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(WBNG) -- The U.S. Department of Education is investigating Binghamton University for a possible violation of freedom of speech and the Higher Education Act.

In November of 2019, College Republicans were hosting a tabling event in a common space on campus. They say they were distributing information about a visiting speaker.

The Department of Education says in this report, another unaffiliated group was nearby, displaying signs of support for the second amendment. This caused approximately 200 students to protest, and destroy material from the College Republicans.

The report says Binghamton University allegedly did not protect freedom of speech rights for College Republicans, and knew that protests would disrupt events hosted by the group.

You can read the statement sent to 12 News from Binghamton University below:

"As an institution of higher education, Binghamton University iscommitted to freedom of speech, academic inquiry, and the exchange ofideas as part of our mission. Binghamton University maintains that weacted consistently with this mission and with the requirements of theFirst Amendment and the Higher Education Act, and we will respond tothe investigation accordingly."

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Binghamton University to be investigated by the US Department of Education - WBNG-TV

North Carolina is once again a presidential battleground, but there are also other races on the ballot, including the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.

With early voting kicking off Oct. 15 in North Carolinaincluding an on-campus early voting place at the Karsh Alumni and Visitors CenterThe Chronicle has pulled together information on other national and statewide races that youll find on your ballot if voting in Durham.

The ballot will also include judicial races in North Carolina, county offices and candidates for the states General Assembly. Information on General Assembly candidates can be found in One Vote N.C.s voter guide.

All eyes are on the Senate race, where Republican incumbent Thom Tillis, a first-term senator, is running against Democratic challenger Cal Cunningham, a former state senator. With millions raised by both sides, the race has become one of the most expensive and closely watched contests in the countryand for good reason.

The outcome could determine whether Democrats gain control of the Senate. If the Democratic presidential ticket loses, denying Democrats the vice presidency, they need at least four seats to flip the chamber.

A self-described common-sense fiscal conservative, Tillis has emphasized his record of cutting taxes, supporting small businesses and increasing jobs. Cunningham, an Army Reserve veteran, has promised to tackle corruption in the capital and to extend healthcare coverage.

On Oct. 2, the race was thrown into turmoil when Tillis announced he had tested positive for the coronavirus and Cunningham admitted to sending sexually explicit text messages to a woman who is not his wife. Still, in an era of sharp political polarization, its uncertain whether the sexting scandal will sway votersthe latest polls largely still show Cunningham with a single-digit lead. After being cleared from isolation by a doctor, Tillis returned to Washington on Tuesday to attend the hearings for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.

Also running are Constitution Party candidate Kevin Hayes and Libertarian Party candidate Shannon Bray:

Durham County is split between North Carolinas 1st and 4th Congressional Districts. Both districts are rated Solid Democratic by the Cook Political Report and are seen as unlikely to swing right.

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The 1st is currently represented by Democrat G.K. Butterfield, who has served in the House since a special election in 2004. Hes being challenged by Sandy Smith, whose website describes her as a Pro-Trump and Pro-America conservative.

The 4th is represented by Democrat David Price, who has served in the House since 1987 with the exception of one term in the 1990s, when he won back the seat two years after losing it to a former Raleigh police chief. Republican challenger Robert Thomas lists three main issues on his website: the Second Amendment, the Constitution and the wall.

1st district

4th district

Democrat Roy Cooper, the incumbent governor, is being challenged by Republican Dan Forest, the current lieutenant governor, as well as Libertarian Steven DiFiore and Constitution Party candidate Steven J. Fiore. In recent polls, Cooper has led Forest by 5 to 8%. The gubernatorial debate is Wednesday, Oct. 14 at 7 p.m.

While in office, Cooper has issued a Clean Energy Plan and executive orders implementing paid parental leave and banning workplace discrimination. He also worked with bipartisan congressional leaders to repeal House Bill 2, the controversial bathroom law that played a major role in Coopers election, also according to his campaign site.

Forests platform includes defending the Second Amendment, putting armed security guards in schools, combating illegal immigration and raising teacher pay.

Coopers coronavirus response plan features prominently in the dialogue regarding the election, with Forest hosting numerous in-person campaign events and promising to loosen restrictions if elected. Forest has called for the reopening of all public schools without a mask requirement.

