WASHINGTON - Congresswoman Mary Miller (IL-15) signed a letter urging the Senate to oppose President Biden’s nomination of David Chipman in leading the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. She joined 68 Republicans of the Republican Study Committee in signing this letter.
No other members of Congress from Illinois signed onto the letter.
“As a strong defender of our Second Amendment, I signed onto a letter urging the Senate to oppose this nomination. David Chipman is an unacceptable choice to lead the ATF. If confirmed, David Chipman would jeopardize the constitutional right of every legal firearm owner and attempt to change the landscape of firearm ownership for future generations. Chipman has not made it a secret that he is an enemy of our Second Amendment. Our Constitution must be upheld with every appointment, and I hope that the Senate will take our petitions into consideration.”
WASHINGTON DC - Illinois' junior US Senator Tammy Duckworth is offering an array of Mother's Day gifts for "the moms in your life" - for prices ranging from $10 for a "Working Moms are Bada@@" to $50 for a plush duck sporting a "Tammy Strong" logo.
The irony can't be overlooked, however, that Senator Duckworth has done everything possible to promote ending motherhood before a new life is able to live outside her mother's womb - and wants even more radical anti-life policies in place in America and abroad. The Democrat is running for a second term in Illinois next year.
Indeed, Senator Duckworth, as her book title says, "Every Day is a Gift." Everyone of us is thankful for our days - and we should regret all the days the unborn in America have missed because of radical pro-abortion policies.
Repeal of Section 230’s 1996 lawless Wild West Internet policy is inevitable because it is based on an immoral premise and has inflicted severe damage to America’s constitutional liberties, national security and economic prosperity.
Repeal vs. Reform
Repeal of Section 230 would serve America and Americans much better than reforms that perpetuate lawless U.S. Internet policy and guarantee Big Tech remains unaccountable and Americans remain unprotected online.
Repeal would affect a major national policy change, while reform incrementalism would preserve the online status quo.
Repeal would be a comprehensive and constitutional solution, while content moderation reforms are piecemeal solutions that carry constitutional risks.
Repeal would empower 2022 and 2024 voters with a national policy conversation that asks candidates if and how they are going to ensure Big Tech is accountable and Americans are protected online?
Most importantly, repeal of Section 230 and its lawless U.S. Internet policy would legally restore the Constitution, Bill of Rights, rule-of-law, right and wrong, due process, redress and a duty of care online — without new regulation.
More HERE
Florida is close to finalizing a bill to protect the free speech rights of people on social media. The bill is supported by The Heartland Institute, which said, "we are entering into a potentially dangerous time for political free speech." It is opposed by Facebook, Amazon, NetChoice and the Internet Association.
More HERE
Americans don't want wokeness in the classroom. Samuel J. Abrams writes:
In the past few weeks, it has become apparent that the extreme progressive impulses infecting higher education in the United States have moved from campus quads and dormitories into our nation’s middle and high schools and even into our kindergartens. In New York City alone, the uptown Dalton School has seen an uprising and departure of numerous high-level staff over questions of curriculum and social justice. Downtown, a Grace Church School teacher published an open letter explaining that the school’s new “anti-racist” ideology induces shame in white students for being oppressors; he has witnessed the harmful impact that these ideas have had on children including silencing inquiry such that “children are afraid to challenge the repressive ideology that rules our school.”
Continue reading "Americans Do Not Want the Woke Racism Our Schools Are Peddling" »
Last week, in a major victory against sanctuary policies, Indiana’s Lake Superior Court struck down key parts of an ordinance that the City of East Chicago, Indiana, had enacted to protect illegal aliens, even ones with criminal records, from federal immigration law enforcement. The decision is a major victory for the plaintiffs, who are represented by the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) and The Bopp Law Firm. Previously, the same attorneys represented plaintiffs who successfully challenged a similar ordinance in Gary, Indiana.
