Mediaboss Marketing

Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), as well as other senators including Ron Wyden, Rand Paul, Edward Markey, Elizabeth Warren, Mike Lee, Cory Booker, and Steve Daines have sent a bi-partisan letter to the United States Postal Services and they want answers. At stake is your privacy contained in letters, shipments and other parcels that travel through the mail system each and every day.

Last week, Senator Lummis tweeted, We cannot allow the federal government to be weaponized to violate the privacy of the people of Wyoming.

The letter calls for stronger protections for the privacy of Americans letters and packages, according to a press release.

So how is the USPS possibly snooping through your correspondence? Even though a private citizen may not have their mail examined without a warrant under the law, there could be a way that the Senators are worried may be exploited by the postal service. The loophole, although not explicitly defined, could happen when those who send and receive packages are tracked in a process called mail covers.

What these covers do is allow the government to see the types of letters and correspondence private citizens are receiving.

The press release states, While mail covers do not reveal the contents of correspondence, they can reveal deeply personal information about Americans political leanings, religious beliefs or causes they support.

What the Senators are worried about is that this method of surveillance is a violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution. The First Amendment guarantees the right to freedom of speech as well as the establishment of religion. Senator Lummis and her colleagues are also claiming that the government doesnt have the right to watch or monitor these activities, but its not necessarily clear what law actually defends that assumption.

We cannot allow the federal government to be weaponized to violate the privacy of the people of Wyoming, Lummis clearly says in a statement. Government surveillance needs to be conducted within the guidelines of the Constitution and fully transparent to the public. Federal agencies do not have the authority to grant themselves loopholes to trample on the freedom of the people of Wyoming.

An audit by the Office of the Inspector General has revealed that government agencies sought information on more than 100,000 mail records from 2010-2014, according to the press release.

Senator Lummis and the other politicians are demanding the USPIS reform its regulations and better protect Americans privacy from the mail covers. Lummis added government agencies should only conduct mail covers with a federal warrant, which is the current policy for inspecting contents of mail.

The U.S. Postal System and the United States Postal Inspection Service was founded by Benjamin Franklin back in 1775, under the Second Continental Congress, on August 7th. That is the established birth date of the United States Postal Inspection Service. The USPIS or United States Postal Inspection Service, enforces over 200 federal statutes related to crimes that involve the postal system, its employees, and its customers, its website states. [Their] Postal Inspectors are federal law enforcement officers who carry firearms, make arrests, execute federal search warrants, and serve subpoenas. Over 1200 Inspectors enforce roughly 200 federal laws covering crimes that include fraudulent use of the U.S. Mail and the postal system.

Senator Lummis took to Twitter to express her concern. If the government wants to look at your mail, they need to get a warrant.

The federal inspection of mail hasa long history of documented abuses committed through postal surveillance. In 1976, it was discovered that the CIA had documented 2 million pieces of mail and opened hundreds of thousands of letters from prominent activists and authors all without a warrant.

The Senators are requesting statistics on how much sealed mail is opened and inspected by USPIS and the United States Postal Service on an annual basis.

Read more here:
Wyoming Senator Lummis Wants Answers From USPS | Big Horn ... - mybighornbasin

SOUTHGATE, Ky. - Forty-six years to the day of the tragic fire that claimed 165 lives at the Beverly Hills Supper Club, a permanent memorial was dedicated Sunday in a moving ceremony that inspired memories of the deceased and tributes to those who fought the fire and tended to the injured.

We gather here today to remember those who lost their lives 46 years ago today, said Southgate Mayor Jim Hamberg. I pray this Memorial will give their families, friends and loved ones some peace and a place to come and remember because we must never forget, and we never will, what happened on that fateful and tragic night.

The memorial includes the names of those who lost their lives in the 1977 fire.

The Beverly Hills Memorial was dedicated along U.S. 27 at Memorial Pointe Drive before a crowd estimated at 300 on the anniversary of the 1977 fire. Moments of silence, prayers and the solemn sound of a bagpipe provided the backdrop for an emotional and appropriate afternoon of remembrance.

