A Tennessee bill to be heard in the state senate Thursday would create a marriage class specifically for marriage between a man and a woman.
SB562/HB233 creates a “Record of Marital Contract at Common Law” to be filed by county clerks and establishes common law marriage in the state as “between one man and one woman,” according to an amended version of the bill.
In addition to creating a separate marriage class in the state, the bill also protects local officials from legal action. The bill states the attorney general would have to defend local officials and political subdivisions of the state against actions targeting them for their decision to issue or deny a marriage license.
The bill’s sponsor, Tom Leatherwood (R-Arlington) said the law being considered would add a new marriage option for Tennesseans. “So, all this bill does is give an alternative form of marriage for those pastors and other individuals who have a conscientious objection to the current pathway to marriage in our law.”
But missing from the bill are age requirements, opening the door for possible child marriages. Something the bill sponsor acknowledged during a Children and Family Affairs subcommittee. “There is not an explicit age limit,” Leatherwood said.
The bill would create a class specifically for marriage between a man and a woman. It would also protect local officials from legal action in denying a marriage license: https://t.co/C02JJP69bL
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Italy is to expel 30 Russian diplomats, Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio announced on Tuesday during a visit to Berlin.
He said the move was “for national security reasons.”
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told the state-owned news agency TASS that there would be a response from Moscow to the expulsions, without giving details.
Also Tuesday, Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod tweeted: “Denmark will expel 15 Russian intelligence officers working at the Russian embassy in Copenhagen. They pose a threat to our national security. It’s in our mutual interests to maintain diplomatic ties, but we will not accept Russian espionage on Danish soil.”
Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde announced at a press briefing Tuesday that the country would also expel three Russian diplomats, because “they have not acted in accordance with the Vienna Convention and conducted illegal intelligence activities in Sweden.”
Linde did not rule out more diplomats being sent back to Moscow, but said such a decision would have to be examined in light of Sweden’s interests in keeping diplomats in Russia.
Italy, Denmark and Sweden are the latest European countries to expel Russian diplomats. On Monday, the German government made a similar move and sent 40 diplomats back to Moscow, while France kicked out 35 diplomats, saying that their activities were “against our national interests.”
On Tuesday, France’s EU Minister Clément Beaune said that the expulsions “were already discussed and looked at” in consultation with other countries including Germany, but that it was “not only directly related to [the atrocities committed by Russian troops in] Bucha.”
Beaune added that “in some territories, there are people presented as diplomats who were, or could be, threatening our essential interests.”
Lithuania, meanwhile, expelled on Monday Russia’s ambassador to Vilnius and recalled its top envoy to Moscow, while Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs announced that his country will “tighten diplomatic relations with the Russian Federation,” but that details will be published “once internal procedures have been completed.”
Reacting to the moves, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told the state news agency TASS that "appropriate measures" will be taken by Moscow.https://t.co/2wXAwm2gqd
— Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (@RFERL) April 5, 2022
Republican politicians routinely claim that cities run by Democrats have been experiencing crime waves caused by failed governance, but a new study shows murder rates are actually higher in states and cities controlled by Republicans.
“We’re seeing murders in our cities, all Democrat-run,” former President Donald Trump asserted at a March 26 rally in Georgia. “People are afraid to go out.”
In February, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., blamed Democrats for a 2018 law that reduced some federal prison sentences — even though it was signed by Trump after passing a GOP-controlled Congress. “It’s your party who voted in lockstep for the First Step Act that let thousands of violent felons on the street who have now committed innumerable violent crimes,” Cotton said during a speech in the Senate.
Last December, Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, told Fox News viewers, “America’s most beautiful cities are indeed being ruined by liberal policies: There’s a direct line between death and decay and liberal policies.”
Former President Donald Trump speaks at a rally at a rally on March 26 in Commerce, Ga. (Megan Varner/Getty Images)
But a comparison of violent crime rates in jurisdictions controlled by Democrats and Republicans tells a very different story. In fact, a new study from the center-left think tank Third Way shows that states won by Trump in the 2020 election have higher murder rates than those carried by Joe Biden. The highest murder rates, the study found, are often in conservative, rural states.