In the East Chicago case, lawyers at IRLI and Bopp argued, and the court yesterday found, that the ordinance violates several Indiana statutes prohibiting governmental bodies in the state from refusing to cooperate with federal immigration law enforcement. The statutes, which IRLI had helped draft, require local jurisdictions to cooperate with such enforcement to the full extent contemplated in federal law.
President Joe Biden cannot say he is tough on China and then transfer advanced pharmaceutical patents to them.
U.S.-based corporations have developed the most effective vaccines against the Covid virus and are generously distributing them to other countries. But sharing the vaccine “formula” with other countries would pose a national security risk. Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement in reaction to demands from other nations to access the intellectual property of America’s advanced biotech labs.
“Because the United States is the most generous country in the world, we are sharing our Covid vaccines with less developed countries. But sharing the intellectual property that underlies those vaccines poses a national security risk.
“Many countries are demanding the U.S. waive the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement that was made at the World Trade Organization in 1995 on pandemic-related products in order to get their hands on our advanced biotech knowledge that was critical to develop the vaccine in the first place.
“This national security concern is why the Trump administration explicitly rejected waiving TRIPS last year, and the Biden administration should do the same, as waiving would give sensitive national security-developed biotech to the rest of the world including China, which is in a race to build its own biotech arsenal.
“President Joe Biden cannot say he is tough on China and then transfer advanced pharmaceutical patents to them and other competitors to exploit and bury U.S. manufacturers. If Congress wants more vaccines distributed globally, it can choose to appropriate more money to do that, but the American people have every right to expect that we will get our doses first.
More HERE
CHICAGO - US Senator Rand Paul will be in the Chicago area June 4th to raise funds for his 2022 re-election bid.
The evening will be hosted by the Honorable Eloise Gerson, the 2nd Ward Republican Committeeperson, and Lori Yokoyama, the 4th Ward Republican Committeeperson for the City of Chicago.
Paul has become a favorite of both libertarians and conservatives - known for his feisty challenges of Dr. Anthony Fauci's COVID policies and the Democrats' unleashed spending efforts.
Image from The Atlantic
By Nancy Thorner -
The Heartland Institute, as a prelude and counter to the Biden/Harris administration's celebration of Earth Day on Thursday, April 22, 2021, presented its own Zoom event on Tuesday, April 20, 2021, titled, "The Real Crisis: Biden and the Left's Radical Climate Policies."
Continue reading "Thorner: Part 1 - Scientific Facts Expose Biden’s Radical Climate Policies" »
By Mark Weyermuller -
“Why didn’t somebody do something?” These are words said by a nine year old girl at the Holocaust Museum in Israel some 30 years ago. That little girl was Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Her dad, the former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, had taken her to the museum.
She was the keynote speaker last Friday night at the Illinois Right to Life dinner in Lombard, Illinois. The event was called “The Leaders For Life Banquet.”
Here’s a look at seven instances where setting the record straight may help those evaluating the speech. Rachel del Guidice and Fred Lucas write:
President Joe Biden delivered his first address to a joint session of a downsized Congress on Wednesday night, nearly 100 days into his presidency.
Biden spoke to only 200 masked lawmakers in the spacious House chamber, even though most, if not all, members of Congress have been vaccinated for COVID-19 and federal health guidelines don’t require such masking and distancing precautions.
Continue reading "Fact-Checking 7 of Biden’s Claims in His Address to Congress" »
A restaurant in Plainfield Illinois is begging its customer base to be patient - very patient. Why? Because although they're trying desperately, they've not been able to find and hire the employees they need to be up to their normal efficiency.
Why the shortage of employees? The owners of the Tap House Grill - Santino and Rick - don't get political in this plea posted on Facebook Monday, but they give a hint of what they're thinking:
"With many people not actively pursuing employment opportunities and not wanting to work at all at this time. our business is having a massive uptick in new customers and with that comes a lot of pressure without having the ability to find qualified applicants or applicants at all at this venture," they write in a post to their customers.