We also gather today to give thanks to the many firefighters, police officers, first responders, Red Cross workers, and volunteers who did their best and gave everything they could to save as many lives as possible, Mayor Hamberg said.

Southgate Volunteer Fire Department Chief JohnBeatschwas a young volunteer firefighter who was among the hundreds of first responders who fought the fire, helped care for the injured and ultimately saved many lives.

I think I can speak for the firefighters who were there, when I say that May 28, 1977, was the worst day of our firefighting career, ChiefBeatschsaid. But I believe it was also our finest hour.Every firefighter who was there either risked their life or was willing to risk their life to try and save those trapped. Over 2,000 patrons got out alive.

Even when it was clear that no one left in the building could be saved, firefighters went back into the building over and over to try and remove the bodies of those who perished, he said. To this day, that haunts all of us who were there. It always will.

David Brock of Independence was an 18-year-old bus boy at Beverly Hills the night of the fire. For more than four decades, he has been a tireless advocate for remembering those who died in the fire as well as the family, loved ones and friends they left behind.

To me, this memorial represents closure, Brock said. It is important to have a place where the families and friends of those who died can go to remember those they lost. It is important for our community to make sure we never forget.

The Beverly Hills Memorialfeatures names of those who lost their lives; a list of local first responder units that responded to the fire; a list of the federal and state fire safety regulations that were implemented because of the fire; the recollections of a firefighter; and photos of the Beverly Hills Supper Club. The Memorial sitewill become a park maintained by the City of Southgate.

Among those involved on the memorial planning committee include Tim Rolf ofRolf Monument, Northern Kentucky first responders and community members and individuals with personal connections to the fire.

The 80-acre Beverly Hills property is currently being transformed into Memorial Pointe, a residential community being developed byAshley Builders Groupin conjunction withVision Realty Group. The companies provided the land and funding for the design and construction of the monument along with Fischer Homes, which is building homes in the development and provided for the landscape improvements.

When we started this project, we set out to create something special here, said Vision Realty Group Managing Partner Matt Olliges. We chose to name the community Memorial Pointe because we knew that honoring the history of this site, honoring the memory of the lives that were lost here and the lives that were forever changed as a result of what happened here with a permanent memorial would be of the utmost importance.

And we chose to place the memorial at the front entrance to the community as a way of making sure that what happened on this site is never forgotten.

Memorial Pointe will include 84 single-family homes, 200 luxury apartments and an assisted living facility of 79 residential units.

Also attending Sundays Memorial dedication were Commissioner of the Department for Local Government Dennis Keene, a Campbell County resident; Campbell County Judge-executive StevePendery; former Southgate Mayors Ron Blanchet, Ken Paul, who served as mayor the night of the fire; and current and former members of Southgate City Council.

Several elected officials and government bodies provided proclamations and resolutions recognizing and honoring the Memorial dedication, including:

Kentucky U.S. Sens. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul.

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, who represents Kentuckys 4th Congressional District.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear.

Kentucky State Sen. Shelley Funke-Frommeyerand the Kentucky Senate.

Kentucky State Rep. Rachel Roberts and the Kentucky House of Representatives.

Campbell County Fiscal Court.

Visit link:
Beverly Hills Memorial dedicated on 46th anniversary of fatal fire - Kentucky Today

FIRST ON FOX: Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul will release a book later this year that focuses on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, and argues that former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases' director Dr. Anthony Fauci deceived the world about the disease.

The book is called "Deception: The Great CovidCoverup" and will be released in October by Regnery Publishing, a Salem Media Group company and the publisher of numerous conservative books.

"Covid-19 was deadly, but the real killer was the cover-up, led by Anthony Fauci Americas most durable medical bureaucrat who knew from the beginning the virus was likely genetically engineered and possibly leaked from a lab," Paul said in a statement in the publisher's news release. "He knew because hed skirted regulations and funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan and elsewhere. We cant allow Fauci and his yes-men to walk away from what theyve done, or the next pandemic may be far worse."

