Brigitte Gabriel
Credit: Right Wing Watch

Brigitte Gabriel, an anti-Islam activist, baselessly claimed today that “over 90 percent of mosques in America” are funded by the Saudi Arabian government in order to teach radical ideology aimed at overturning the United States government.

Speaking with “Breitbart News Daily” this morning, Gabriel agreed with guest host Raheem Kassam’s suggestion that the United States should create a searchable database of information about foreign-funded religious institutions, and claimed that nearly all U.S. mosques are funded by Saudi Arabia to radicalize Muslims against America.

“I think it must be clear where a lot, if not every single foreign-funded religious institution gets its money from in this country,” Kassam said. “I think there has to be an absolutely crystal-clear searchable database so we can see where these Saudis are funding these radical mosques all across the United States.”

“You think they’re not doing it?” Kassam said. “It is happening here too.”

Gabriel added, “To the tune of millions, it’s happening here. Mosques in America are funded by the government of Saudi Arabia. We know […]

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Aoxin Ibis Chinese electric car.
Credit: Green Car Reports

On Saturday, a Chinese official told the audience at an auto forum in Tianjin that the government is working on a timetable to end “production and sales of traditional energy vehicles,” i.e., gasoline and diesel cars, according to accounts from the Xinhua News Agency. Regulators have begun the “relevant research,” and the policy will be implemented “in the near future.”

Details are somewhat sketchy, but it appears the government plans to shift away from the massive research and consumer subsidies of recent years to something like a cap-and-trade program for fuel economy and emissions, with automakers facing rising quotas but tradable credits providing some compliance flexibility.

It’s not a concrete policy yet; we’ll have to see how it’s implemented. But for a moment, look beyond the policy to the optics. This is the world’s largest car market — responsible for around 30 percent of global passenger vehicle sales — announcing an imminent end to fossil fuel cars. That’s a big, big deal.

It is just one of […]

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Credit: Illustration by Sarah Rogers/The Daily Beast

A judge calls it a ‘life-and-death safety concern.’ A government document shows there may not be enough room to brace for impact. Inside the potential dangers.

As airlines pack seats tighter than ever, the tests supposed to show that passengers can get out alive in a crash are woefully out of date. The FAA won’t make the results public, and a court warns there is “a plausible life-and-death safety concern.”

For years the airlines have been allowed to steadily shrink the size of coach class seats and the space between seat rows without regulators considering the impact of this on safety. A Daily Beast investigation has found:

• The tests carried out to ensure that all the passengers can safely exit a cabin in an emergency are dangerously outdated and do not reflect how densely packed coach class seating has become—or how the size of passengers has simultaneously increased;

• No coach class seat meets the Department of Transportation’s own standard for the space required to make a […]

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Donald Trump campaigned on the claim that he would be a “law and order” president, and the 2016 Republican platform called for more “gratitude and support” for law enforcement and expressed concern over “the murder rate soaring in our great cities.” (That last part, at least, was pretty much a fabrication.) Despite that high-minded rhetoric, congressional Republicans are pushing forward with a stealth bill that will make life easier for contract killers and make it more dangerous for police to protect themselves from gun violence.

On Tuesday, the House Committee on Natural Resources will hear testimony about the innocuously titled “Sportsmen’s Heritage and Recreational Enhancement Act” (or SHARE Act), introduced by Rep. Jeff Duncan, a South Carolina Republican. Buried in the middle of a bunch of provisions regarding hunting and fishing on federal lands, however, is a provision that would roll back parts of an 80-year-old law — passed in response to the St. Valentine’s Day massacre of 1929 —  that regulates the sale of firearm silencers.

“Silencers distort the sound of a gun, and in the wrong hands, they […]

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NRA TV host Grant Stinchfield

NRA TV host Grant Stinchfield is once again attacking the mainstream media — and this time it’s over articles that describe guns and firearms as “weapons.”

Via Media Matters, Stinchfield went on a lengthy rant against an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that talked about fears that campus open carry laws would lead to college students getting drunk and firing their weapons. Stinchfield singled out the use of the word “weapon” as a textbook example of “media bias” intended to make the general public afraid of guns.

“It’s their use of the word weapon that has me bewildered,” he said of the article. “The reporter uses ‘weapons’ in place of firearms or guns so many times, it just becomes bizarre. Here, ‘Fears of gun owners getting drunk and firing their weapons.’ I firmly believe she uses the phrase weapons over firearms in an effort to scare the uninformed.”

Stinchfield then acknowledged that the reporter may have been in the right referring to firearms as “weapons” because the state of Georgia does refer to its open carry permits as “weapons […]

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