Tag: republicans

New House Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul Is a Standard Old-School Interventionist

For those who hoped the new Republican-led and Trump-approved House of Representatives under Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R–Calif.) might promote some of the better aspects of MAGA-ism, such as a foreign policy that recognized the mistakes of the past three decades, and charter a less bellicose and controlling path for the U.S. abroad, the ascension of Rep. Michael McCaul (R–Texas) to chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee should be unpleasant cold water.

While the Trumpian strain in the GOP is supposed to favor a radical rethink of the U.S. mission to find and combat foreign adversaries with every sort of intervention, involvement, and pressure even if short of direct troop deployment, McCaul retains an older sense of an abiding American mission to shape the world to our desires and “interests.”

McCaul:

• is an enthusiastic supporter of U.S. military aid to Ukraine and helping ensure Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian leaders face war crimes tribunals;

• is fighting to raise the political costs of ending foreign interventions by an attack investigation on President Joe Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal (which was following through on Trump’s intentions) and insists the U.S. must even now “hold the Taliban accountable for their appalling actions”;

• wants to make sure the U.S. is optimally aggressive in supporting Taiwan against China, including “strategic, long-term security assistance well in advance of conflict in order to effectively deter, and, when necessary, to respond to, acts of aggression”;

• wants more U.S. pressure on Nicaragua;

• is angry that Biden “has backed away from the goal of North Korea’s complete denuclearization [and] failed to make the security commitments to the Indo-Pacific that its own National Defense Strategy demands”;

• demands “immediate action to combat and deter the proliferation of Iran’s conventional and non-conventional weapons, including through the use of sanctions and enforcement of U.S. export controls”;

• legislates to ensure the U.S. keeps an eye on foreign lands’ “freedom of expression…with respect to electronic information”;

• and had been a loud voice in opposition to former President Donald Trump’s plans to lessen U.S. presence in Syria.

While McCaul thankfully isn’t making open calls to immediately send in the troops to solve all the world’s problems, he is a largely pre-Trump Republican when it comes to foreign policy, eagerly demanding to keep U.S. money, arms, and pressure at play in as many foreign fields as he can survey.

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Louisiana’s new law requiring age verification on adult websites is driving uptake of digital ID

Downloads of Louisiana’s state digital ID app have substantially increased because of a new Republican law requiring adult websites to verify the age of visitors with ID.

Since Dec. 31, the day before the law took effect, downloads of LA Wallet increased from a daily average of between 1,200 and 1,500 to over 5,000.

The increase in downloads and site visits coincided with the Jan. 1 implementation of the state law requiring adult websites to verify the age of visitors or be held responsible for distributing harmful content to children.

The law was sponsored by Republican state Rep. Laurie Schlegel, who said that she saw the harm caused by pornographic content while working as a couples therapist and decided that websites should start requiring users to show ID.

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Wife of Prominent GOP Activist Accused of Shooting, Killing Husband

The wife of a prominent local Republican activist in New Jersey is in jail after police arrested her for fatally shooting her husband on Christmas Day. Prosecutors claim that Marylue Wigglesworth, 51, shot her husband David Wigglesworth at the couple’s Mays Landing home.

Fox News reported further that the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office said that police arrived to find David Wigglesworth, 57, dead from an apparent gunshot wound. His wife is now in jail at the Atlantic County Justice Facility.

“The slain man had been involved in local politics. He ran as a Republican for the Township Committee in 2019 but lost. He also served on the Planning Board and volunteered for the Boys & Girls Club of Atlantic City, according to New Jersey 101.5,” Fox News noted. “The couple share an adult son, WPG Talk Radio reported. Police did not disclose a motive for the slaying. Photos on Marylue Wigglesworth’s Facebook page show a smiling, affectionate couple.”

“I cannot believe this,” one local wrote regarding the incident on Facebook, the New York Post reported. “We’ve known Dave and Mary for years…This just can’t be true.”

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ANOTHER NASTY SURPRISE: GOP Sellouts Gave Biden Regime $11 MILLION to Target Gun Owners in Repulsive Omnibus Bill

We all are accustomed by now to the GOP treating conservatives like Chip Diller in Animal House (Thank you sir, may I have another!). So naturally the RINO sellouts in Congress decided to hand our God-given 2nd Amendment rights over to the most anti-gun regime in American history.

Gun Owners of America went through the 4,000+ page omnibus package and uncovered $11 million worth of weaponry to oppress law-abiding gun owners. 

