Briefs are posted every weekday morning, M-F

NEWS

The bare-knuckle, politicized State Supreme Court race that just shattered national spending records and obliterated traditional judicial norms has raised anew the question of whether justices should be elected the same way as partisan Republicans and Democrats. Alternatives in use in other states include appointments and independent commissions.

“Let the governor pick the judges, and you can have the confirmation process in the legislature,” said Brian Fitzpatrick, a Vanderbilt Law School professor who has studied the partisan leanings of state judges, while discussing the options before the election. “This does a good job of reflecting the preferences of the public over time without all of the negative atmospherics that we get with elections.”

Others are wary.

Former Justice Dan Kelly, who lost the recent Supreme Court race to progressive Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz, told the Badger Institute prior to the election to be careful about changing systems.

“The wise man once said that there are no solutions, only trade-offs,” he said. “So if we went from an elected judiciary to a different system, we would just be making different trade-offs.”

Rick Esenberg, head of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, said Wisconsin voters are unlikely to support any measure that would take away one of their prized votes. In 2018, the Legislature sent to the voters a constitutional amendment to eliminate the elected position of state treasurer, he pointed out. Nearly 62% of the electorate voted against it.

“And who cares who the state treasurer is?” Esenberg said. “Yet people wouldn’t even go for that.”

The alternative, though — keeping elections that have become overtly political — risks undermining faith in the court.

Everett Mitchell — the Dane County judge who finished a distant fourth in the February primary — predicted before the election that judicial campaigns would become more costly without necessarily changing anyone’s mind.

“Whether Janet or Dan comes through, there’s going to be another 49% of the population who would just believe that it’s illegitimate,” Mitchell told the Badger Institute.

“Back in 2003, you could run a supreme-court race for $37,000. Now the new price tag is going to be, what, $30 million?” he said. “And for people to really believe that the courts have been bought, that those votes have been bought, that those decisions have been bought, really makes the court just feel like another part of the political, partisan process. So, they will see it no differently than a senate race or governor’s race.”

—The Badger Institute

The top official in charge of Senate Republicans’ campaign strategy said he would like to see U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher challenge Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin in 2024 despite few indications the Wisconsin Republican will jump in the race.

Sen. Steve Daines, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the party wants to find a candidate who “can win a primary as well as a general election.” He mentioned Gallagher as a top contender.

“One of the names that surfaces, certainly, is Congressman Gallagher,” Daines said in a brief interview outside the Senate chamber. “He’s a very effective member of the House. He’s doing a great job with his leadership on exposing what China has been doing over the last several years.”

But Gallagher in recent months has largely dismissed questions about whether he will challenge Baldwin. He previously told the Journal Sentinel that he’s focused on his new assignment as chairman of a select committee on the Chinese Communist Party and lamented that “the problem with politics is that people are always looking for the next job, the next election… and they never focus on just doing their current job.”

Still, Gallagher has not shut the door on a bid, and Republicans in both Wisconsin and Washington are quietly hoping Gallagher jumps in the race despite doubts from insiders in both parties.

—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Daniel Penny is expected to turn himself in as soon as Friday to face criminal charges in connection with the chokehold death of Jordan Neely aboard an F train, according to the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

“We can confirm that Daniel Penny will be arrested on a charge of Manslaughter in the Second Degree,” a spokesperson for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said.

Neely died following a chokehold on May 1. Video showed Penny, a Marine veteran, putting Neely in a chokehold following outbursts from Neely on the train.

Attorneys for Penny said in a statement Thursday night that they are confident that “once all the facts and circumstances surrounding this tragic incident are brought to bear, Mr. Penny will be fully absolved of any wrongdoing.”

“When Mr. Penny, a decorated Marine veteran, stepped in to protect himself and his fellow New Yorkers, his well-being was not assured. He risked his own life and safety, for the good of his fellow passengers,” said the statement from the law firm of Raiser and Kenniff. “The unfortunate result was the unintended and unforeseen death of Mr. Neely.”

Neely was homeless at the time of his death. Some witnesses reportedly told police that Neely was yelling and harassing passengers on the train, authorities said.

In an earlier statement, Penny’s attorneys offered “condolences to those close to Mr. Neely” and claimed “Mr. Neely began aggressively threatening Daniel,” and that the Marine veteran and others “acted to protect themselves.”

