Day: February 23, 2022

Senate Majority Leader Saslaw Spars with Secretary of Finance Cummings over Administration Analysis That Virginia Is Lagging Economically

Eric Burk

Secretary of Finance Stephen Cummings told the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee on Tuesday that while General Fund revenues are performing well, there is an overall lack of economic growth in Virginia. That’s similar to the message from a letter Governor Glenn Youngkin sent to the Senate Finance and House Appropriations chairs last Friday. Tuesday’s discussion between Democratic senators and Cummings illustrated the policy divide on finance between the administration and the Senate.

Cummings said that January 2022 was the sixth consecutive month of revenues exceeding the prior year by more than 15 percent. “So, pretty remarkable times,” Cummings said.

“Obviously, the extraordinary level of revenues for the government is great, but that does not indicate success in our economy,” Cummings said. “It’s the result of external factors, and in our opinion, taxes that are too high.”

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Virginia Husband and Wife Realtor Team Plead Guilty to Federal Wire Fraud Charge, Now Await Sentencing

Kaitlin Housler

A husband and wife realtor team from Abingdon, Virginia, pleaded guilty Wednesday to federal wire fraud charges related to their scheme to create fake residential sales contracts in order to obtain advance sales commissions to which they were not entitled, according to a press release by the Western District of Virginia U.S. Attorney’s Office.

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Abortion Funding Groups Admitting to Violating Texas Heartbeat Act to Face Depositions

Susan Berry, PhD

Two litigation firms have filed petitions against organizations that have admitted to paying for abortions in Texas after detection of a fetal heartbeat, a violation of the Texas Heartbeat Act.

Attorneys from both America First Legal and the Thomas More Society filed petitions for discovery against the Lilith Fund for Reproductive Equity and the Texas Equal Access Fund, both of which have admitted in court that their organizations paid for at least one abortion of an unborn baby in Texas who had a detectable heartbeat.

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Commentary: In 2022, Voters Must Stand Up to America’s Uniparty Empire

Virginia Star Staff

If we follow the conventional political thinking, Republicans can anticipate an electoral shift during the November midterm elections and appear likely to recapture the White House in 2024. A grassroots revolt is already showing signs that the Democrats should expect to be punished for politicizing education and mismanaging COVID policy.

If we follow the conventional thinking even further, this will spell success for a usual cast of Republican-leaning characters in leadership and consulting roles. Karl Rove is likely already updating his fee structure. Veterans of the two Bush Administrations will send their résumés east in hopes of retaining old posts so they can steer contracts and favors back to their allies and former employers.

Right, Left, Right, Left, the hypnotic rhythm drums on—briefly interrupted only by an aberrational Trump Administration or popular uprising—but it all returns to the statists’ status quo in the end. The uniparty simply shifts its weight from its left foot to its right while business proceeds as usual.

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Hillary Clinton’s ‘Fake Scandal’ Attack on Durham Probe Revives Strategy from Whitewater Era

Virginia Star Staff
Hillary Clinton

Aquarter century ago as Whitewater prosecutors closed in on evidence that Bill and Hillary Clinton both gave factually inaccurate testimony, the then-first lady unleashed a blistering attack that stunned a capital city that in those days was far less rancorous.

Mrs. Clinton called the Whitewater probe “an effort to undo the results of two elections,” claiming it was run by a “politically motivated prosecutor who is allied with the right-wing opponents of my husband.”

Prosecutors have been “looking at every telephone call we’ve made, every check we’ve ever written, scratching for dirt, intimidating witnesses, doing everything possible to try to make some kind of accusation against my husband,” she declared in that 1998 interview with NBC’s “Today” show.

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Ivy League Law School Will Pay Tuition for Low-Income Students

Virginia Star Staff

An Ivy League law school will start paying tuition for low-income students beginning next fall to diversify its culture and make law degrees more affordable, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Yale Law School will cover the tuition for students with income below the federal poverty line by offering scholarships of roughly $72,000, the Wall Street Journal reported. The scholarship will cover tuition, fees and health insurance while students are responsible for their estimated $21,000 living expenses.

