A woman who used to work as the top Democratic lawyer for the House Judiciary Committee said that Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) once showed up to a meeting wearing nothing but his underwear.

The woman, Melanie Sloan, told ABC News that she “walked into his office having been called up to brief him on something and he was walking around in his underwear.”

Sloan, who served as minority counsel for the committee, said she was startled by the encounter that took place in the Rayburn House Office Building.

“I was pretty taken aback to see my boss half-dressed,” Sloan told the Washington Post. “I turned on my heel and I left.”

Although Sloan did not accuse Conyers of sexual harassment, she did accuse him of verbally abusing her while she worked for him.

“There was an occasion where he called me out of a meeting with a bunch of advocates and was screaming at me in the halls, including [about] me not wearing stockings on a 95-degree Washington summer day … while he wasn’t wearing socks,” she said.

Sloan added that she felt there was nothing she could do to stop him.

“I was dismissed and told I must be mentally unstable,” she said.

Conyers’ attorney, Arnold Reed, claimed that the Michigan Democrat “has never done anything inappropriate to Melanie Sloan.”

The House Ethics Committee announced that it would investigate Conyers after a BuzzFeed News report revealed that Conyers’ congressional office paid a former female staffer $27,000 of taxpayer funds to settle a sexual harassment claim.

Reed said Conyers, the longest-serving House member, is innocent and that the lawmaker will not resign despite the House Ethics Committee’s investigation into his alleged misconduct.

Can’t leftists take one day off from being complete assholes? Seriously, it’s Thanksgiving. A small group of illegal aliens attempted to disrupt the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City and yes, this was an anti-Trump/pro-amnesty demonstration. Nothing makes people sympathetic to a cause like attempting to sabotage a beloved holiday tradition, does it?

The NY Daily News reports:

Four people protesting President Trump’s immigration policies staged a sit-down protest and briefly blocked the Thanksgiving Day Parade route before cops removed them Thursday.

Four whole people? That sounds more like a Moms Demand Action protest than an anti-Trump rally.

The protesters are young people who came into the country undocumented…

That’s the liberal media way of saying the protesters are illegal aliens.

The protesters, dressed in red T-shirts, sat down in the middle of the road on Central Park West at 70th St. and were soon ushered off by police. They were not arrested…

Yeah, it would have been a shame if illegal aliens were arrested for breaking even more laws, wouldn’t it? Also, the irony is not lost on me that lawbreakers were trying to call attention to their lawlessness by breaking the law.

The reason stated for this massive show of civil disobedience is because these illegal aliens are so-called DREAMers who were given temporary deportation relief by former president Obama. Earlier this year President Trump stopped the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which shielded hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens from getting the boot.

“We want permanent protection for undocumented youth, and more focus on the fact that all undocumented youth are suffering, whether they’re DACA or not,” said protester Piash Ahamed.

As alluded to by that last guy, these protesters don’t just want protection for DACA recipients, they want amnesty for every single illegal alien in this country:

“It was scary at the beginning. I was scared of being arrested, I was scared of losing my job. But once there, I felt empowered, having them with me, and knowing it wasn’t just for me — it was for everyone, not just the Dreamers, but all 11 million,” said Barbara Hernandez who is an illegal alien teacher from California.

“What we’re trying to remind people is that they’re the ones who shape a Democracy, and it’s their voices that shape what the future is,” said yoga instructor Hector Martinez.

Well no, actually, illegal aliens don’t have a say in shaping our democracy. We are a nation of laws and they are breaking several of them. They definitely don’t get to change our laws to accommodate their complete lack of respect for those laws. To be honest, I’m a little leery about letting people who teach yoga for a living have a say in our democracy.

The participants of this 4-person protest think it was such a roaring success that they plan on taking it on the road:

“Today was successful in that we were able to remind the immigrant community that they don’t have to live in fear,” said Martinez.

Ahamed said they’re planning to protest in Washington, D.C., in December.

They got 4 people to show up to an anti-Trump protest in the biggest most liberal city in the country. If that’s a success, what do they think failure looks like? Did anyone even notice them?

Follow Brian Anderson on Twitter

Liberal environmentalist non-profits are urging people to eat organic, consume less meat, and consider the carbon footprint of their Thanksgiving feast, the Baltimore Sun reports.

The Center for Food Safety cites University of Manchester researchers’ claim that a turkey and all-the-trimmings meal for eight people produces 44 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions. And the life of the bird at the center of the table contributes about 60 percent of that planet-warming gas.

The Baltimore Sun’s Meredith Cohn and Tim Wheeler wrote:

And [those figures don’t] include drinks.

Leave it to the Brits to rain on our traditions. But it was brought to my attention by the Washington-based Center for Food Safety, which wants Americans to lay off food produced by “industrial agriculture” for the sake of the planet, if not their health.