SEN. RAND PAUL ACCUSES FAUCI OF COLLUDING WITH TEACHERS UNION TO PROMOTE 'HYSTERIA' AROUND SCHOOL REOPENINGS

Sen. Rand Paul will release a book later this year that focuses on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases' director Dr. Anthony Fauci's role in the process. (Regnery Publishing, Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

"Wielding previously unimaginable power, Anthony Fauci misled the country about the origins of theCovid pandemic and shut down scientific dissent. One of the few leaders who dared to challenge'Americas Doctor' was Senator Rand Paul, himself a physician. Deceptionis his indictment ofthe catastrophic failures of the public health bureaucracy during the pandemic," Regnery said of the book in a press release.

Paul has consistently taken aim at Fauci for his role in the COVID-19 pandemic response, and has criticized the health official for the NIAID's involvement with the Wuhan, China, lab that studied coronaviruses.

Dr. Anthony Fauci responds to questions from Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., at a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on January 11, 2022 in Washington, D.C. (Greg Nash-Pool/Getty Images)

Last month, Paul accused Fauci of being culpable of "one of the worst judgment errors" in his handling of COVID by pushing for the funding "gain of function" research in China.

RAND PAUL BLASTS FAUCI AFTER FREEZE-OUT ALLEGATIONS: A FACT FAUCI CONVINCED SCIENTISTS TO CHANGE MINDS

"I think Fauci deserves culpability and history is going to judge him very poorly because he made the judgment to fund this research. It's dangerous research. He doesn't want to call it gain of function, but most other scientists do call it gain of function in Wuhan in an opaque totalitarian country. And in the end, there was a leak from the lab and millions of people died worldwide. And this didn't happen sort of accidentally. The leak may have been accident, but the funding wasn't accidental," Paul said during an appearance on Fox and Friends in April.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., questions Dr. Anthony Fauci during a Senate hearing to examine the federal response to COVID-19 and emerging variants on Jan. 11, 2022 at Capitol Hill in Washington. (GREG NASH/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

"Tony Fauci actually went around the system. We had set up a system where there's a committee, they're supposed to go before a committee to judge whether this was dangerous and whether it should be funded. Tony Fauci exempted Wuhan from the committee. They never went before the committee. And this is extraordinary. The committee that was supposed to provide safety and review this, never looked at the research in Wuhan because Tony Fauci gave them exception. So the thing is, yes, he does bear responsibility for maybe one of the worst judgment errors in the history of modern medicine or modern public health to fund this dangerous research," he added.

Paul's book, which is now available for pre-order on Amazon, is slated to be released on October 10.

See the rest here:
Sen. Rand Paul takes aim at Dr. Fauci in new book focused on the COVID-19 'cover-up' - Fox News

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., on Sunday wouldn't commit to supporting a short-term extension of the debt ceiling and insisted on a "clean" debt ceiling lift, in an exclusive interview on Meet the Press, as congressional leaders remain in a gridlock to work out a deal.

Asked by NBC News' Chuck Todd whether he accepts the premise that Democrats won't get a clean debt ceiling hike, Jeffries said: I do not because we have a constitutional responsibility to make sure that we protect the full faith and credit of the United States of America."

Everyday Americans understand this principle: If you have a bill, you need to pay it, he added. If you fail to pay it. Its going to adversely impact your credit rating, your credit score will drop. If your credit score drops, your costs are going to go up and if America defaults on our bills, thats exactly what is going to happen. And everyone is going to pay the price.

The White House is weighing whether to broker a short-term extension of the debt ceiling to allow more time to pass alargerincrease, five sources familiar with the matter told NBC News last week a backstop with three weeks until the current deadline in June.

Jeffries argued that the only responsible action would be to help President Joe Biden raise the debt ceiling and avoid a default as Democrats did three times during the Trump administration.