“Mr. Neely had a documented history of violent and erratic behavior, the apparent result of ongoing and untreated mental illness,” said the statement from the law firm of Raiser and Kenniff. “When Mr. Neely began aggressively threatening Daniel Penny and the other passengers, Daniel, with the help of others, acted to protect themselves, until help arrived. Daniel never intended to harm Mr. Neely and could not have foreseen his untimely death.”

—ABC News

UPDATE: Daniel Penny, a US Marine veteran who held homeless street artist Jordan Neely in a fatal chokehold on a New York subway train earlier this month, has surrendered to police to face a second-degree manslaughter charge.

Penny has “his head held up high” and is dealing with the situation “with the sort of integrity and honor that is characteristic of who he is” and “of his honorable service,” said his attorney Thomas Kenniff.

An arraignment is expected Friday afternoon “and the process will unfold from there,” Kenniff said outside the police precinct where Penny surrendered.

—CNN

The U.S. entered a new immigration enforcement era Friday, ending a three-year-old asylum restriction and enacting a set of strict new rules that the Biden administration hopes will stabilize the U.S.-Mexico border and push migrants to apply for protections where they are, skipping the dangerous journey north.

The transition has been far from simple. Even as the old policy known as Title 42 expired, migrants along the border were still wading into the Rio Grande to take their chances getting into the country, defying officials shouting for them to turn back. Others hunched over cellphones trying to access an appointment app, a centerpiece of the new measures. And lawsuits sought to stop some of the measures.

—Associated Press

CNN vet Anderson Cooper called the network’s May 10 presidential town hall event with Donald Trump “disturbing,” and told viewers that they “have every right to be angry and never watch this network again.”

“Many of you think CNN shouldn’t have given him any platform to speak and I understand the anger about that — giving him the audience, the time, I get that,” Cooper said during the opening monologue of his CNN show “Anderson Cooper 360°.”

However, “the man you were so disturbed to see and hear from last night — that man is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president,” Cooper said, defending the network’s decision to give Trump a platform.

“According to polling, no other Republican is even close,” Cooper said. According to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) straw poll, Trump’s the preferred candidate for 62% of right-wing voters — a wide margin above No. 2, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who had 20% support.

“Do you think staying in your silo and only listening to people you agree with is going to make that person go away?” Cooper continued.

“If we all only listen to those we agree with, it may actually do the opposite,” he added of making Trump go away.

He also took the opportunity to bash his own network’s decision to put mostly Republican voters in the audience.

“It was certainly disturbing to hear that audience — young and old, our fellow citizens, people who love their kids and go to church — laugh and applaud his lies and his continued defamation of a woman who, according to a jury of his peers, he sexually abused and defamed,” Cooper said.

The long-time CNN host suggested Trump voters may be too sizeable to ignore. “That man you were so upset to hear from, he may be President of the United States in less than two years. It can happen again, it is happening again. He hasn’t changed and he is running hard,” Cooper said.

—NY Post

E. Jean Carroll, the woman who sued Donald Trump for defamation and left CNN’s Anderson Cooper aghast with her ‘rape is sexy’ remarks, is mulling slapping the former president with another lawsuit over his town hall event with CNN. During that media spectacle, Trump called Carroll a “whack job” and denied in the strongest terms that he had never met the woman.

This week, a New York City jury ruled in her favor, where Trump must pay $5 million in damages. The jury did not agree with Carroll on the first question, which is whether Trump raped her in the 1990s.

Ms. Carroll is considering another legal action.

The NY Times:

When former President Donald J. Trump was inveighing against E. Jean Carroll on CNN Wednesday night, at least one person was not watching: Ms. Carroll.

She was asleep and did not learn of his comments calling her claim of a decades-old sexual assault “fake” and a “made-up story” until Thursday morning, when her lawyer sent her a transcript, she said.

“It’s just stupid, it’s just disgusting, vile, foul, it wounds people,” Ms. Carroll said in an interview with The New York Times on Thursday, adding that she had been “insulted by better people.”

Ms. Carroll, 79, is now weighing whether to file a new defamation lawsuit against Mr. Trump, said her lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan. In addition to the case that ended Tuesday, Ms. Carroll has an earlier defamation suit against Mr. Trump, 76, that is still pending. Mr. Trump has argued in that case that he cannot be sued because he made those comments in his official capacity as president.