“Choosing the type of food we eat – organic versus conventional meats and veggies, makes a great difference in greenhouse gas emissions,” Debi Barker, the Center’s international director, said, adding that about 14 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions are connected to industrial agriculture methods, she contends.

“Our take on that is to empower ourselves,” Barker said. “If you’re buying organic, you’re really taking a bite out of climate [change].”

The Baltimore Sun also talked to Mike Tidwell, head of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network in Takoma Park, who said eating farm-raised meat, fish, or fowl — including turkeys —  is “high-impact” when it comes to climate change.

Tidwell said he is a vegetarian because of his concerns about climate change — except on Thanksgiving.

“You caught me, with my one exception,” Tidwell said.

Meanwhile, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies reported that climate change could cause problems for another Thanksgiving stable, the pumpkin.

Yale Climate Connections reported:

There’s a good chance the pumpkin in your Thanksgiving pie came from Morton, Illinois. This pumpkin paradise produces most of the nation’s holiday squash. But dark skies may loom ahead.

Pumpkins are fair weather fruit; squash rots in squishy fields. And in 2015, record rainfall put a big dent in canned pumpkin production. It was not the first time America’s top squash crop got soaked. And Illinois State Climatologist Jim Angel says it will not be the last.

“Probably our biggest concern right now and into the future is that we’ve been trending toward wetter conditions,” Angel said.

Some 100,000 tons of pumpkins are processed in Morton each year, according to the article.

“There are still more good years than bad. But pumpkin shortages could become more common as the climate continues to change.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is badly losing the war he is waging against his own party’s voters this Thanksgiving, a sign of the failed GOP leader’s waning power in the era of President Donald J. Trump.

Just over a couple weeks from now, conservative Judge Roy Moore is expected to defeat radical Democrat Doug Jones in Alabama’s special election for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by now Attorney General Jeff Sessions—and that is just the beginning of a larger wave brewing against McConnell. After Jones goes down, as polls indicate he will, and Moore is elected to the Senate, McConnell faces a rash of electoral events coming up next year that are likely to further destabilize his power structure in the Senate—all while struggling this year to get anything done for President Trump’s agenda.

McConnell’s last-ditch effort to stop Moore in Alabama came over the past couple weeks after evidence-free allegations against Moore allege he engaged in sexual misconduct decades ago. Within minutes of the allegations first appearing in the Washington Post, McConnell and his legion of Senate GOP allies called for Moore to “step aside.” But, upon further review, the allegations have not held up under scrutiny and the stories of the accusers have begun crumbling with actual reporting into the details of them. Gloria Allred, the attorney for one of them, has refused in interviews on CNN and MSNBC to deny that the only piece of evidence she offered to back up her claims—a yearbook she and her client claim Moore signed years ago—is a forgery.

McConnell has gone all out to try to stop Moore.

“Senate Republicans are running out of options in their effort to replace Roy Moore as the party’s nominee in the Alabama Senate race,” Alex Bolton wrote in The Hill this past weekend describing McConnell’s failed efforts. “In the past week, they tried to pressure Moore to drop out by siding with the women who accused him of sexual misconduct. He refused. They tried to coax President Trump into calling for Moore’s ouster. Trump declined. They tried to convince the Alabama Republican Party to disqualify Moore as the nominee or to schedule a new election. Those officials said no. They tried to find a write-in candidate to challenge Moore, but their first choice, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, signaled through allies he wasn’t interested. Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), went so far as to call for a vote to expel Moore from the Senate should he win the Dec. 12 special election. Nothing has worked. Moore is still in the race.”

Instead of succeeding in ousting Moore from the race, the entire attack has backfired. Moore has shot back repeatedly at McConnell on the campaign trail, reiterating his call for McConnell to step aside as Senate Majority Leader.

“This is an effort by Mitch McConnell and his cronies to steal this election from the people of Alabama,” Moore said at a news conference in Birmingham, Alabama, last week.

Meanwhile, President Trump has come forward and called out liberal Democrat Jones’ record—and emphasized that Moore has denied the allegations against him.

Alabama is the least of McConnell’s worries now. McConnell has failed to repeal and replace Obamacare. He is already facing difficulty in passing tax cuts. Both of those agenda items his House counterparts passed with ease. More than 300 bills that have passed the House this year languish in the McConnell-run Senate. But as next year rolls around, passing agenda items may be the least of McConnell’s concerns.

In elections across the country, McConnell-aligned forces are dropping like flies. McConnell spent more than $30 million attempting to prop up appointed incumbent Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL) in the Alabama special election only to have Moore smoke him on Sept. 26 by nearly double digits. That same day, McConnell ally Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN)—the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—announced his intent to retire next year. That cleared the way for conservative Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) to step up as the clear frontrunner for the U.S. Senate in Tennessee.

A couple weeks later, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) announced his intent to retire as well—clearing the way for former state senator Dr. Kelli Ward in Arizona. Blackburn and Ward are unlikely to just be handed their respective nominations—McConnell’s establishment forces are desperate to find alternatives to both of them—but are both likely to win.

