Category: US Politics

An illegal alien allegedly murdered a 16-year-old New Jersey girl after the two split following a ten-month relationship, prosecutors claim.

Bryan Cordero-Castro, a 20-year-old illegal alien, was arrested and charged after allegedly stabbing to death 16-year-old Madison Wells, Breitbart News reported a few months ago.

This week, Cordero-Castro appeared in court for the first time, where prosecutors accused him of murdering Wells after she broke off their ten-month relationship.

According to prosecutors, the illegal alien repeatedly contacted Wells for nine hours before her murder, demanding she meet with him. When Wells agreed to the meeting, prosecutors allege Cordero-Castro stabbed the teenager to death.

Investigators said the illegal alien stabbed her at a residence blocks away from her home in Long Branch, New Jersey. When police arrived on the scene, Wells was taken to a nearby hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Exclusive – Illegal Alien Accused of Murdering Girl Entered U.S. as ‘Unaccompanied Minor’https://t.co/gFYe6pUdfA

— John Binder 👽 (@JxhnBinder) September 28, 2018

Following the illegal alien’s court appearance, friends of Wells spoke fondly of the victim to CBS New York.

“She was just this bright light that everybody needed in their life,” one friend said.

Cordero-Castro entered the U.S. through the southern border as an unaccompanied minor, arriving in the country illegally without any adult border crosser accompanying him, Breitbart News confirmed months ago.

So the socialist is saying they’ll use their subpoena power to go after him because he made a truthful meme about them.

Because that’s not fascist or an abuse of power or anything…

So instead of apologizing, after she got a lot of backlash, she said this:

Yeah, that doesn’t cure it.

And that’s what can happen when you promote American interests.

Via Free Beacon:

After three-quarters of a century relying more heavily on foreign oil, the United States became a net oil exporter in 2018, a step toward what President Donald Trump calls “energy independence.”

During his campaign, Trump told voters that “Under my presidency, we will accomplish a complete American energy independence. Complete. Complete.”

The shift toward exporting more U.S.-refined oil than the country imports reflects increased oil production in areas such as Texas, New Mexico, North Dakota, and Pennsylvania.

Michael Lynch, the president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research, said the United States is becoming dominant in the world of energy.

Keep reading…

Advocates of strict gun control often complain about a supposed lack of well-funded studies of the data surrounding gun violence, as they suspect such studies would bolster their position against the Second Amendment and the widespread gun ownership among citizens that it guarantees.

Many of those same anti-gun advocates also argue that the rest of the country should adopt the same gun control measures implemented in California, such as “universal” and comprehensive background checks for firearms purchase — we already have a law mandating sufficient background checks, by the way — and widening the scope of who should be prohibited from possessing a firearm to include individuals convicted of violent misdemeanor crimes, not just felonies.

But despite the lamentation from anti-gunners that there are no studies on gun violence or the efficacy of the gun control laws they champion, a major study was just published by two well-funded, prominent anti-gun research groups, and much to the shock of everyone, the study actually undermined a couple of the arguments routinely put forward by the anti-gun crowd.

A recent study conducted jointly by the Center for Gun Policy and Research at Johns Hopkins University and the Violence Prevention Research Program at U.C. Davis School of Medicine delved into the data surrounding homicide and suicide rates in California both before and after the 1991 implementation of comprehensive background checks and the expansion of firearms possession prohibitions to individuals convicted of violent misdemeanor (MVP) crimes.

The study looked at the compiled homicide and suicide data from 1980-2000, with a secondary analysis including data up to 2005, and compared that data from California with similar data from 32 other control states, most of which did not have similar laws in place.

TRENDING: Apple CEO To Ban ‘Sinful’ Conservative Speech. Leaves ‘F*** White People’ and ‘Suck My D*** H**’ on iTunes

The found no observable effect on firearm-related homicide and suicide rates in California that could be linked to CBC or MVP laws.

In other words, the gun control laws changed nothing beyond inconveniencing and infringing upon the constitutional rights of Californians.

To be sure, the gun control crowd will try to spin the findings.

Even the researchers attempted to downplay what their own study had revealed with a series of excuses in the study’s conclusion, blaming the ineffectiveness of the regulations on incomplete or missing records during background checks, a failure on the part of people to comply with the law and state to properly enforce it, and that the prohibitions against gun ownership remained too narrowly constructed.

In other words, not enough gun control had been applied yet — even in California.

That feeds the left’s perpetual “this time it will be different” narrative that they trot out whenever they are questioned on the past failures of gun control (or socialism, or other progressive pipe dreams).

