Though Tesla has built its image on electric vehicles aimed at the consumer space, long term success is going to depend on Tesla tackling the commercial space as well. In order to do that, it’s going to need to build some bigger vehicles, and we’re learning today that we’ll see one of them later this year. Tesla CEO Elon Musk … Continue reading
This afternoon a set of images has leaked of the next HTC smartphone – or at least what appears to be HTC’s next smartphone. This is the HTC One X10, a device that leaked in a very small way a few months ago. If this phone ever makes it to market, it’ll be a disruptor to one key part of … Continue reading
Bad news for those of you who have been looking for an NES Classic Edition since November: Nintendo has officially pulled the plug on the mini console. The company says that retailers will be receiving their final shipments throughout April, and after that, you’ll have to rely on third party resellers if you want to find one. Nintendo, as many … Continue reading
A small camera drone from Zero Zero Robotics has launched for sale in Apple stores and through the Apple website, the company has announced. The Hover Camera Passport is a consumer-tier autonomous drone designed for consumers who want to easily capture shots of themselves from perspectives that are more interesting than the average smartphone can produce. In addition to its … Continue reading
A member of the Trump family is being problematic on Twitter this week ― and it’s not the one you think.
On Thursday, Donald Trump Jr. retweeted a piece from The Daily Caller outlining anxieties students at Pennsylvania’s Duquesne University have about the arrival of a Chick-fil-A on their campus in light of the corporation’s anti-gay history.
The president’s oldest son quoted the tweet and added: “Luckily these students wont likely have to tackle issues more stressful than a yummy chicken sandwich in their lives … Oh Wait #triggered.”
For those unfamiliar, in 2012 Chick-fil-A was consumed by controversy when its president and CEO, Dan Cathy, stated that he was “guilty as charged” in “support of the traditional family” when it came to opposing same-sex marriage rights.
In the years that followed, marriage equality activists led boycotts and kiss-ins at Chick-fil-A locations across America, with Cathy adamantly defending his anti-gay views every step of the way.
At the height of this controversy, which largely happened before SCOTUS’s ruling on same-sex marriage, college students across the country rallied to try to remove Chick-fil-As from their campuses.
Trump’s comments are clearly mocking this battle for both the LGBTQ community and college students who want to be intentional about the corporations they support through their finances.
Do better, Donald.
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Nearly two years after getting the authority to prosecute voter fraud, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) announced Wednesday he had obtained his first conviction of a non-citizen who had voted.
Kobach, who has made the unsubstantiated claim that millions of non-citizens could be registered to vote across the country, said that Victor David Garcia-Bebek, had pleaded guilty to voter fraud and illegally voted in a 2012 special and general election, as well as a 2014 general election. Under a plea agreement reached with Kobach’s office, Garcia-Bebek agreed to pay a $5,000 fine and be placed on unsupervised probation for up to three years. The probation will end once he pays the fine.
The Wednesday announcement marked just the eighth time Kobach has convicted someone in Kansas of voter fraud since gaining the ability to prosecute in 2015. Kobach had pushed for prosecutorial authority, arguing he needed it to crack down on voter fraud. However, from 1997 to 2010, there were only 11 confirmed cases of it in Kansas. There were 1,788,673 registered voters in the state as of March, according to the Kansas City Star.
“The problem of non-citizens voting is a serious one, both in Kansas and nationally. Every time a non-citizen votes, it cancels out the vote of a United States citizen,” Kobach said in his announcement.
During a February interview on Fox Business Network, Kobach cited an unnamed “expert” as saying as many as 18,000 non-citizens could be on the voting rolls in Kansas, but conceded that he believed only a fraction of that number were actually voting in elections.
Kobach told the Kansas City Star that officials discovered Bebek had voted illegally after he became a naturalized citizen in February and was offered the opportunity to vote. He did choose to register, but when election officials went to enter his information, they found he had already voted.
Garcia-Bebek did not immediately return a request for comment. According to the athletics website at Newman University, he coached the women’s soccer team there for four years before resigning in 2015, eight games into the season due to personal reasons.
“I pride myself on being able to have close relationships [with coaches] but I learned more about Victor after his resignation than I ever did before,” Vic Trilli, the school’s athletic director, told the Vantage after Garcia-Bebek resigned. “I had conversations with him, but it was hidden. A lot of personal things people don’t want to talk about because it’s personal and it hurts. It’s what led to this.”
Kobach, who has pushed one of the most restrictive voting laws in the country, quickly seized upon the conviction, suggesting that there was more voter fraud in the state.
“His conviction is just the tip of the iceberg. In that same county we know of 24 other aliens who registered to vote, some of whom voted and others attempted to register. But we can’t prosecute because the statute of limitations has run [out], the crime is more than five years old,” Kobach said during a Thursday interview on “Fox and Friends.”
“It’s a huge problem, not just in Kansas, but nationally. And we only see the very top of the sliver of the iceberg because it’s so hard to detect when you have a non-citizen on our voter rolls,” he added.
