Free Republic

Three Democratic U.S. senators on Monday said they are introducing legislation that would require U.S. regulators to mandate installation of driver-monitoring systems to ensure motorists pay attention while using systems like Tesla's Autopilot.Senators Ed Markey, Richard Blumenthal and Amy Klobuchar introduced the measure on Monday, saying they hope to get it included as part of infrastructure reform legislation. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened 28 probes into Tesla crashes to date, with 24 pending, where Autopilot was suspected of being in use.The measure also requires the agency "to study how driver-monitoring systems can prevent driver distraction, driver disengagement,...

President Barack Obama’s auto bailout czar Ron Bloom is under fire from the House Oversight Committee for a pro-union comment he reportedly made in 2009. David Shepardson, a reporter for The Detroit News, wrote in 2009 that Bloom told a dinner audience, “I did this all for the unions.” While testifying under oath at an Oversight subcommittee hearing in June, though, Bloom denied making those comments. Rep. Dan Burton, an Indiana Republican, asked Bloom about the comment. Bloom replied that he didn’t say it. So, Burton asked him if he thought he was “misquoted.” Bloom said “that’s correct.” Burton then...

Will the Real News Fabricator Please Stand Up? May 19, 2005 By Debbie Schlussel The Detroit News and its star reporter, David Shepardson, got caught with their pants down. They ran a fake story. But no-one noticed. No-one, except me—which lead to Detroit News Editor and Publisher Mark Silverman and his minions racing to hush the story and bury it, looking for some silent way to cover-up their very large, very exposed rears. They printed Shepardson’s phony story about a terrorist, and I exposed it, last week. Shepardson ran with it, without even a modicum of fact-checking (easily done with...

Jihad Journalism: Detroit News’ Fabricated Terrorism “Reporting” May 11, 2005 By Debbie Schlussel “Former Terrorism Suspect is Deported: Moroccan . . . Was Forced to Leave,” screamed a sympathetic headline in Gannett’s Detroit News, last week. Problem is, the deportation of alleged Detroit terror cell member Ahmed Hannan never happened. Hannan is still here. And other details in the apocryphal article by Detroit News reporter David Shepardson were also wrong or made-up. The May 3, 2005 article claimed that Hannan—who planned to blow up U.S. tourist sites and a U.S. Air Force Base in Turkey—was deported two weeks before the...