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COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The nation's oldest civil rights organization endorsed an Ohio ballot initiative Wednesday that is aimed at streamlining the state's voting process.

President Donald J. Trump, joined by Vice President Mike Pence and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, delivers remarks at the signing ceremony for the United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2020, in front of the South Portico of the White House.

In the U.S., the CDC is reporting five confirmed cases from these states: Washington, Illinois, California and Arizona. On Monday, Jan. 27, Nancy Messonnier, MD, Director of the agency's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said it had 165 persons under investigation for coronavirus from 36 states. In addition to the 5 confirmed positive, 68 have tested negative. They are prioritizing the testing based on a personÂ’s risk. Messonnier said they had posted the blueprints for their diagnostic test on a public server and were working "as fast as we can" to get test kits out to states. Right...

Sidney Powell has the corrupt DOJ lawyers on their heels. – Some big developments took place in the case involving the coerced guilty plea by General Michael Flynn on Wednesday, as both sides made a series of key filings with the court. First, General Flynn filed a motion to dismiss the case entirely, citing an array of government misconduct that is backed up by overwhelming documentary evidence. Second, General Flynn filed a declaration requesting the court allow him to remove his plea of guilty entirely, citing misleading statements and document revisions by the FBI agents who performed the January, 2017...

BREAKING: Deputy Trump counsel Philbin just told the Senate the "whistleblower" may have had a "conflict of interest" in filing his complaint, because he may have been involved in decisions on Biden & Burisma & may have had a "reason to deep-six" a rekindled Ukraine investigation

Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts blocked Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul from posing a question during the Senate impeachment trial Wednesday that would have named the alleged whistleblower at the center of the case, Fox News is told — and Paul may try to force the issue during the question-and-answer session that begins Thursday afternoon.

During President Donald J. Trump's impeachment trial, we'll hear a lot of talk about our rules for governing. One frequent claim is that our nation is a democracy. If we've become a democracy, it would represent a deep betrayal of our founders, who saw democracy as another form of tyranny. In fact, the word democracy appears nowhere in our nation's two most fundamental documents, the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. The founders laid the ground rules for a republic as written in the Constitution's Article IV, Section 4, which guarantees "to every State in this Union a Republican...

(PLA Lieutenant Ye was charged in federal indictments Tuesday, along Dr. Charles Lieber (pictured in Wuhan in 2011), chairman of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University.) A Chinese People’s Liberation Army lieutenant spied on the United States while doing “research” on a J-1 visa at a Massachusetts University. Yanqing Ye, a PLA officer with ties to the Chinese Communist Party, was one of three individuals indicted with aiding China and hiding connections. Others caught in the indictment include Dr. Charles Lieber, chairman of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University, and Chinese national...

A trans female Virginia delegate, who was biologically born a male, got an arm tattoo of the first 24 words of the Equal Rights Amendment. Democratic Manassas, Virginia, Del. Danica Roem tweeted a picture Wednesday showing Roem smiling with an arm tattoo of the words “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

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Today Jimmy Murphy tells us about an Educated Fool (1951). THE WESTERNER https://thewesterner.blogspot.com/

Better to have the pig farmers than the bleating pig herself. – At Wednesday’s signing ceremony for the huge US/Mexico/Canada Trade Agreement (USMCA), President Donald Trump ensured that representatives from the nation’s hog farmers were in attendance, given the deal’s heavy focus on pork and agricultural goods. But here’s who he didn’t invite to be there the landmark agreement was signed into law: After allowing many of her House Democrats vote for the bill along with the Republicans in December, Pelosi made a point of claiming to have forced “major revisions” to the initial draft that had been agreed-to by...

Have you heard that the president has been impeached? Seriously, the trial is happening right now in the U.S. Senate. I’m kidding. Of course, you can’t escape the news because it’s the only thing the “news” is talking about. We’re in the middle of the most choreographed foregone conclusion in history and the media is treating it like a whodunit. But the suspense is akin to a murder mystery where there are two people in a room and one of them ends up dead. We know the outcome. It’s time to move on.But while the press is single-minded in their...

One of the main irritants of the three explanatory days given to each side in the impeachment trial was the stultifying predictability. I obviously agreed with one side and disagreed with the other, but after a while I was able to recite their arguments in my sleep. The Wednesday Senators’ question period at least offered the possibility of some unscripted moments that might provide a spark of unpredictability to liven up the proceedings for a numb audience. It was not to be. The air hung thick with coordination on all sides as it became obvious that Democrat Senators would toss...

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An ancient habit of Western elites is a certain selectivity in condemnation. Sometimes Westerners apply critical standards to the West that they would never apply to other nations. My colleague at the Hoover Institution, historian Niall Ferguson, has pointed out that Swedish green-teen celebrity Greta Thunberg might be more effective in her advocacy for reducing carbon emissions by redirecting her animus. Instead of hectoring Europeans and Americans, who have recently achieved the planet's most dramatic drops in the use of fossil fuels, Thunberg might instead turn her attention to China and India to offer her "how dare you" complaints to...

CHILLING colourised photographs of prisoners at Auschwitz capture the true horrors of the Nazi's 75 years after the camp's liberation. The harrowing images show skeletal Auschwitz inmates, discarded bodies and haunting images of belongings such as false teeth and glasses snatched on arrival from those arriving at the camp. Sadness and a skeletal frame - this was often all that was left of victims of the holocaust Many of those killed at the camp were children, with 23,000 under the age of 18 being sent there between 1940 and 1945 Many were subjected to cruel beatings before finally being sent...

I have always lived my life around a simple principle, “Don’t eat weird stuff.” And see? I was right. The Coronavirus ripping through the Wuhan region of Red China – and that has now spread here – may well have crossed over to our species because some people in China eat bats. Yeah, on purpose. How the hell did they ever get the idea that dining on Dracula birds was a good plan? It doesn’t matter – what does is our response, and right now the Administration is behind the power curve. With attention fixed on the circle of self-abuse...

Top Senate Republicans are warning Rep. Doug Collins that running against Sen. Kelly Loeffler in Georgia’s special Senate primary could pave the way for an otherwise unlikely Democratic sweep in the state in November. ”The shortsightedness in this decision is stunning. Doug Collins’ selfishness will hurt David Perdue, Kelly Loeffler, and President Trump," National Republican Senatorial Committee Executive Director Kevin McLaughlin said in a statement. Collins, a Trump ally and part of his impeachment defense team, announced his Senate candidacy on Wednesday. He was passed over for an appointment to the Senate by Gov. Brian Kemp after Johnny Isakson resigned...

Before the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald J. Trump was gaveled into session, Chief Justice John Roberts presided over a swearing-in ceremony where all 100 senators pledged to be impartial jurors. The liberal media zeroed in on that pledge and decried Senate Republicans who seemed to be siding with the President. But a Media Research Center study of broadcast evening news coverage of the opening arguments of both sides, found ABC, CBS, and NBC did not live up to the standard they demanded of Republicans. They gave Democrats double the airtime and showered their arguments with mostly praise, while...