January 18, 2023

Free speech or out of order? As meetings grow wild, officials try to tame public comment.

A school board meeting in Greeley, Colo., kicked off this month with a newly restrictive public comment policy — the fourth iteration in a year marked by such vitriol over masks and books that one member suggested suspending comment altogether. Two opportunities for citizens to address the board for a total of four minutes had already been slimmed to one three-minute chance. Now speakers would have two minutes.

In Rochester, Minn., where public comment at city council meetings has featured personal attacks on the mayor and baseless accusations about the library promoting pedophilia, speakers since October have been permitted to comment just once a month — and the board is considering further restrictions.

And in Salem, Ore., the school board in September closed meetings to the public and began taking comments by Zoom, phone or in writing, following what the superintendent called an “escalation of disruptive behavior” that had turned in-person comment into a “public forum for political agendas.”

Across a polarized nation, governing bodies are restricting — and sometimes even halting — public comment to counter what elected officials describe as an unprecedented level of invective, misinformation and disorder from citizens when they step to the microphone. As contentious social issues roil once-sleepy town council and school board gatherings, some officials say allowing people to have their say is poisoning meetings and thwarting the ability to get business done.

“I’m not denigrating the concept of acknowledging true questions our community has. That’s vital. That’s what I’ve spent my entire adult life doing,” said Rochester Mayor Kim Norton, a former school board member and Democratic state lawmaker. But, she added: “Do I think we have an obligation to have the same personal attacks be made week after week, year after year? No.”

https://wapo.st/3Dj6d3N

January 17, 2023

Harris Faulkner DISGUSTED By 'MILF' Show, Would Like To Talk About JESUS INSTEAD!

Harris Faulkner may be better at pretending to be appalled than any of the other on-air talent at Fox News. We charitably assume she is pretending to be appalled, obviously, that she is a complete fake who correctly surmised that she could rise to the top of the daytime crew if she just out-batshitted them all. You know, at least until Boxwine-Thirty in the afternoon.

If Faulkner is not pretending, then that would mean she really is the doofus we see on our TVs all the time. For her sake, we pray that is not the case.

Harris Faulkner looks her viewers in the eye, gets that very serious look on her face — like she's about to tell you Santa Claus ran over your puppy dog with his sleigh and now everyone's dead — and tells them that GOP Senator Tom Cotton pulling up his hoop skirt and angrily shaking his Arkansas-square-dancing pantaloons at Merrick Garland for eight solid minutes is RIVETING and SERIOUS BUSINESS.

Harris Faulkner HOW VERY DARE HE's when Joe Manchin comes on Fox News and calls Fox News a liar right to its face. She invokes the Bible and her father's military service, and oh, the indignation!

Harris Faulkner FEMINIST HERO HOW VERY DARE THEY's when the girl M&Ms are upside down on the package. "Thank you very much, WE STAND ON OUR OWN! We don't need to be shown on a package, LOOKIN' CRAZY UPSIDE DOWN!"

https://www.wonkette.com/harris-faulkner-milf-manor

Posted just for the Tom Cotton reference...

January 17, 2023

'Matt Schlapp Is a Sexual Predator': Accuser Sues Over Sexual Battery

Source: Daily Beast

The former Herschel Walker staffer who came forward to The Daily Beast earlier this month to detail a sexual assault allegation against conservative icon Matt Schlapp is now suing the powerful chairman of the American Conservative Union—for battery, defamation, and conspiracy.

The lawsuit, which the staffer’s attorneys filed Tuesday in the circuit court of Alexandria, Virginia, accuses Schlapp of “sexual battery” after “aggressively fondling” his “genital area in a sustained fashion” while the staffer drove Schlapp home from an evening of drinks at Atlanta bars in October.

The complaint also accuses Schlapp—as well as his wife, conservative commentator and former Trump White House communications adviser, Mercedes Schlapp—of defamation, citing efforts to “impugn” the accuser’s character in response to media reports of the allegation. It further alleges a conspiracy count where the couple worked to denigrate the accuser with the help of conservative fundraiser Caroline Wren, who has acted as a representative for the Schlapps in the matter.

The lawsuit claims that Schlapp, who oversees the Conservative Political Action Conference, made "repeated unsolicited and undesired advances" toward the campaign staffer for Herschel Walker. The staffer previously told The Daily Beast that Schlapp "groped" his crotch while he drove the conservative organizer back to his hotel after a day of campaign events.

Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/accuser-sues-matt-schlapp-for-sexual-battery

January 17, 2023

I Was on the Church Committee. The New Republican Version Is an Outrage.

