Haley Trashes Gabbard As “Propagandist” For Putin

Haley Trashes Gabbard As “Propagandist” For Putin:

“Look at a speech I gave holding up pictures of dead children who had been killed by chemical attacks. For her to say that Assad was not behind that? Literally, everything she said about that, were Russian talking points.

“Every bit of that, that was Russian propaganda. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Tulsi Gabbard literally blamed NATO, our Western alliance that’s responsible for countering Russia.

“She blamed NATO for the attack on Ukraine and the Russians and the Chinese echoed her talking points and played her interviews on Russian and Chinese television.

“Tulsi Gabbard pushed for dropping charges against WikiLeaks’s Founder Julian Assange and pardoning National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden, both who were accused of leaking highly sensitive U.S. Secrets that put Americans in danger.

“She’s defended Russia, she’s defended Syria, she’s defended Iran, and she’s defended China. No, she has not denounced any of these views. None of them. She hasn’t taken one of them back.

“DNI, Department of National Intelligence. This is not a place for a Russian, Iranian, Syrian, Chinese sympathizer. DNI has to analyze real threats. Are we comfortable with someone like that at the top of our national intelligence agencies?” – Nikki Haley.

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Nancy Mace Has Vile Anti-Trans Melt Down [VIDEO]

Nancy Mace Has Vile Anti-Trans Melt Down [VIDEO]:

Mediaite has the transcript:

LIZ LANDERS: I just want to add that the congresswoman elect does identify as a woman. I will be referring to her in that way–.

REP. NANCY MACE: She’s not a woman! It’s a MAN! She was born a man! She’s a man! She is biologically a male. That is science.

You guys on the left in the mainstream media want to say “follow the science.”.

Let’s follow the science! Okay. He is a man. He can wear a dress–.

LIZ LANDERS: Congresswoman–.

REP. NANCY MACE: He can call himself as pronouns, can be she or her. But he doesn’t belong in a women’s restroom, period!

LIZ LANDERS: Are you suggesting that the representative-elect McBride poses some kind of danger to you and other women in Congress?

REP. NANCY MACE: Absolutely! Absolutely! 100%. This is an assault on women, a man being a biological man, a man with a penis, male genitalia– being in a women’s locker room is an assault on women. And so the question is, do I have rights as a woman or not?

And I’m not going to allow the media or Congress to strip away women’s rights for one half of 1% of people out there. That more than likely, he’s got a mental mental illness and this is why he’s doing this.

He should not be forcing his private parts into women’s private spaces. I’m absolutely a no, hard pass on this. I’m going to fight it every step of the way.

LIZ LANDERS: Are you diagnosing, right now, an incoming member of Congress with a mental illness? I’m not sure how you would know that.

REP. NANCY MACE: I am absolutely diagnosing anyone who cross-dresses with a mental illness. And in fact, by the way, I’m getting death threats from men dressed up as women who want to kill me because I don’t want penises in women’s bathroom.

Read the full transcript. Caitlyn Jennings must be so proud. The quotes above only tell part of the story. Watch the video and you’ll see Mace repeatedly attack the admirable interviewer herself.

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Arrests of Alabama journalists spark civil rights lawsuit

Arrests of Alabama journalists spark civil rights lawsuit:

(CN) — The publisher of a small weekly newspaper in rural Alabama joined three other plaintiffs Wednesday in a federal civil rights lawsuit against the district attorney and sheriff of Escambia County Alabama for a series of searches, seizures and arrests in 2023. 

The plaintiffs claim the actions were unwarranted and politically motivated retaliation for the plaintiffs’ opposition of an incumbent school superintendent. The defendants waged a four-month campaign against the plaintiffs, charging them with revealing grand jury secrets, before eventually recusing themselves. Then, the Alabama Attorney General’s Office adopted the case and dropped all charges. 

But by then, “the damage was already done,” the plaintiffs claim in a lawsuit filed in the Southern District of Alabama, also naming several individual deputies as defendants. “Criticism isn’t criminal. Our Constitution ensures that government officials can’t use their authority to punish people who disagree with them about who should hold local office,” their lawsuit says. 

The plaintiffs are represented by the Institute for Justice. 

Atmore News Publisher Sherry Digmon also served on the Escambia County School board, where, amid a questionable state financial audit, she and another member blocked the early renewal of the superintendent’s employment contract. But the superintendent had political allies in District Attorney Stephen Billy and Sheriff Heath Jackson, who “openly threatened to retaliate against anyone who stood between them and four more years of [the superintendent],” the plaintiffs claim. 

In response to their opposition, Billy and Jackson issued and served an unlawful subpoena for school board payroll records and after the Atmore News published a story about it, ordered deputies to seize the phones and electronic devices of Digmon, the other school board member, a payroll specialist for the school district and news reporter Don Fletcher, who wrote the story. 

For obtaining or distributing a copy of the subpoena, all four were also arrested and charged with revealing grand jury secrets, although the subpoena itself had never been reviewed or authorized by a grand jury. 

Digmon was arrested a second time and charged with additional ethics violations regarding her role as school board member, while Billy also led a campaign to have her impeached. Digmon was arrested and booked a third time allegedly as part of an unnecessary process to reprocess a prior arrest on a lower bond amount. 

The plaintiffs claim the actions are violations of their First and Fourth Amendment rights protecting free speech and against unlawful searches and seizures. 

In a statement announcing the lawsuit Wednesday, Digmon emphasized the plaintiffs had been engaged in common, constitutionally protected speech. 