NY Times

Another lawsuit? Trump is right: whenever the media or some figure with a grudge unleashes on him, the better he does in the polls. The hard-core segments of the GOP base see the heavy politicization behind these actions. And maybe that’s what Carroll wants because it’s an open secret that Democrats hope Trump is the 2024 nominee. Perhaps, she’s doing her part for the Democratic Party in fostering another presidential defeat for Donald Trump, or at least that’s what she thinks. But after emerging victorious in this kangaroo court, I’m betting the public is getting tired of this woman. Frankly, not many know about her, the allegations, or the court battle that just concluded. Just give it a rest, lady.

In the meantime, Trump has appealed the verdict in the defamation case.

—Townhall

The Border Patrol union called the current crisis “the worst sustained disaster … ever seen at our border” — saying President Biden deserves to be arrested and that his administration is “absolutely corrupt to its core.”

The National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) tore into the end of Title 42 — the pandemic-era law allowing certain migrants to be booted — as Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz confirmed that “upwards of 60,000 migrants” are currently “staging in and around the immediate border area.”

“This is by far the worst sustained disaster that any BP agent, active or retired, has ever seen at our border,” the service’s official union tweeted just before Title 42 ended at midnight.

“And one man is responsible for every single bit of it, with the worst still to come,” the NBPC wrote alongside a photo of a smiling Biden.

“The Biden Administration is absolutely corrupt to its core,” the union alleged.

The union’s president, Brandon Judd, told Fox News late Wednesday that Biden should be treated like anyone caught smuggling migrants into the country.

“If he wasn’t the president of the United States, I would arrest him,” Judd told Sean Hannity.

“But he is the president, so he’s not held accountable,” he said.

—NY Post

The U.S. Postal Service is replacing tens of thousands of antiquated keys used by postal carriers and installing thousands of high-security collection boxes to stop a surge in robberies and mail thefts, officials said Friday.

The Postal Service is replacing 49,000 so-called arrow locks with electronic versions to make them less attractive to criminals who have been targeting them to steal mail from secure receptacles, and it is placing 12,000 hardened blue collection boxes in high-risk areas, according to the Postal Service and Postal Inspection Service.

The announcement came days after the National Association of Letter Carriers expressed outrage as The Associated Press reported that nearly 500 postal carriers were robbed last year.

The spike in postal carrier robberies has put letter carriers on edge.

The robberies have more than quadrupled over a decade, and weapons were used in most of the 496 robberies last year, according to data provided by the Postal Inspection Service to the AP under the Freedom of Information Act. Thirty-one postal carriers were injured, and one of them was killed last year, according to the data.

Photo below: A postal worker empties a box near the Fiserv Forum on Aug. 18, 2020, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Morry Gash, File)

—Associated Press

Watch out, K-9 units. There’s a new animal assisting police in their crime-fighting mission.

A herd of cows helped a North Carolina police department track a suspect who fled from officers during a traffic stop on Tuesday, allowing police to locate and arrest the suspect, authorities said.

“The cows literally led the officers to where the suspect was hiding,” the Boone Police Department Sergeant Dennis O’Neal wrote in an official press release. “In addition to thanking our officers and deputies for putting themselves in harm’s way; obviously, we want to express our gratitude to the cows for their assistance.”

Boone Police officers initially pulled over Joshua Minton, 34, for a traffic stop on Tuesday, May 9. Minton fled from the officers before abandoning his vehicle and running into a rural area, according to the press release.

“Due to the suspect’s fast and reckless driving, our officers were not close enough to see exactly where the suspect ran,” the release said.

As officers struggled to locate Minton in the remote part of Deep Gap, North Carolina, a group of cows emerged to lead the officers to where Minton was hiding.

Minton was charged with fleeing arrest with a motor vehicle, driving with a revoked license and disorderly conduct, according to police. He received a $20,000 bond and is expected back in court in late June.

—ABC News

OPINION

Eighteen months ago, Fed chair Jerome Powell said repeatedly: “there’s no inflation — don’t worry, it’s only transient.” At the grocery this morning, I paid twice as much for a bag of coffee as I had before. The same for vegetables, paper towels, and a host of other products. As I write, gas prices are up from a low of $1.77 under President Trump to a current $3.32 — an 87% increase.

The entire Biden administration is laughing at us with its “no inflation” line because inflation doesn’t hurt the people therein, especially if you’re Hunter Biden selling original paintings for as much as $500,000 apiece.

The well-being of ordinary Americans is not at the top of liberals’ list. They think they can do whatever they like to us, let their media cover it up before the next election, and we won’t catch on. According to Biden’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, inflation is not Biden’s fault — and Biden is doing everything he can to bring it down. If that’s true, he’s not doing much of a job.