Meanwhile, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) is likely to retire in Utah—setting the stage for a battle for control of that Senate seat between conservatives and the anti-Republican Party base potential candidate Mitt Romney. Romney, the failed GOP nominee for president in 2012, is a former governor of Massachusetts. After he lost the 2012 election, he turned on the GOP and pushed his former party to support amnesty for illegal aliens and back corporatist policies that would severely harm GOP voters. If Romney were to carpetbag into Utah to try to run for Senate there, it would spark a severe war inside the party—and lay all of Romney’s deep, dark financial history out to bare for the whole world to see.

Over in Mississippi, state Sen. Chris McDaniel—from whom McConnell allies stole the 2014 GOP nomination for Senate when McDaniel ran against Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) using underhanded tactics that backfired in 2016’s presidential primaries—is plotting a potential bid against Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS). McDaniel would be a formidable candidate against Wicker, and establishment forces close to McConnell in Washington, D.C., tell Breitbart News that the Senate Majority Leader is very worried about that race.

That then brings up Wyoming, where Blackwater founder Erik Prince is mulling a bid against incumbent Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY)—something that would likely be an easy win for Prince as Wyoming voters are some of the most conservative in the country. Then, of course, there is Nevada—where Danny Tarkanian is running against incumbent Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) in a state Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton won in 2016—causing even more worry for McConnell.

That’s not to mention other states like Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, where voters and GOP forces are aligning against McConnell en masse. Not one Senate candidate in 2018 is openly supporting McConnell remaining Majority Leader, as even top National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) recruits like Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, Ohio treasurer Josh Mandel, and Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA) understand the toxicity McConnell brings upon the party.

In Wisconsin, the clear frontrunner businessman Kevin Nicholson—who is running far ahead of the establishment-backed state Sen. Leah Vukmir—has openly called for new leadership in the GOP-led Senate. Vukmir, who has fallen behind Nicholson, has rebuked calls from her own party’s voters for fresh leadership different than McConnell.

That all doesn’t even begin to get into the issues McConnell faces as two of his more senior members, Cochran in Mississippi and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in Arizona, have serious health issues that could imperil their long-term service prospects. With establishment members under fire in both states–Flake has already stepped aside, and Wicker is likely to face a brutal primary challenge with little chance of victory–that presents an opportunity for conservatives who want fresh, new GOP leadership other than McConnell in the U.S. Senate to flip four seats instead of just two.

If McConnell fails to pass tax cuts this year, he is likely to face an even more unforgiving electorate next year. But even if he does pass tax cuts, the voters across America are unlikely to give him any breaks at the polls when his allies face the fire and Republicans pushing for fresh leadership win in landslides.

A New Jersey woman has raised more than $200,000 for a homeless man in Philadelphia who previously bought her gasoline when she unexpectedly ran out.

Kate McClure, a 27-year-old from New Jersey, told the Inquirer that as she was traveling to Philadelphia to visit a friend, her car suddenly ran out of gasoline. McClure said she was nervous and scared, as the neighborhood where her car stopped was sketchy.

“My heart was beating out of my chest,” McClure said. “I didn’t know what the heck to do.”

After calling her boyfriend, 38-year-old Mark D’Amico, who promised to come get her, McClure said a homeless man named Johnny approached her car to help.

The Inquirer notes:

They learned he is Johnny Bobbitt Jr., 34, from the Raleigh, N.C., area. He was an ammunition technician in the Marines. His Facebook page includes photos and posts that trace a romantic relationship from its happier days to its 2014 breakup.  He studied hard while training to be a paramedic and then worked long shifts, according to his Facebook posts, where a smiling Johnny stands tall in front of a medical rescue helicopter. In August 2014, Johnny posted that he aspired to be a flight nurse.

According to McClure, Johnny — who takes care of two other men under a bridge in the area — told her to lock her car doors and that he would return.

Johnny told her to sit tight and that he would spend his last $20 to buy gas a few blocks away. “He said, ‘I’ll be back. Trust me,’” McClure told the Inquirer.

Ten minutes after speaking with McClure, Johnny returned with a gallon of gas that he had bought with his last $20.

“She called me and said the guy brought her gas,” said D’Amico.

Though McClure and D’Amico continued passing through to see Johnny in Philadelphia, they still felt they could do more. That is when they decided to fundraise to help change Johnny’s life, setting up a GoFundMe page that has far exceeded the $10,000 goal the couple originally set.

Johnny told McClure that he is interested in working at the Robbinsville, New Jersey, Amazon warehouse so he can get health benefits and make a decent living.

“He knows where he’s at and he knows what he has to do to dig himself out,” D’Amico told the Inquirer. “It’s almost impossible to dig himself out if he has nobody and nothing. If we can raise enough money to set him up for a few months, where he doesn’t have to worry about where he’s going to sleep and what he’s going to eat, then he can get a job and go about his life.”