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BEIJING -- Chinese authorities Thursday moved to lock down three cities that are home to more than 18 million people in an unprecedented effort to contain the deadly new virus that has sickened hundreds and spread to other parts of the world during the busy Lunar New Year travel period. Police, SWAT teams and paramilitary troops guarded Wuhan’s train station, where metal barriers blocked the entrances at 10 a.m. Only travelers holding tickets for the last trains out were allowed to enter. Normally bustling streets, shopping malls, restaurants and other public spaces in the city of 11 million people were...

In the aftermath of World War II, the United States spent 12 years looking for a successor to the M1 Garand rifle. The following is an examination conducted by Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons. Here is a very interesting prototype Winchester Select-fire Magazine-fed version of an M1-Garrand. Now, this was obviously part of the development program process for the M14 rifle. While there are good references out there on the Springfield and the Remington corporate versions of the different rifles that ended up as part of the M14 project, there doesn't seem to be much reference material out there on...

While speaking in Iowa on Wednesday, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden predicted that if President Trump survives the Senate’s impeachment trial, he will likely be “stronger and harder to beat” but Congress doesn’t have any choice, and has to uphold its “constitutional responsibility.” Biden said, “I always get asked the question, well, isn’t the president going to be stronger and harder to beat if he survives this? The answer is yes, probably. But, the Congress has no choice. They have a constitutional responsibility. And the people who vote the way they may vote are going to...

The challenge is becoming increasingly clear for House Democrats prosecuting President Donald Trump’s impeachment case as the Senate convenes for a second day of arguments in the landmark trial. No matter how overwhelming the evidence confronting Trump, it becomes less compelling when presented again and again, day after day, as Democrats try to convince not just fidgety senators but an American public deeply divided over the Republican president in an election year. The team led by Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of House Intelligence Committee, constructed a gripping account of Trump’s political pressure on Ukraine and attempt to cover up...

The anniversary of the infamous Supreme Court abortion decision,Roe v. Wade, is upon us again. And here we are, 61 million abortions later. Some of the most powerful spokespersons against Roe are those who survived an attempted abortion. At least 300 Americans alive today are in that category. Here we will highlight three such survivors. A couple of months ago, I heard a dramatic talk from Gianna Jessen of Tennessee. Born in 1977, Gianna survived a saline abortion, and her story has been told in a Focus on the Family book, Gianna: Aborted, and Lived to Tell about It. Gianna...

For every Friday of fall 2019, Jane Fonda was on Capitol Hill, protesting climate change alongside friends like Gloria Steinem and actresses Rosanna Arquette, Sally Field and Catherine Keener. Fonda could spend her time in retirement, enjoying the fruits of an illustrious Hollywood career. Instead, on the eve of her 82nd birthday, she was led out of the Hart Senate Building in handcuffs. She had been arrested for civil disobedience. Since September, Fonda says she’s “lost count” of how many times she’s been arrested. Since October, she had begun organizing weekly protests with the catchy nickname “Fire Drill Fridays.” She...

"[I pray] that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him" (Eph. 1:17). Your inheritance in Christ is so vast and profound that you cannot comprehend it apart from God’s enabling. The late newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst invested a fortune in collecting great works of art. One day he read of an extremely valuable work that he determined to add to his collection. His agent searched the galleries of the world but to no avail. Finally, after many months of effort...

While attending a “community conversation” in Grimes, Iowa, this past Monday, a man approached Elizabeth Warren to ask her a question about her student loan plan. He was irked by having debt redistributed and Warren was decidedly unsympathetic.

Northern Ireland's farmers must adapt along with others in the UK to help reach a key target on climate change, a government advisory body has said. Suggestions include planting a fifth of UK farmland with trees. Livestock numbers should be reduced, as should the consumption of beef and dairy, a new report suggests. Its recommendations also include restoring peatlands, while the 13.6m tonnes of food thrown away in the UK every year should be cut by a fifth. The recommendations are in the first report by the Committee on Climate Change on how the sector must adapt to help achieve...

