Day: April 20, 2021

Jury Finds Derek Chauvin Guilty on All Counts in the Death of George Floyd

The Center Square
Derek Chauvin

Less than a year after the death of George Floyd in police custody, a jury found former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin guilty on charges of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter.

Anger from the tragic death in police custody  on May 25, 2020, was fueled by a bystander filming part of the arrest, showing Floyd pinned under Chauvin’s knee for 9 minutes and 45 seconds, while he pleaded “I can’t breathe.” Floyd was declared dead later that day.

The video caused protests worldwide and pushed discussion of police accountability and proper levels of force for minor crimes, as Floyd was arrested for allegedly attempting to spend a fake $20 bill.

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New Greater Georgia Billboard Blames Democrats and Major League Baseball for ‘Costly Misinformation’

Chris Butler

Greater Georgia members have launched a digital billboard campaign highlighting Major League Baseball’s decision to move the All-Star game out of Georgia, “driven by Democrats’ falsehoods about Georgia’s Election Integrity Act.” Greater Georgia members announced the campaign Monday.

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Commentary: Proposed Education Department Rule Would Prioritize Funding Critical Race Theory Grant Applications

Georgia Star News Staff
Close up of person writing

The Biden Administration is wasting no time in working to promote highly controversial critical race theory and anti-racism concepts into curriculums nationwide.

A proposed rule from the U.S. Education Department seeks to prioritize funding grant proposals that support diversity and inclusion narratives within American History and Civics Education programs.

The department states on the Federal Register that such a move would “support the development of culturally responsive teaching.”

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NASA Makes History with First Helicopter Flight on Another Planet

Georgia Star News Staff
NASA Helicopter

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration made history Monday morning when it conducted the first ever powered and controlled flight on a different planet.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Ingenuity, a solar-powered helicopter, took flight on Mars for more than 39 seconds, reaching a maximum altitude of 10 feet, the agency announced. Hours after the flight, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California confirmed the success after it received data sent from the helicopter.

“Ingenuity is the latest in a long and storied tradition of NASA projects achieving a space exploration goal once thought impossible,” acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk said in a statement Monday.

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YouTube CEO Honored with ‘Free Expression’ Award as Big Tech Silences Conservatives

Peter D'Abrosca
Susan Wojcicki

Despite its ongoing censorship and banning of prominent conservatives from its platform, the CEO of Google-owned YouTube collected an award for “free expression” last week. 

The nonprofit Freedom Forum, which describes itself as “celebrating the world’s champions of free expression,” decided that Susan Wojcicki met that high bar. 

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Proposed Florida Vote-By-Mail Restrictions Scaled Back, But Opponents Not Swayed

The Center Square
Dennis Baxley

A key Senate panel Wednesday amended a controversial bill imposing a range of restrictions on the state’s vote-by-mail (VBM) laws but did not vote on the measure after an exhaustive debate.

The Senate Rules Committee ran out of time before it could issue a verdict on Senate Bill 90 during a fiery marathon meeting that began with an hours’-long fracas over a proposed bill preempting local governments from regulating ports in areas “of critical state concern.”

Committee chair Sen. Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, concluded the meeting without calling for a vote on SB 90, saying the panel could take up the measure in its Friday meeting or next week. The bill was not on panel’s Friday agenda as of Thursday afternoon.

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Vandals Target Chauvin Defense Witness and Vandalize Wrong House

Georgia Star News Staff
minneapolis police department

Far-left domestic terrorists attempted to intimidate one of the key witnesses in the defense of Derek Chauvin over the weekend, but instead ended up vandalizing the wrong house, according to ABC News.

Barry Brodd, a former training officer with the Santa Rosa Police Department, testified during the defense of Chauvin, who is accused of murder in the death of George Floyd last year. Brodd concluded that, from his review of the evidence, Chauvin’s use of his knee to restrain Floyd was ultimately justified, and that he “was acting with objective reasonableness following Minneapolis Police Department policy and current standards of law enforcement in his interactions with Mr. Floyd.”

Following his testimony, a group of vandals dressed in all-black targeted his home in Santa Rosa early Saturday morning, throwing a severed pig’s head onto the front porch and splashing blood on the front of the building. However, Brodd no longer lives in that home, and the police were called by the terrified new homeowners at about 3 AM.

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Commentary: The Joe Biden Who Never Was

Georgia Star News Staff

These are the most radical first three months of a presidency since 1933, the most divisive—and certainly the most dangerous. And its catalyst is the myth of ol’ Joe from Scranton who has unleashed furies and hatreds never quite seen in modern American history.