Liberals truly think they are better than we are.

That’s why they think they don’t have to answer questions. When Biden is asked a real question, he says, “I’ll get in trouble if I answer that.” In other words, “I don’t have to answer questions that would inform ordinary people of what I’m up to. I am above ordinary people and don’t take their questions.”

President Trump never acted this way. He always made a point of saying it was our movement and our presidency, and he meant it. He said it was our government, and we had a right to it, even on Jan. 6 as a presidential election was being stolen from us.

From his comments to contemporaries, we know that Hitler felt a vast contempt for the German people. Even as he addressed huge, adoring crowds at Nuremberg, he saw them as less than human. And as he sent young boys off to their deaths, he felt the pleasure of the ruler who is above it all.

Biden is not Hitler, but Biden looked the other way as 108,000 young men and women died in 2022 of drug overdoses (up 7% from 2021). If he truly cared, he would stop the flow of fentanyl and other drugs crossing the border. If he cared, he would have visited the families of those slain in Nashville. If he cared, he would not hire 87,000 additional IRS agents to interrogate ordinary taxpayers. If he cared about taxpayers, he would not have sent some $75 billion with little oversight to Ukraine. What has that $75 billion bought us?

According to government statistics, a broad basket of drug prices increased by 31.6% from July 2021 to 2022. If Biden cared about how these price increases affect retirees, he would have shown some concern. But, apparently, he thinks he can dodge questions, make few public appearances, and get re-elected.

Biden has many disguises, from working-class Joe to moderate politician to the doddering fool, but beneath it all is the conviction of superiority. Nothing that Biden has done has benefited ordinary Americans, but it has brought wealth to his political supporters. That is the whole point of his Build Back Better bill, a $5-trillion handout to the political elite. Biden donors are lined up like pigs at the trough, ravenous for their share of the loot.

Biden and Harris are masters of the snicker and the sneer, and they are laughing at us as they go about “transforming America,” which amounts to transferring huge sums of money from ordinary Americans to the political elite and their friends. It’s time for the American people to realize that progressives are not their friends. They snicker and sneer, even as they exhaust the people with mandates, taxes, and inflation.

We need to use every peaceful means to wipe the smiles off their faces, like voting in the 2024 election.

—Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture including Heartland of the Imagination (2011)

A growing number of companies are reportedly inviting customers to opt-out of receiving Mother’s Day email ads, in the name of sensitivity and “inclusivity.”

On Sunday, a Twitter thread by @AZInformer, an account with slightly more than five thousand followers, reported the news, which quickly attracted more than a million views:

“Something very strange is happening with Big Corporations. Out of nowhere, @kroger owned @FrysFoodStores, @KayJewelers, @Hallmark, and now @DoorDash have all sent “Opt out of #MothersDay” emails to their customer base. This is not organic. This reeks of anti-family activists.”

Companies listed include:

• Levis,

• Ancestry,

• MAC cosmetics,

• Stitch Fix,

• BuyBuyBaby,

• Etsy,

• Cartier,

• Kroger,

• Frys Food Stores,

• Kay Jewelers,

• Hallmark,

• Door Dash, and

• Nestle’s Nespresso.

The nearly-identical language used by the companies, such as labeling Mother’s Day “a difficult time,” prompted some critics to suspect a coordinated effort by woke liberals to “cancel” the holiday in order to advance their gender-fluid ideology.

Others wondered if companies will now invite customers to opt-out of other types of email ads they find difficult to view.

Turning Point USA CEO Charlie Kirk tweeted a question to his 2.1 million followers:

“Brands are bending over backwards to let customers to ‘opt out’ of Mother’s Day. Can we opt out of Pride Month spam too?”

Despite the recent media attention, advertising to customers that they can opt-out of Mother’s Day advertising isn’t exactly new. For example, Hustler Marketing magazine recommended the practice in 2021 and PRNEWS followed suit in 2022.

The anti-Mother’s Day marketing campaign has not hurt Mother’s Day, however.

Research by the National Retail Federation shows that, since 2009, the percentage of adults celebrating the holiday has held steady at around 84%, while the average expenditure on Mother’s Day has more than doubled.

— Craig Bannister, Editor, CNSNews

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY – In 1932, the Baby son kidnapped from Charles Lindbergh was found dead just miles away from the Lindbergh home.

