Virginia Governor Ralph Northam and members of the state’s law enforcement agencies are working to reduce impaired driving over the holiday season.
The governor on Tuesday announced that the 116 Virginia law enforcement agencies will complement each other and support the Checkpoint Strikeforce campaign.
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Justice S. Bernard Goodwyn was elected to be the new chief justice of the Virginia Supreme Court beginning on Jan. 1 after the current chief justice, Donald W. Lemons, announced he would step down.
The justices elected Goodwyn upon the news of Lemons stepping down. The court issued a news release, but did not say why Lemons was leaving. He has served as the chief justice since Jan. 1, 2015 and his term was not set to end until 2024. He is the oldest justice on the court at age 72.
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In a recent Washington Post op-ed, three retired generals, Paul Eaton, Antonio Taguba, and Steven Anderson warn of a supposedly impending coup should Donald Trump be elected in 2024.
The column seemed strangely timed to coincide with a storm of recent Democratic talking points that a reelected Trump, or even a Republican sweep of the 2022 midterms, would spell a virtual end of democracy.
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Electric truck manufacturer Nikola announced Tuesday it had settled fraud charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), agreeing to pay the regulator $125 million.
The settlement is in response to allegations by the SEC that Nikola’s founder and former chief executive Trevor Milton misled investors about Nikola’s products and technological progress in order to boost the company’s share price. The SEC alleged that Milton misrepresented the anticipated costs and sources of electricity for its truck venture.
Milton was indicted by the Department of Justice in July on fraud charges, to which he pleaded not guilty.
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In a recent Washington Post op-ed, three retired generals, Paul Eaton, Antonio Taguba, and Steven Anderson warn of a supposedly impending coup should Donald Trump be elected in 2024.
The column seemed strangely timed to coincide with a storm of recent Democratic talking points that a reelected Trump, or even a Republican sweep of the 2022 midterms, would spell a virtual end of democracy.
Read More
West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin told the White House last week that he was willing to endorse some type of billionaire tax in President Joe Biden’s domestic spending package before coming out against it days later, The Washington Post reported.
Manchin said that a tax on billionaires’ wealth could be a means to pay for the package, according to the Post, citing three people familiar with his offer to the White House. The outlet reported that it was unclear whether Manchin provided an estimate of how much money the provision would raise.
Programs in Manchin’s $1.8 trillion counteroffer included universal pre-K for ten years, expansions to the Affordable Care Act and billions of dollars for climate change mitigation measures, according to the Post, but it did not include the child tax credit, which many Democrats have touted as one of the single biggest policy achievements of the year.
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At least nine Republican U.S. senators are continuing to pressure the Department of Homeland Security for answers over its vetting process of Afghan evacuees entering the U.S.
Three Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee members sent a letter last week to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and to Secretary of State Antony Blinken requesting information about Afghan evacuees. This week, six additional senators sent a letter to DHS asking for an overdue report they were supposed to have received Nov. 30.
Their letters followed news reports that the State Department didn’t have reliable data on everyone who evacuated Afghanistan and what types of visas they qualified for, and after a convicted rapist on an evacuation flight reached Washington-Dulles Airport. The letters also were sent after assaults and arrests were reported at military bases in New Mexico and Wisconsin where evacuees were being housed, and after several of the senators expressed concerns at a senate committee hearing in September.
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Aside from the pandemic, no other issue has dominated the daily news cycle and collective fixation of the ruling class more than the alleged “insurrection” on January 6, 2021.
The events of that day were a gift to the Biden regime and the Democratic Party—which should instantly disabuse anyone of the notion that the Capitol protest was legitimately an organic uprising instead of an inside job orchestrated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, and the FBI to name just a few accomplices.
Since then, every lever of government power in Washington, D.C. has been wielded in a vengeful way against American citizens who dared to protest the rigged 2020 presidential election. The conduct of those in charge has exposed the moral depravity of the people who populate the power center of the world’s greatest country, showing a stark chasm between the inherent goodness and decency of the American people and the sadistic ghouls who call the shots from the Beltway.
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President Joe Biden has seized on a winning message: tax the rich. He tweets incessantly, “Big corporations and the super wealthy have to start paying their fair share of taxes. It’s long overdue,” and claims his Build Back Better agenda “will be paid for by the wealthy paying their fair share.”