The study found that murder rates in the 25 states Trump carried in 2020 are 40% higher overall than in the states Biden won. (The report used 2020 data because 2021 data is not yet fully available.) The five states with the highest per capita murder rate — Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Alabama and Missouri — all lean Republican and voted for Trump.
There are some examples of states Biden won in 2020 that also have high per capita murder rates, including New Mexico and Georgia, which have the seventh- and eighth-highest murder rates, respectively. And there are Trump-supporting states with low murder rates, such as Idaho and Utah. Broadly speaking, the South, and to a lesser extent the Midwest, has more murders per capita than the Northeast, interior West and West Coast, the study found.
Those findings are consistent with a pattern that has existed for decades, in which the South has had higher rates of violent crime than the nation as a whole.
Demonstrators march in Atlanta on April 14, 2021, to protest the shooting death of Daunte Wright three days earlier. (Megan Varner/Getty Images)
“We as criminologists have known this for quite some time,” Jennifer Ortiz, a professor of criminology at Indiana University Southeast, told Yahoo News. “States like Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama have historically had high crime rates.”
Criminologists say research shows higher rates of violent crime are found in areas that have low average education levels, high rates of poverty and relatively modest access to government assistance. Those conditions characterize some portions of the American South.
“They are among the poorest states in our union,” Ortiz said of the Deep South. “They have among the highest rates of child poverty. They are among the least-educated states. They are among the states with the highest levels of substance abuse. All of those factors contribute to people engaging in criminal behavior.”
“I thought that was a very good study,” Richard Rosenfeld, a professor of criminology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and former president of the American Society of Criminology, told Yahoo News about the Third Way report. “In Republican states, states with Republican governors, crime rates tend to be higher. I’m not certain that’s related to the fact that the governor is a Republican, but it’s a fact nonetheless.”
Police and emergency personnel work on a crime scene in Waukesha, Wis., in November 2021. (Jim Vondruska/Getty Images)
(While the Third Way study divided states by presidential vote in 2020, using gubernatorial party affiliation leads to similar results because most states have recently chosen the same party for governor and for president. Based on presidential vote, eight of the 10 states with the highest murder rates lean Republican, versus seven of the top 10 if one uses the governor’s party.)
Although murder rates tend to be highest in the South, the biggest increases in 2020 were found in the Great Plains and Midwest, according to Third Way. The largest jumps were in Wyoming (91.7% higher than in 2019), South Dakota (69%), Wisconsin (63.2%), Nebraska (59.1%) and Minnesota (58.1%). Wyoming, South Dakota and Nebraska all voted for Trump and have Republican governors. Wisconsin and Minnesota voted for Biden and are led by Democrats.
Few large cities are governed by Republicans — only 26 of the 100 largest U.S. cities have Republican mayors — making apples-to-apples comparisons difficult. But cities that do have Republican mayors do not have lower murder rates than similarly sized Democratic-led cities, the study found.
Some experts warn against the impulse to use crime data to score quick political points.
“Being a Republican or Democratic state or city is correlated with many other issues,” David Weisburd, a professor of criminology and executive director of the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy at George Mason University, wrote in an email to Yahoo News. “That means that the murder rate may be due to the state being Republican, or it may be due to the fact that Republican states have many other risk factors related to crime or murder rates. Even with a very comprehensive modeling of all of these factors, it is very difficult to get a valid causal result for explaining crime rates.”
Police tape blocks a street where a person was shot in a drug-related incident in Philadelphia in 2021. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
That argument cuts both ways, however. Weisburd also thinks the claims of Trump and other Republicans who say Democrats have caused a crime wave in the cities and states they govern are unfounded. “I don’t think this argument can be supported no matter which way you go,” Weisburd said.