NEWS/OPINION BRIEFS – Friday, May 12, 2023
Briefs are posted every weekday morning, M-F

NEWS

The bare-knuckle, politicized State Supreme Court race that just shattered national spending records and obliterated traditional judicial norms has raised anew the question of whether justices should be elected the same way as partisan Republicans and Democrats. Alternatives in use in other states include appointments and independent commissions.

“Let the governor pick the judges, and you can have the confirmation process in the legislature,” said Brian Fitzpatrick, a Vanderbilt Law School professor who has studied the partisan leanings of state judges, while discussing the options before the election. “This does a good job of reflecting the preferences of the public over time without all of the negative atmospherics that we get with elections.”

Others are wary.

Former Justice Dan Kelly, who lost the recent Supreme Court race to progressive Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz, told the Badger Institute prior to the election to be careful about changing systems.

“The wise man once said that there are no solutions, only trade-offs,” he said. “So if we went from an elected judiciary to a different system, we would just be making different trade-offs.”

Rick Esenberg, head of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, said Wisconsin voters are unlikely to support any measure that would take away one of their prized votes. In 2018, the Legislature sent to the voters a constitutional amendment to eliminate the elected position of state treasurer, he pointed out. Nearly 62% of the electorate voted against it.

“And who cares who the state treasurer is?” Esenberg said. “Yet people wouldn’t even go for that.”

The alternative, though — keeping elections that have become overtly political — risks undermining faith in the court.

Everett Mitchell — the Dane County judge who finished a distant fourth in the February primary — predicted before the election that judicial campaigns would become more costly without necessarily changing anyone’s mind.

“Whether Janet or Dan comes through, there’s going to be another 49% of the population who would just believe that it’s illegitimate,” Mitchell told the Badger Institute.

“Back in 2003, you could run a supreme-court race for $37,000. Now the new price tag is going to be, what, $30 million?” he said. “And for people to really believe that the courts have been bought, that those votes have been bought, that those decisions have been bought, really makes the court just feel like another part of the political, partisan process. So, they will see it no differently than a senate race or governor’s race.”

—The Badger Institute

The top official in charge of Senate Republicans’ campaign strategy said he would like to see U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher challenge Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin in 2024 despite few indications the Wisconsin Republican will jump in the race.

Sen. Steve Daines, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the party wants to find a candidate who “can win a primary as well as a general election.” He mentioned Gallagher as a top contender.

“One of the names that surfaces, certainly, is Congressman Gallagher,” Daines said in a brief interview outside the Senate chamber. “He’s a very effective member of the House. He’s doing a great job with his leadership on exposing what China has been doing over the last several years.”

But Gallagher in recent months has largely dismissed questions about whether he will challenge Baldwin. He previously told the Journal Sentinel that he’s focused on his new assignment as chairman of a select committee on the Chinese Communist Party and lamented that “the problem with politics is that people are always looking for the next job, the next election… and they never focus on just doing their current job.”

Still, Gallagher has not shut the door on a bid, and Republicans in both Wisconsin and Washington are quietly hoping Gallagher jumps in the race despite doubts from insiders in both parties.

—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Daniel Penny is expected to turn himself in as soon as Friday to face criminal charges in connection with the chokehold death of Jordan Neely aboard an F train, according to the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

“We can confirm that Daniel Penny will be arrested on a charge of Manslaughter in the Second Degree,” a spokesperson for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said.

Neely died following a chokehold on May 1. Video showed Penny, a Marine veteran, putting Neely in a chokehold following outbursts from Neely on the train.

Attorneys for Penny said in a statement Thursday night that they are confident that “once all the facts and circumstances surrounding this tragic incident are brought to bear, Mr. Penny will be fully absolved of any wrongdoing.”

“When Mr. Penny, a decorated Marine veteran, stepped in to protect himself and his fellow New Yorkers, his well-being was not assured. He risked his own life and safety, for the good of his fellow passengers,” said the statement from the law firm of Raiser and Kenniff. “The unfortunate result was the unintended and unforeseen death of Mr. Neely.”

Neely was homeless at the time of his death. Some witnesses reportedly told police that Neely was yelling and harassing passengers on the train, authorities said.

In an earlier statement, Penny’s attorneys offered “condolences to those close to Mr. Neely” and claimed “Mr. Neely began aggressively threatening Daniel,” and that the Marine veteran and others “acted to protect themselves.”

