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Last week, I received a phone call from a professor who teaches in another department here at the University of North Carolina – Wilmington (UNCW), where I have taught for the past 27 years. He was reporting a case of possible discrimination, which resulted in a professor being denied tenure thus losing his livelihood very soon. When I received the call, I immediately began asking questions to assess the validity of his concern. After just a few questions, I came across some information that will shock the conscience of any clear thinking, rational individual. By way of background information, professors...

Mitt Romney didn't just shoot inside the Grand Old Party's tent by voting for one article of impeachment against President Trump. The Utah senator became a heretic to the very people who once supported him, financially and electorally. The vote for conviction goes beyond mere policy disagreement, such as the proper tax rate for depreciation recapture. It goes beyond refusing to defend your party head. What Romney did was lob a M67 into the center of the Republican Party, intended for everyone from Ted Cruz to Susan Collins to lifelong GOP member Ethel Grannysmith in Boca Raton, before retreating to...

Breakthrough technologies such as carbon capture and hydrogen cannot be relied on to help the UK meet its climate change targets, a report says. The government had hoped that both technologies would contribute to emissions reductions required by 2050. They say the government must start a debate on other, controversial steps. These actions, which they say would need to be implemented in the near-term, include cutting down on flying and eating red meat. The report says: “Businesses and the public want to act to eliminate emissions, but exaggerated claims about the speed at which new technologies can be introduced are...

The Chinese doctor who tried to warn other medics about the coronavirus has died after contracting the infection in Wuhan. According to local media, Dr Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist, died from the virus on Thursday. Global Times ✔ @globaltimesnews #Breaking: Chinese doctor Li Wenliang, one of the eight whistleblowers who tried to warn other medics of the #coronavirus outbreak but were reprimanded by local police, dies of coronavirus on Thursday in Wuhan, the Global Times has learned. View image on TwitterView image on Twitter 4,567 9:38 AM - Feb 6, 2020 Twitter Ads info and privacy 5,705 people are talking...

A judge has overturned the convictions of four women who left water and other supplies for migrants in the deserts of Arizona. USA Today reported that the judge in Tucson, Ariz. reversed convictions for the four women, who are volunteers with a migrant advocacy group called No More Deaths and faced up to 6 months in prison and fines of $500. U.S. District Judge Rosemary Marquez wrote that the government was stifling the women's religious beliefs by arresting them and charging them for providing humanitarian aid. "Defendants met their burden of establishing that their activities were exercises of their sincere...

Before World War II, Depression-era Americans wanted their Hollywood male leads to be suave and sophisticated, whether they were in dramatic or humorous roles. After World War II, however, Americans craved authentic men on the screen — and in Kirk Douglas, they got a movie star so authentic, so searing, that even today Douglas is still a cultural touchpoint. Issur Danielovitch Demsky, better known as Kirk Douglas, was born into poverty on December 9, 1916, in Amsterdam, New York. He died on February 5, 2020, at age 103, in Beverly Hills, California, not only wealthy, but also one of the...

Democrats Are Now Blaming Trump Supporters For Part of Chaos in Iowa Democrats never seem to fail when it comes to placing blame on President Trump and Republicans for their problems, and apparently the Iowa caucuses are no exception. Technical difficulties were first blame with the questionable app that was being used, then mathematical errors seemed to be the problem. And now, Democrats are saying part of the confusion and delay in the night was because Trump supporters flooded the hotline used by precinct chairs in the state. “At the outset of boiler room operations on February 3rd, the Iowa...

A top Salt Lake City newspaper on Wednesday evening lauded Utah Sen. Mitt Romney for “doing the right thing” by voting to remove President Donald Trump from office. “Mitt Romney could have ducked this one,” wrote the editorial board of The Salt Lake Tribune, but the 2012 GOP presidential nominee “couldn’t explain it to his conscience” and “could not avert his eyes from the fact that this president had, without a shadow of a doubt, abused his power as commander and chief.” The editorial board argued that all Utahns and Americans, “regardless of politics, ideology or religion should be duly...

During a CNN town hall on Wednesday, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden said he “can’t imagine” being president and viewing the impeachment vote the Senate had for President Trump as a victory. Biden said, “I can’t imagine being president of the United States and having all of one party, plus someone from your own party vote to say you should be thrown out of office and view that as a victory.”

