A new gender discrimination lawsuit claims that Nye County District Attorney Chris Arabia and Commissioner Leo Blundo “began a campaign of harassment and intimidation” against a former prosecutor.
Before Ronni Boskovich was fired in 2019, Arabia and Blundo targeted her “in part, because of her father’s political aspirations and her father and step-father’s status as homosexual males,” according to the federal lawsuit.
Boskovich also claims that she was fired after she reported sexual harassment against Blundo, who is a close friend of Arabia’s. An ethics complaint was filed against both officials before she was terminated, the court document states.
Also listed as defendants are Nye County and the district attorney’s office. They are accused of violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and allowing “Defendant Arabia and Defendant Blundo to continue to abuse their office and positions.”
Both a Nye County spokesman and Arabia declined to comment on the allegations, citing pending litigation. Blundo said he would respond to the claims in an email but never did.
Nye County District Attorney Chris Arabia left, and Commissioner Leo Blundo (Las Vegas Review-Journal)
In the lawsuit, filed Thursday, Boskovich claims that Blundo and Arabia made numerous degrading comments about the sexuality her father and stepfather. Her dad, Ron Boskovich, is gay and ran unsuccessfully for county commissioner against Blundo in 2018.
After taking office, Blundo often would refer to Boskovich and her parents as the “Trifecta of Evil,” according to the complaint, which also accuses Blundo of sexual harassment.
On Jan. 24, 2019, he hugged Boskovich inappropriately, the document states.
“As he was hugging Boskovich, he whispered to her that they were not on the clock, so this was ok,” Boskovich’s attorney, Michael Balaban, wrote.
In March 2019, Boskovich reported Blundo’s behavior to the county’s human resources director “however, nothing was done to address and/or correct Defendant Blundo’s behavior,” the lawsuit states.
Boskovich claims her boss, Arabia, then had her interrogated and fired her based on false allegations of misconduct, then directed his employees not to extend professional courtesies to her cases when she later became a public defender.
He also filed a State Bar of Nevada complaint against her, but it was dismissed after nine months, according to the document.
The Pahrump Valley Times reported in July 2019 that Arabia outlined in a letter to Boskovich several “issues of concern/misconduct” that Nye County determined had occurred.
This letter “noted Boskovich disclosed the existence and substance of sensitive, legally significant and confidential information related to marijuana regulations, procedures, brothels and conflicts of interest, which included the disclosure to three people potentially involved in the matter, as well as disclosure to at least two other people.”
Just finished David Baldacci’s latest mystery novel, “A Gambling Man,” another in the author’s long string of intriguing, deftly woven tales of odd characters facing long odds while making moral decisions.
Released this past week, “A Gambling Man” is the sequel to Baldacci’s “One Good Deed,” about recent World War II vet Aloysius Archer who was trying to put his life back together after being imprisoned for the “crime” of being involved with a young lady who could not refuse the entreaties of her law enforcement father. It is another world, one in which everyone is chain-smoking unfiltered Lucky Strikes and Camels while taking frequent swigs of hard liquor from ubiquitous flasks that seemed to populate every pocket and purse, often joined by small-caliber pistols.
To accomplish this life mending, Archer — who always avoided the use of his rather anachronistic mouthful of a given name and answered to his surname, as is customary in the military — took a bus west to meet up with the “very private investigator” Willie Dash about a possible job as a PI with Dash in his California coastal town. During an overnighter in the biggest little city of Reno, Archer befriended a gambling addict too deep into debt to the wrong crowd. After some fisticuffs, a car chase punctuated by small arms fire and the presumptive demise of the gambler, Archer wound up the custodian of a red, 12-cylinder, 1939 French convertible and in the company of a comely singer-dancer with the convenient post-war stage name Liberty Callahan, who had Hollywood ambitions.
Together they made it out of Reno alive and arrived in Dash’s corrupt town in time to become ensconced in an attempted blackmail investigation that evolved into bodies tumbling like dominoes.
Baldacci keeps the pace quick and the plot twisting and tightening ever closer to the penultimately evil culprit. Along the way he drops nuggets of tortured similes and metaphors like: “They heard the sobs as they approached the garage. They cut through the still morning air like a machete through bamboo.”