“Mr. Neely had a documented history of violent and erratic behavior, the apparent result of ongoing and untreated mental illness,” said the statement from the law firm of Raiser and Kenniff. “When Mr. Neely began aggressively threatening Daniel Penny and the other passengers, Daniel, with the help of others, acted to protect themselves, until help arrived. Daniel never intended to harm Mr. Neely and could not have foreseen his untimely death.”

—ABC News

UPDATE: Daniel Penny, a US Marine veteran who held homeless street artist Jordan Neely in a fatal chokehold on a New York subway train earlier this month, has surrendered to police to face a second-degree manslaughter charge.

Penny has “his head held up high” and is dealing with the situation “with the sort of integrity and honor that is characteristic of who he is” and “of his honorable service,” said his attorney Thomas Kenniff.

An arraignment is expected Friday afternoon “and the process will unfold from there,” Kenniff said outside the police precinct where Penny surrendered.

—CNN

The U.S. entered a new immigration enforcement era Friday, ending a three-year-old asylum restriction and enacting a set of strict new rules that the Biden administration hopes will stabilize the U.S.-Mexico border and push migrants to apply for protections where they are, skipping the dangerous journey north.

The transition has been far from simple. Even as the old policy known as Title 42 expired, migrants along the border were still wading into the Rio Grande to take their chances getting into the country, defying officials shouting for them to turn back. Others hunched over cellphones trying to access an appointment app, a centerpiece of the new measures. And lawsuits sought to stop some of the measures.

—Associated Press

CNN vet Anderson Cooper called the network’s May 10 presidential town hall event with Donald Trump “disturbing,” and told viewers that they “have every right to be angry and never watch this network again.”

“Many of you think CNN shouldn’t have given him any platform to speak and I understand the anger about that — giving him the audience, the time, I get that,” Cooper said during the opening monologue of his CNN show “Anderson Cooper 360°.”

However, “the man you were so disturbed to see and hear from last night — that man is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president,” Cooper said, defending the network’s decision to give Trump a platform.

“According to polling, no other Republican is even close,” Cooper said. According to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) straw poll, Trump’s the preferred candidate for 62% of right-wing voters — a wide margin above No. 2, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who had 20% support.

“Do you think staying in your silo and only listening to people you agree with is going to make that person go away?” Cooper continued.

“If we all only listen to those we agree with, it may actually do the opposite,” he added of making Trump go away.

He also took the opportunity to bash his own network’s decision to put mostly Republican voters in the audience.

“It was certainly disturbing to hear that audience — young and old, our fellow citizens, people who love their kids and go to church — laugh and applaud his lies and his continued defamation of a woman who, according to a jury of his peers, he sexually abused and defamed,” Cooper said.

The long-time CNN host suggested Trump voters may be too sizeable to ignore. “That man you were so upset to hear from, he may be President of the United States in less than two years. It can happen again, it is happening again. He hasn’t changed and he is running hard,” Cooper said.

—NY Post

E. Jean Carroll, the woman who sued Donald Trump for defamation and left CNN’s Anderson Cooper aghast with her ‘rape is sexy’ remarks, is mulling slapping the former president with another lawsuit over his town hall event with CNN. During that media spectacle, Trump called Carroll a “whack job” and denied in the strongest terms that he had never met the woman.

This week, a New York City jury ruled in her favor, where Trump must pay $5 million in damages. The jury did not agree with Carroll on the first question, which is whether Trump raped her in the 1990s.

Ms. Carroll is considering another legal action.

The NY Times:

When former President Donald J. Trump was inveighing against E. Jean Carroll on CNN Wednesday night, at least one person was not watching: Ms. Carroll.

She was asleep and did not learn of his comments calling her claim of a decades-old sexual assault “fake” and a “made-up story” until Thursday morning, when her lawyer sent her a transcript, she said.

“It’s just stupid, it’s just disgusting, vile, foul, it wounds people,” Ms. Carroll said in an interview with The New York Times on Thursday, adding that she had been “insulted by better people.”

Ms. Carroll, 79, is now weighing whether to file a new defamation lawsuit against Mr. Trump, said her lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan. In addition to the case that ended Tuesday, Ms. Carroll has an earlier defamation suit against Mr. Trump, 76, that is still pending. Mr. Trump has argued in that case that he cannot be sued because he made those comments in his official capacity as president.
NY Times

Another lawsuit? Trump is right: whenever the media or some figure with a grudge unleashes on him, the better he does in the polls. The hard-core segments of the GOP base see the heavy politicization behind these actions. And maybe that’s what Carroll wants because it’s an open secret that Democrats hope Trump is the 2024 nominee. Perhaps, she’s doing her part for the Democratic Party in fostering another presidential defeat for Donald Trump, or at least that’s what she thinks. But after emerging victorious in this kangaroo court, I’m betting the public is getting tired of this woman. Frankly, not many know about her, the allegations, or the court battle that just concluded. Just give it a rest, lady.