SANTA ANA (CBSLA) — Since California became a sanctuary state in 2017, the number of inmates with immigration detainers being arrested again after being released from jail has jumped, according to a new report from Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes. SB 54 restricts most notifications to ICE upon an inmate’s release to the most seriously violent offenders. It became law in 2017 despite heavy opposition from the state’s law enforcement community. “SB 54 has made our community less safe. The law has resulted in new crimes because my deputies were unable to communicate with their federal partners about individuals who...

Mitt, I voted for you but alas ..... read the internet. By clothing your vote to remove Trump from office in our shared religion and even God himself, you have painted all LDS people as petty and anti-conservative. By voting for this highly partisan presidential removal and ignoring the corruption which it grew from, you have effectively 'strained at a gnat and swallowed a camel'. As the highest profile member of our church, people now associate your documented anti-Trump bias with anti-american/anti-conservative bias and consequently our church. Enjoy your moment of being toasted in the 'Tall and Spacious Building' in...

Happy Birthday, Mr. President. I think you would be proud of our current guy.

This week, something of great significance has happened in the UK. Something that has implications far beyond its shores and that will affect the Church and Western democracy for years to come. Future historians will look back and see this incident as an indication of the decline of Western democracy and it's replacement with an authoritarian ideology far removed from the liberal democracy birthed from Christianity. We are not talking about the day that the UK finally left the EU - important though that is. No, this week an incident happened that at first sight seems trivial. Franklin Graham was...

HE PINNED THIS. YOU THINK THIS IS A JOKE, DON’T YOU? IT’S NOT. HE MEANS IT. HE WILL CHANGE THE RULES AND HIS ENABLERS WILL LET HIM. IF HE WINS AGAIN, HE WILL RULE YOU UNTIL HE DIES, YOU DIE, OR BOTH. THEN...YOU’LL GET IVANKA.

In 2011, President Obama issued a presidential memorandum urging federal agencies to “take steps to expedite permitting and review,” including “setting clear schedules for completing steps in the environmental review and permitting process.” Such bureaucratic delays, Obama explained, interfered with the “engine of job creation and economic growth[.]” In recognizing the significant costs that excess bureaucracy imposes, Obama was in good company. Presidents of both political parties long have sought to make the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) — a federal statute that requires agencies to produce reports on the environmental effects on their actions — work for the American...

The Donald Trump White House put out a photograph of the president's task force on the coronavirus. CNN promptly showed its displeasure, not with the task force's effort but with its racial composition. There was insufficient "diversity" in the photo. In a piece called "Coronavirus Task Force Another Example of Trump Administration's Lack of Diversity," CNN national political writer Brandon Tensley wrote: "Who are these experts? They're largely the same sorts of white men (and a couple women on the sidelines) who've dominated the Trump administration from the very beginning. "By contrast, former President Barack Obama's circle of advisers...

Forget the liberal media’s scrambling to throw cold water on President Donald Trump’s State of the Union Address. CNBC host of Mad Money Jim Cramer gave high praise for Trump’s economy, a major focus of the president’s speech Tuesday. Cramer also conceded a key point: “Like him or hate him though, the president’s great for the stock market. But previous presidents have not cared about the stock market because they don’t think it’s that big.” [Emphasis added.] He continued: “But I’m listening to him [Trump], and I’m thinking, you know what? I understand why people are buying stocks.” [Emphasis added.]

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) wrote in The Prince (1505 in Italian, 1513 in English) what has been translated as “Never do an enemy a small injury.” If one is striking out at an opponent, one should make sure that the fatal blow is struck, successfully ending the confrontation. Machiavelli wrote that “the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.”

Investors are showing no signs of concern that Sen. Bernie Sanders will end up in the White House in January. Sanders, I-Vt., who has all but secured a top-two finish in the Iowa caucus, has rocketed to the top of the field of Democratic presidential candidates in recent polls. The online platform PredictIt now gives him a 48 percent chance of winning the party's nomination, up from 25 percent at the end of last year. At the same time, the stock market has shrugged off President Trump’s impeachment trial and the coronavirus outbreak, gaining about 3 percent this year.

In a shocking announcement prior to the Senate’s vote on impeachment Wednesday, Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, announced that he would vote to convict President Trump, earning him the praise of many left-leaning celebrities. Trump was ultimately acquitted on charges of obstruction of Congress and abuse of power. Romney broke from the rest of his Republican colleagues in the Senate with his vote on the abuse of power. Despite the ultimate outcome, Democratic celebrities were quick to praise the former presidential candidate for going with his conscience and casting a vote for conviction.