Several studies and investigations have shown that widespread voter fraud is not a problem nationally. Despite the lack of evidence, President Donald Trump has said that millions voted nationally and pledged a national investigation. The White House has also pointed to Kobach as someone who can provide evidence of voter fraud, and Kobach confirmed Thursday that he has advised the White House on the alleged widespread voter fraud.
In February, a Texas woman who was not a U.S. citizen was sentenced to eight years in jail for illegally voting in two elections. The woman, who said she did not know she was ineligible, is likely to be deported to Mexico.
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Kenny, a 10-year-old golden retriever from Elkhart, Indiana, just wanted a bed of his own.
Paeton Mathes, Kenny’s 15-year-old owner, told the Huffington Post their older dog, Torii, has a dog bed and Kenny liked it so much that he kept on trying to share it.
But that situation didn’t look too comfy for either dog, so Paeton’s mom, Heather Stoddard, decided to buy Kenny a bed online. But she didn’t notice that it came in multiple sizes.
On April 10, the family received Kenny’s new bed. And let’s just say, it was a little on the small side.
In fact, it was an extra-small bed.
But being the sweet boy that he is, Kenny rolled with it.
“It was honestly funny seeing how small and thin it was. It almost looked like a pillow,” Paeton told HuffPost. “[Kenny] just tried to make it work.”
Paeton found her pup’s reaction so cute, she decided to post photos of him attempting to make the most of his gift to Twitter, where they soon went viral — receiving over 137,000 likes and 63,000 retweets. And, of course, a few doggone funny responses.
The post has received so much attention that a few pet companies have sent the family more suitably sized dog beds for Kenny to try out.
Paeton says that Kenny is sampling his new swag and he will keep one. The rest will be donated to a local animal shelter.
Good humans!
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WASHINGTON ― When House Republicans returned home this week for a long Easter recess, they found themselves facing rooms packed with loud, furious constituents — and in some cases relied on extra security.
It turns out, governing with complete control of the federal government is harder than Republicans may have expected. After failing to rally enough support to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act last month, the party has struggled to come up with a coherent legislative agenda, and the scandal-ridden Trump administration isn’t helping.
Despite the hostile atmosphere, a number of rank-and-file Republicans held town hall meetings in their districts. Health care dominated the conversation. But constituents also wanted answers on immigration, climate change, Russia, and whether lawmakers were going to demand President Donald Trump’s tax returns.
Constituents greeted Rep. Leonard Lance (R-N.J.) on Wednesday with boos and hisses at his town hall, where gigantic sand trucks were parked outside and officers patrolled with K-9 units on the ground and the roof.
The audience members pressured Lance, who ultimately pulled his support of “Trumpcare,” to do more to fight his party’s Obamacare repeal efforts. Republicans have continued to negotiate over a repeal and replace plan, but the deep divisions between the right and center wings of the party present a near insurmountable barrier.
“You have the majority, so govern,” attendees shouted at Lance.
Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) also faced constituents’ anger over health care. The congressman — who is perhaps best known for shouting “You lie!” at then-President Barack Obama during an address to Congress in 2009 — had his own words thrown back at him by rowdy attendees. The chant started after Wilson claimed that Obamacare was obstructing health services, according to The New York Times.
Moderate Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) took heavy fire from hundreds of constituents at two town halls for helping House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) craft the GOP’s Obamacare replacement bill, which would have left an estimated 24 million people uninsured. One resident in his district accused him of abandoning the “middle way,” according to The Oregonian.
“I feel you’ve abandoned me for the right, the far right,” Gretchen Kimsey, who has lived in The Dalles, Oregon, for 50 years, told the congressman. “Where are you, Greg Walden?”
Health care was also the theme in Colorado Springs, where Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn fended off questions from a heavy liberal bloc. One woman told Lamborn she feared how changes in health care policy would affect her son, who has a rare disability. “I have to choose between paying my mortgage and paying my son’s medical care,” she added.
In several states, constituents attacked their representatives for failing to hold the Trump administration accountable. In California, one town hall attendee called Republican Rep. Tom McClintock “a rubber stamp for Donald Trump.” The audience also asked McClintock about investigations into potential ties between Trump campaign aides and Russia.
Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) took heat from constituents who wanted answers on Trump’s tax returns and conflicts of interest.
Given the strong presence of liberal activists at the events, it’s not surprising that the topic of climate change also came up. In Mesa, Arizona, they booed loudly when Republican Rep. Andy Biggs, a member of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, explained why he had doubts about climate change, according to the Arizona Republic. And while Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) acknowledged that “the climate changes” at his town hall, he also fended off boos when he added, “the data set we’re dealing with is very small,” MLive.com reported.
Since Trump’s inauguration, Republicans have faced tougher crowds during their visits home, but the April recess is one of the longest breaks they’ve had this year ― giving voters ample time to pressure them.