Instead of highlighting the few benefits of his Build Back Better Act, (H.R. 5376) his public positioning is about harming a particular group. Why? This message sells with three key constituencies he’s counting on to pressure Congress to vote yes.
Younger millennials and Gen Z who believe the uber-rich should not exist.
The working rich who believe taxing themselves is a solution to poverty and a source of economic growth.
The governing elites who want to accumulate more government control by enlarging the dependent class.
Younger Millennials and Gen Z: Being Rich Is Inherently Bad
A recent PEW research poll revealed that half of adults under 30 believe billionaires are bad for the U.S. One self-proclaimed “anticapitalist” Millennial and trust fund beneficiary summed it up this way: “I want to build a world where someone like me, a young person who controls tens of millions of dollars, is impossible.” Accordingly, wealth comes from exploitation. Giving their money away (or giving it to Washington to redistribute into a social justice plan) is making “reparations.”
Using this logic, the late Steve Jobs should have been prohibited from earning ridiculous amounts of wealth. Because of his ingenuity, however, millions of jobs have been created, young people have been inspired, and some of the greatest technology has been made available. Like Jobs, those who earn their billions through innovation (and experience many failures in their pursuit and on their own dime) reinvest it in the economy in ways the government could not. Moreover, their earnings are a result of what others were willing to pay them.
Working Rich: We’re Moral People
A 2019 letter penned by more than a dozen of the wealthiest Americans — including George Soros, heiress Abigail Disney, and Molly Munger, daughter of Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charlie Munger— stated, “it is our duty to step up and support a wealth tax that taxes us.” They believe America “has a moral, ethical and economic responsibility to tax our wealth more.” Mr. Biden’s allies on the Left share this opinion.
A “transfer of wealth” by taxing the rich is nothing short of legal theft. Government is not, and cannot be, altruistic. Government has nothing to give that it has not taken from another by force. With few exceptions, this type of help will erode self-reliance and the moral incentive of charitable action, leading to more government spending.
Ignored is that the free market has done more to break the cycle of poverty than any government program, as it empowers people and mends the nonfinancial, relational parts of society.
The wealthy could put their money to better use by directly donating to effective charitable causes, investing in local communities, or investing in expanding their businesses to serve more consumers and create more jobs. Moreover, there is nothing stopping billionaires from giving their wealth directly to the U.S. government. If they genuinely believe it is their “moral, ethical and economic responsibility,” there is no need to wait.
Governing Elites: We Like Being In Control
They say it’s about social or economic justice, but President Biden’s messaging is déjà vu from Obama-era calls to redistribute wealth, or Marxist accolades of redistribution as a form of economic justice. The increasing popularity of taxing the rich makes the job of government elites easier. President Biden even engages in shame-tweeting such as, “Those at the top have been getting a free ride at the expense of the middle class for far too long.” But the bureaucrats’ real reason to tax the rich is to snatch individuals’ birthrights of personal responsibility, a move toward a centralized system that deflates personal choices and violates personal rights.
Taken together, these ideas unfortunately resonate beyond younger millennials and Gen Z, the working rich, and the governing elites. Jumping onto the “tax the rich” bandwagon feels good because – why should the rich have that much money anyway?
Envy permeates this ideology. Yet economics trumps envy.
The actual tax burden will not fall on folks writing checks to the US Treasury. The rich will, for the most part, still be rich. It’s the middle- and working class who will pay dearly when high-income individuals respond to the tax hike by simply investing less, resulting in fewer job opportunities and lower wages.
Left to fend for their economic lives will be small-business owners. President Biden may consider them wealthy, but taxing these individuals more will decimate communities, as jobs are lost or not created, and wages and hours are cut.
There’s no question that taxing the rich is popular. Problem is, it’s also reckless.
Instead of highlighting the few benefits of his Build Back Better Act, (H.R. 5376) his public positioning is about harming a particular group. Why? This message sells with three key constituencies he’s counting on to pressure Congress to vote yes.
Younger millennials and Gen Z who believe the uber-rich should not exist.
The working rich who believe taxing themselves is a solution to poverty and a source of economic growth.
The governing elites who want to accumulate more government control by enlarging the dependent class.
Gabriel: “Do you know the difference between a hustler and a good con man?”
Fitz: “No.”