To legitimize otherwise questionable investigations, Congress occasionally labels them after a previous successful effort. Thus, the new Republican-controlled House of Representatives’ proposed select committee, which plans to investigate the “weaponization of government,” is being described as “the new Church committee,” after the group of senators who investigated the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and other groups from 1975-76.

As the last surviving member of the original Church committee, named after its chairman, the late Senator Frank Church of Idaho, I have a particular interest in distinguishing what we accomplished then and what authoritarian Republicans seem to have in mind now.

The outlines of the committee, which Rep. Jim Jordan will assemble, remain vague. Reading between the rhetorical lines, proponents appear to believe agencies of the national government have targeted, and perhaps are still targeting, right-of-center individuals and groups, possibly including individuals and right-wing militia groups that participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionist attack on the Capitol.

That is almost completely at odds with the purpose of the original Church committee, which was founded in response to widespread abuses by government intelligence agencies. While we sought to protect the constitutional rights and freedoms of American citizens, we were also bound to protect the integrity of the intelligence and security agencies, which were founded to protect those freedoms, too.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/17/opinion/church-committee-republicans.html?unlocked_article_code=aD9a9ySzXmTmO0YMJLAGs_QWNJqI4tMizd_uToZ05O9chGLNSkbyb8u5zQDgHpgo3F6zGpx1dl6gk96z7EtEog3JAQ2m6kl02it7CY6eTeD7S46QGiuzOoLuLRUK-hCy-IrYzBZlnwKNQ2UABoFFW19QpNhqB6N0nsy1UXZU8seoMsPGXTDlhjx0NMOVkOy5-sWnkhx63aUnK54cudTORAkKnlFpDQuXY4YKoaBsIHCf21qpuGDTo1lajMxAdSiCJX00eqTYf3ZrpYmMzGFVv-cOpqGiijd03igMSm4VeQ0oFOHUPqoB0EmDD88ToNhlrU7FCId4VfUSL1MFq0WILr2mW7Y8vQ&smid=share-url

January 17, 2023

How dark money groups led Ohio to redefine gas as 'green energy'

Conservative groups helped Ohio lawmakers push the narrative that the fuel is clean, documents show. They are taking their campaign to other states.

When Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) signed a bill this month to legally redefine natural gas as a source of “green energy,” supporters characterized it as the culmination of a grass-roots effort to recognize the Buckeye state’s largest energy source.

“It’s green. It’s clean. And it’s abundant right under our feet, right here in Ohio,” Rep. Troy Balderson (R-Ohio) wrote in an opinion piece in the Columbus Dispatch.

But Ohio’s new law is anything but homegrown, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post. The Empowerment Alliance, a dark money group with ties to the gas industry, helped Ohio lawmakers push the narrative that the fuel is clean, the documents show. The American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, another anonymously funded group whose donors remain a mystery, assisted in the effort.

ALEC — a network of state lawmakers, businesses and conservative donors — circulated proposed legislation for Ohio lawmakers and has urged other states to follow suit, according to the documents, which were obtained via a public records request by the Energy and Policy Institute, a group that advocates for renewable energy.

https://wapo.st/3QJAMFc

January 17, 2023

The Bathroom Fight Fueling Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert's Break-Up

A shouting match in a bathroom. Kevin McCarthy. Donald Trump. Ukraine aid. They're all contributing to the split between two of the far right’s most high-profile figures.

When Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was finally elected speaker after 15 rounds of votes earlier this month, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) wasn’t in her normal seat.

Instead of the middle section of the House chamber where conservatives and GOP castaways have taken up residence for years now, Greene was sitting near the front of the chamber in a section of leadership loyalists, right next to Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO), who came into Congress in 2013 and immediately started cozying up to McCarthy and GOP leaders.

While Greene sat with her new friends and cheered on McCarthy—at one point, she grabbed a selfie with McCarthy to commemorate the night he took the speaker’s gavel—Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) was in a more familiar spot.

Boebert proudly sat where she usually does: in the middle section of conservatives, right next to Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL). At one point, when McCarthy was just short of the votes to become speaker, he walked over to Boebert and Gaetz and tried to convince one of them to vote for him. Neither of them did.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-bathroom-fight-fueling-marjorie-taylor-greene-and-lauren-boeberts-break-up

January 17, 2023

Former Wagner commander flees to Norway and seeks asylum

Source: CNN

A former commander in Russia’s Wagner private military company has fled to Norway and is seeking asylum after crossing that country’s arctic border, according to Norwegian police and a Russian activist.

Andrei Medvedev, in an interview with a Russian activist who helps people seek asylum abroad, said that he feared for his life after refusing to renew his service with Wagner.