Asked if a short-term fix is the best way forward, Jeffries said: Well, I dont think the responsible thing to do is to kick the can down the road when President Biden has been saying, for months the position of leader Schumer, the position of House Democrats has been we have to avoid a default."

"America should pay its bills. Protect the full faith and credit of the United States of America," he said.

House Republicans are pushing to attach spending cuts to a debt ceiling increase, while Democrats have hesitated to negotiate over whether to pay the countrys bills or default. Democrats, resistant to policy conditions, have insisted on a clean debt limit hike. They want Congress to negotiate over spending cuts that Republicans have demanded in the separate government funding process, which has a deadline of Sept. 30.

Jeffries said Democrats are open to discussing what types of investments, spending and revenues are appropriate to protect the health, safety and economic well-being of the American people.

Thats a process that is available to us right now, he said. I dont think we need to delay those discussions for a few months.

Jeffries remarks come before he and other congressional leaders are scheduled to meet with Biden this week to discuss the looming debt limit deadline, which could be as early as June 1.

The Biden administration agrees with Jeffries' remarks, saying that a short-term extension is "not our plan," a White House spokesperson said in a statement to NBC News.

"We are focused on removing the threat of default, which will erase our economic progress," the spokesperson added. "As the President has made clear, default is not negotiable.

The office of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Biden last week insisted that he will only accept a bill with no strings attached, as he dismissed Republicans demands for concessions ahead of the meeting on Tuesday with congressional leaders, including McCarthy, Jeffries, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

The president has said he plans to reiterate to the leaders during the meeting that they should do what every other Congress has done, that is pass the debt limit, avoid default.

Biden invited the lawmakers to the meeting hours after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned in a letter that the U.S. could breach the debt ceiling as soon as June 1, narrowing the timeline from the June 5 date she previously had set. Its common for the Treasury to adjust the date for when money runs dry based on fluctuating tax collections that can be tricky to predict.

Forty-three Senate Republicans, including leadership, on Saturday said in a letter to Schumer that they wont support a clean debt ceiling lift without spending cuts in a letter to Schumer.

In the letter, led bySen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, the Senate Republicans wrote that they're united behind their colleagues in the House in support of spending cuts and structural budget reform as a starting point for negotiations on the debt ceiling.

As such, we will not be voting for cloture on any bill that raises the debt ceiling without substantive spending and budget reforms, they wrote.

Only six Republicans in the chamber did not sign onto the letter, including Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Josh Hawley of Missouri.

With the absence of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Democrats would need 10 Republicans to join them in voting for a debt ceiling increase, which they already appear to fall short of. The letter from Senate Republicans, however, does not mention whether they would be open to a short-term fix.

The White House swiftly pushed back against Republicans call for attaching spending cuts to any debt limit increase.

At a moment when the country just posted historic jobs gains, this is no time for these Senators to reverse their support for avoiding default without conditions during the Trump presidency, White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement shared with NBC News.

They need to honor their Constitutional obligation to pay our bills and not unilaterally inflict a recession on the country, Bates added. The American people would not stand for that threat under any circumstances, but especially not to allow the draconian cuts in the House bill that would throw veterans, law enforcement, manufacturing workers, and sick children under the bus.

Summer Concepcion is a politics reporter for NBC News.

Julie Tsirkin and Mike Memoli contributed.

Continue reading here:
Hakeem Jeffries wont commit to a short-term debt ceiling deal - NBC News

One of the stranger features of the politics of the war in Ukraine is that the most vocal opposition to it tends to come from the hard right. In some ways, that right sounds like the hard left it used to oppose so fiercely.

On April 20, 19 Republican lawmakers, including Sens. Rand Paul, Mike Lee and J.D. Vance, sent a letter to President Joe Biden decrying "unlimited arms supplies in support of an endless war." Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis have each expressed their opposition to Western support for Ukraine (though the Florida governor seemed to walk his opposition back); both are keenly attuned to what they think will play well in GOP primaries.