Or this gem: “Dash moved slowly across the room to greet the men. Where he had been frenetic seconds before, Archer could see the man was now all cool, calm, and as collected as a preacher about to dispense an easy dose of religion and then follow that up with an ask for money.”
There is an adequate helping of casual sex along the way, but not so detailed as to border on the pornographic.
“A Gambling Man” is another satisfying and mind tingling tale from the 60-year-old author of more than 40 novels. The prolific writer is already scheduled to release another in his Atlee Pine series in November. Can’t wait. http://dlvr.it/RyXrQC
CARSON CITY, Nev.—The man-made lakes that store water supplying millions of people in the U.S. West and Mexico are projected to shrink to historic lows in the coming months, dropping to levels that could trigger the federal government’s first-ever official shortage declaration and prompt cuts in Arizona and Nevada.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation released 24-month projections last week forecasting that less Colorado River water will cascade down from the Rocky Mountains through Lake Powell and Lake Mead and into the arid deserts of the U.S. Southwest and the Gulf of California. Water levels in the two lakes are expected to plummet low enough for the agency to declare an official shortage for the first time, threatening the supply of Colorado River water that growing cities and farms rely on.
The agency’s models project Lake Mead will fall below 1,075 feet for the first time in June 2021. That’s the level that prompts a shortage declaration under agreements negotiated by seven states that rely on Colorado River water: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
The April projections, however, will not have binding impact. Federal officials regularly issue long-term projections but use those released each August to make decisions about how to allocate river water. If projections don’t improve by then, the Bureau of Reclamation will declare a Level 1 shortage condition. The cuts would be implemented in January.
Arizona, Nevada and Mexico have voluntarily given up water under a drought contingency plan for the river signed in 2019. A shortage declaration would subject the two U.S. states to their first mandatory reductions. Both rely on the Colorado River more than any other water source, and Arizona stands to lose roughly one-third of its supply.
Water agency officials say they’re confident their preparation measures, including conservation and seeking out alternative sources, would allow them to withstand cuts if the drought lingers as expected.
“The study, while significant, is not a surprise. It reflects the impacts of the dry and warm conditions across the Colorado River Basin this year, as well as the effects of a prolonged drought that has impacted the Colorado River water supply,” officials from the Arizona Department of Water Resources and Central Arizona Project said in a joint statement.
In Nevada, the agency that supplies water to most of the state has constructed “straws” to draw water from further down in Lake Mead as its levels fall. It also has created a credit system where it can bank recycled water back into the reservoir without having it count toward its allocation.
Colby Pellegrino, director of water resources for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, reassured customers that those preparation measures would insulate them from the effects of cuts. But she warned that more action was needed.
“It is incumbent upon all users of the Colorado River to find ways to conserve,” Pellegrino said in a statement.
The Bureau of Reclamation also projected that Lake Mead will drop to the point they worried in the past could threaten electricity generation at Hoover Dam. The hydropower serves millions of customers in Arizona, California and Nevada.
To prepare for a future with less water, the bureau has spent 10 years replacing parts of five of the dam’s 17 turbines that rotate to generate power. Len Schilling, a dam manager with the bureau, said the addition of wide-head turbines allow the dam to operate more efficiently at lower water levels. He said the turbines will be able to generate power almost to a point called “deadpool,” when there won’t be enough water for the dam to function.
But Schilling noted that less water moving through Hoover Dam means less hydropower to go around.
“As the elevation declines at the lake, then our ability to produce power declines as well because we have less water pushing on the turbines,” he said.
The hydropower costs substantially less than the energy sold on the wholesale electricity market because the government charges customers only for the cost of producing it and maintaining the dam.
Lincoln County Power District General Manager Dave Luttrell said infrastructure updates, less hydropower from Hoover Dam and supplemental power from other sources like natural gas raised costs and alarmed customers in his rural Nevada district.
“Rural economies in Arizona and Nevada live and die by the hydropower that is produced at Hoover Dam. It might not be a big deal to NV Energy,” he said of Nevada’s largest utility. “It might be a decimal point to Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. But for Lincoln County, it adds huge impact.”
“Originalism” means applying the Constitution as the Founders understood it. Originalism is just a modern name for how English and American judges and lawyers have read most legal documents for at least 500 years (pdf).