Gabriel: “A hustler has to get out of town as quick as he can, but a good con man—he doesn’t have to leave
—Steven McKay, Diggstown
The Kansas City Shuffle: Winston-Salem, NC, 1985
I was a 16-year-old kid out with my girlfriend on a Friday night. We were at the county fair, where we wandered a lane crowded by brightly lit booths advertising competitions of chance and skill. Carnies invited us to toss baseballs into milk jugs, shoot basketballs through hoops, and pop balloons with darts. They made the games seem easy, but I’d never had much luck at them. I couldn’t throw a ball fast enough at the pitching booth, or swing a mallet hard enough to ring the bell at the strongman game. Still, I really wanted to win a prize for my girlfriend.
Read More
Lithium — a mineral that is key for electric car batteries — continues to rise in price, jeopardizing the ongoing transition to renewable energy outlined by Western governments.
The cost of lithium has skyrocketed more than 250% over the last 12 months, hitting its highest level ever, according to an industry index from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. While the cost of manufacturing a lithium-ion battery for an electric vehicle (EV) has fallen sharply over the last decade, the decline has slowed in recent months due to rising lithium costs.
The average cost of an EV battery pack fell to $157 per kilowatt hour, a measure of energy capacity, in 2021, the Department of Energy said in October. That means a typical EV battery is between $6,000 and $7,000, a BloombergNEF analysis showed.
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Population growth in the United States declined to an all-time low during the COVID-19 pandemic. Following a decade-long fertility slump, 2020 saw more people dying than being born in half of all US states. Early estimates suggest that the US population grew only 0.35 percent, the lowest rate ever recorded, and growth is expected to remain near flat this year, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal.
WSJ writers Janet Adamy and Anthony DeBarros report, “With the birthrate already drifting down, the nudge from the pandemic could result in what amounts to a scar on population growth, researchers say, which could be deeper than those left by historic periods of economic turmoil, such as the Great Depression and the stagnation and inflation of the 1970s, because it is underpinned by a shift toward lower fertility.”
The Malthusian View of Population
This demographic news comes at a time when limiting family size is widely encouraged in the media. In July, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry won an award for their “enlightened decision” to limit themselves to two children. And in response to a recent Census Bureau report of low population growth over the last decade, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote in a New York Times column that, “In fact, in a world of limited resources and major environmental problems there’s something to be said for a reduction in population pressure.”
Read More
A coalition of far-left pro-amnesty groups has filed a lawsuit against the United States Border Patrol, reviving the debunked hoax that horseback agents were seen “whipping” illegal aliens back in September, Breitbart reports.
The lawsuit claims that the Border Patrol has demonstrated “physical abuse, racial discrimination, denial of basic necessities and medical treatment, and a complete failure to process asylum claims.” The only proof offered by the suit is the handful of photographs taken from the incident in September, which was debunked by the photographer himself as instead being captured in the moment that horseback agents were spinning their reins around in an effort to keep illegals away from their horses, rather than actually whipping them.
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An additional $38.4 million of Texas taxpayer money has been allocated to fund border security efforts at the Texas-Mexico border. It’s money Texas shouldn’t have to spend, Gov. Greg Abbott said, but is because of President Joe Biden’s open border policies that have ushered into the state rampant trafficking of drugs, people and crime.
The money will provide additional funding for Operation Lone Star, which Abbott launched in March and go towards law enforcement, jail operations, and court administration costs. It brings the total PSO funding for Operation Lone Star to $74 million to date designed to assist border cities and counties.
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Amazon stopped offering customer ratings and reviews of books sold in China at the request of the Chinese Communist Party, according to a Reuters investigation.
The Chinese government ordered Amazon to stop allowing customers to review books following less-than-perfect ratings of a collection of President Xi Jinping’s writings, Reuters reported, citing two people familiar with the matter. Amazon partnered with a state-owned firm called China International Book Trading Corp (CIBTC) and created a portal, which it called China Books, that promotes Chinese Communist Party material and forbids negative reviews.
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President Joe Biden has seized on a winning message: tax the rich. He tweets incessantly, “Big corporations and the super wealthy have to start paying their fair share of taxes. It’s long overdue,” and claims his Build Back Better agenda “will be paid for by the wealthy paying their fair share.”
Instead of highlighting the few benefits of his Build Back Better Act, (H.R. 5376) his public positioning is about harming a particular group. Why? This message sells with three key constituencies he’s counting on to pressure Congress to vote yes.