“Woke” Joe Biden

At an age when most long ago embraced a consistent political belief, late septuagenarian Joe Biden suddenly reinvented himself as our first woke president. That is ironic in so many ways because Joe’s past is a wasteland of racialist condescension and prejudicial gaffes. For much of the 1980s and 1990s, he positioned himself as the workingman’s Democrat from Delaware (or, as Biden once beamed, “We [Delawareans] were on the South’s side in the Civil War.”). In truth, he exuded chauvinism well beyond that of his constituents.

Biden’s concocted working-man schtick meant praising former segregationists of the Senate like Robert Byrd and James O. Eastland. He would talk tough about inner-city predators, even as he pontificated about his support for tough drug sentencing. Kamala Harris, without any political traction other than her race and gender, once predicated her unimpressive and early aborted presidential campaign on the single strategy of knocking Joe out of the primaries for his purported innate racism that hurt victims of color, such as herself, the deprived child of two Ph.Ds.

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‘This is What Open Borders Agenda Looks Like,’ Trump’s ICE Chief Says

Georgia Star News Staff
U.S. Border Patrol

Tom Homan, former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said Monday that President Joe Biden sacrificed the U.S.’ safety at the southern border in order to win the 2020 election.

“This is open borders agenda, Joe Biden sold out this country and our border security to win the election, he wanted to win over the progressive left, have an open borders agenda, Homan said on “Fox and Friends First.” Biden called the border situation on Saturday a “crisis” for the first time while discussing the refugee cap.

“We’re going to increase the number [of refugees allowed into the country]. The problem was that the refugee part was working on the crisis that ended up on the border with young people,” Biden said. “We couldn’t do two things at once. But now we are going to increase the number.”

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Arizona Senate on the Verge of Beginning Major Audit of Maricopa County Ballots

Georgia Star News Staff
Karen Fann

The Arizona Senate is poised to begin a major audit of over two million ballots cast in the 2020 election in the state’s largest county, a process the state Senate president claims has been stymied by county officials and which the county claims rests on legally uncertain ground.

Senate subpoenas to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors for information and equipment needed to perform the audit have been pending since Dec. 15, 2020 and were upheld by a judge on Feb. 25. In mid-March, the state Senate announced that Republicans in that chamber would be conducting a “broad and detailed” review of Maricopa’s ballots, one that would involve “testing the machines, scanning the ballots, performing a full hand count and checking for any IT breaches,” among other approaches.

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Commentary: Too Much Data, Too Little Wisdom

Georgia Star News Staff

Every day, we are bombarded with information. A police shooting under questionable circumstances. A tense encounter between people of different races. A flood of statistics on COVID-19 cases, mortality, and vaccine effectiveness. 

We receive the data in the form of easily digested soundbites and a never-ending reel of videos. We are supposed to respond by taking a stand and making a judgment. If there is any doubt as to what that stand should be, the mood music on the news and the explicit narratives on social media make it plain what we are supposed to feel and think. 

Objectively speaking, these videos present as many questions as they present answers. Maybe it’s grainy and fast moving. Maybe the lens is distorting perspective. With YouTube, we can slow it down, rewind, and enhance the color. Ah ha! See! The kid dropped the gun a tenth of a second before the officer’s shot went off, says the know-it-all. 

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Biden Administration Won’t Define ‘Sex’ as Biological as Title IX Review Starts

Georgia Star News Staff
Women's soccer game

The Biden administration has rejected a petition to define sex in biological terms as it reviews the Trump administration’s Title IX policies on women’s sports and sexual misconduct proceedings.

The rejection came a day after the Department of Education announced it was soliciting public input on implementing President Biden’s March 8 executive order on sex discrimination.

The Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), a self-described radical feminist group that opposes transgender policies, said it was pleased that the department did not reject its legal arguments out of hand.

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Proposed Florida Vote-By-Mail Restrictions Scaled Back, But Opponents Not Swayed

The Center Square
Dennis Baxley

A key Senate panel Wednesday amended a controversial bill imposing a range of restrictions on the state’s vote-by-mail (VBM) laws but did not vote on the measure after an exhaustive debate.

The Senate Rules Committee ran out of time before it could issue a verdict on Senate Bill 90 during a fiery marathon meeting that began with an hours’-long fracas over a proposed bill preempting local governments from regulating ports in areas “of critical state concern.”

Committee chair Sen. Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, concluded the meeting without calling for a vote on SB 90, saying the panel could take up the measure in its Friday meeting or next week. The bill was not on panel’s Friday agenda as of Thursday afternoon.

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10 Questions American Enterprise Institute Scholar John Fortier Should Ask Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger at Livestream Event

Chris Butler

Members of the Washington, D.C.-based American Enterprise Institute (AEI) are scheduled to host a livestreamed question and answer session with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. AEI officials have scheduled the event for 3:30 p.m. Central on Tuesday on AEI’s website. People may submit their own questions to Raffensperger as they watch.

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