Medvedev said that after completing his contract, and refusing to serve another, he was afraid of being executed in the same manner of Yevgeny Nuzhin – a defector from Wagner who was killed on camera with a sledgehammer.

“We were just thrown to fight like cannon fodder,” he told Vladimir Osechkin, head of Gulagu.net, a human rights advocacy group, in a conversation published on YouTube.

Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/16/europe/norway-wagner-asylum-russia-war-intl/index.html

January 17, 2023

GOP Complains That Biden Administration Won't Negotiate With Terrorists On Debt Limit

The looming standoff over the debt limit has been telegraphed for months. And now, just days into the new Congress, it has arrived.

Republicans have made their intentions clear since at least October: Take the debt limit hostage as a bargaining chip, demanding cuts to programs the party has long sought to slash, such as Medicare and Social Security.

The White House has repeatedly said it won’t play ball, and did so again after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned the U.S. would hit the debt limit Thursday, and that her department would begin “extraordinary measures” to continue to fulfill the U.S.’s obligations. “There is going to be no negotiation over it,” White House Press Secretary Karinne Jean-Pierre said. “This is something that must get done.”

Yet Republicans, having captured their hostage, were not keen to take no for an answer.

“When President Biden says he’s just going to refuse to negotiate with Republicans on any concessions, I don’t think that’s right either,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) in an interview with ABC This Week on Sunday.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/gop-complains-that-biden-administration-wont-negotiate-with-terrorists-on-debt-limit

Whaaaaaa? He's refusing to negotiate? Do we really shoot the hostage now? Are Americans dumb enough to believe Biden forced us to shoot the hostage?

January 17, 2023

Inside the One-Way Feud Between Ron DeSantis and Kristi Noem

Kristi Noem’s aides came out of nowhere to attack Ron DeSantis. There’s more going on here than meets the eye.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis hasn’t even declared whether he’ll run for president in 2024, and Donald Trump has tried to restrain himself from going after his top GOP rival, but the former president’s allies are already mounting an offensive—with South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem now leading the charge.

Noem may be interested in running for president herself, and therefore would have good reason to go after DeSantis, but she also may be angling for a different role: Trump’s vice president.

Earlier this month, Noem’s press secretary, Ian Fury, took a shot at DeSantis seemingly from out of nowhere. Fury sent a follow-up email to the National Review for an article ostensibly about “the transgender lobby’s outsized influence in South Dakota.” Fury went on a tirade—against DeSantis.

“Governor Noem was the only Governor in America on national television defending the Dobbs decision,” Fury said, referring to the Supreme Court decision overturning federal abortion protections. “Where was Governor DeSantis? Hiding behind a 15-week ban. Does he believe that 14-week-old babies don’t have a right to live?”

After cruising to re-election by almost 20 points without facing a primary challenge or having to do a single interview with a non-friendly conservative media outlet, DeSantis is now facing his first real test from the right—this largely one-way feud with Noem.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-the-one-way-feud-between-ron-desantis-and-kristi-noem

Fight fight fight. Big bag of rats.

January 16, 2023

Wyoming wants to phase out sales of new EVs by 2035

It's a symbolic gesture aimed at states like California.

While jurisdictions like California and New York move toward banning the sale of new gasoline-powered cars, one US state wants to go in the opposite direction. Wyoming’s legislature is considering a resolution that calls for a phaseout of new electric vehicle sales by 2035. Introduced on Friday, Senate Joint Resolution 4 has support from members of the state’s House of Representatives and Senate.

In the proposed resolution, a group of lawmakers led by Senator Jim Anderson says Wyoming’s “proud and valued” oil and gas industry has created “countless” jobs and contributed revenue to the state’s coffers. They add that a lack of charging infrastructure within Wyoming would make the widespread use of EVs “impracticable” and that the state would need to build “massive amounts of new power generation” to “sustain the misadventure of electric vehicles.”

SJ4 calls for residents and businesses to limit the sale and purchase of EVs voluntarily, with the goal of phasing them out entirely by 2035. If passed, the resolution would be entirely symbolic. In fact, it’s more about sending a message to EV advocates than banning the vehicles altogether. To that point, the final section of SJ4 calls for Wyoming’s Secretary of State to send President Biden and California Governor Gavin Newsom copies of the resolution.

“One might even say tongue-in-cheek, but obviously it’s a very serious issue that deserves some public discussion,” Senator Boner, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, told the Cowboy State Daily. “I’m interested in making sure that the solutions that some folks want to the so-called climate crisis are actually practical in real life. I just don’t appreciate when other states try to force technology that isn’t ready,”

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wyoming-wants-to-phase-out-sales-of-new-e-vs-by-2035-200704042.html?.tsrc=daily_mail&uh_test=2_04