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Santa Clara County deployed a variety of surveillance techniques on congregants of a local church that met during COVID-19, including tracking phone location data and parking a car in a nearby lot to observe behavior, court documents reported by independent journalist David Zweig reveal. Inspectors from the county’s COVID-19 Business Compliance Unit spent a total of 51 hours conducting stakeouts near Calvary Chapel San Jose between November 25, 2020 and January 3, 2021, observing everything from Sunday services to baptisms and prayer groups, Zweig reported. Enforcement officers, who were paid $219 an hour, wrote in great detail about church activities,...

The oldest living former U.S. senator turns 100 Thursday. James L. Buckley is among the few in American history who have served in the upper echelons of all three branches of our government. Jim Buckley served as a lieutenant in the Navy during the final years of the Pacific war. After the war, he attended Yale Law School and became an attorney. In 1970 Mr. Buckley won a historic third-party victory as the Conservative Party’s Senate nominee in New York. Serving as a U.S. senator until 1977, Mr. Buckley was an articulate and cordial agent of change and an advocate...

Second Week of Lent Luke 16:19–31Friends, today’s Gospel tells the story of the rich man and the poor man, Lazarus, at his gate.God is not pleased with this kind of economic inequality, and he burns with passion to set things right. Even though it makes us uncomfortable—and God knows it does, especially those of us who live in the most affluent society in the world—we can’t avoid it because it’s everywhere in the Bible.St. Thomas Aquinas says, "We must distinguish between ownership and the use of property." We have a right to ownership, through our hard work or inheritance. Fair...

The reputation of the “Iron chancellor” Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898) was established by his remarkable achievement in unifying Germany through three short victorious wars, from 1864-1870, that completely remade the European balance of power, and then orchestrating a generation of peace through a series of complex treaties that placed his country in amicable relations with all the continent’s great powers, except the irreconcilable French who were kept in a permanent state of diplomatic isolation. However, in 1890, Germany’s blundering new sovereign, Kaiser Wilhelm II, dismissed Bismarck from office and subsequently rejected the renewal of the Russo-German Treaty of Accord, which...

The BBC is receiving backlash for airing a Bill Cosby documentary in which a self-proclaimed "fat sex therapist" argued for allowing men to pay to be able to drug and have sex with women. "If we actually grappled with the fact that sex negativity is what causes this type of behavior, then we could create a world where in an idyllically sex-positive world, someone is able to pay conscious women to come and be drugged so that I can get my kink out, my fetish on having sex with unconscious people," Sonalee Rashatwar said in a segment. "There’s a consensual...

Elephant Bird Egg What a whole Aepyornis egg would have looked like when freshly laid, seen in a market near the town of Toliara on the southwest coast of Madagascar. Credit: Gifford Miller More than 1,200 years ago, flightless elephant birds roamed the island of Madagascar and laid eggs bigger than footballs. While these ostrich-like giants are now extinct, new research from the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU Boulder) and Curtin University in Australia reveals that their eggshell remnants hold valuable clues about their time on Earth. Published on February 28 in the journal Nature Communications, the study describes...

Tucker Carlson did his version of the January 6th special, and it came with plenty of controversies. Allegedly, Carlson’s team spent looking at over 40,000 hours of the footage from that day and came to several conclusions. Fox aired Carlson’s special on Capitol Riot, and among the aspects of this investigation was the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick. The tragic death of the officer, who passed away on January 7, was the subject of several media stories, with one side claiming that his death was due to the riots and the other saying it was from natural causes.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry demanded on Wednesday that the government of the United States prevent any meeting between Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, who is reportedly planning to stop through Los Angeles and New York in April, and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). McCarthy confirmed on Tuesday that he planned to meet with Tsai during her stay in America, a stopover on her way to friendly Latin American states, and dismissed any pressure from Beijing not to do so. McCarthy also stated that meeting Tsai in America would not preclude any visit he might make to Taiwan in the future.

Former President Donald Trump will publish a book in April containing private letters that celebrities and other prominent figures have written him over the years, according to Winning Team Publishing. “Letters to Trump” will highlight 40 years worth of Trump’s correspondence with these famous individuals to provide a “glimpse into history,” the book’s description reads. The book, by Winning Team Publishing, includes the former president’s comments along with the letters, and is for pre-sale now.

A recently discovered asteroid has a 1-in-625 chance of smashing into Earth, NASA stated on Tuesday. NASA is tracking the asteroid, named 2023 DW, noting that current estimates suggest it will smash into Earth on Valentine’s Day in 2046, according to the agency’s Near Earth Orbit website. It is a relatively new rock discovered by NASA, and therefore more time is needed to hone in on the various uncertainties of its orbit in coming years. But we do know that 2023 DW is about the size of a swimming pool, at 165 feet in diameter, NASA noted on the asteroid’s...