Murder rates in the U.S. rose dramatically in 2020 from record lows, and the increases are similar across states — regardless of partisan preference. For homicides in 2020, Third Way found a 32.2% uptick in Trump-backing states versus a 30.8% rise in those that voted for Biden. Some states with large cities, such as New York and Pennsylvania, saw larger-than-average increases: New York went up 47% and Pennsylvania is up 39%. But the largest increases were in rural, Republican-led states, including Montana (+84%) and South Dakota (+81%).
The higher national murder rate is naturally causing public concern, although violent crime does remain far below its early 1990s high point. “Using the FBI data, the violent crime rate fell 49% between 1993 and 2019,” from 757 incidents per 100,000 people to 379 per 100,000, the Pew Research Center noted last November. Between 2019 and 2020, the murder rate jumped from 6 homicides per 100,000 people to 7.8 homicides per 100,000, but that was still 22% below the rate in 1991 of 10 homicides per 100,000.
Yesterday, I sat through first day of jury selection in the trial for my daughters killer. Since her murder, my mission is to reduce gun violence. Never should have been a partisan fight. Simply put, Republican states are deadlier & they need to change.https://t.co/uol9NUOr3E
“The 5 states with the highest per capita murder rate — Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Alabama and Missouri — all lean Republican. Broadly speaking, the South, and to a lesser extent the Midwest, has more murders per capita than the Northeast and West.” https://t.co/1SI8ZFvk52
House Republican Study Committee (RSC) Chairman Jim Banks (R-IN) wrote in a letter to Disney CEO Bob Chapek he will fight to rescind Mickey Mouse’s copyright renewal over the megacorporation’s LGBT campaign.
Banks wrote to Chapek as the Mickey Mouse copyright will expire on January 1, 2024. Given Disney’s opposition to Gov. Ron Desantis’s Parental Rights in Education Act, and its push to include as “many, many many LGBTQIA characters in its stories,” he cannot support an extension of its copyrights.
Banks explained that Congress had repeatedly extended Disney’s copyright due to intense lobbying from Disney. Now, Disney could lose its copyright renewal when Republicans are slated to hold the House majority after the 2022 midterm elections.
Read the full article. Banks last appeared on JMG when he falsely claimed to be on the Capitol riot committee in letters to federal agencies seeking information to be turned over to the committee.
This is what the party of small government wants. Complete control over everything. Complete control over people from forced birth to what is indoctrinated to them in conservative run public schools, to what people can do in the bedrooms and this their genitals, to what businesses can do or say. That is freedom, right? Isn’t that why the maga crowd refused to wear masks because it took away their freedoms? But telling restricting what you can read, say, watch, and what sex you can have along with who you can marry due to the church doctrine is pure freedom. Not for me.
Next year, the woke Disney lobbyists will ask Congress to extend Micky Mouse’s trademark.
Hello TG. I think this is already a world war and everyone has chosen sides. So what sense does it make to half support the side we stand with? It is not going to make the countries on the other side like us any better, we are still helping stop their invasion and conquering of the country we support. Either we want to stop the war crimes and genocide, or no country meant it when we said “Never again” after World War two.
Ukrainian forces braced for an intensified Russian onslaught against the eastern Donbas region as officials from Ukraine, the U.S. and other countries condemned Moscow over allegations of civilian executions.
A gruesome cleanup was underway in the northern suburbs of Kyiv, the capital, following the withdrawal of Russian troops. Ukrainian soldiers were removing bodies from streets, homes and other sites in the towns of Bucha and Irpin, which had been recently occupied by Russian forces.
Ukrainian officials accused Russia of large-scale killings of civilians, alleging that some of the victims’ bodies in Bucha had been found with their hands tied. Russia has reportedly denied the allegations.
Axios’ email thingie:
Reuters journalists who visited Bucha on Saturday said a mass grave at a church was still open, with hands and feet poking through red clay heaped on top.
Human Rights Watch released a report yesterday documenting…
Scottie's Playtime 