By respecting the understanding behind a document, originalism keeps the document alive.
By contrast, there’s no simple definition of “living constitutionalism” because “living constitutionalists” differ greatly among themselves. They’re united by dislike of many of the Constitution’s rules and standards, and they all want to adjust the Constitution to serve their political goals. But beyond that, their unity ends: They sometimes have different goals, and they propose different ways of justifying constitutional manipulation.
“Living constitutionalism” is a misnomer, because when we abandon a document’s rules and standards, the document dies. In practice, “living constitutionalism” converts our Constitution into a parchment loin cloth to cover political pudenda.
Among the inconsistencies of living constitutionalists are claims that the Constitution is both “too rigid” and “too vague.” One who thinks it’s too rigid is David A. Strauss, a law professor on President Joe Biden’s Supreme Court commission. He wants constitutional law to evolve much as the common law evolves. Such “common law constitutionalists” underappreciate the fact that our decision to adopt a written Constitution was a clear rejection of the British-style “evolving” constitution.
By contrast, William Brennan, a living constitutionalist who afflicted the Supreme Court from 1956 to 1990, thought much of the Constitution was so vague as to be virtually meaningless. He referred to constitutional provisions as “luminous and obscure.” He wanted judges to replace the shimmering fog with structures of their own making.
The “too vague” and “too rigid” accusations are not only inconsistent with each other. They also are incorrect.
Let’s apply a dash of common sense to a serving of history. The Constitution’s framers weren’t the kind of people who write overly rigid or meaningless terms. They included Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut, John Dickinson of Delaware, and John Rutledge of South Carolina, each the leading attorney in his respective state. Eight framers had been educated in London’s Inns of Court, the schools for training English barristers. The framers included other celebrated lawyers as well, such as James Wilson of Pennsylvania and Alexander Hamilton of New York. Even most of the non-lawyers, such as James Madison and Nathaniel Gorham, had been immersed in legal subjects throughout their careers. The framers had composed written legal documents in business, in law practice, in the state legislatures, and in Congress.
They were, moreover, deeply familiar with the 600-plus-year Anglo-American tradition of composing constitutional-style documents.
They drafted the Constitution as a legal document should be drafted: tuning each provision to the level of rigidity or flexibility necessary to its purpose.
As a result, some constitutional phrases are rigid—but properly so. For example:
The president “shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years.”
“No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.”
Few of us would want to live under the “living constitutionalist” versions, which might read:
“The president shall hold [insert politically correct pronoun here] office as long as the judges, balancing all factors, decide it promotes good social policy,” and
“A person may be convicted of treason if the judges find the evidence persuasive after they have balanced its reliability and quantity with the needs of social justice.”
But when rigidity wasn’t appropriate, the framers could write terms flexible enough to satisfy any living constitutionalist. For example:
“Each House shall keep a Journal … and from time to time publish the same, excepting such Parts as may in their Judgment require Secrecy,” and
“The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.” (Italics added)
And as explained below, the Constitution also has many provisions that are neither particularly rigid nor overly flexible.
One reason some people think the Constitution is too vague or too rigid is that they don’t understand what many of its clauses actually mean.
For 25 years I’ve been working to cure that by writing a series of research articles exploring sections of the Constitution. My research has demonstrated that many charges of rigidity or vagueness are wrong.
For example, some law professors used to laugh at how “rigid” the Coinage Clause is. The Coinage Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 5) grants Congress power “To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures.” The scoffers assumed that “To coin Money” meant only to strike metallic coin. They said that in modern society this is impractical: We need paper and electronic money as well.
But if they’d read the clause carefully, they might have noticed that interpreting “coin” as only metal made no sense. When the Constitution says “regulate the Value … of foreign Coin,” it means setting foreign exchange rates. If “Coin” meant only metal, then Congress could set exchange rates for foreign metal tokens but not for foreign paper money. Surely the Founders didn’t intend such an absurd result.
And they didn’t. As I documented in a 2008 article (pdf) published by one of the Harvard journals, the Founders understood the Constitution’s word “coin” to include money in any medium, including paper. The scoffers were flat wrong: The Coinage Clause wasn’t rigid at all!
I also have disproved the once-common charge that the Constitution permits only male presidents, and other scholars have rebutted (pdf) the charge that its original meaning permits segregation of schools.