Speaking to Ryan Grim and Emily Jashinsky on the Breaking Point podcast March 8, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh shredded the New York Times, Washington Post and Die Zeit reports on an alleged “Pro-Ukrainian group” behind the Nord Stream attack.“The thing I’m accused of is not naming sources”, Hersh said. ”I noticed both the New York Times and the Washington Post … had no sources.”“What’s going on now in this White House is terrifying to me”, Hersh said. “(Antony) Blinken, (Jake) Sullivan and (Victoria) Nuland … they’re just out of their league here… Do they really want to get NATO into...

The United Kingdom has been forced to use its emergency coal-fired backup generators for the first time as renewables failed to supply enough energy. Britain’s crusade for net zero saw another major failure on Tuesday, with the country having to resort to using its emergency coal-fired power plants as renewables were unable to keep up with demand. The country has been focused on moving away from burning fossil fuels and towards green energy sources in recent years, with the last twelve months in particular seeing the country struggle to keep the lights on at times due to the green agenda...

WASHINGTON — President Biden’s annual budget plan calls for roughly $5.5 trillion in tax increases over the next decade to offset proposed spending increases — including a massive 5.2% federal worker pay raise. The package, to be announced later Thursday, is headed for certain defeat in the Republican-held House of Representatives and comes as the GOP demands spending cuts without new taxes in a standoff with Biden over raising the federal debt ceiling later this year. “This is the start of a healthy dialogue,” White House budget director Shalanda Young told reporters on a morning conference call.

The New York Times tried turning the screws on Republican members of Congress who are adamant about President Joe Biden agreeing to spending cuts before the debt ceiling is raised … yet again. Times White House correspondent Jim Tankersley wrote in the sub-headline of his anti-GOP propaganda March 7 that “a top economist will warn lawmakers that Republicans’ refusal to raise the nation’s borrowing cap could put millions out of work.” The “economist” was none other than Hillary Clinton donor and “registered Democrat” Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi. Tankersley wielded Zandi to claim that “The U.S. economy could quickly...

Reflecting on Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s 1977 Sermon on Real and Apparent Disobedience “We hold fast, with all our heart and with all our soul, to Catholic Rome, Guardian of the Catholic Faith and of the traditions necessary to preserve this faith, to Eternal Rome, Mistress of wisdom and truth. We refuse, on the other hand, and have always refused to follow the Rome of neo-Modernist and neo-Protestant tendencies which were clearly evident in the Second Vatican Council and, after the Council, in all the reforms which issued from it.” (1974 Declaration of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre)Almost fifty years after he wrote...

I am waiting for tomorrow’s employment report to see if the Biden Administration plays it straight or give another padded report like first half 2022. But in the meantime, according to Challenger Gray & Christmas, U.S.-based employers announced 77,770 job cuts in February. It is 410% higher than the 15,245 cuts announced in the same month last year. February’s total is the highest for the month since 2009… So far this year, employers announced plans to cut 180,713 jobs, up 427% from the 34,309 cuts announced in the first two months of 2022. It is the highest January-February total since...

After Fox News host Tucker Carlson aired Capitol surveillance footage this week exposing yet more falsehood from the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 and leaving Democrats and their media allies irate, the committee chair on Wednesday said the panel never actually analyzed the crucial footage. On Monday’s edition of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Fox News aired the footage of the riot on Jan. 6, 2021, undermining the select committee’s narrative of a “deadly insurrection.” Given access to the video by Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Carlson’s team reviewed over 40,000 hours of footage, which offered proof the committee manipulated audio...

Tucker Carlson joined nationally syndicated radio host and co-founder of Blaze Media Glenn Beck on his radio show Wednesday to discuss the uncut and narrative-destabilizing footage of the Jan. 6 protests, which the Fox News host has been playing on his show. (snip) "So I was shocked to learn that they were lying intentionally," continued the Fox News host. "We have a very specific way of knowing that. ... January 6 committee researchers looked at video. They bookmarked it. They left an electronic mark on the video they watched. So we know what they watched. And then we watched it."...

NEWARK, N.J. -- The city of Newark is admitting it got scammed. It was about to become a Sister City with a Hindu nation, but there was one problem -- the nation doesn't exist. As CBS2's Ali Bauman reports, the city only found out about the fraud after it held an official ceremony for it. What started off as a seemingly well-intentioned partnership has turned into a giant embarrassment for the city of Newark. Earlier this year, Mayor Ras Baraka invited what he thought was the Hindu nation of Kailasa to Newark's City Hall for a cultural trade agreement, but...

Four U.S. citizens who were kidnapped in Mexico by the notorious criminal and drug syndicate Gulf Cartel have lengthy criminal rap sheets. Latavia McGee, Eric Williams, Zindell Brown and Shaeed Woodard traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border town Matamoros on Friday when they were caught in crossfire and abducted. Brown and Woodard didn't survive. DailyMail.com can reveal that Williams was previously busted for 'distributing crack near a school,' while McGee has been slapped with 'unlawful conduct towards a child,' when her daughter tested positive for amphetamines. Woodard was charged with the 'manufacturing and possession' of drugs and pleaded guilty, while Brown...