Younger millennials and Gen Z who believe the uber-rich should not exist.
The working rich who believe taxing themselves is a solution to poverty and a source of economic growth.
The governing elites who want to accumulate more government control by enlarging the dependent class.
Younger Millennials and Gen Z: Being Rich Is Inherently Bad
A recent PEW research poll revealed that half of adults under 30 believe billionaires are bad for the U.S. One self-proclaimed “anticapitalist” Millennial and trust fund beneficiary summed it up this way: “I want to build a world where someone like me, a young person who controls tens of millions of dollars, is impossible.” Accordingly, wealth comes from exploitation. Giving their money away (or giving it to Washington to redistribute into a social justice plan) is making “reparations.”
Using this logic, the late Steve Jobs should have been prohibited from earning ridiculous amounts of wealth. Because of his ingenuity, however, millions of jobs have been created, young people have been inspired, and some of the greatest technology has been made available. Like Jobs, those who earn their billions through innovation (and experience many failures in their pursuit and on their own dime) reinvest it in the economy in ways the government could not. Moreover, their earnings are a result of what others were willing to pay them.
Working Rich: We’re Moral People
A 2019 letter penned by more than a dozen of the wealthiest Americans — including George Soros, heiress Abigail Disney, and Molly Munger, daughter of Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charlie Munger— stated, “it is our duty to step up and support a wealth tax that taxes us.” They believe America “has a moral, ethical and economic responsibility to tax our wealth more.” Mr. Biden’s allies on the Left share this opinion.
A “transfer of wealth” by taxing the rich is nothing short of legal theft. Government is not, and cannot be, altruistic. Government has nothing to give that it has not taken from another by force. With few exceptions, this type of help will erode self-reliance and the moral incentive of charitable action, leading to more government spending.
Ignored is that the free market has done more to break the cycle of poverty than any government program, as it empowers people and mends the nonfinancial, relational parts of society.
The wealthy could put their money to better use by directly donating to effective charitable causes, investing in local communities, or investing in expanding their businesses to serve more consumers and create more jobs. Moreover, there is nothing stopping billionaires from giving their wealth directly to the U.S. government. If they genuinely believe it is their “moral, ethical and economic responsibility,” there is no need to wait.
Governing Elites: We Like Being In Control
They say it’s about social or economic justice, but President Biden’s messaging is déjà vu from Obama-era calls to redistribute wealth, or Marxist accolades of redistribution as a form of economic justice. The increasing popularity of taxing the rich makes the job of government elites easier. President Biden even engages in shame-tweeting such as, “Those at the top have been getting a free ride at the expense of the middle class for far too long.” But the bureaucrats’ real reason to tax the rich is to snatch individuals’ birthrights of personal responsibility, a move toward a centralized system that deflates personal choices and violates personal rights.
Taken together, these ideas unfortunately resonate beyond younger millennials and Gen Z, the working rich, and the governing elites. Jumping onto the “tax the rich” bandwagon feels good because – why should the rich have that much money anyway?
Envy permeates this ideology. Yet economics trumps envy.
The actual tax burden will not fall on folks writing checks to the US Treasury. The rich will, for the most part, still be rich. It’s the middle- and working class who will pay dearly when high-income individuals respond to the tax hike by simply investing less, resulting in fewer job opportunities and lower wages.
Left to fend for their economic lives will be small-business owners. President Biden may consider them wealthy, but taxing these individuals more will decimate communities, as jobs are lost or not created, and wages and hours are cut.
There’s no question that taxing the rich is popular. Problem is, it’s also reckless.
Instead of highlighting the few benefits of his Build Back Better Act, (H.R. 5376) his public positioning is about harming a particular group. Why? This message sells with three key constituencies he’s counting on to pressure Congress to vote yes.
Younger millennials and Gen Z who believe the uber-rich should not exist.
The working rich who believe taxing themselves is a solution to poverty and a source of economic growth.
The governing elites who want to accumulate more government control by enlarging the dependent class.
At least nine Republican U.S. senators are continuing to pressure the Department of Homeland Security for answers over its vetting process of Afghan evacuees entering the U.S.
Three Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee members sent a letter last week to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and to Secretary of State Antony Blinken requesting information about Afghan evacuees. This week, six additional senators sent a letter to DHS asking for an overdue report they were supposed to have received Nov. 30.
