Mother of two disabled children and an advocate for disabled workers wins 2017 CNN Hero of the Year award

Amy Wright, mother of two kids born with Down syndrome and an avid advocate for disabled workers has emerged the winner of the 2017 CNN Hero of the year award.

Wright was named the 2017 CNN Hero of the Year for her efforts to advocate for disabled people. The award is determined by online voters who selected Wright from among the top 10 CNN Heroes finalists.

Wright's advocacy took the form of a coffee shop. She opened Bitty & Beau's Coffee in January 2016, named for her two children. On Sunday, it was clear that Wright, Bitty, Beau and the 40 disabled employees at the Wilmington, North Carolina, shop have an army of supporters.

Wright will receive $100,000 to grow her cause. All of the top 10 CNN Heroes for 2017 will receive a $10,000 cash award. Donations made to each of their designated nonprofit organizations are also being matched up to $50,000.

In her speech, Wright said, "I am bringing this home to the 40 employees who work at Bitty & Beau's because they are my heroes. And most of all to my two youngest children, Bitty and Beau, who are my inspirations".

School Ask 7th-grader To Remove His Fake News' T-shirt on field trip to CNN

A Georgia family is under fire for allowing a seventh grader to wear a T-shirt that mocked liberal news network CNN on a school field trip to CNN’s Atlanta headquarters -- but the boy's parents think the school violated the First Amendment by making their son take it off. 

Nancy and Stan Jester, of Dekalb, are both local elected officials, she a county commissioner and he is a member of the local school board. Their son, seventh-grader Jaxon, wore a shirt mocking the CNN logo as “FNN” with the caption, “Fake News Network.”

A teacher asked him to remove it before the tour, but the school has since apologized to the Jesters. However, the parents want an apology for Jaxon because, they say,  the whole thing was his idea and he has the right to free speech.

“This year when the CNN tour was announced, my 7th grade son Jaxon asked me if he could purchase an FNN-Fake News Network shirt to wear for his field trip,” Stan Jester wrote in a blog post. “As an advocate for the First Amendment, I agreed to his request.”

“This year when the CNN tour was announced, my 7th grade son Jaxon asked me if he could purchase an FNN-Fake News Network shirt to wear for his field trip… As an advocate for the First Amendment, I agreed to his request.”

- Stan Jester

Jester continued: “His mother cautioned him that he might cause a controversy and needed to be prepared for that. He was fully aware of the implications of his decision and made the affirmative choice to wear his shirt.”

The boy’s father wrote that he is “disappointed by the hypocrisy” of the decision to make his son change his shirt.

“Some students are celebrated when they make a controversial display during the National Anthem. My student was forced to remove his shirt because someone didn’t like it. I defend speech and expression, even if I disagree, or it makes me uncomfortable,” he wrote.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Maureen Downey wrote a column asking, “Was a Dekalb board member wrong to allow son to wear insulting T-shirt to CNN tour?”

At the end of her column, Downey declared that, “As a parent who has chaperoned a lot of field trips, I would avoid sending my child off with an attitude or attire that could create problems not only for teachers, but parent chaperones, most of whom take off work to give their time.”

CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker has seemingly implemented an anti-President Trump programming strategy at the network that was once known for Ted Turner's bare bones "just-the-facts" approach to journalism. As a result, Trump refers to CNN as “fake news” on a regular basis and mocked the network on Twitter as recently as Wednesday.

“While in the Philippines I was forced to watch @CNN, which I have not done in months, and again realized how bad, and FAKE, it is,” Trump tweeted. “Loser!”

CNN Senior White House Correspondent Jim Acosta has emerged as one of the faces of anti-Trump liberal media, regularly interrupting press briefings with grandstanding and providing personal opinions about the administration on a consistent basis. The network’s primetime programming is littered with large panel discussions, often featuring numerous liberal analysts against a single quasi-Trump supporter. CNN’s morning show, “New Day,” has made news because erratic co-host Chris Cuomo seems to enjoy sparring with Kellyanne Conway.

