News and Headlines: In The News, Politics, World News, Commentary/Opinion.

In The News:

Ninth Circuit Court Of Appeals Rules Facebook, YouTube Are Not Bound By First Amendment

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision came in a case brought by Prager University, a nonprofit that produces videos promoting conservative positions on politics.

PragerU sued YouTube in 2017 for flagging several of its videos as “inappropriate” and stripping them of advertising.

Conservatives have long said the Ninth Circuit Court is a progressive liberal bastion.

President Donald Trump has made headway in recent months changing the makeup of the Ninth Circuit Court. He nominated Patrick Bumatay and Lawrence VanDyke to the court in 2019. The Senate confirmed them in December, raising the number of Trump’s Ninth Circuit appointees to nine.

Newly proposed bill in California would require stores’ toy aisles to be gender-neutral

According to KRON-TV in San Francisco, a new California law would require retailers to have gender-neutral sections inside of their stores.

Proposed by Assemblyman Evan Low (D), Assembly Bill 2826 would apply to retail department stores with over 500 employees.

If passed, the law would eliminate boys and girls aisles, and require that children’s toys be offered in one, gender-neutral section inside the store.
Low’s proposed legislation adds:

“Keeping similar items that are traditionally marketed either for girls or for boys separated makes it more difficult for the consumer to compare the products and incorrectly implies that their use by one gender is inappropriate.”

Oklahoma Man Henri Michelle Piette Gets Life In Prison For Kidnapping Stepdaughter, Holding Her For 19 Years

Henri Michelle Piette kidnapped Rosalynn McGinnis from her hometown of Poteau, Oklahoma, when she was 12 years old, or possibly 11 years old, according to a companion NBC News report.

At the time, Piette was in a relationship with McGinnis’ mother. Shortly afterwards, he “took her to a van” and “married” her, according to prosecutors.

Over the next 20 years, Piette inflicted unspeakable sexual abuse on the young girl, repeatedly raping her.

Three years after her kidnapping, at the age of 15, she gave birth to her first child that Piette fathered; she would go on have eight more of his children.

California Governor Gavin Newsom Says State Is Monitoring 8,400 Coronavirus Cases

The announcement comes a day after a suspected case was reported to have been caused through “community spread,” making the person the first in the U.S. to contract the virus without having traveled to affected areas or having exposure to others who had the coronavirus, according to NPR.

The suspected case was left undiagnosed for days because a request for testing wasn’t initially granted, officials at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento said according to NPR.

Molson Coors employee shot and killed five co-workers before turning the gun on himself, police say

Police say the 51-year-old assailant — who has not been publicly named by authorities — opened fire on the sprawling Molson Coors campus Wednesday afternoon, leaving officers to recover the bodies from a complex of some 20 buildings where more than 1,000 people work.

The brewery, known for its big “Home of the High Life” sign, remained closed Thursday.

While much remains unknown, both local officials and Democratic presidential candidates are already calling for changes to stop deadly mass shootings.

The rampage is the first shooting in a public space to kill four or more people in 2020, according to a Washington Post database.

Children of wounded soldiers charity stiffed; Navy veteran founder accused of theft

The charity advertises itself as a helping hand for children of fallen military men and women, cops and firefighters.

But former Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputy and Navy veteran Robert “Bobby” Simeone — who founded and ran Children of Wounded Warriors — used the organization to stuff his own pockets for years, authorities say.

And they allege Simeone brazenly did it after being charged in 2017 with numerous felonies in a separate case, in which he’s accused of paying kickbacks to lure patients into his drug treatment center in West Palm Beach.

Simeone worked for the Sheriff’s Office for about 10 years before retiring. In 2016, he had an unsuccessful run for a seat in the state Legislature, a House district that includes Palm Beach Gardens.

His military service includes four years in the U.S. Navy, from 1989 to 1993, when he fought in the Desert Storm conflict.

SpaceX officially can start building its Mars spaceship

The Los Angeles City Council approved a permit Tuesday that allows the Elon Musk-led company to use a site at the Port of L.A. to build aerospace parts.

With this vote, SpaceX is now cleared to start work at the site — last week, the L.A. Board of Harbor Commissioners green-lighted the permit.

SpaceX representatives told L.A. City Councilman Joe Buscaino’s office that the company was interested in the port site because it needed additional manufacturing capacity for its Starship spaceship and rocket booster.

The company is currently building prototypes of the Starship system at its facility near Boca Chica Beach in south Texas. In Southern California, it manufactures Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon capsules in Hawthorne, where its headquarters are.

Border chief: Wall cuts illegal crossings 80%

Mark Morgan, acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, said the key is not just the border wall but the entire system being built, with roads and lighting and, in some cases, multiple layers of fencing.

He said that’s giving agents more time to get to spots where breakthroughs happen, and when they can respond they can make arrests or force people to retreat back into Mexico.

“We’ve seen apprehensions and illegal entries and gotaways all being reduced by over 80% in that 20-mile stretch,” Mr. Morgan told the House Appropriations Committee.