Their letters followed news reports that the State Department didn’t have reliable data on everyone who evacuated Afghanistan and what types of visas they qualified for, and after a convicted rapist on an evacuation flight reached Washington-Dulles Airport. The letters also were sent after assaults and arrests were reported at military bases in New Mexico and Wisconsin where evacuees were being housed, and after several of the senators expressed concerns at a senate committee hearing in September.
Read More
Gabriel: “Do you know the difference between a hustler and a good con man?”
Fitz: “No.”
Gabriel: “A hustler has to get out of town as quick as he can, but a good con man—he doesn’t have to leave
—Steven McKay, Diggstown
The Kansas City Shuffle: Winston-Salem, NC, 1985
I was a 16-year-old kid out with my girlfriend on a Friday night. We were at the county fair, where we wandered a lane crowded by brightly lit booths advertising competitions of chance and skill. Carnies invited us to toss baseballs into milk jugs, shoot basketballs through hoops, and pop balloons with darts. They made the games seem easy, but I’d never had much luck at them. I couldn’t throw a ball fast enough at the pitching booth, or swing a mallet hard enough to ring the bell at the strongman game. Still, I really wanted to win a prize for my girlfriend.
Read More
Population growth in the United States declined to an all-time low during the COVID-19 pandemic. Following a decade-long fertility slump, 2020 saw more people dying than being born in half of all US states. Early estimates suggest that the US population grew only 0.35 percent, the lowest rate ever recorded, and growth is expected to remain near flat this year, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal.
WSJ writers Janet Adamy and Anthony DeBarros report, “With the birthrate already drifting down, the nudge from the pandemic could result in what amounts to a scar on population growth, researchers say, which could be deeper than those left by historic periods of economic turmoil, such as the Great Depression and the stagnation and inflation of the 1970s, because it is underpinned by a shift toward lower fertility.”
The Malthusian View of Population
This demographic news comes at a time when limiting family size is widely encouraged in the media. In July, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry won an award for their “enlightened decision” to limit themselves to two children. And in response to a recent Census Bureau report of low population growth over the last decade, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote in a New York Times column that, “In fact, in a world of limited resources and major environmental problems there’s something to be said for a reduction in population pressure.”
Read More
Democratic nominee Jackie Glass will run against Republican Giovanni Dolmo to fill the 89th House District after Delegate Jay Jones (D-Norfolk) suddenly announced he would vacate the seat. The special election is scheduled for January 11.
“Giovanni is a young, fresh-faced activist who is also an immigrant and a Navy veteran. With his well-rounded background and different perspective, he will connect with voters of all groups across the district,” 89th Legislative District Chairman for the Norfolk GOP Ian Cummings said in a Tuesday evening press release.
“Gratitude to all voters in the 89th that cast a ballot tonight. Asking you to turnout on the drop of a dime is no small ask. I am honored and ready to earn the Jan 11th win. Let’s get to work,” Glass tweeted on Tuesday evening.
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The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) is encouraging holiday drivers to take it slow, and its using creative messaging to get its point across.
“Visiting In-Laws? Slow Down. Get There Late.” an electronic sign on a Virginia highway says.
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The poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” better known by its opening line “‘Twas the Night before Christmas,” has a special place among Christmas traditions, right alongside hot chocolate, caroling and bright lights. It has also inspired the modern image of Santa Claus as a jolly old man sporting red and a round belly.
But this poem has been steeped in controversy, and debate still looms over who the true author is. Traditionally, Clement C. Moore – a 19th-century scholar at the General Theological Seminary in New York, where I work as a reference librarian – has been credited with writing the poem in 1822 for his children. Every December, library staff shares our multiple copies of the poem in an exhibit to celebrate the holiday season.
No matter who wrote it, the poem is a fascinating object that has shaped Christmases past, present – and maybe yet to come.
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Nothing says Christmas quite like a fruitcake – or, at the very least, a fruitcake joke.
A quip attributed to former “Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson has it that “There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other.”
It’s certainly earned its reputation for longevity.
Two friends from Iowa have been exchanging the same fruitcake since the late 1950s. Even older is the fruitcake left behind in Antarctica by the explorer Robert Falcon Scott in 1910. But the honor for the oldest known existing fruitcake goes to one that was baked in 1878 when Rutherford B. Hayes was president of the United States.