There is no incumbent in the race for lieutenant governor, with Forest stepping down to run for governor against Cooper.

Republican Mark Robinson, a former small-business owner and manufacturing worker, rose to prominence as a gun-rights activist in 2018 and is only the second Black Republican candidate for statewide office in North Carolina in the past 120 years, according to records reviewed by The News & Observer.

Robinson has been criticized in recent days for Facebook posts in which he makes derogatory comments about transgender people, Muslims and others. He has said he will not apologize for comments posted to Facebook in the past several years and has denied that the posts are offensive.

Democrat Yvonne Holley, if elected, would be only the second woman to serve as N.C. lieutenant governor. She has served in the state House of Representatives since 2013 after working in state government.

Either would become the first Black lieutenant governor in state history, and an East Carolina University poll from early October found the two in a dead heat, tied at 45% each.

The main roles of the North Carolina secretary of state are to foster economic growth, ensure adequate levels of corporate transparency and provide infrastructure for business transactions.

The NC Office of the State Auditor is responsible for conducting account inspections for all state government bodies.

The responsibilities of the N.C. Department of the State Treasurer include the administration of health-care and retirement programs for state employees, as well as the provision of fiscal advising to local governments.

The attorney general represents the state government in legal affairs, serves as the primary legal counsel to the General Assembly and the governor and manages criminal appeals from state trial courts.

The superintendent of public instruction oversees the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction and works with policymakers to promote the interests of the states public school systems.

The state labor commissioner is responsible for regulating workplace conditions, conducting health and safety inspections and otherwise promoting the wellbeing of North Carolinas workforce.

For more election coverage from across North Carolina, visit One Vote North Carolina, a collaborative between The Chronicle and six other student newspapers that aims to help college students across the state navigate the November election.

Originally posted here:
The Chronicle's guide to national, statewide races on the ballot in Durham - Duke Chronicle

Gun-rights groups understandably are upsetthat a Louisiana public school punished a fourth-grade student after a teacher saw a BB gun in the boy's bedroom during a video classroom session. That was an absurd case of political correctness, given that the gun merely was in the background. It reflects infuriating anti-gun bias.

Now contrast many gun activists' reactionor apparent lack thereofto a more significant gun-related issue that grabbed headlines the same week. A grand jury in Louisville gave a wrist slap to officers who killed Breonna Taylor during a raid at her home. The African-American medical worker hadn't done anything wrong. The drug-related warrant, which spurred the raid, apparently involved her former boyfriend.

I scoured the internet and found little outrage from gun-rights groups and supporters. Yet the Taylor caseas well as the issue of police raids and police militarization, in generalposes a real risk to Americans' Second Amendment rights. They also pose risks to our other constitutional rights, such as protection against government searches and seizures, and the requirement for due process.

Heavily armed, black-clad SWAT officers conduct thousands of these raids each year, with many of them botched and some even taking place at the wrong address. As The New York Times recently explained, Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, were in bed and heard banging. Police say that they announced themselves before busting down the door with a battering ram, but Walker said he didn't hear that announcementand feared the intruder was Taylor's ex-boyfriend.

Walker fired his gun, hitting a sergeant in the thigh. One officer reportedly fired 10 rounds blindly into the apartment, while others fired five rounds at Taylor, killing her. Dispatch logssuggestthe officers waited 20 minutes before providing medical assistance to Taylor. Police found no drugs in the apartment, according to the family lawyer. The grand jury indicted one officer for "wanton endangerment," but filed no charges against the others. One officer was fired.

Authorities dropped attempted-murder charges against Walker, but they typically file such charges against citizens who use firearms when the intruders turn out to be officers.

"In theory, no-knock raids are supposed to be used in only the most dangerous situations," per a 2015 Voxreport. "In reality, though, no-knock raids are a common tactic, even in less-than-dangerous circumstances." It noted that 80 percent of them involve the execution of a simple search warrant. (A judge had issued a no-knock warrant in the Taylor raid, even though it later was amended to a knock-and-announce warrant.)