Marine Corps commandant orders removal of Confederate symbols from all Marine bases

Maj. Eric Flanagan, Berger’s spokesman, confirmed the accuracy of the memo, which was leaked on Friday.

He also confirmed several other directives outlined by Berger, including items such as ordering leaders to find ways to increase combat roles for women, extend maternity leave to one year, and apply parental leave to same-sex couples.

Since Gen. Berger became the 38th Marine commandant in July 2019, he has emphasized his goal to design the Marine Corps to be a future-facing force and more prepared for threats outlined in the National Defense Strategy.

Porn star Lynn Pleasant sentenced to 10 years in prison for trying to hire hit man to kill father of her kids

The 32-year-old was arrested in December 2018 by federal agents in Washington state.

The investigation was sparked after Danforth apparently told her friend she wanted the father of her children killed, according to Idaho’s The Spokesman-Review.

Per court documents, her friend gave her the number of a “hit man” in Montana and she agreed to meet him in October.

During their meeting, Danforth “agreed to pay $5,000 in exchange for the murder” of a man only identified as “R.H.”

She allegedly laid out a few instructions: the target’s body must be found and it was alright if others in his home were harmed.

Massachusetts dad sentenced to 18 years in prison after trying to kill daughter, 7, with drain cleaner

Christoper Conley, 37, was found guilty Friday of attempted murder, assault and battery on a child using a dangerous weapon and assault and battery on a child causing substantial bodily injury after prosecutors say he tried to kill his then-7-year-old daughter in April 2015, the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office said in a news release.

During his 11-day trial, prosecutors detailed how Conley injected the drain cleaner into his daughter’s cecostomy tube, which she had put into place to help empty her bowels.

He then overdosed the child on pain medication.

The girl survived but her injuries required a seven-hour surgery in which she had over six feet of her intestines removed and subsequent surgery to removed a third of her bladder, the District Attorney’s office said.

Cincinnati church wipes out $46.5 million in medical debt for 45,000 families

Crossroads Church partnered with RIP Medical Debt, a medical debt relief nonprofit, to wipe out debts for people in Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and Indiana.

They will receive bright yellow envelopes this week letting them know the good news.

“Churches are at our best when we are a blessing to real people in our communities,” Senior Pastor Brian Tome told Fox News Thursday. “We’re not here to just have big Sunday meetings.”

Politics:

Report: Green New Deal Will Impose A $75,000 Per Year Cost On Swing-State Households

The Green New Deal would cost households an average of between $74,287 and $76,683 in Colorado, Michigan and Pennsylvania, among others, a report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute noted.

CEI worked with Power the Future and the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty on the report.

The authors incorporated the costs of electricity production within the first year after Green New Deal’s implementation and the costs of a one-time upgrade to buildings and vehicles.

They also determined how the plan’s mandate would increase the cost of logistics in a modern American economy.

Thinking About Voting For Bernie? Watch This!

Commentary/Opinion: Blue Collar Logic

If you’re thinking about voting for Bernie, or you know someone who is, you need to watch this video.

Jason breaks it down like no other. Here’s the Simple Truth.

Former Baltimore mayor Pugh sentenced to 3 years in book scheme

The scandal has shaken Maryland’s largest city, which for years has struggled with grinding poverty, political mismanagement, record crime rates and police abuses that led to massive riots.

And it made a mockery of Catherine Pugh’s inaugural promise to restore trust in Baltimore’s leaders.

Pugh was also sentenced to serve three years of supervised release after getting out of prison. She pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy and tax evasion charges in November.

Bernie Sanders: 18 things the Democratic front-runner believes

Bernie Sanders is the national frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination. The Vermont senator has promised a political revolution, but what does that mean? What does he actually stand for?

10. Universal healthcare – Sanders proposes that all Americans would receive government-run health insurance, which he says would cost about $30tn over a decade, though his costing for the policy, Medicare for All, is under intense scrutiny. Sanders’ idea to nationalise US health coverage was as recently as 2016 dismissed out of hand within the Democratic party as too far-left. What was once a pipe dream is now mainstream.

12. More taxes – Much has been made of Sanders’ aim to introduce taxes on Wall Street stock transactions and raise them for individuals with a net worth exceeding $32m. But the candidate also acknowledges planning to raise taxes for working families in order to fund Medicare for All. However much extra the federal government deducts from Americans’ payroll, he argues, would be more than offset by their health-cost savings.

16. Sometimes, dictators can do good things – Sanders told CBS in February it would be “unfair” to say “everything is bad” about Cuba’s communist revolution. Critics then brought up how as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, in 1985, Sanders praised Nicaraguan left-wing Sandinistas strongman Daniel Ortega as “an impressive guy”, downplaying reports of rights abuses there. Sanders’ fans are sometimes dubbed “Sandernistas”.

Mark Meadows: ‘Shame’ on Lawmakers that Vote for a Clean Reauthorization of FISA Without Reform

Attorney General William Barr has said he wants a simple reauthorization of FISA; however, Meadows, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), and many other Republicans want “significant reforms” to FISA before it is reauthorized.