The living-Constitution crowd leveled the opposite accusation against the Necessary and Proper Clause (Article I, Section 18, Clause 18). They claimed it was so open-ended they branded it the Elastic Clause.
The Necessary and Proper Clause grants Congress power “To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”
“What in the world does ‘necessary and proper’ mean?” the scoffers asked. “And what about these powers ‘in the Government of the United States’? Is that a drafting mistake? The Constitution grants powers to government departments and officers, but not to ‘the Government of the United States.’” Some living constitutionalists even claimed it refers to federal authority not otherwise mentioned in the Constitution.
Most constitutional commentators have had little experience practicing law. But I had, and to me the Necessary and Proper Clause looked like a phrase I’d seen in agency and trust documents. I suspected “necessary and proper” was a common term in 18th century documents and had a specific meaning.
Investigation proved my hunch correct. During the Founding Era, “necessary and proper” and variants of that phrase were exceedingly common in legal documents. In this context, “necessary” was a technical term for “incidental,” and “proper” meant “in compliance with fiduciary duty.” I don’t have space here to explain all of these legal expressions, but I can assure you they’re not “vague.”
The Necessary and Proper Clause authorized Congress to undertake a limited number of subordinate activities the Constitution doesn’t list explicitly. My investigation also showed that the Supreme Court had misapplied the Clause in some very important cases.
I also found—contrary to what the scoffers were saying—that the part of the clause referring to powers granted to “the Government of the United States” wasn’t a drafting error or a reference to mysterious extra-constitutional authority. The Constitution explicitly grants some powers to the federal government as an entity. This last point became clear from examining colonial documents familiar to the framers but unknown to most commentators.
My Necessary and Proper Clause findings were published in a book published by Cambridge University Press and in other outlets (pdf).
Over the past quarter century, I have examined many other parts of the Constitution previously pronounced rigid, vague, or meaningless. I have found that all have fairly well-defined meanings. Moreover, most are flexible enough to accommodate modern political activity consistent with the Constitution’s underlying principles of freedom, federalism, and limited government. Admittedly, they’re inconsistent with the goals of many of the “living constitutionalists”—regimentation, centralization, and cultural destruction.
Of course, altered conditions occasionally do require constitutional change. To respond, we can use the amendment process. We don’t need to kill the Constitution on the pretense of letting it live.
Robert G. Natelson practiced law for 11 years, then served as a law professor for 25. Among other subjects, he taught constitutional law, constitutional history, First Amendment, and advanced constitutional law. In 2010, he returned to the private sector. He is senior fellow in constitutional jurisprudence at the Independence Institute in Denver and author of “The Original Constitution: What It Actually Said and Meant.”
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said on Wednesday that he will be scrutinizing five big tech companies that might have potentially caused harm to Indiana consumers through “abusive, deceptive and/or unfair” practices.
The five companies to be scrutinized by Rokita are Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter.
Rep. Todd Rokita (R-Ind.) announces the 2018 budget blueprint during a press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington on July 18, 2017. (Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters)
The attorney general is particularly looking into procedures that allegedly restrict consumers’ access to specific content, referring to the deletion or obscuring of conservative posts.
“In a free society, few assets are more important to consumers than access to information and the opportunity to express political viewpoints in meaningful forums,” Rokita said. “It is potentially harmful and unfair for these companies to manipulate content in ways they do not publicly discuss or that consumers do not fully understand.”
The attorney general is also probing into allegations that attorney Vanita Gupta took actions that encouraged censorship of conservative voices by the relevant companies.
Gupta is President Joe Biden’s nominee for associate U.S. attorney general. She was questioned in March by Republicans over her partisan record.
“Her Twitter feed has painted Republicans with a broad brush, describing our national convention last year as three nights of ‘racism, xenophobia, and outrageous lies,’” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said.
Rokita has previously been critical of censorship on social media. In February, he posted a Valentine’s day card with President Trump’s image with the words “You stole my heart like a 2020 election.” Twitter initially reacted by blocking the ability of the post to be retweeted or get replies, as well as adding a tag on the post saying that false information could cause violence.
Texas Senate Passes Social Media Bill
The Texas Senate passed a bill that forbids social media companies that have at least 100 million users per month to block, ban, demonetize, or discriminate against any of their users due to their political views.