“Don and I were doing our job as community newspaper reporters,” she said. “I was upholding my oath as a school board member. Certainly nothing was unlawful about either act. However, when someone with a little power disagreed with us, they had us arrested. I look forward to justice being served in hopes we can keep something like this from happening to someone else.”

Similarly, Institute for Justice attorney Jared McClain said, “Americans must be able to participate in their government without fear that they’ll be labeled as political enemies, investigated, and punished for exposing corruption. [The plaintiffs] were just doing their jobs and what they knew was right. But because that got in the way of what the district attorney and sheriff wanted, they ended up in jail. We need the courts to hold government officials accountable when they abuse their power.”

Billy has not commented on the case since his recusal, which he attributed to undefined personal and professional conflicts. After 20 years as district attorney, he announced his intent to retire last month.

Photos by Noah Kalina of the oldest forest in the world (a...

Photos by Noah Kalina of the oldest forest in the world (a...:

Photos by Noah Kalina of the oldest forest in the world (a 385-million-year-old forest in Cairo, New York) and the paleobotanist who discovered it. “Holy cats! These were roots and that’s where a tree stood 385 million years ago.”

💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

House speaker bars trans women from restrooms on Transgender Day of Remembrance

House speaker bars trans women from restrooms on Transgender Day of Remembrance:

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has barred transgender women from using women’s restrooms on the House side of the U.S. Capitol and the House office buildings, his office announced in a statement on Wednesday.

The move comes on Transgender Day of Remembrance, which memorializes those who have been murdered as a consequence of transphobia.

“All single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House office buildings — such as restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms — are reserved for individuals of that biological sex,” Johnson said.

The speaker added, “It is important to note that each member office has its own private restroom, and unisex restrooms are available throughout the Capitol. Women deserve women’s only spaces.”

Asked how the measure would be enforced, Johnson declined to specify, telling reporters that “like all House policies, it’s enforceable.”

Wednesday’s announcement comes two days after U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) introduced a proposal to exclude trans women from women’s restrooms on Capitol Hill.

The congresswoman said her policy was partially designed to target incoming Delaware Congresswoman Sarah McBride, who will be the first trans member of Congress when she is seated in January.

Mace and other House Republicans who endorsed her proposal, like U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) used transphobic language when discussing McBride and deliberately misgendered her.

McBride responded on X that the effort is a distraction from the more pressing work in which Congress should be engaged.

Several House Democrats leapt to her defense, from the openly gay and lesbian members of the Congressional Equality Caucus to the Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), with the latter two calling the bill “bullying.”

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Here are the 30 transgender Americans lost to violence so far this year

Here are the 30 transgender Americans lost to violence so far this year:

Four men accused of homosexuality beaten, chased out of Nigerian city

Four men accused of homosexuality beaten, chased out of Nigerian city:

Four young men have been beaten and chased out of a Nigerian city after they were found engaging in consensual same-sex sexual activity.

An angry mob paraded the four men, who were only wearing boxing shorts, down Nomayo Street in Benin City, the capital of Edo state, on Nov. 17. One of them had a visible deep cut on his forehead as a result of the beating.

The mob threatened to kill them if they were to return to the city. It also questioned why they were “into” homosexuality when there were many women in the area.

Samson Mikel, a Nigerian LGBTQ activist, said the attack was misdirected anger.

“Benin City is one of the backward places in Nigeria and a dorm for scammers and other crimes, the people are proud of their roughness, they are never concerned about these other crimes or how the government is impoverishing them, but will light gay men on fire the moment they think,” said Mikel. “All they want is to live and experience love. They are not the cause of the economic meltdown in the country, neither are they the reason why there are no jobs in the streets of Nigeria.”

Attacks like the one that happened in Benin City have been happening across Nigeria — the latest took place in Port Harcourt in Rivers state last month.

Section 214 of the Criminal Code Act on Unnatural Offenses says any person who has “carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature, or has carnal knowledge of an animal, or permits a male person to have carnal knowledge of him or her against the order of nature, is guilty of a felony” and could face up to 14 years in prison.

Several LGBTQ people and activists have been arrested under Section 214.

In some cases they are murdered with law enforcement officials showing little to no interest in investigating, such as the case of Area Mama, a popular cross-dresser whose body was found along the Katampe-Mabushi Expressway in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, in August.

The Initiative for Equal Rights, a Nigerian advocacy group, said the federal government should take concrete steps to protect the rights of all Nigerians.

“For many, especially LGBTQIA+ individuals, women, and those within the Sexual Orientation Gender Identity, Expression and Sexual Characteristics (SOGIESC), community, freedom remains a distant goal. Discrimination, violence and human rights violations are daily realities,” said TIERs Nigeria. “Despite the progress we have made, the journey towards justice is long, but our voices remain unwavering.”

TIERs Nigeria also called upon the federal government to repeal the Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act 2014, to respond to the African Commission’s recommendation to review laws that criminalize rights of assembly and association, and to enact laws and policies that discourage hate speech and other actions that incite discrimination against LGBTQ people.

Many Nigerians vehemently oppose public discussions about LGBTQ-specific issues because of religious and cultural beliefs.

A number of local and international human rights organizations have advised the federal government to prioritize the rights of everyone in Nigeria, including those who identify as LGBTQ. There is, however, little hope that Nigerian officials will do this anytime soon.

Consensual same-sex sexual relations remain punishable by death in states with Sharia law. Those who advocate for LGBTQ rights in these areas could also face a similar fate.

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