CNN did not respond to request for comment. 

Government Lawyers have asked judge to reject CNN's request to make Comey memos public

Government lawyers have asked a judge to reject CNN's requests to make public the memos of former FBI Director James Comey in which he details his meetings with President Donald Trump.

In a late Friday evening filing, the lawyers also have asked for permission to argue in secret why they say the disclosure could compromise the investigation into Russian election-meddling and potential obstruction of justice into that probe.

Several news outlets and government watchdogs, including CNN, have requested the documents be released under the Freedom of Information Act. Comey testified in Congress that the documents detail Trump's request that he pledge personal loyalty and what he interpreted as a request to curtail an investigation into Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

YOU SHOULD READ THIS!

Despite Comey's testimony that he wrote the memos specifically to avoid including classified information, the government argued it has now classified portions of the documents.

Releasing the memos, the government said, could "reveal the scope and focus of the investigation and thereby harm the investigation" and any prosecutions.

To prevent that harm, the government requested District Judge James E. Boasberg, who sits in Washington, DC, allow them to secretly make their case, citing an unnamed "FBI employee" who would testify only behind closed doors about why the Comey memos could not be disclosed.

"Publicly explaining in any greater detail why the release of the Comey Memos would be detrimental to the pending investigation would itself disclose law enforcement sensitive information that could interfere with the pending investigation," the government wrote.

In a court filing earlier this year, CNN argued disclosure of the documents was in the public interest and required under the Freedom of Information Act. It requested the memos be released "unredacted, and without further delay."

The existence of the memos was first disclosed when Comey asked a friend to provide the contents of one memo to The New York Times. The friend told CNN that the document contained no classification markings.

Comey had just been fired by Trump as FBI director, imperiling the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election that Comey had been leading. Comey told Congress he expected the disclosure would lead to a special counsel picking up the investigation.

Trump told NBC News he fired Comey because of the Russia investigation, claiming it "is a made-up story."

Comey then publicly described the memos and meetings with Trump in testimony before Congress in June. In one meeting, according to the former FBI director, Trump asked others -- including the attorney general -- to leave so Trump and Comey could speak privately, and then asked Comey to "let this go," referring to the Flynn investigation.

In another, the President invited Comey to dinner, which "turned out to be just the two of us, seated at a small oval table in the center of the Green Room," according to Comey's Senate testimony. Comey said he was concerned that "the dinner was, at least in part, an effort to have me ask for my job," which "concerned me greatly, given the FBI's traditionally independent status in the executive branch" and his inquiry involving current and former Trump aides.

Comey said he turned over his copies of the memos to the special counsel.

The request for the documents landed in court back in June after the FBI did not respond to CNN's FOIA request. Other watchdog groups and news organizations, including USA Today, Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch, joined the lawsuit, and the government has repeatedly asked to delay the proceedings.

CNN Mistakenly Aired Porn Video For 30 Minutes And No Staff Noticed

UPDATE, 11/25/16 at 2:00 p.m.: Jeff Carlson, SVP and General Manager, RCN Boston, told Esquire in a statement:

"We are in the process of researching this incident but see no evidence our CNN network feed was compromised last evening in Boston."

---

Allegedly, when Twitter user Rose (@solikearose) settled in all full of turkey to watch the new episode of Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown last night, she...didn't get to see Parts Unknown. But she certainly saw some parts.

Rose tweeted pictures of her television at around 11:00 PM EST last night, which appeared to be broadcasting a hardcore porn video instead of the new episode. CNN's broadcasting in Boston is provided by local television provider RCN, where someone may have been having some quality time with their right hand.

"I can't wait until @RCNconnects wakes up tmrw & realizes that hardcore porn was broadcast on @CNN instead of @PartsUnknown CNN tonight," Rose tweeted last night before making her account protected.