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Kyle Rittenhouse Launches New Initiative to Hold Media Outlets Accountable for Telling Defamatory Lies

Virginia Star Staff

Kyle Rittenhouse on Monday announced that he is launching a new initiative aimed at holding major media outlets and celebrities like Whoopi Goldberg accountable for telling “malicious defamatory lies.”

Last November, the 18-year-old was acquitted of all charges related to the shooting deaths of two antifa rioters, and the injury of a third in Kenosha, Wisconsin in August of 2020. The jury found that he had acted in self-defense. Charges ranged from intentional homicide to recklessly endangering safety.

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Commentary: Confronting the Snake Oil of Woke Ideology

RealClearWire
Group protesting; "no justice no peace" sign

Woke ideology is proof that the world has gone Mad – as in Mad Magazine. What passes as penetrating insight on the left is just a newfangled version of the old fill-in-the-blanks word game Mad Libs. Try to guess what the Princeton University students are talking about here:

We aim to decolonize our practice of ____, even as ____ remains an imperialist, colonialist, and white supremacist art form. (Answer: ballet)

How would you complete this statement from Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau?

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Supreme Court to Hear Case of Woman Forced to Create Websites for LGBT Causes Against Religious Beliefs

Virginia Star Staff

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of a web designer fighting a Colorado law that forces her to promote messages against her religious beliefs, the court announced Tuesday.

Lorie Smith of 303 Creative asked the court to review the 10th Circuits’ ruling that Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act requires Smith to engage in speech that violates her conscience, according to the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing her.

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Commentary: Teaching Unbiased American History

RealClearWire

In his Gettysburg Address at the height of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln pointed out that the United States was “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” “Now,” he continued, “we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

Thankfully, we are not in a civil war today – and, one hopes, never will be again. We are, however, in a battle for the soul of our country.

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Missouri Senate Candidate Vicky Hartzler Scores Another Endorsement as Frontrunner Loses Momentum

Virginia Star Staff

Missouri Republican Rep. Vicky Hartzler scored another major endorsement in her bid to succeed Sen. Roy Blunt as polls show that the race’s frontrunner could be a risky general election candidate.

The Susan B. Anthony List endorsed Hartzler Tuesday, calling her an “unwavering pro-life champion” who is “Planned Parenthood’s worst nightmare.” It comes just days after Republican Sen. Josh Hawley also endorsed her over the rest of the crowded GOP field.

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Commentary: What Happens in New York Doesn’t Stay in New York

Virginia Star Staff

It seems like every day America is becoming more anti-American than the day before. The Biden administration just keeps shooting for the “how can we out-do ourselves in pushing our Marxist policies” prize, and blue states are in lockstep. The American people keep getting whacked day in and day out, and the media is complicit. No one is safe these days in Biden’s America.

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Texas Attorney General Declares Puberty Blockers and Gender Transition Surgeries ‘Child Abuse’

Susan Berry, PhD
Doctors performing surgery

The performance of surgical and chemical procedures on children for the purpose of gender transition “can legally constitute child abuse” under Texas law, declared Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton Friday in a formal attorney general opinion.

Paxton responded to questions from State Representative Matt Krause (R-Fort Worth), chair of the Texas House Committee on General Investigating, who asked whether “sex change” surgeries performed on children, including castration, vasectomy, hysterectomy, penectomy, phalloplasty, vaginoplasty, mastectomies, and removal of otherwise healthy body parts, constitute child abuse.

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Senate Privileges and Elections Committee Kills Most House Elections Reforms Bills

Eric Burk
Person voting in poll booth

Delegate Lee Ware (R-Powhatan) sponsored HB 46, which would have reintroduced a photo identification requirement, repealed the permanent absentee voter list, shortened early voting, and required representatives from each political party to verify the absentee ballot cure process.

“About photo ID, there is wide public polling that shows that support for [photo id] this crosses every demographic group, every partisan group,” Ware said.

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