"A U.S. jury on Tuesday found the National Association of Realtors and some residential brokerages, including units of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, liable to pay $1.78 billion in damages for conspiring to artificially inflate commissions for home sales.

"The verdict by a federal jury in Kansas City, Missouri, could upend decades-old practices that have allowed real estate agents to boost commissions as home prices and mortgage rates rise, hurting consumers by making housing transactions more expensive.

"Plaintiffs in the class action included sellers of more than 260,000 homes in Missouri, Kansas and Illinois between 2015 and 2022, who objected to the commissions they were obligated to pay buyers' brokers.

"The verdict followed a two-week trial, and the damages award can be tripled under U.S. antitrust law to more than $5.3 billion."

Read the entire article here.

"The National Archives' stunning admission that it has located 82,000 pages of potentially government-related emails from Joe Biden's pseudonymous private accounts not only threatens to supplant Hillary Clinton in the annals of email scandals, it could also provide a boon to the ongoing federal and congressional investigations into the Biden family. ...

"The admission came out Monday as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit brought by the non-profit Southeastern Legal Foundation. ...

"Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who first raised questions about President Biden's use of private email years ago, said the discovery of the emails should be combed for potential evidence by every investigator from Congress to the Justice Department.

"'It's stunning, but when you consider the lawlessness of this administration, I guess it's not surprising,' Johnson told the 'Just the News, No Noise.' television show Monday evening just hours after word of the email discovery broke."

Read the entire article here.

"President Joe Biden killed the Keystone XL pipeline with a pen stroke on his first day in office. Thousands of American jobs were killed from the comfort of his desk using a 23KT gold-plated pen. Now with another pen he has committed your tax dollars to deploy 20,000 young political "climate activists.

"This is a make-work program for political progressives at the expense of working households. We pay for it.

"An official White House statement said the 'Climate Corps' will 'train young people' to 'advance environmental justice' while 'tackling climate change.'

"Mm-Hmm.

"No law from Congress was enacted to authorize this Green New Deal youth patrol. Biden simply decreed it. And he refuses to state how much of your tax dollars he is spending on these busybody hall monitors."

Read the entire article here.

"A day after Jewish college kids found it necessary to barricade themselves inside a library in the center of Greenwich Village while a mob of repugnant terrorist lovers banged on the locked doors trying to get at them, the message is being broadcast that, on this Sabbath, Jews in Brooklyn had better remain at home.

"Stay inside.

"Lock the doors.

"A pro-Palestinian protest is scheduled for 3 p.m. Saturday in front of the Brooklyn Museum. ...

"Better for the Jews to stay inside.

"Just as it became a matter of life and death for them to stay inside back in 1991, in the very same neighborhood.

"What everyone is afraid of is a repeat of August 1991."

Read the entire article here.

"Rep. Jamaal Bowman has been criminally charged for pulling the fire alarm during a House vote that would have avoided a government shutdown.

The New York Democrat called allegations it was deliberate 'complete BS' and claimed he thought he was opening a door.

But now the Capitol Police have referred him to prosecutors, who have hit him with one misdemeanor count and ordered him to appear in court.

The September 30 incident took place in the Cannon House Office building and sparked calls from Republicans for him to be expelled from Congress.

The charge was for 'willfully and knowingly [giving] a false alarm of fire, in violation of DC code' and the New York Democrat was ordered to appear in court for arraignment on Thursday."

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"Did you know we spend more than $800 billion annually on public K-12 education in America? On average, schools in the United States spend $19,380 per pupil, which is more per child than all but one other developed nation (Luxembourg). Adjusting for inflation, spending grew by 244% between 1970 and 2019. That's 6% of our GDP, also more than many other North American and European nations, which average 4.85% of GDP.

"What do we have to show for that? More teachers per student, more non-instructional staff and smaller class sizes than ever before (down from 22 students per teacher in 1970 to 15 in 2021). We have higher high school graduation rates and lower dropout rates. More kids have access to computers and the internet than ever before -- 97% of 3- to 18-year-olds.

"That all sounds like good news, so why are American students falling behind globally -- behind China, Japan, Canada, Poland, Slovenia and many more? Thirty-six countries outperformed the United States in mathematics at the high school level on the most recent (2018) Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). They did slightly better in science (at No.17) and reading comprehension (at No. 12), but the gap between high and low performers widened. About one-fifth of American 15-year-olds scored so low on the PISA test that it appeared they had not mastered the reading skills expected of a 10-year-old, according to one expert."

Read the entire article here.

"Several current and former congressional oversight staff have been recently informed that the U.S. Justice Department seized their phone and email records back in 2017 as part of leak investigations, belated revelations that have touched off an inquiry by DOJ's internal watchdog and raised serious concerns about the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches. ...

"Officials said the seizures were related, in part, to leak investigations stemming from the FBI's now-discredited Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Russia collusion.

"The targeted staffers include people who worked for the Senate Judiciary and House Intelligence committees who have direct oversight responsibility for the FBI and Justice Department, raising concerns that the legislative branch overseers were being monitored by those they oversee in the executive branch."

Read the entire article here.

"President Joe Biden's reckless energy policies, including a relentless war on US oil, have now seriously undercut national security.

"To wit, the US Energy Information Agency just pegged the nation's supply of emergency oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve at just 351 million barrels -- about half its capacity.

"Biden has been depleting it periodically in the name of 'Message: I care,' as his other policies have driven pump prices far above the level when he took office.

"That's the lowest the SPR has been in 40 years, providing enough to last only 17 days in a national emergency.

"What a time to run low!

"The Middle East may erupt any day, threatening oil exports from the region; Russian oil remains banned as its war in Ukraine rages on."

Read the entire article here.

"Campbell Brown, Facebook's top news executive, left the company this month. Twitter, now known as X, removed headlines from the platform days later. The head of Instagram's Threads app, an X competitor, reiterated that his social network would not amplify news.

"Even Google -- the strongest partner to news organizations over the past 10 years -- has become less dependable, making publishers more wary of their reliance on the search giant. The company has laid off news employees in two recent team reorganizations, and some publishers say traffic from Google has tapered off.

"If it wasn't clear before, it's clear now: The major online platforms are breaking up with news."

Read the entire article here.

"The Biden administration is facing an onslaught of opposition to its proposed fuel economy standards, which critics say would increase consumer costs and unfairly burden U.S. businesses.

"The Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) received more than 62,900 public comments related to the fuel economy regulations it issued in late July during its comment period, which ended Monday. The so-called Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards received opposition letters from a wide range of stakeholders, including 26 states and the energy, agriculture and automotive industries.

"'NHTSA's proposal is yet another attempt by the Biden administration to restrict Americans' freedom to decide what vehicle fits their needs and budget,' Will Hupman, the American Petroleum Institute's (API) vice president of downstream policy, said in a statement.

"'Combined with EPA's proposed tailpipe emissions standards, these rules amount to a de facto ban on cars and trucks using liquid fuels, which can and should be a part of the solution to reduce carbon emissions,' he continued."

Read the entire article here.