It took a while for anyone over at RCN to notice, Rose said, so it played for half an hour. It's important to note, though, that Rose seems to be the only person who has provided evidence of this half-hour RCN joyride, so it's possible that it may not have happened at all, but wouldn't it be pretty hilarious if it i

No word on whether Anthony Bourdain approves of this dish.

From: Esquire

CNN DISOWN DONNA BRAZILE AFTER WIKILEAKS EMAILS SHOWS SHE LEAKED DEBATE QUESTIONS TO HILLARY CLINTON

Another leaked email has emerged showing Democratic National Committee boss and former CNN contributor Donna Brazile sharing a debate question in advance with the Hillary Clinton campaign -- despite Brazile's persistent claims to the contrary.





CNN announced in a statement soon after the email became public Monday that Brazile had tendered her resignation and the network accepted it on Oct. 14, days after the controversy over Brazile tipping off the Clinton campaign initially broke.

According to documents released Monday by WikiLeaks, Brazile sent Clinton Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri an email titled, “One of the questions directed to HRC tomorrow is from a woman with a rash,” the night before the March 6 CNN primary debate in Flint, Mich.

“Her family has lead poison and she will ask what, if anything, will Hillary do as president to help the ppl of Flint,” Brazile wrote.

The following night, Lee-Anne Walters, a mom whose twin boys stopped growing and whose daughter lost her hair during the Flint water contamination crisis, posed a question to both Clinton, the eventual Democratic presidential nominee, and her primary opponent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

“After my family, the city of Flint and the children in D.C. were poisoned by lead, will you make a personal promise to me right now that, as president, in your first 100 days in office, you will make it a requirement that all public water systems must remove all lead service lines throughout the entire United States, and notification made to the — the citizens that have said service lines?” Walters asked.

Clinton responded with a lengthy answer that moderator Anderson Cooper had to twice interrupt in an attempt to keep to the agreed-upon time limit. Clinton’s remarks drew applause from the crowd, though she wound up ultimately losing the state’s primary to Sanders two days later.

The apparent email tip-off was included in the latest trove of messages hacked from Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta’s Gmail account and posted by WikiLeaks.

Brazile had been under fire over an earlier email chain appearing to show her tipping off the campaign before a town hall event later that same month. That exchange began with Brazile sending Palmieri the text of a question about the death penalty in an email with the subject line: “From time to time I get the questions in advance.”

After Palmieri responded, Brazile wrote back: “I’ll send a few more.”

Roland Martin asked the death penalty question verbatim the next night during a CNN town hall.

Brazile's role as a CNN contributor was suspended when she took over as interim DNC head in July, but on Oct. 14, in light of the email revelations, CNN said it accepted her full resignation.

"We are completely uncomfortable with what we have learned about her interactions with the Clinton campaign while she was a CNN contributor," the network said Monday in a statement.

Brazile on Monday tweeted a "thank you" to CNN and in a second tweet told the media to refer to an Oct. 11 statement she gave to Politico about the controversy.

“As a longtime political activist with deep ties to our party, I supported all of our candidates for president," Brazile's statement said. "I often shared my thoughts with each and every campaign, and any suggestions that indicate otherwise are simply untrue. As it pertains to the CNN Debates, I never had access to questions and would never have shared them with the candidates if I did."

Brazile, in an interview with Fox News Channel’s Megyn Kelly on Oct. 19, again denied aiding Clinton during the primaries.

“Well, Kelly, since I play straight up and I play straight up with you, I did not receive any questions from CNN,” she said.

When Kelly pressed, Brazile said she was being persecuted and questioned the credibility of the hacked files.

“As a Christian woman, I understand persecution, but I will not sit here and be persecuted,” Brazile said. “Your information is totally false.”

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump called out the DNC head over the emails at a rally Monday in Grand Rapids, Mich.

“[Brazile] should be fired from the DNC," he said. "What would happen if I did that? The electric chair, I think."