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Still More Juicy Stuff on the New GOP Congressman Who Lied About Everything

Perhaps you saw The New York Times’s exposé on incoming Republican Congressman George Santos from the Empire State. He’s a total unknown who in November managed to flip one of a handful of House seats nationally in the fingernail-chewing battle for control of the House of Representatives. 

And, as we shall see, there is less to the man than meets the eye.  

I’d read up on Santos right after the election, and noted his consequential victory and a  historical first: Both the Republican and his Democratic opponent, Robert Zimmerman, whom he narrowly beat, are openly gay. It is the first time this has ever happened in the country. 

It also didn’t happen where one might expect. New York’s 3rd Congressional District, one of the wealthiest in the country, runs along Long Island’s North Shore, includes a bit of Queens, leans conservative, and is graced with the Gatsby-esque old-money mansions of the “Gold Coast.” All this just a short distance from the Gomorrahs of Manhattan, Fire Island, and the Hamptons. 

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Mystery surrounding Republican Rep.-elect George Santos who flipped a House seat on Long Island: There are ‘no records’ at big banks where he said he worked, college he said he attended, or of properties ‘wealthy’ candidate says he owns

Republican Rep.-elect George Santos comes to Congress in January with a degree from Baruch College and stints at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, according to his campaign biography. 

But a New York Times investigation revealed Monday that nobody by Santos’ name, or a deviation of it, graduated in 2010 from Baruch. 

Nobody at Citigroup nor Goldman Sachs had a record of Santos working at their offices. 

The Times’ reporters couldn’t even track down the Long Island Republican where he said he lives. 

Journalists went to where Santos is registered to vote and the address associated with a campaign donation he made in October, but the woman living at that address said Sunday she was not familiar with Santos. 

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Bipartisan Bill Would Let Americans Voluntarily Give Up Gun Rights

Congress is trying to pass a bill to allow the federal government to pressure people to give up their Second Amendment rights in the name of suicide prevention. At the same time, newly released documents show multiple federal law enforcement agencies have effectively done this to people without congressional approval.

On Thursday, Gun Owners of America (GOA), put all its evidence online that shows the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has permanently disarmed people. The gun rights group is lobbying on Capitol Hill to stop this practice from being codified.

The bipartisan bill called the “Preventing Suicide Through Voluntary Firearm Purchase Delay Act” passed the Judiciary Committee last week. It says the FBI would create a new database for people who volunteer to be blocked from buying or possessing a gun. The “delay” in the bill title refers to the period from which the person put themselves into the database and potentially subsequently took themselves out of it.

The FBI program, which claims it ended in 2019, and the House bill both use a “self-submission” program to make people prohibited who could not be blocked from having a gun under current law. The Brady Law of 1993 created the NICS system of background checks to help enforce the nine prohibited categories of people (from the Gun Control Act of 1968 ) from buying guns.

The House bill would upend federal background check gun law by making it arbitrary who loses the right to own or buy a gun. Under current law, a person is prohibited from buying or owning a firearm for mental health reasons only due to being adjudicated as mentally defective or involuntarily committed to a mental institution. The House bill makes it so people in this new FBI database who have not experienced these situations would still be committing a federal crime by possessing a gun.

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The Porn Industry Is Worried That a Republican Senator Wants to Ban Porn

Some members of the adult industry are worried that a prorposed federal bill that’s going after content that aims to “arouse, titillate, or gratify” sexual desires has the potential to outlaw porn nationwide.

This week, Republican Sen. Mike Lee, from Utah, introduced the Interstate Obscenity Definition Act (IODA), which seeks to “establish a national definition of obscenity that would apply to obscene content that is transmitted via interstate or foreign communications,” according to a statement from Lee’s office. 

Technically, a federal standard that defines obscenity already exists. Under the decades-old Miller Test, content is obscene if it hits certain conditions, including that the content in question depicts sexual conduct “in a patently offensive way.” At the moment, producing and distributing sexual content is legal in the U.S. 

The Free Speech Coalition, a trade association for workers in the adult industry, and its members are watching Lee’s bill closely because they believe it represents yet another attempt by conservatives to censor speech and expression about sex. 

Lee “introduced a bill that would remove porn’s First Amendment protections and effectively prohibit distribution of adult material in the US,” Free Speech Coalition (FSC) tweeted. “FSC is monitoring the bill, and will continue to do so in the new Congress.”

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