Earlier today, President Trump shared a video of House Intel Chair and lead Impeachment Manager Adam Schiff as Wile E. Coyote chasing the road runner. In the hilarious animated short, Schiff is wearing a coyote costume and continues to fail in his attempts to catch the road runner. Trump supporters found the cartoon funny and left positive responses on social media. Watch and judge for yourself.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wondered why there were "almost no police officers" at a Second Amendment rally in Virginia that saw a heavy police presence. Thousands of gun rights advocates demonstrated in Richmond, Virginia, on Monday in protest of a series of gun control bills proposed by Democrats. While speaking the same day at Blackout for Human Rights: MLK Now 2020 in Harlem's Riverside Church, the New York Democrat criticized the rally."There's this gun rights protest happening down in Richmond," she began as the event's host said, "On MLK day!" "On MLK day!" Ocasio-Cortez said before contrasting the Richmond rally with...

Air travel should be taxed more and EU funds redirected to pay for a dramatic reforesting of Britain’s countryside, the government’s climate change advisers have recommended. Farmers should be incentivised to plant 100 million new trees a year and consumers encouraged to eat a fifth less lamb, beef and dairy to cut sheep and cattle grazing by 10 per cent, the Committee on Climate Change has said.

Hunter Biden is "just the tip of the iceberg" when it comes to examining corruption within the Biden family during the time that Joe Biden was vice president, investigative reporter and author Peter Schweizer said Tuesday. Appearing on "Fox & Friends" with host Pete Hegseth, Schweizer said that in his new book, "Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America's Progressive Elite," the Bidens -- who he reports benefitted from having a family member in the White House -- are dubbed the "Biden Five." "There [are] five Biden family members that got very, very good deals while Joe Biden was...

Joseph Stalin gets some advice from Roy Acuff & His Smoky Mountain Boys in Advice To Joe. The tune was recorded in Nashville on Jan. 16, 1951. THE WESTERNER https://thewesterner.blogspot.com/

An African intellectual sets the record straight. Michele Antaki—a former UN interpreter, journalist, and translator—has written and sent me the following exclusive summary of a recent speech given in French by Ernest Tigori, an Ivorian intellectual and political activist, exiled in France, and winner of the 2017 Nelson Mandela Prize for Literature. In his new book “L’Afrique à désintoxiquer” (“Detoxifying Africa”), he explains why it is crucial to lead Europe out of repentance for its alleged crimes in Africa, and lead Africa out of infantilization. He presented it to great acclaim at a recent patriotic forum in Paris. Antaki’s write-up...

U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the congressman known for falsely claiming for years he had evidence of Trump campaign 2016 collusion with Russia and for putting a fabricated Trump phone transcript in the congressional record, has gone off the deep end this time, says talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh. In his opening statement Wednesday in the impeachment trial of President Trump, Schiff charged that the results of elections cannot be trusted and Americans who vote are too stupid to make such decisions."He actually said it. The son of a ... actually said it," Limbaugh told his listeners. Schiff said the Senate...

Tax proposals from two leading 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), would raise less revenue than the campaigns say they would, according to analyses released Thursday by the nonpartisan Penn Wharton Budget Model (PWBM). The analyses were released less than two weeks before the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses. PWBM released three analyses Thursday. One looked at Sanders’s wealth-tax proposal, and a second looked at Sanders’s proposal to expand the estate tax. The third examined nine tax changes proposed by Biden. Sanders’s wealth tax proposal would create a progressive tax that starts with a...

The Trump administration is at the point of finalizing reform of antiquated Cold War rules which were used to target gunsmiths and small gun manufacturers. Included in the reforms is the transfer of responsibility for the export of most firearms and ammunition from the Department of State to the Department of  Commerce. In 2016, the State Department, under the Obama administration, “clarified” the definition of “manufacturers” who were required to register under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). The registration fee was $2,250 per year.  PNJ.com reports the actions of the State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC):...

Last year, the nation received good news. Two new reports both indicated that the U.S. abortion rate continues to decline. In September, the Guttmacher Institute released 2017 abortion data and in November, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released abortion data from 2016. The trends were very similar. Both data sources found that the U.S. abortion rate has fallen by around 20 percent since 2000. Furthermore, both data sources indicate that the U.S. abortion rate has fallen by approximately 50 percent since 1980. Good news! The decline in the U.S. abortion rate is more noteworthy then people realize. After...

§ 18.2-152.7:1. Harassment by computer; penalty. If any person, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, or harass any person, shall use a computer or computer network to communicate obscene, vulgar, profane, lewd, lascivious, or indecent language, or make any suggestion or proposal of an obscene nature, or threaten any illegal or immoral act, he shall be is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor. A violation of this section may be prosecuted in the jurisdiction in which the communication was made or received or in the City of Richmond if the person subjected to the act is one of the following...