on Facebook is of an interview that the state-controlled propaganda network conducted about the coronavirus pandemic with the editor of The Lancet, one of the world’s top medical journals.

The editor, Richard Horton, largely praised the Chinese government’s response to the pandemic while blasting the U.S. in the May 2020 interview, which garnered around 900,000 impressions at a cost of around $500, according to Facebook data.

“I think we have a great deal to thank China for, about the way that it handled the outbreak,” Horton said in the interview.

Read More

Psaki Defends Biden’s Neanderthal Comment

Virginia Star Staff

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Thursday defended President Joe Biden’s comment that governors who stopped their state’s mask mandates were thinking like Neanderthals.

Biden was talking about “the behavior of a Neanderthal, just to be very clear,” Psaki said during the White House press briefing.

Psaki said Biden’s comments were “a reflection of his frustration and exasperation, which I think many American people have that for almost a year now.”

Read More

Despite Last Week’s Vote, Republican Party of Virginia Still Doesn’t Have a Clear Path to Nominate Candidates

Eric Burk

The Republican Party of Virginia (RPV) still doesn’t have a finalized option for how to nominate its candidates, despite the final-sounding words of party officials last week.

The RPV State Central Committee (SCC) has decided to hold a drive-in convention at Liberty University (LU), but after a site visit with LU officials Wednesday, the RPV team determined that convention would not be feasible. In a letter published Friday, RPV Chair Rich Anderson renewed a call for a convention that would have satellite locations across Virginia, and announced that the SCC would hold another Zoom meeting to vote on an unassembled convention again.

Read More