Read More
Inflation continues to soar throughout the U.S., with the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index increasing to the highest level in almost 42 years while consumer spending cools, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported Thursday.
The PCE, one of the Federal Reserves’ key inflation indicators when it aims for a 2% annual inflation rate, surged 5.7% in November on a year-over-year basis, a 0.6% jump from October, the BEA reported. November’s figure is the highest since 1982.
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The Biden administration released 1,491 classified documents Wednesday regarding the assassination and subsequent investigation of former President John F. Kennedy.
The documents include filings from federal agencies and law enforcement authorities, including the CIA and FBI, as part of the federal government’s review of Kennedy’ assassination.
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Former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik will publicize the documents he is presenting to the Jan. 6 committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to a letter from Keriks’s attorney, obtained by Just the News.
Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., subpoenaed Kerik to speak about his work with former President Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani following the 2020 election with a focus on Jan. 5 and 6.
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Carbon taxes, emissions caps, subsidies – these all seek to reduce atmospheric emissions of greenhouse gases, yet regularly meet criticism and opposition. Is there a more efficient solution to achieving climate balance? Not only is the answer yes, but the potential benefits could far outperform what other strategies hope to achieve.
Most solutions seek to reduce emissions –abruptly or over time– or attain carbon neutrality by utilizing renewable power sources, but increasingly we hear that carbon neutrality is not enough. We must find new technology and techniques to reduce greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere, which will require meaningful investments in research and development. One solution is voluntary carbon offsets.
Carbon offsets are certificates for purchase intended to counteract operational emissions or capture legacy emissions from the past. This is done by paying for a given quantity of CO2 to be neutralized through investment in offsetting projects or technology. Whether the certificates are directed towards conservation efforts, renewable energy, or carbon capture or removal, purchasing carbon offsets provides one party investor satisfaction and the other party an infusion of funding intended to finance a carbon-reduction strategy. When purchasing high quality offsets, these serve as a down payment and incubator toward the best climate solutions available in the laboratory or in the field.
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Merry Christmas! In the infamous words of Gordon Gecco, “Money never sleeps!” Plus we have two Christmas Day games to bet on! Screw the CCP loving lib-tards who run the NBA! We have NFL football on Christmas! I had a topsy-turvey roller-coaster week 15: Red hot in early games, smoked like a cheap Saturday night cigar on late games, then came roaring back with the snake eyes deuce on Tuesday. Overall I went 8-6 ATS, bringing my season record to 76-55-2 ATS. That’s 22 games over .500. My season pre-playoff goal is 25 games over .500. I am within striking distance this week.
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The number of Americans who filed new unemployment claims totaled 205,000 in the week ending Dec. 18, a new post-pandemic low.
The Labor Department figure shows an unchanged amount of claims from the previous week ending Dec. 11. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal estimated that claims would remain around last week’s reported level of 206,000, just above the lowest number in 52 years.
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On Wednesday, the Supreme Court announced that it will hold a special session in roughly two weeks to hear oral arguments regarding the Biden Administration’s ongoing efforts to force vaccinations on private employees, federal contractors, and healthcare workers, according to Politico.
The special session will begin on January 7th, 2022, just several days ahead of the regularly-scheduled session set to begin on January 10th.
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A Saudi Arabian man described by a U.S. Border Patrol chief as a “potential terrorist” was apprehended attempting to enter the U.S. illegally near Yuma, Arizona. He was apprehended wearing a New York county ambulance jacket.
Yuma Sector Chief Border Patrol Agent Chris Clem announced the apprehension on Twitter with an accompanying blurred photo of the man.
“Yuma Sector agents apprehended a potential terrorist who illegally entered the U.S. from Mexico Thursday night,” Clem wrote. “The 21-year-old migrant from Saudi Arabia is linked to several Yemeni subjects of interest.”
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After the Environmental Protection Agency dumped advisers from regulated industries, the federal agency appears to have prioritized gender and ethnic diversity to replace them, EPA documents show.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia heard arguments Wednesday in the case of Young vs. EPA. The lead plaintiff in the case, Stanley Young, was ousted in March from the EPA’s Science Advisory Board weeks after President Joe Biden took office.
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Your brain may be leaking … energy, according to a new study that may explain why your noggin consumes 20% of the energy needed to keep your body running.