In its entirety:
Continue reading "Plainfield restaurant begs for customer patience due to staff shortage" »
From Persecution.org -
A rise in international religious persecution is expected as the Biden administration backs away from promoting religious freedom abroad, despite progress made by the Trump administration.
In March, Secretary of State Antony Blinken overturned an executive order signed under the Trump administration that required federal agencies to “prioritize international religious freedom in the planning and implementation of United States foreign policy.”
The current administration is taking a broader approach and does not want to appear to be giving certain issues precedent over others.
Continue reading "Biden Administration Shifts Focus Away from International Religious Freedom" »
(Photo: Jason Mendez/Getty Images)
As recently as last summer, few people outside academia had heard of critical race theory, whose central claim is that racism, not liberty, is the founding value and guiding vision of American society. Then, President Donald Trump issued an executive order last September banning the teaching of this “malign ideology” to federal employees and federal contractors.
Trump’s ban was blocked by a federal judge in December and immediately revoked by Joe Biden upon occupying the White House in January. Since then, federal agencies and federal contractors have resumed staff training on unconscious bias, microaggressions, systemic racism, and white privilege—some of the most common but also most disputed concepts associated with the 4-decade-old academic theory.
Now critical race theory is about to face a major real-world test: a spate of lawsuits alleging that it encourages discrimination and other illegal policies targeting whites, males, and Christians.
But unlike Trump’s executive order, which ran into First Amendment problems by prohibiting controversial speech, the lawsuits name specific policies and practices that allegedly discriminate, harass, blame, and humiliate people based on their race.
The common thread of these legal challenges is the inescapable logic that making accommodations for critical race theory will erode the nation’s anti-discrimination law as it has developed since the 1960s.
More HERE
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, some academics predicted a “baby boom,” as couples found themselves locked down with nothing to do. But those familiar with economics knew differently – and the data have now backed us up.
The coronavirus “baby boom” has turned into a “baby bust.” The CDC reported that U.S. births in the month of December 2020, nine months after the lockdowns began, fell by 8% compared with December 2019. The same pattern is seen in state-by-state results reviewed by the media. In places like Hawaii (30%), California (10%), Florida (8%), Ohio (7%), and Arizona (5%).
The impact will be enormous. The Brookings Institution has estimated 300,000 to 500,000 American babies will never be born due to the global pandemic. And there is no end in sight. The Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research forecasts that the baby bust will last until August – the longest streak of lowered fertility in 100 years, including the Great Depression and the 2008 recession.
The baby bust has made life harder for those who wish to adopt children. And it likely increased the number of abortions.
What brought this birth dearth on? Uncertainty and economic hardship.
More HERE
There are more than 150,000 homeless people in California, enough to fill the Rose Bowl and Dodger Stadium, combined. It is an appalling statistic, up by nearly 40,000 since its 2014 low point. In fact, 27 percent of all homeless persons in America live in California.
Rising homelessness is a humanitarian concern. It also produces public nuisances, such as the homeless blocking sidewalks, building entrances, and other public spaces. Mounting homelessness is also a threat to public safety and health due to swelling crime rates, open drug use, and the spread of illnesses, including medieval diseases that had been virtually eradicated in the modern world.
More HERE
Maxine Waters bill to eliminate background checks for contractors raises serious questions.
House Democrats introduced a bill to block forms of federal grants from going to employers that conduct criminal background checks, or even “inquire” about the criminal history of an applicant. Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning issued the following statement in reaction to this misguided measure:
“Apparently stupidity runs so rampant on the Democratic side of the aisle in the House of Representatives that Maxine Waters and David Trone have introduced legislation that would end federal grants given to companies that conduct criminal background checks on their employees. Under this measure, every defense contractor who conducts background checks would have their contracts stripped and if they aren’t currently conducting criminal background checks, then they should have their government contracts taken away for incompetence.
“What could go wrong? A few things come to mind. We could have defense secrets stolen, money syphoned from the U.S. mint, and Drug Enforcement Agency contractors moonlighting for drug cartels.
More HERE