Meadows and Jordan noted during the CPAC panel the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officials have abused the FISA process to surveil the 2016 Donald Trump campaign.

“Former FBI officials in 2016-17 gravely abused the FISA process and lied to the FISA court 17 times.

Now, some members of Congress want to do a clean reauthorization of FISA anyway Totally unacceptable. Should NEVER happen,” Meadows wrote.

CPAC 2020: Former Flynn deputy McFarland reveals new details of Mueller interviews

McFarland, who was the deputy to former national security adviser Michael Flynn and a former Fox News contributor, described her experience being approached by members of Mueller’s office.

“Two FBI agents were outside my house,” McFarland said, noting they “waited until my husband left.”

She added, “I was alone.”

“They were able to take Trump tweets, excerpts from text messages, things I said,” she explained. “And they said, ‘we think you should have remembered these things, and if you didn’t remember, we think that’s perjury.’”

“It became clear that what they wanted me to do…was plead guilty to a crime I didn’t commit,” she said. “They wanted me to plead guilty for lying.”

Group threatens lawsuits over ‘suspiciously high’ voter registration rates in swing states

The data was compiled by the Honest Elections Project, a new nonprofit organization that blames the seemingly implausible statistics on a failure of states to properly update voter rolls to account for people moving, dying or being incarcerated.

The group examined publicly available registration records and compared it with citizen voting-age data from the U.S. Census Bureau, describing the figures as “suspiciously high.”

“All three states have multiple counties where voter registration rates exceed 90 percent, in some cases they exceed 100 percent.

World News:

Report: Police Stealing Food Donated to Chinese City Under Coronavirus Lockdown

Police are believed to be behind the misappropriation, after a family member of an employee of the Phoenix Police Station in Echeng District uploaded a video to WeChat last week showing donations her family had received from the police station, including multiple boxes of fruits, fresh vegetables, and eggs.

Noting that the quantity was “more than they can eat,” she took three boxes of food to her parents’ house.

Another WeChat User married to a police official also posted the list of supplies gifted to her family, including six barrels of oil, multiple bags of vegetables, four bags of rice, and hundreds of face masks.

“Blame your husband for not being an official!” she captioned the post, apparently addressing those complaining that they did not receive supplies.

Putin rejects meeting Erdogan amid Syria’s accelerated offensive – 27.2.2020 TV7 Israel News

1) In light of growing concerns over the Coronavirus, The Israeli health ministry issued a warning, in which it urged Israelis to avoid making unnecessary trips overseas, and to avoid attending international conferences either abroad or in Israel.

2) A multilateral meeting in Vienna, which aimed to try and salvage the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, fail to make any substantive progress.

3) Moscow has rejected Ankara’s request for a Presidential meeting over Syria; amid an accelerated offensive by the Russian-backed Syrian army from both the south and east of the northwestern Idlib governorate, in the direction of the territory’s capital, Idlib city.

US lists leader of Iran-backed Shi’ite militia in Iraq as ‘global terrorist’

A State Department official on February 26 said the United States had listed Ahmad al-Hamidawi, head of the armed faction of the group, as a “specially designated global terrorist.”

The action will freeze U.S. assets that he might hold and make any transactions with him a crime. Kataib Hizbullah was declared a terrorist group in 2009.

“Today we are intensifying our pressure on this terrorist group,” Nathan Sales, the State Department counter-terrorism chief, told a news conference.

Israeli scientists: ‘In a few weeks, we will have coronavirus vaccine’

“Congratulations to MIGAL [The Galilee Research Institute] on this exciting breakthrough,” Akunis said.

“I am confident there will be further rapid progress, enabling us to provide a needed response to the grave global COVID-19 threat,” Akunis said, referring to the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

In preclinical trials, the team demonstrated that the oral vaccination induces high levels of specific anti-IBV antibodies, Katz said.

“Let’s call it pure luck,” he said. “We decided to choose coronavirus as a model for our system just as a proof of concept for our technology.”

Syrian rebels retake key town in Idlib from Assad forces

The loss of the town, which is strategically located at the crossroads of Syria’s main two highways, is the first major setback for advancing Syrian government troops since Turkey decided to deploy soldiers and equipment to bolster rebel groups earlier this month.

However, the counteroffensive could be short-lived as the Syrian army and allied militias, accompanied by Russian airpower, continue a ferocious three-month assault on rebels and jihadist factions in the last part of the country that remains outside Assad’s de facto control.

Turkish attempts to hold a four-way summit with the leaders of Russia, France and Germany next week to address the escalating violence have been met with indifference by the Kremlin.

Commentary/Opinion:

Answers to 25 Questions

Bill Warner offered on Facebook to answer questions about Islam. Here are the questions and answers.

Topics include: why do Muslims vote Democrat; what is the madhi; how do we fight Islam; different schools of Islam; reform of Islam; can Islam be reformed?

Californians Fleeing the State for Texas

California’s left-wing policies are squeezing out the middle class, and it’s reached a breaking point.

Check out the preview of our upcoming mini-documentary “Fleeing California” on Fox News!