The study researchers found that tiny sacs called vesicles that hold messages being transmitted between brain cells may be constantly oozing energy, and that leakage is likely a trade-off for the brain being ready to fire at all times, according to a new study published Dec. 3 in the journal Science Advances.
“The brain is considered a very expensive organ to run,” said senior author Timothy Ryan, a professor of biochemistry at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City.
Read More
Ever since humans gave millipedes their name, the leggy arthropods have had a ‘false advertising’ problem. The prefix “milli-” refers to a “thousand,” while “pede” means feet, yet no millipede had ever been found with more than a thousand legs.
Until now, that is.
Read More
Nothing says Christmas quite like a fruitcake – or, at the very least, a fruitcake joke.
A quip attributed to former “Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson has it that “There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other.”
It’s certainly earned its reputation for longevity.
Two friends from Iowa have been exchanging the same fruitcake since the late 1950s. Even older is the fruitcake left behind in Antarctica by the explorer Robert Falcon Scott in 1910. But the honor for the oldest known existing fruitcake goes to one that was baked in 1878 when Rutherford B. Hayes was president of the United States.
Read More
After the Environmental Protection Agency dumped advisers from regulated industries, the federal agency appears to have prioritized gender and ethnic diversity to replace them, EPA documents show.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia heard arguments Wednesday in the case of Young vs. EPA. The lead plaintiff in the case, Stanley Young, was ousted in March from the EPA’s Science Advisory Board weeks after President Joe Biden took office.
Read More
Ever since humans gave millipedes their name, the leggy arthropods have had a ‘false advertising’ problem. The prefix “milli-” refers to a “thousand,” while “pede” means feet, yet no millipede had ever been found with more than a thousand legs.
Until now, that is.
Read More
Your brain may be leaking … energy, according to a new study that may explain why your noggin consumes 20% of the energy needed to keep your body running.
The study researchers found that tiny sacs called vesicles that hold messages being transmitted between brain cells may be constantly oozing energy, and that leakage is likely a trade-off for the brain being ready to fire at all times, according to a new study published Dec. 3 in the journal Science Advances.
“The brain is considered a very expensive organ to run,” said senior author Timothy Ryan, a professor of biochemistry at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City.
Read More
A group of parents with children who attend schools within the Albemarle County District are suing the school board for “enacting discriminatory policies and indoctrinating students in radical ideology.”
According to the Alliance Defending Freedom, attorneys who are representing the nine parents, the school board’s policies allow members of the staff to treat students differently based on race.
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Virginia’s unemployment rate fell by 0.2 percentage points in November, which brings it to 3.4%, according to numbers recently released by the Virginia Employment Commission.
Over the last year and a half, unemployment has been steadily decreasing in the state, dropping at least 0.1 percentage points every month in the last year and a half. The lower unemployment trend coincides with the government rescinding COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, which had initially caused a massive spike in unemployment.
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In regions like suburban Philadelphia, the Salvation Army’s red kettles at retail entrances are a timeless reminder of ordinary Americans’ philanthropic commitment to the less fortunate. Unfortunately, Salvation Army leaders have now dared to accuse these same Americans of participating in a “racist” society where “racial groups are placed into a hierarchy, with White or lighter-skinned people at the top.”
The organization’s “Let’s Talk About Racism” curriculum for its officers and soldiers has sparked national outrage for its admonition that white people “repent” for “racism” and for its belief that America “work[s] to keep White Americans in power.” Yet rather than admit that these woke ideas are not shared or supported by its donors or staff, the leadership of the Salvation Army has hidden its new effort from the public.
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Woke and leftist ideologies often target traditions and celebrations around holidays, particularly those that pertain to Christianity and American identity.
With 2021 coming to an end, Campus Reform has compiled a list of the top five instances of colleges and universities ruining holidays on campus.
1. Colleges celebrate Valentine’s Day with ‘Sex in the Dark’
Multiple colleges hosted a question and answer “Sex in the Dark,” a virtual Q&A event with health experts, just in time for Valentine’s Day.
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An Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) administrator was fired Monday for “sharing public files” with news outlets as well as recordings of a “Racial Justice Speaker Series” that was presented to students, according to a statement.
Tony Kinnett was fired from his job as District Science Coordinator & Instructional Coach for IPS for “Sharing that IPS recorded children in required racial justice sessions, not sending IPS the personal info of” two reporters, “quoting Dr. Payne’s racist comments to students” and for “sharing public files,” according to his Twitter.