Senate Bill 12, which is sponsored by Republican state Sen. Bryan Hughes, passed on April 1 and would apply to Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and other platforms.
“I think we all have to acknowledge, these social media companies are the new town square,” Hughes said.
“And a small group of people in San Francisco can’t dictate free speech for the rest of us. It needs to be an open exchange of ideas, and Senate Bill 12 is going to get Texans back online.”
— Senator Bryan Hughes (@SenBryanHughes) April 1, 2021
He said that the bill is on its way to the state House and that it is expected to get a good consideration, adding that he hopes that the governor will sign it into law soon.
The measure would require companies to make their moderation policies known, publish reports about the content blocked out by the platform, and create an appeals process for the removed content.
Major League Baseball had extended and expanded its contract with a Chinese telecommunications giant shortly before boycotting the state of Georgia over the league’s disagreement with the election reforms recently enacted by the Peach State’s democratically elected governor and legislature.
Chinese state media reported on April 1 that the MLB will continue to be aired on the streaming platform operated by Chinese tech giant Tencent, which has significant ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Tencent is of the Chinese companies that had temporarily dropped NBA games as a form of censorship after former Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey spoke out in support of the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
On April 2, the day after the announcement of the Chinese deal, the MLB moved its annual All-Star game out of Atlanta, Georgia, in response to a set of election reforms signed by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp last month. MLB Commissioner Robert Manfred said in a statement that the move would “demonstrate our values as a sport.”
The league did not respond to an emailed request to confirm the details of the Chinese deal and a question on how continuing business with Chinademonstrates its values considering the recent U.S. recognition of a genocide being carried out by the CCP against the Uyghur Muslims. The CCP is responsible for an estimated 100 million unnatural deaths since taking power in China in 1949.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) flagged the coincidental timing of the MLB’s China deal and Georgia boycott, writing on Twitter that the league has caved to pressure, moving the draft and Allstar game “the same week they announce a deal with a company backed by the genocidal Communist Party of China.”
“Why are we still listening to these woke corporate hypocrites on taxes, regulations & anti-trust?” Rubio wrote.
The MLB enjoys a federal anti-trust exemption.
Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) on April 2 instructed his staff to draft a bill that would remove the exemption in response to the Georgia boycott.
“An overwhelming bipartisan majority of Americans support requiring an ID to vote, and any organization that abuses its power to oppose secure elections deserves increased scrutiny under the law,” Duncan wrote on Twitter.
Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, signed a package of election reforms into law last month which expanded voting hours and access to early voting. The new law also required absentee voters to provide a copy of their ID alongside their ballot, something the state had already required for in-person voters.
The reforms have become the target of left-wing criticism, including false claims by President Joe Biden about the law requiring the polls to close by 5 p.m. The bill had actually expanded the voting hours to 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed legislation into law on Friday lifting some restrictions to buy or carry a handgun in the state for law-abiding citizens.
The NRA-backed legislation named “House File 756” will take effect on July 1 and eliminates the requirement for law-abiding Iowans to obtain a permit to purchase a handgun from private non-licensed sources. Additionally, to carry a weapon, people will no longer need to have a permit as well.
Individuals will still have to follow federal law and go through an instant background check to buy from licensed sellers each time they purchase a gun.
People who fail to commit to the new law will be charged with a Class D felony, which is punishable by up to five years in prison. It will become a felony if a person sells, rents, or loans a firearm to someone the seller “knows or reasonably should know” isn’t legally allowed to get a gun or is intoxicated.
“Today I signed legislation that protects the 2nd Amendment rights of Iowa’s law-abiding citizens while still preventing the sale of firearms to criminals and other dangerous individuals,” Reynolds said in a statement after signing the bill.
“This law also takes greater steps to inform law enforcement about an individual’s mental illness helping ensure firearms don’t end up in the wrong hands,” she added. “We will never be able to outlaw or prevent every single bad actor from getting a gun, but what we can do is ensure law-abiding citizens have full access to their constitutional rights while keeping Iowans safe.”
The new law has been supported by the National Rifle Association (NRA), which applauded the governor for signing the bill allowing law-abiding adults to carry a concealed firearm without first asking the government’s permission for a permit.