In some cases, frustrated organizers held town halls for Republican lawmakers who never showed. Hundreds of people attended an event in Indiana on Sunday with the hope of luring Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.) into discussing health care. When she didn’t attend, they resorted to writing questions on index cards to be delivered to her later, according to WNDU.
And about 500 people gathered at a banquet hall in Howell, Michigan, on Tuesday to interrogate a cardboard cutout of GOP Rep. Mike Bishop after the congressman held “listening sessions” capped at a few dozen people the day before.
Speakers blasted Bishop for trying to repeal Obamacare and encouraged attendees to get involved in efforts like a campaign to put a redistricting amendment on the state ballot in 2018.
In Oklahoma, GOP Rep. Markwayne Mullin got into a testy exchange with constituents, telling them they don’t pay his salary, according to a video posted on Facebook.
“You say you pay for me to do this? That’s bullcrap,” he said. “I pay for myself. I paid enough taxes before I got here and continue to through my company to pay my own salary. This is a service.”
Mullin later canceled a different town hall 15 minutes before it started, citing “safety concerns.” The abrupt cancellation was a surprise for constituents on both sides of the aisle. Pamela Coonce, president of Cherokee County Republican Women, told the Tahlequah Daily Press, they were “very disappointed, and none of us are really sure what happened.”
Other conservatives simply blamed liberal activists for the disruptions.
Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.), a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, was heckled and booed at a town hall earlier this year, and said he’s not holding any during this recess.
In an interview with USA Today, Brat characterized protesters showing up to Republican lawmakers’ town halls this way: “We were asleep; we thought Hillary was going to get in. We’re ticked off, so we’re going to take it out on you.’”
Either way, Brat admitted, every Republican showing up to town halls across the country is “getting just annihilated.”
Kate Abbey-Lambertz, Andy Campbell and Ryan Grenoble contributed reporting.
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West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (D) made it clear he thinks a budget bill state lawmakers sent to his desk is a load of bull crap.
Justice rolled out a copy of the bill with poop on top during a Thursday announcement saying he’d veto the legislation.
The governor, who frequently uses props during announcements, brought out three covered trays during a speech criticizing the $4.1 billion budget bill. He uncovered the first two trays to reveal a “nothing burger” and a “mayonnaise sandwich,” references to colorful ways he criticized budget plans earlier this month.
He uncovered the third tray to reveal a stack of papers ― presumably the budget bill, which lawmakers passed on Sunday ― with what Justice called “bull-you-know-what” on top.
”We don’t have a nothing burger today, and we don’t have a mayonnaise sandwich today,” Justice said. “We all should take ownership for this, but what we have is nothing more than a bunch of political bull-you-know-what.”
Here’s a closer look at the you-know-what.
After vetoing the bill, Justice said he hopes lawmakers will “stop the bull crap.”
“I hope and pray that the silliness will stop,” he said.
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A high school in Canada is making headlines after a student shared a recording from a class during which an anti-abortion video was shown. The video compared abortion to the Holocaust.
École Secondaire Notre Dame High School is a Catholic high school located in Red Deer, Alberta. In March, a presentation was shown in a mandatory religion class by the group Red Deer and Area Pro Life that referenced Adolf Hitler’s genocide of the disabled and other “unwanted” persons in parallel to terminating a pregnancy, Canada’s Global News reported.
“In 1939, Hitler had authorized a scheme by which severely disabled children could be murdered. Then once the war began, this killing was extended to disabled adults as well (and then to all ‘unwanted’ persons),” says the narrator in the video, which was produced by Abort73, an anti-abortion Christian non-profit “working to protect women and children from the violence of abortion through education and peer-to-peer engagement,” per its Facebook page.
The video then transitions to Nazi propaganda footage which describes the rationalization for killing of the disabled. “Can we burden future generations with such an inheritance?,” the propaganda asks. This subtitle is then presented with an annotation: “Sound familiar?!”
A student recorded the video on their phone and sent it to Accessing Information, Not Myths (AIM), an Alberta group that addresses sexual health and gaps in education curriculum, according to BuzzFeed. Cristina Stasia, who founded AIM, told BuzzFeed that schools often bring in third-party, anti-abortion groups for presentations with “problematic and inaccurate” information such as this.
AIM got in touch with Alberta Minister of Education, David Eggen, and the school district was made aware of the video. Eggen is working on finding out how this happened.
“They let this thing slip through. It’s not good for kids to be presented inaccurate information. It’s outrageous to the general public that someone would make a connection between abortion and the Holocaust,” Eggen told Global News. “It doesn’t belong there and if it’s being used anywhere else here across the province, I want to hear about it immediately,”
The school division then banned that particular video, according to CTV, but the Red Deer and Area Pro Life group is still allowed to present in schools.
Stasia remains frustrated.
“In Catholic school systems, discussions of abortions and reproductive rights are important, but giving students misinformation, giving them medically inaccurate information, scientifically inaccurate information, myths, shaming sexual assault survivors ― that’s not part of having an honest conversation,” she told CTV.
The Huffington Post has reached out to École Secondaire Notre Dame High School for comment.
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