In the meantime, Trump has appealed the verdict in the defamation case.

—Townhall

The Border Patrol union called the current crisis “the worst sustained disaster … ever seen at our border” — saying President Biden deserves to be arrested and that his administration is “absolutely corrupt to its core.”

The National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) tore into the end of Title 42 — the pandemic-era law allowing certain migrants to be booted — as Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz confirmed that “upwards of 60,000 migrants” are currently “staging in and around the immediate border area.”

“This is by far the worst sustained disaster that any BP agent, active or retired, has ever seen at our border,” the service’s official union tweeted just before Title 42 ended at midnight.

“And one man is responsible for every single bit of it, with the worst still to come,” the NBPC wrote alongside a photo of a smiling Biden.

“The Biden Administration is absolutely corrupt to its core,” the union alleged.

The union’s president, Brandon Judd, told Fox News late Wednesday that Biden should be treated like anyone caught smuggling migrants into the country.

“If he wasn’t the president of the United States, I would arrest him,” Judd told Sean Hannity.

“But he is the president, so he’s not held accountable,” he said.

—NY Post

The U.S. Postal Service is replacing tens of thousands of antiquated keys used by postal carriers and installing thousands of high-security collection boxes to stop a surge in robberies and mail thefts, officials said Friday.

The Postal Service is replacing 49,000 so-called arrow locks with electronic versions to make them less attractive to criminals who have been targeting them to steal mail from secure receptacles, and it is placing 12,000 hardened blue collection boxes in high-risk areas, according to the Postal Service and Postal Inspection Service.

The announcement came days after the National Association of Letter Carriers expressed outrage as The Associated Press reported that nearly 500 postal carriers were robbed last year.

The spike in postal carrier robberies has put letter carriers on edge.

The robberies have more than quadrupled over a decade, and weapons were used in most of the 496 robberies last year, according to data provided by the Postal Inspection Service to the AP under the Freedom of Information Act. Thirty-one postal carriers were injured, and one of them was killed last year, according to the data.

Photo below: A postal worker empties a box near the Fiserv Forum on Aug. 18, 2020, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Morry Gash, File)

—Associated Press

Watch out, K-9 units. There’s a new animal assisting police in their crime-fighting mission.

A herd of cows helped a North Carolina police department track a suspect who fled from officers during a traffic stop on Tuesday, allowing police to locate and arrest the suspect, authorities said.

“The cows literally led the officers to where the suspect was hiding,” the Boone Police Department Sergeant Dennis O’Neal wrote in an official press release. “In addition to thanking our officers and deputies for putting themselves in harm’s way; obviously, we want to express our gratitude to the cows for their assistance.”

Boone Police officers initially pulled over Joshua Minton, 34, for a traffic stop on Tuesday, May 9. Minton fled from the officers before abandoning his vehicle and running into a rural area, according to the press release.


“Due to the suspect’s fast and reckless driving, our officers were not close enough to see exactly where the suspect ran,” the release said.

As officers struggled to locate Minton in the remote part of Deep Gap, North Carolina, a group of cows emerged to lead the officers to where Minton was hiding.


Minton was charged with fleeing arrest with a motor vehicle, driving with a revoked license and disorderly conduct, according to police. He received a $20,000 bond and is expected back in court in late June.

—ABC News

OPINION

Eighteen months ago, Fed chair Jerome Powell said repeatedly: “there’s no inflation — don’t worry, it’s only transient.” At the grocery this morning, I paid twice as much for a bag of coffee as I had before. The same for vegetables, paper towels, and a host of other products. As I write, gas prices are up from a low of $1.77 under President Trump to a current $3.32 — an 87% increase.

The entire Biden administration is laughing at us with its “no inflation” line because inflation doesn’t hurt the people therein, especially if you’re Hunter Biden selling original paintings for as much as $500,000 apiece.

The well-being of ordinary Americans is not at the top of liberals’ list. They think they can do whatever they like to us, let their media cover it up before the next election, and we won’t catch on. According to Biden’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, inflation is not Biden’s fault — and Biden is doing everything he can to bring it down. If that’s true, he’s not doing much of a job.