Kinnett told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the HR team pulled him into several meetings that they repeatedly said were non-disciplinary, but he said at the meetings he was not allowed to speak freely, initially bring an attorney or record anything.
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Former first lady Melania Trump announced Thursday that she is launching her own line of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and donating a portion of the proceeds to fund children’s programs.
NFTs are unique units of data, similar to trading cards, that are stored on the blockchain, a decentralized public ledger distributed across multiple servers. Conventionally, an NFT is similar to a deed of ownership corresponding to a particular item of media, like a piece of digital art.
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It’s that time of year again, the time when Americans consume more than ever, but also the time when Americans give more than ever. Indeed, America’s generosity as a whole is actually quite extensive, with Americans giving $471 billion in 2020, an all time high. That’s more than what the vast majority of countries bring in for tax revenue. 80% of this is from individuals, according to Giving USA.
Americans, in general, are incredibly generous, with 25% of Americans volunteering every year. Converted to a dollar value, this is roughly $179 billion worth of work. Most of this charity comes from the rich, with 93% of households that make over $162,501 donating to charity and 91% of households that make over $125,001 donating to charity.
Since the government started the “War on Poverty” 56 years ago, it has spent $27 trillion on this effort. And yet, it was only the beginning 7 years when poverty rates went down. Why? Well, one likely explanation is that welfare has taught people not to work, as governmental welfare dependency statistics have shown. Indeed, 93% of welfare recipients rely on welfare for more than 2 years. Charity, on the other hand, is not guaranteed, so it encourages people to take responsibility and become self-sufficient.
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This year, for the first time since graduation some two decades ago, I did not donate to either of my alma maters. Like many of you, I have become disillusioned with the illiberalism on many college campuses and could no longer support them with an annual gift. While higher education has historically tipped to the political left, the gap has widened in recent decades. Analyzing data on faculty ideological leanings, the American Enterprise Institute reported that “in less than 30 years the ratio of liberal identifying faculty to conservative faculty had more than doubled to 5.”
At Harvard, where I attended graduate school, the faculty political imbalance is particularly striking. According to a 2021 survey by The Harvard Crimson, the college newspaper, out of 236 faculty replies only 7 people said they are “somewhat” or “very conservative,” while 183 respondents indicated that they are “somewhat” or “very liberal.” A similar problem plagues my undergraduate college, Bowdoin.
The absence of my meager donations won’t matter to the colleges I attended, each of which has billions of dollars in endowment money. But big alumni donors at some leading universities are using their influence to improve free thought and inquiry on college campuses.
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A new survey by the Pew Research Center shows that the number of American adults with no religious affiliation is on the rise and has reached its highest point yet, as reported by Fox News.
Pew’s new study, released on Tuesday, shows that those who identify as having no religious affiliation make up 29 percent of all American adults. The number was previously 23 percent in 2016 and 19 percent in 2011, a whole ten points lower than it is today.
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Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan is the most likely candidate to take over the House Judiciary Committee if the GOP wins back Congress next year. Ask him what he wants to investigate and who he wants to subpoena, and he doesn’t hesitate. Not even for even a second.
“Fauci,” he told Just the News, referring to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. infectious disease specialist overseeing America’s pandemic response.
While the many conflicting messages and reversals of the pandemic response are ripe for investigation, Republicans like Jordan also want to press Fauci about why America was funding China’s bat research on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through a U.S. nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance and why NIH revived a dangerous form of experimentation known as gain of function in 2017.
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Religious couples are less likely to get divorced despite marrying younger — a factor generally associated with higher divorce rates — because they are less likely to live together before marriage, according to the Institute for Family Studies (IFS).
For those who married in their twenties, cohabitation before marriage was associated with higher divorce rates for both religious and nonreligious couples, the study found. The study found no difference in divorce rates between religious and nonreligious couples who chose not to live together before marriage.
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National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci has urged Americans to disinvite unvaccinated family members from their holiday gatherings as the fast-spreading COVID-19 Omicron variant surges nationwide.
‘We’re dealing with a serious enough situation now that if there’s an unvaccinated person, I would say, ‘I’m very sorry, but not this time. Maybe another time when this is all over,” said Fauci in an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday night.
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