Gun-rights supporters argue correctly that Americans should be free to own firearms to protect themselves. When the government employs these police-state tactics, how can you reasonably know that the people plowing through your door aren't criminals who want to kill your family? In my view, such raidswhether "no knock" or "knock and announce"also pose a grave risk to Americans' Second Amendmentprotections (as well as to police who conduct them).

The late San Jose police chief, Joe McNamara, worried that police agencies increasingly send SWAT teams to homes to deal with relatively minor incidents if they suspect that the person owns a firearm. With California'sreporting system, any gun owner could be subject to a SWAT raid solely because they have availed themselves of this legal right. After all, it's easy for the authorities to know if you own a weapon.

During a 2018 hearing about proposed gun restrictions at the Maryland House of Delegates, one gun-rights advocatetoldUSA Today, "The Second Amendment is not about hunting. It is not about competitiveshooting. The Second Amendment is about self-defense. It's about being able to stop people who would do you harm, whether that's a criminal or the government."

Gun-rights supporters are on point with this argument, which one can easily confirm by perusing the Founding Fathers' statements about gun ownership. Yet in most of these police-shooting cases, the loudest Second Amendment supporters go silent. Few of them issued any substantive comment after a Minnesota police officer in 2016 shot to deathPhilandro Castile, who had told the officer he had a licensed firearm in his possession.

The fundamental problem is rooted in the nation's endless drug war, which in turn has led police agencies to behave more militaristically. "Simply put, the police culture has changed,"wroteMcNamara in a 2006 Wall Street Journal column. "An emphasis on 'officer safety' and paramilitary training pervades today's policing, in contrast to the older culture, which held that cops didn't shoot until they were about to be shot or stabbed."

Racial disparities certainly matter, but I believe that cultural change is the impetus for ongoing police-brutality protests. Those Americans who support the right to private firearms ownershipand the groups that claim to speak for usneed to speak out about this threatto our liberties. Quite frankly, it's a far bigger problem than schools that foolishly suspend kids for having a BB gun within view of the video camera.

This column was first published in The Orange County Register.

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The Police Tactics That Caused Breonna Taylor's Death Should Infuriate Second Amendment Advocates - Reason

Layers and details involved in the plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer are still unfolding 24 hours after the federal case was announced.

We are learning more about the men arrested in Antrim County.

Some of the men involved in that investigation were part of the April Second Amendment rally in Lansing.

The picture below was posted by a downstate senator back on April 30.

The first, third and fourth men in this picture were arrested for their roles in the plot against the governor.

The man on the far right is William Null, one of the four men charged in Antrim.

The April rally ended with many storming the Capitol building to protest the governors response to the coronavirus crisis.

The investigation spans 18 communities with 13 people arrested.

Court documents show this investigation took months of work by investigators and informants inside the two militia groups.

The federal complaint shows the group had several plans to kidnap Governor Whitmer.

Those plans included:

The FBI says they were communicating through an encrypted group chat and using code words to avoid detection.

The group had this all planned to happen before the November election.

They wanted to try her in Wisconsin for treason because they were upset with her actions during the coronavirus pandemic.

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Man Charged in Antrim Co. for Plot to Kidnap Governor Attended 2nd Amendment Rally in Lansing - 9&10 News

With only a few weeks until Election Day, voters are feverishly hearing from candidates running for offices from your local town board to president of the United States.

Though rallies, town halls and campaigning are mostly virtual this election season, candidates are articulating their visions and appealing to voters interests. As an electorate, we are being demographically portioned into groups the suburban voter, the millennial voter and the Second Amendment voter.

However, one major constituency is not being highlighted in the current debate, which is why, as a pediatrician, I plan to vote like childrens futures depend on it in November. Children are 20% of the population but 0% of the vote, and their problems dont get addressed unless physicians, parents, teachers and those who care for kids make their issues our own.

Nothing is more fundamental to child health than health insurance and the ability to see a doctor when your child is ill. For healthy children, insurance coverage allows kids to access preventive care like autism screening, vision/hearing/dental screening and life-saving immunizations.

But while the current Covid pandemic has highlighted disparities in childrens access to internet and quality virtual education, long-standing income-based gaps in childrens health insurance coverage have gone largely unnoticed.

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Another Voice: Cast a vote for kids and ensure Medicaid is protected - Buffalo News