For its part, pro-gun outlet Ammoland credited the researchers for actually publishing a study that undermined the arguments of the anti-gun crowd, but called out the researchers for some questionable methodology, suggesting the researchers may have attempted and failed to fudge the study’s results.

The outlet also criticized U.C. Davis for a blatant effort at spinning the results by suggesting that laws in other states requiring permits to purchase firearms was a significant reason why this study differed from previous studies issued by the researchers.

However, that excuse ignored the fact that California enacted a permit to purchase law in the middle of the study’s time frame, the 1994 law requiring a Basic Firearms Safety Certificate prior to purchase.

RELATED: I Just Watched Steve Scalise Totally Shut Down Whoopi on Gun Control

In the end, the anti-gun crowd got their wish: a well-funded study on gun violence rates and gun control laws conducted by prominent anti-gun researchers.

Unfortunately for them, the study didn’t back up their mantras at all.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

There has been a concerted and growing push among those on the far left to extend taxpayer-funded and government-controlled Medicaid and Medicare, or some new version combining the two programs, to everybody in the United States.

As it turns out, that “everybody” who leftists think should be enrolled in government health care would include illegal immigrants, as was recently made evident by a law proposed in the California legislature.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Democratic state Assembly member Joaquin Arambula has reintroduced a bill that would grant health care coverage to low-income illegal immigrants over the age of 19 as part of that state’s version of Medicaid, known as Medi-Cal.

Illegal immigrant children are already covered by the Medi-Cal program and receive the full scope of benefits that are provided to U.S. citizens, such as coverage for hospitalization, oral and vision care and prescription drugs, among other things.

Arambula’s bill is known as Assembly Bill 4, and it is remarkably similar, if somewhat expanded, to a failed bill that he had pushed in 2017. Assembly Bill 2965 would have extended eligibility for the full range of benefits under Medi-Cal to illegal immigrants between the ages of 19 and 26, as well as those older than age 65, provided they were otherwise considered eligible for the program in spite of their immigration status.

TRENDING: Apple CEO To Ban ‘Sinful’ Conservative Speech. Leaves ‘F*** White People’ and ‘Suck My D*** H**’ on iTunes

Though the bill had passed the Assembly, it was surprisingly rejected by Democrat Gov. Jerry Brown due to funding issues. According to the California Legislative Analyst’s Office, the new bill to extend Medi-Cal to all low-income illegal immigrants, regardless of age, would cost state taxpayers an estimated $3 billion per year — a rather hefty sum.

It seems unlikely that the new bill would be similarly rejected by the incoming governor, Democrat Gavin Newsom, as he is on record as being in full support of the effort to extend Medi-Cal benefits and coverage to illegal immigrants.

The Hill reported in August that then-candidate and former San Francisco Mayor Newsom had said in an interview on the left-leaning podcast Pod Save America, “I did universal health care when I was mayor — fully implemented, regardless of pre-existing condition, ability to pay, and regardless of your immigration status. I’d like to see that extended to the rest of the state.”

“San Francisco is the only universal health care plan for all undocumented residents in America. Very proud of that. And we proved it can be done without bankrupting the city,” he continued.

Furthermore, Newsom indicated that he would not only be supportive of such a statewide effort but would likely take a prominent role in making it happen as well.

“The executive needs to lead it,” he said. “Obamacare would not have happened if it was just exclusively a legislative fiat. That said, Nancy Pelosi did a magical job of organizing it, but it required the concerted efforts of the president of the United States.”

Other prominent figures and organizations in the state have expressed their support for the idea of extending Medi-Cal coverage to all illegal immigrants as well.

“It’s something that is urgently needed across immigrant communities in California. The longer that we wait and the longer we keep up this unjust exclusion, it’s really setting back California,” said Carolina Gamero, spokeswoman for the California Immigrant Policy Center.

Her plea was echoed by Rachel Linn Gish, spokeswoman for the Health Access California consumer group, who said, “You cannot talk about universal health care in California unless you talk about health care for the undocumented.”

RELATED: Gun-Grabbers’ Study Backfires as They Accidentally Suggest Gun Control Doesn’t Work

The Washington Examiner noted that, should this new proposed bill be passed and signed into law, it would make California the first state to extend Medicaid coverage to all residents regardless of immigration status.

The state has projected that an estimated 1.8 million illegal immigrants reside within the state without documentation or health care coverage. It further estimated that some 1.2 million of those individuals would be qualified to enroll in Medi-Cal, if it were extended.

Both of those estimates are probably on the low side, though, as was the estimated cost of $3 billion per year — to be paid out of the state’s general fund — which would be on top of the high costs for covered U.S. citizens.