Liberals truly think they are better than we are.


That’s why they think they don’t have to answer questions. When Biden is asked a real question, he says, “I’ll get in trouble if I answer that.” In other words, “I don’t have to answer questions that would inform ordinary people of what I’m up to. I am above ordinary people and don’t take their questions.”

President Trump never acted this way. He always made a point of saying it was our movement and our presidency, and he meant it. He said it was our government, and we had a right to it, even on Jan. 6 as a presidential election was being stolen from us.


From his comments to contemporaries, we know that Hitler felt a vast contempt for the German people. Even as he addressed huge, adoring crowds at Nuremberg, he saw them as less than human. And as he sent young boys off to their deaths, he felt the pleasure of the ruler who is above it all.

Biden is not Hitler, but Biden looked the other way as 108,000 young men and women died in 2022 of drug overdoses (up 7% from 2021). If he truly cared, he would stop the flow of fentanyl and other drugs crossing the border. If he cared, he would have visited the families of those slain in Nashville. If he cared, he would not hire 87,000 additional IRS agents to interrogate ordinary taxpayers. If he cared about taxpayers, he would not have sent some $75 billion with little oversight to Ukraine. What has that $75 billion bought us?

According to government statistics, a broad basket of drug prices increased by 31.6% from July 2021 to 2022. If Biden cared about how these price increases affect retirees, he would have shown some concern. But, apparently, he thinks he can dodge questions, make few public appearances, and get re-elected.

Biden has many disguises, from working-class Joe to moderate politician to the doddering fool, but beneath it all is the conviction of superiority. Nothing that Biden has done has benefited ordinary Americans, but it has brought wealth to his political supporters. That is the whole point of his Build Back Better bill, a $5-trillion handout to the political elite. Biden donors are lined up like pigs at the trough, ravenous for their share of the loot.

Biden and Harris are masters of the snicker and the sneer, and they are laughing at us as they go about “transforming America,” which amounts to transferring huge sums of money from ordinary Americans to the political elite and their friends. It’s time for the American people to realize that progressives are not their friends. They snicker and sneer, even as they exhaust the people with mandates, taxes, and inflation.

We need to use every peaceful means to wipe the smiles off their faces, like voting in the 2024 election.

—Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture including Heartland of the Imagination (2011)

A growing number of companies are reportedly inviting customers to opt-out of receiving Mother’s Day email ads, in the name of sensitivity and “inclusivity.”

On Sunday, a Twitter thread by @AZInformer, an account with slightly more than five thousand followers, reported the news, which quickly attracted more than a million views:

“Something very strange is happening with Big Corporations. Out of nowhere, @kroger owned @FrysFoodStores, @KayJewelers, @Hallmark, and now @DoorDash have all sent “Opt out of #MothersDay” emails to their customer base. This is not organic. This reeks of anti-family activists.”

Companies listed include:

• Levis,
• Ancestry,
• MAC cosmetics,
• Stitch Fix,
• BuyBuyBaby,
• Etsy,
• Cartier,
• Kroger,
• Frys Food Stores,
• Kay Jewelers,
• Hallmark,
• Door Dash, and
• Nestle’s Nespresso.


The nearly-identical language used by the companies, such as labeling Mother’s Day “a difficult time,” prompted some critics to suspect a coordinated effort by woke liberals to “cancel” the holiday in order to advance their gender-fluid ideology.

Others wondered if companies will now invite customers to opt-out of other types of email ads they find difficult to view.

Turning Point USA CEO Charlie Kirk tweeted a question to his 2.1 million followers:

“Brands are bending over backwards to let customers to ‘opt out’ of Mother’s Day. Can we opt out of Pride Month spam too?”

Despite the recent media attention, advertising to customers that they can opt-out of Mother’s Day advertising isn’t exactly new. For example, Hustler Marketing magazine recommended the practice in 2021 and PRNEWS followed suit in 2022.

The anti-Mother’s Day marketing campaign has not hurt Mother’s Day, however.

Research by the National Retail Federation shows that, since 2009, the percentage of adults celebrating the holiday has held steady at around 84%, while the average expenditure on Mother’s Day has more than doubled.

— Craig Bannister, Editor, CNSNews



ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY – In 1932, the Baby son kidnapped from Charles Lindbergh was found dead just miles away from the Lindbergh home.