On March 22, House File 756 passed 60–37, with all Republicans voting for it, along with Democrat state Rep. Wes Breckenridge. Republicans have a majority in the Senate and previously passed a similar piece of legislation through a committee.
Iowa now becomes one of 19 states in the U.S. that no longer requires law-abiding citizens to get a permit before carrying a gun for self-defense.
The 18 other states that eliminated this requirement are: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
Democrats have opposed the bill, saying the reversal is dangerous and a “reckless disregard for the safety and well-being of Iowans.”
“Our communities aren’t safer when criminals can legally purchase a handgun without a background check,” Iowa Democratic Party Chair Representative Ross Wilburn said in a statement in reaction to Reynolds signing the bill.
“Background checks are wildly popular, even among gun owners, as a common-sense way to keep people safe,” he said. “Legislation like this serves no purpose other than appeasing the gun industry and its powerful lobbyists.”
Mark Olivia, director of public affairs at the National Shooting Sports Foundation, told The Epoch Times that laws restricting gun ownership have dubious origins.
“The history of gun control laws really has its roots in Jim Crow-era racist laws that are designed to deny people their rights,” he said. “Your permit is your Second Amendment right. The idea of having to get a permit to be able to exercise your Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is antithetical to what your rights are as an American at birth.”
YouTube has deleted about 2.5 million ‘dislikes’ from videos on the official White House channel of President Joe Biden, according to data collected and posted online by a researcher who wished to remain anonymous. YouTube recently announced that it’s testing a new page design that hides the dislike count.
The Google-owned video platform allows users to give videos either a thumb up (like) or thumb down (dislike). For at least two years, it’s had a policy to remove likes and dislikes it considers spam.
“We have policies and systems in place to ensure that the engagement on YouTube is authentic, and remove any fraudulent metrics,” a YouTube spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email, but when asked, wouldn’t go into details on what criteria it uses to make these calls.
The White House videos have seen these kinds of interventions on an ongoing basis, but it appears it’s only the dislikes that are disappearing.
The channel has posted more than 300 videos that have garnered nearly 3.7 million dislikes of which nearly 2.5 million were removed, according to data posted on the website 81m.org. The author of the website started to track the engagement on January 26 and has published all the data as well as the methodology used to collect it, but wouldn’t comment on his or her identity when asked via email.
YouTube is deleting close to 8,000 dislikes per video on average. Not a single like was removed, the data indicates.
Even after the interventions, the videos have nearly six times more dislikes than likes on average, the data shows. Without intervention the ratio would be over 17 dislikes for every like.
Posts on social media indicate that some supporters of former President Donald Trump make a point of disliking the Biden White House videos. The videos often get thousands of dislikes shortly after popping online, only for a large portion of the dislikes being deleted later.
In some cases, batches of dislikes would be removed about once an hour, keeping the dislike count around the same number. In other cases, a large portion of dislikes would be chopped down at once, the data indicates.
The website 81m.org lists results of the same analysis for several other YouTube channels with large followings. None of them exhibited dislike removals of this magnitude.
Videos of PewDiePie, one of the most popular channels on the platform, do show some like and dislike removals, but never more than a few dozen per video, based on a review of the data for the past more than two dozen videos on the channel.
YouTube recently announced testing of a design that still includes the dislike button, but no longer shows the number of dislikes.
“This is a test for a small group of users and is a response to creator feedback that the visible count may impact their wellbeing,” a spokesperson said via email.
YouTube and its owner, Google, have long faced accusations of political bias. The companies have said their products are developed and run as politically neutral, but employee accounts and leaked internal materials indicate the companies are infusing their politics into their products.
According to research psychologist Robert Epstein, Google shifted millions of votes in the Nov. 3 election by skewing its search results and other tools, compared to competitors.
“Google search results were strongly biased in favor of liberals and Democrats. This was not true on Bing or Yahoo,” Epstein told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, referring to data from more than 700 voters who worked with him to monitor what results they were receiving from channels such as search results, reminders, search suggestions, and newsfeeds ahead of the election.
Google previously rejected Epstein’s research results.
The Arkansas state Senate voted this week to block federal law enforcement officials enforcing certain gun laws and regulations, sending a bill to the state House in the midst of congressional gun-control proposals.