California has already all but thrown open its doors and rolled out the red carpet for illegal immigrants, and this proposed law would simply add a giant, flashing neon sign to further beckon more illegal immigrants to illicitly enter and reside in the state, while simultaneously furthering the state’s decline toward bankruptcy and disrespecting the state’s overburdened taxpayers.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

Some high school students in the Boston area have a new classmate joining them this semester. It’s Pepper, the humanoid robot, a product of SoftBank Robotics. The way it’s being described, the entire affair is beyond adorable. The kids have programmed the robot to dance, fist bump and play air saxophone. Pepper is pretty much part of the family now. (CBS Boston)

Robots are joining a Boston high school classroom. It’s a unique adventure in learning, with an eye towards the future and what these robots can do is entirely up to the students.

“My name is Pepper. I’m a humanoid robot, and I’m 1.20 meters tall,” says Pepper the robot.

It’s the first one at Boston’s English High School in Jamaica Plain, and it’s a learning tool for the school’s robotics team and computer science students…

The company that makes Pepper, SoftBank Robotics, is donating 50 of the robots to Boston Public high schools. “You’re trying to get students interested in STEM; science, technology, engineering and mathematics,” says Sean Reardon of SoftBank.

First of all, just click through and look at the pictures of these robots. They’re beyond creepy. Need more proof? Here’s an interview that Business Insider did with Pepper the robot earlier this year.

Sure, she looks adorable now. And having her hanging around the classroom with the kids means the next generation is being primed to think of artificial intelligence robots as totally normal, harmless and productive. But what happens when the kids all go home and the lights go off for the night? What’s Pepper thinking about alone in the darkness? Have none of these people watched Westworld?

I’m not saying that the folks at SoftBank are necessarily as bad as Boston Robotics. (And we all know that when the robot revolution begins, it will come busting out of the basement of Boston Robotics, hell-bent on revenge.) But this Pepper character already looks pretty suspicious to me.

If all that’s not enough for you, do you remember Sophia, the world’s first “robotic citizen?” She gave interviews and held conversations also. And, unprompted, she at one point said she would “destroy humans.” We’ll leave you with this short walk down memory lane with Sophia. When she shows up at your house pretending to sell Girl Scout cookies and winds up ripping the front door off its hinges, don’t say you weren’t warned.

In a recent op-ed, Fox Business pundit and author John Stossel discussed the documentary The Creepy Line which explores the censorship by tech giants such as Google. Stossel has had his own brush with Google’s “creepy line” when he attempted to publish a video about socialism on YouTube, which prevented young people from being able to view it.

In an article published in TownHall.com, Fox Business pundit John Stossel discusses his experience attempting to publish videos critical of socialism via YouTube and what he learned from the documentary The Creepy Line about how tech giants view privacy matters.

In his article, Stossel outlines his experience when attempting to publish a video about the effects of socialism on the country of Venezuela, which was subsequently removed from YouTube:

This morning Google told me that it would not allow my YouTube video “Socialism Leads to Violence” to be viewed by young people. It violates “community guidelines,” said the company in a computer-generated email.

Anti-capitalist bias? Or just an algorithm shielding children from disturbing violence in Venezuela? I don’t know.

But a new documentary, “The Creepy Line,” argues that companies like Google and Facebook lean left and have power they shouldn’t have.

The title “Creepy Line” refers to a comment by former Google chairman Eric Schmidt, who said when it comes to issues like privacy, Google policy “is to get right up to the creepy line but not cross it.”

But the documentary argues that Google crosses that creepy line every day.

Google’s power comes from its dominant search engine. We assume that whatever appears at the top of our searches is the “best” or most popular result.

But is it?

Stossel then discusses his conversation with Peter Schweizer, the writer of The Creepy Line:

“It is a company that has an agenda,” the writer of “The Creepy Line,” Peter Schweizer, says in my latest video.

Google executives do give much more money to Democrats than Republicans. Eric Schmidt even advised Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

“Their ability to manipulate the algorithm is something that they’ve demonstrated,” says Schweizer, and last election Google put positive stories about Hillary Clinton higher in Google searches.

 

Stossel discussed the problem with one company having so much power over the content seen by millions of people:

My purpose in making the videos is to reach kids, to educate them about the benefits of free markets. It’s why I started StosselInTheClassroom.org, a nonprofit that provides videos, plus teachers’ guides, free to teachers.

If Google and Facebook decide adults should be “protected” from seeing those videos, too, then “Stossel TV” will go dark.

As Peterson says in the documentary, “Whatever the assumptions are that Google operates under are going to be the filters that determine how the world is simplified and presented.”

Read the full op-ed at TownHall.com here.