Opposition also comes from what passes for an anti-war conservative intelligentsia. Peter Hitchens, the brother of Christopher Hitchens, is a fierce critic, as is Orbanist American writer Rod Dreher, whose manner of critique is "Russia is wrong, but ... ." Tucker Carlson routinely used his prime-time pedestal to disparage Volodymyr Zelenskyy, calling the Ukrainian president a "dictator" and comparing his dress style to that of the manager of a strip club. The Buchananite American Conservative is against the war on principle; the Trumpian Federalist is against it as a matter of political opportunism.

"While forcing his own people and those whose migration keeps the cartels supplied with the billions to buy military-grade weaponry to suffer murder, rape and other heinous crimes, Biden is abroad encouraging ongoing violence in Ukraine," wrote The Federalist's executive editor, Joy Pullmann, giving readers a taste of the quality of both her thinking and her prose.

Is there a coherent philosophical grounding for these anti-war conservatives? On the surface, no.

From Vietnam to Iraq, the anti-war left (both in the United States and abroad) tended to be united by a kind of instinctive pacifism, a belief that war was almost never the right answer. There has also often been a fair amount of anti-Americanism on the left the Chomskyite view that Washington's foreign policy is generally a force for neo-imperialism and rapacious capitalism.

But that's not the case with the anti-war right.

Some of the more dovish conservative voices on Ukraine, who fear that the war could set off a nuclear conflagration with Moscow, are uber-hawks when it comes to China: They argue that the resources we are pouring into Ukraine should be held in reserve for a looming battle with Beijing over Taiwan. They are also the same people who fault Biden's shambolic withdrawal from Afghanistan for making America seem weak, without appearing to be the least bit concerned about the signal that an American abandonment of Ukraine might also send.

Some of the Tuckerite conservatives who accuse Zelenskyy of illiberal policies in Ukraine such as banning pro-Russian political parties that could be expected to serve as Vladimir Putin's puppets in the event of a Russian military victory go out of their way to celebrate the illiberal policies of the government in Budapest, Hungary.

Some of the historical revisionists who embrace Putin's pretext for invasion that he was provoked by the West into coming to the defense of ethnic Russians who were "stranded" in a "Nazi" Ukraine after the breakup of the Soviet Union would never accept those arguments in any other context: They're the people who believe in the absolute inviolability of America's Southern border when it comes to the "invasion" of Latin American immigrants.

Much of this incoherence is partly explained via the George Costanza school of modern conservatism: If a Democrat is for it, they're against it.

But something darker is also at work. In Putin's cult of machismo; his suppression of political opposition; his "almost sublime contempt for truth" (Joseph Conrad's memorable line about Russian officialdom); his opportunistic embrace of religious orthodoxy; his loathing of "decadent" Western culture; his sneering indifference to international law; and, above all, his contempt for democratic and liberal principles, he represents a form of politics the Tuckerites glimpsed but never quite got in Trump's presidency.

It isn't new. In the 1930s, there was Ezra Pound and Charles Lindbergh and Diana and Oswald Mosley. The hard right's reverence for the principles of raw strength and unblinking obedience runs deep.

This is not true of every conservative. The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, remains firmly on Ukraine's side, as do the editorialists at The Wall Street Journal and National Review and even conservative firebrands like Mark Levin. A narrow plurality of Republican-leaning voters feel the same way. To tar the entire American right as pro-Putin is a slur, much as old right-wing allegations about liberal softness on communism used to be. But there's also more than a nugget of truth to it.

Certain conservative readers of this column will no doubt feel insulted and claim that it should be possible to oppose U.S. support for the war on strategic grounds without being labeled pro-Putin.

It's worth reminding them what George Orwell wrote in 1942 about the position of Western pacifists vis--vis Nazi Germany: "Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help that of the other."

The New York Times

More:
Opinion: The curious conservative case against defending Ukraine - Chattanooga Times Free Press