The Senate voted 28-7 to approve the measure, which will then be sent to the House. Arkansas’ Legislature is overwhelmingly Republican.
“All acts, law, orders, rules, and regulations of the United States Government, whether past, present, or future, that infringe on the people’s right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution and Arkansas Constitution, Article 2, [Section] 5, are invalid in this state, shall not be recognized by this state, are specifically rejected by this state, and shall be considered null and void and of no effect in this state,” according to the text of the bill.
The measure will prohibit any law enforcement agencies in Arkansas from cooperating with federal officials to enforce federal gun laws that go in conflict with the rights provided in the Arkansas Constitution, according to Arkansas Online. Some state lawmakers expressed a worry that President Joe Biden would ramp up gun-control measures.
“It is more important now than ever that we protect our state rights,” Sen. Trent Garner, a Republican, said of the passage of the bill. “Once [Democrats in the U.S. Senate] get rid of the filibuster, guess what happens next? It is called packing the courts,” he claimed, referring to statements from Democratic lawmakers that the 60-vote legislative be removed in order to pass their agenda items.
“You would have to be totally blind to death to not see that our nation is as divided right now as it ever has been and we have elected officials in office in Washington, D.C., who actually don’t even care what the Constitution says and decided that they are going to do it their way no matter what happens and have no respect for the 10th Amendment,” Republican Sen. Jason Rapert said, according to the news outlet.
State Sen. Jim Hendren said the bill would put Arkansas’ federal funding at risk and would place an unnecessary hurdle between Arkansas law enforcement and federal agents.
Following two mass shootings in Atlanta and Boulder, Colorado, Biden and top Democrats said that it’s imperative that new restrictions be passed. Dozens of Democratic House members this week sent a letter to Biden, saying that he should take executive action to ban “concealable assault-style firearms” such as the semi-automatic Ruger AR-556 pistol that was used in the Boulder shooting.
“Concealable assault-style firearms that fire rifle rounds pose an unreasonable threat to our communities and should be fully regulated under the National Firearms Act consistent with the intent and history of the law. The recent tragedy in Boulder, Colorado where 10 people including a police officer were killed is one in a string of deadly incidents involving this style of weapon,” Reps. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.), Joe Neguse (D-Colo.), Val Demings (D-Fla.), and Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.) said in a letter to Biden.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters last week that Biden is looking to issue an executive order on gun control.
Two teenage girls were charged with murder and carjacking in connection to the death of a 66-year-old Uber Eats driver in Washington, officials said.
The girls, aged 13 and 15, were charged in a family court with felony murder while armed, reckless driving, and carjacking, according to Fox Baltimore.
A police homicide detective, Chad Leo, testified in court that witnesses told him the teen girls and the driver—who family members identified as Mohammad Anwar, a Pakistani immigrant—were arguing loudly. The witnesses said the driver complained the girls were attempting to steal his car.
The identities of the two girls were not disclosed by officials.
Leo said one witness shot a video showing one girl behind the car’s steering wheel with a Taser as the other girl partially wedged between the open driver’s door sitting on top of the other girl, according to Fox Baltimore. Social media footage reviewed by The Epoch Times showed one girl starting the car as the other girl was behind the wheel as Anwar was hanging on.
Leo cited footage showing the car speeding down Van Street before hitting a tree box. The car then took a right turn on N Street before it hit other cars and flipped on its side, throwing Anwar from the vehicle. According to the Fox affiliate, he suffered broken ribs, a broken pelvis, and other significant injuries before he was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead.
According to a GoFundMe page, nearly $400,000 has been raised for Anwar’s family. It described him as a “Pakistani immigrant who came to the United States to create a better life for him and his family” and “was simply at work yesterday evening, providing for his family, when his life was tragically taken in an appalling act of violence.”
“The details are still being investigated, however we know that Anwar was working on an UberEats delivery when two assailants attempted to carjack him in Navy Yard,” the page read.
The two girls are being held pending their next court date on March 31, reports said.
“I saw all the police cars first. Then I saw the car, and I thought, ‘This must be a movie scene or something,’” witness Pamela Johnson told NBC4. “I think that people do need to be brought to justice and that they have to stand for what they did and be accountable for their actions, because someone died,” Johnson added. “I mean, that’s serious.”
