The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection poked another hole in the pro-Trump conspiracy theory that federal agents orchestrated the attack, confirming on Tuesday that a man at the center of the claims said he’d never been an FBI informant.

Ray Epps, an Arizona man who was filmed encouraging others to enter the U.S. Capitol, testified that he wasn’t “employed by, working with, or acting at the direction of any law enforcement agency on Jan. 5th or 6th or at any other time,” the committee tweeted on Tuesday.

The committee issued its statement after numerous Republican lawmakers highlighted the fringe theory in recent weeks, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday. Pressed by Cruz, a Justice Department official said she couldn’t say whether FBI agents participated in the insurrection because she couldn’t discuss “the specifics of sources and methods” of the FBI.

 

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Jewish communities across the US are on heightened alert after the Texas standoff: 'Is our community under attack again?'

Jewish communities across the United States once again find themselves on edge in the wake of another attack on worshippers at a synagogue, this time at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, where a man interrupted Saturday's Shabbat service and held four people hostage for hours. 

No hostages were killed and the suspect is dead, according to authorities. But after other high-profile attacks on other synagogues, the incident Saturday serves as the latest reminder for Jewish congregations and organizations to be vigilant, step up security measures and have hard conversations about how to stay safe.

"All of a sudden, we have to become experts in security," said Rabbi Joshua Stanton, a senior fellow at the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership.

"I did not become a rabbi to be an expert in security," he said. "I became a rabbi to teach, to support, to care, to be in the wider community as a source of love for the world. And now, all of a sudden, there is a great deal of fear. ... And to have the Jewish community targeted like this casts a (pall) over all of us."

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Well, we don’t have to guess what Dr. King, Jr. would say. He left for us powerful words that seem eerily applicable to the current crisis we face.

In 1957, six years before his speech at the March on Washington and eight years before the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Dr. King, Jr. gave another speech in Washington, D.C., commemorating the third anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown vs. Board of Education.

Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, King remarked that “all types of conniving methods are still being used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters.” Continuing, he argued that, “The denial of this sacred right is a tragic betrayal of the highest mandates of our democratic tradition.” Before a crowd of thousands, King made a plea to those in power and said, “Our most urgent request to the president of the United States and every member of Congress is to give us the right to vote.”

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Pat welcomes  Dr. Erik W. Klemetti, Associate Professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences / JournalismDenison University 

Twitter: @eruptionsblog

Rocky Planet: https://www.discovermagazine.com/blog/rocky-planet

Magma Through Time & Space: https://dumagma.weebly.comORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0539-979X

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Pat welcomed Dr. Jackie Copeland — who had roles as chief operating officer for both Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County and the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology — launched the WISE Fund last year after eye-opening visits to see the damage climate change has done to the Great Barrier Reef and the Kuranda Rainforest in Australia. She decided to put the network she had built through her long career to work helping the planet — WISE stands for Women Invested to Save Earth — by supporting African-descent, Indigenous, women of color who are working on eco-health solutions to climate change that also help disadvantaged communities around the world.

But she also channeled some of the past year’s turmoil into art, working on “Blachant,” a studio album of avant-garde jazz music under the name Bouvier. The title comes from her jazz chant vocal style, which she called blachanting. The first single, “Brown Baby,” was released Tuesday on Spotify and other streaming channels, with sales supporting WISE Fund and the Black Philanthropy Month program.

https://thewisefund.org/about-us/

BIO: 

Jackie Bouvier Copeland, Ph.D. | Governing Board, PresidentThe WISE Fund’s FounderAn award-winning innovator, Dr. Jackie Bouvier Copeland bridges diverse disciplines and communities to heal people, society, and the planet. She is founder and chief executive officer of The Women Invested to Save Earth Fund (WISE), also the backbone organization for other global Black initiatives she has created, such as Black Philanthropy Month and Reunity. Her work has reached at least 20 million people, and she is recognized as a History Maker, included in The Congressional Record, for her significant civic contributions.  Educated as a cultural anthropologist, diplomat, impact designer, and creative at Georgetown University and University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Copeland was also trained in social finance at University of Oxford. A certified life coach,  she is certified in board governance at Santa Clara University. Her sustainability company, Renewell, is releasing The Blachant Project, a healing arts initiative rooted in her global Black heritage. A songwriter and vocalist using the sobriquet, “Bouvier”, Dr.  Copeland’s Blachant Project includes her debut jazz spirituals album, a healing journal, and other products designed to promote personal wellness during these turbulent times for all people.

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Two days before the assault on the U.S. Capitol, Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano, a Republican, said supporters of then-President Donald Trump’s claims of election fraud were basically in a “death match with the Democrat Party.”

A day later, right-wing activist Alan Hostetter, a staunch Trump supporter known for railing against California’s virus-inspired stay-at-home orders, urged rallygoers in Washington to “put the fear of God in the cowards, the traitors, the RINOs, the communists of the Democrat Party.”

The shared grammatical construction — incorrect use of the noun “Democrat” as an adjective — was far from the most shocking thing about the two men’s statements. But it identified them as members of the same tribe, conservatives seeking to define the opposition through demeaning language.

https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-us-news-ohio-elections-f39b9370f14fd698a76285b83a2ef4c6

 

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What Martin Luther King Jr. said about voting rights and why any celebration without legislation dishonors his legacy.

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Today we celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The educator, advocate and activist has left a lasting impact on all of us today.

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Mark opens the show discussing 49er Football with Former Producer Albert and the volcanic explosion near Tonga with Pacific Institute Scientist and Climate Expert Dr. Peter Gleick. In the second hour, Mark rounds things out with a "That's Rich" segment and a discussion about putting prominent African Americans on U.S. currency.

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Investors are paying millions of dollars for virtual property in the metaverse, and the Morning Show with Nikki Medoro asks if you'd be comfortable spending big money with this new technology. Also, Walmart is preparing for a new kind of shopping in the metaverse with some recent patent filings.

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